Category: History

Death of a Whaling Industry: A Chapter in Man’s Relation with the Sea

Dependent yet abusive, enchanted yet careless, man’s relationship with the sentient and non-sentient beings and phenomena of his environment has had a long history of both beauty and violence. Exploring the peninsula of O Morrazo, a verdant corner of Galicia carved out by the mouths of the three river inlets, Lives and Times discovered one particularly bloody chapter in this history of man and the sea, that of whaling: its origins, its industrialisation, and its death. Continue reading “Death of a Whaling Industry: A Chapter in Man’s Relation with the Sea” →

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Jerez de la Frontera: A City Long in Love With Wine

Sherry we say in English, Jerez in Spanish, Sherish they said in Arabic, a city that you can grasp in a glass and let roll through your lips in your mouth over your tongue. It is a city which has always been a lover of wine, always. Long before ‘sherry’ evolved into what it is today – an alchemical creation fortified with alcohol, oxidised by air and transformed by flor – and before the catavinos wine glass became the glass of choice for sherry lovers, before, even, the solera system of ageing wines, Jerez was always madly in love with the vine. Continue reading “Jerez de la Frontera: A City Long in Love With Wine” →

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Exploring Carmen’s Seville: Cigars, Conquest, and Colonialism at the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville

Sevilla, “so affectionate, so brunette, gypsy and so beautiful”, as the song says. Sevilla, forever the heart of the south and for so long the crossroads of the Old and New worlds. Sevilla I visit to learn about the symbol of this cultural meeting point, the Royal Tobacco Factory, the same tobacco factory from which poured out Sevilla’s most beautiful cigarreras in Bizet’s opera Carmen, pursued by their admirers Continue reading “Exploring Carmen’s Seville: Cigars, Conquest, and Colonialism at the Royal Tobacco Factory of Seville” →

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