STORIES LEFT IN STONE

A Canadian teacher fashions a travelogue about his adopted hometown in Extremadura, Spain, hub of diverse civilizations.

Returning to live in his wife’s hometown in Spain, raising his children, and teaching English as a profession, author Nahumko, from Edmonton, offers a deep exploration of the southwestern county of Cáceres, deep in Extremadura, an agricultural center bordering Portugal. The town itself is notable for the Paleolithic rock art found in its Maltravieso cave, some painted by Neanderthals more than 60,000 years ago. Although the author begins with a rarely permitted dive into the cave, he does not return to this fascinating paleoanthropological story until later, rather concentrating on his own story involving always being considered the outsider, confronting the Fascist past, and taking side trips to Moorish, Roman, and early Christian ruins. As a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1986), Cáceres is Europe’s third-largest intact medieval city and rarely changes. Nahumko also writes about his search for a house and why most Spaniards live in apartment houses—which seems to have its roots in the mass exodus of people from the countryside to the cities in search of work after the Spanish Civil War. As a teacher he is keenly interested in the profession and how the lives of Spanish civil servants “depend entirely on how high they score on the list of available jobs.” He seeks out tour guides, shop owners, and politicians and finds that the town is less conservative than it used to be. The city is a rare find, yet many involved in its preservation despair at what already has been lost to careless development.

A fresh and engaging outsider perspective on life in Spain.