Glasgow  

There was a Spanish poet who found Glasgow ugly and sordid. Now that I´m living in this warm and open land, understand perfectly why he said that.

It´s not the same to travel to a city for the mere fact of being retired and freely use your time as you please, than to have to go jumping from city to city because a civil war has been declared and you have to save your skin. You leave behind not only the bullets but the most retrograde ideas of a country that had been blown up. This is how Luis Cernuda appeared in the Scottish city.

He, who is taken by British on more than one occasion, had a hard time adapting — and it seems that he couldn´t — to the climate that reigns above 55º N. We must not forget that he was born and lived his first years in Seville. If to this we add the love disappointment that was dragging on, it´s quite easy to suppose that not even the most trained spirit would endure a new uprooting.

I write this because I have seen a documentary dedicated to the trajectory of the Sevillian where — among all the things that were said — it startled me that the poet and professor said, felt, that Glasgow stood out for its ‘ugliness and squalor’. If you have ever been there, you will have seen that it rains a lot, in all seasons of the year, that the stones of many of its buildings have a strong nineteenth-century smell and that people are imbued with their tasks...

The way I see it, no city is ugly. It's a matter of humour and finding the right angle and seeing it cast in 'a silver grey shade'.

From my Borstal.

LDR