I’m writing this in Madrid, while waiting for a plane that isn’t coming. Writing will help me to lighten this drowsy wait that separates me from Porto, and to avoid the anxiety of thinking about numerous things I need to do in the approaching week. 

Images flow through my head like a movie sequence when I remember how the car steered along the winding road next to a deep ravine on the way to Picos de Europa.

I remember the journey and the feeling of going through a tunnel, because there are no open views there. One is surrounded by wild mountains, with craggy profiles silhouetted against the sky… Now I understand how it was named. 

The landscape is extraordinary. It looks like a painting by an unknown Flemish artist, with the splendid greens of plants and waters, sometimes almost fluorescent, and the dark and yellowish grays of rocks; this palette is balanced by the pure, crystal whiteness of snow-covered “spikes”, cut out of the intense, brilliant and clean blue sky.