Trains and boats and planes ... and the odd bus: Mediterranean 2014

This post combines Cartagena and Cadiz in Spain, and Gibraltar.

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Cartagena, a major Republican naval port, was one of the last cities to fall to Franco. I head to the Museo Refugio de la Guerra Civil, once air raid shelters and now a museum.

Children peeking out after a German aerial attack.

The Germans and Italians were key to Franco's victory. Guernica, the Spanish town devastated by German bombing, was immortalized by Picasso.

The war produced memorable propaganda posters, more creative on the Republican, the government side.

Although seventy-five years since the war's end and nearly forty since Franco's death, decades of dictatorship remain decisive in democratic Spain. Last year, the Catholic Church, which supported the Fascists and landowning elites, beatified priests and nuns killed by the Republicans.

I emerge from the recounting of 20th Century barbarism to be confronted by a medieval festival.

Irritated eagle? large falcon? What self-respecting bird-of-prey wouldn't be irritated with all these drums, weird dancers and costumes?

Mollified, well, as mollified as an eagle? falcon? can be.

(January 1 - thanks to Don and Brian for suggesting that this may be a Golden Eagle)

I don't know if I like this ...

And meat! I've never seen a barbecue like this, not even in Texas. Good stuff.

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‘There is an idea … that the Rock of Gibraltar looks like a lion …so I suppose it must be due to some deficiency in my powers of observation that to me it appeared like a great slab of cheese …’ (Labels by Evelyn Waugh based on a 1929 voyage)

I've passed and visited Gibraltar a number of times, but not seen it in daylight from the cheese angle with the mountains of Spain beyond.

iPads and tablets are increasingly popular for photography, but seem unwieldy and likely to be dropped into the Mediterranean.

(December 31 - many thanks to Ron, also from Toronto, for the one shot of me in all these Mediterranean posts!)

A few minutes later, from my cabin as we round Gibraltar's Europa Point.

At the top of the Rock, you can see a gun emplacement ...

... and, clicking on the link below, you'll come to a previous trip with a view from the battery and a wander 'round the top of the Rock.

http://trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.ca/2010/11/take-that-colonel-gaddaffi-and-other_19.html

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‘The (Cadiz) boatmen, who crowd to land passengers, rival in noise and rascality those of Naples. The common charge is a peseta per person; but they increase their demands in proportion as the wind and waves arise …’ (Murray’s 1845 Hand-Book for Travellers in Spain by Richard Ford quoted by Alan Sillitoe in Leading the Blind)

In Cadiz on Spain's Atlantic coast, modern bow and stern thrusters make boatmen and, to some extent, tugs, redundant. We dock on time and I catch first light. As modern cruise ships go, Maasdam really is quite appealing.