Culture: In Chapter Two of that novel, we are assured that Mr Leopold Bloom liked his grilled mutton kidneys, which had "the tang of faintly scented urine". Like the tangy physicality of Joyce's Ulysses, Ghosts of Spain, by the Guardian's Madrid correspondent, is a heady mix of socio-political commentary with a certain amount of historical contextualisation woven in, larded with reflections on culinary, sporting and other diverse cultural practices, writes Ciaran Cosgrove
Giles Tremlett has given us Spain in all its variegated glory and, yes, tackiness. This is a feast of a book. If it is "Spanish", Tremlett has savoured it.
He is at his wittiest when it comes to the all-pervasive representation of sex in the Spain that followed Franco's death in 1975. His description of his visit to a brothel, El Club Romaní, south of Valencia, where a fully equipped room for "disabled" clients is part of the service, is hilariously described. The brothel PR man tells him of the pièce de résistance sitting in the corner: "This is a very special wheelchair. You press a button and it stands itself, and whoever is in it, almost upright". Or, here is Tremlett on the conservative wing of the Spanish press: "the Pope inspires the editorials, but it is the prostitutes who service the small-ads pages".
Beauty and death, so truly the indissoluble "duo" of Spanish life, as writers as diverse as Lorca and Hemingway have emphasised, are accorded their special measure in this often eloquent - though, it has to be said, at times too anecdotal and over-written - homage to an adopted country.
Forerunners of Ghosts of Spain flood the memory as I read this book. Tremlett is a worthy heir to, and inhabits an interstitial space between, the more scholarly Hispanist scholar Gerald Brenan and the lyrical Laurie Lee of As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning.
He tells memorably of how, when Brenan died in an old people's home in Britain after a lifetime in Spain, the local Spanish mayor pledged that the town "would look after him". His body was returned to Spain, and went to the University of Málaga's faculty of medicine, as Brenan had wanted to leave his body to medicine. But the Faculty's doctors did not want "to mutilate the corpse for research". One said that "it did not seem decent to put the author of The Spanish Labyrinth on the dissecting table".
There is a gorgeous chapter on the scintillating fire of flamenco, as played out in the infamous Seville barrio of "Las Tres Mil Viviendas", or in Seville's jail. "When you sing in jail, blood comes out of your mouth", one of the inmates tells Tremlett, as he mentions too how the exemplar of modern flamenco singing, Camarón de la Isla, who died of cancer in 1992, is still the living ghost of the musical south.
Tremlett comments that "the routine of death in Spain is a well-trodden path", and his description in a later chapter of the Madrid "tanatorio", or official morgue, ("it bustles like a railway terminus - with its large bar-cum-restaurant doing brisk trade") is surrealistically comical.
The grimmer side of death in Spain is, however, also given much attention by Tremlett. The exhumation of bones in many parts of rural Spain in an attempt to give final rest to the victims of Spain's bloody Civil War of seven decades ago, is movingly recounted. So too is the ongoing saga of the conflict in the Basque country.
On contemporary Spanish politics, Tremlett has been aided by significant work done by Paul Preston, Paddy Woodworth and others. The political shenanigans engaged in by Aznar and his ministers of the former Popular Party government concerning the Madrid bombings of 2004 are also given a substantial airing.
What comes across forcibly in the book are the distinct idiosyncrasies and characteristics of the autonomous regions and cultures, whether Basque, Catalan, Gallician or Andalusian. But it is the multi-coloured tapestry that is Spain which Tremlett configures, elucidates and embraces with infectious love. In the mind of Tremlett and this reviewer, at least, the separate parts that constitute the whole of Spain make for strong interactions rather than centrifugal disintegration.
The negative side of Spain is not eschewed by Tremlett. As I write, the council of ministers appointed by the Spanish government has effectively dissolved the Marbella city council. For years, corruption has been rife in the Costa del Sol. Spearheaded by the now deceased property developer, football club owner and, in Tremlett's words, "all-round thug", Jesús Gil y Gil, drug money, political involvement and uncontrolled housing construction have been the bane of the Costa.
This book contains a treasure trove of Spanish words. Tremlett adopts the winning strategy of using Spanish words wherever he can, and providing an English translation alongside. Regrettably, perhaps, a regional map of Spain with mentioned place-names might have prefaced the book, and, for the uninitiated, a select bibliography at the end would have been an enticement to further reading. Small reservations; a big book!
Ciaran Cosgrove is Head of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College Dublin
Ghosts of Spain By Giles Tremlett Faber & Faber, 433pp. £16.99