Toro and Zamora
Atardecer después de la tormenta
Colección La Photo
We are nearly at the point where the Douro meets Portugal. Two monumental cities rise up on its banks, the water lapping against them: Toro and Zamora. The writer Suso de Toro came here to piece together forgotten recollections of his grandfather Faustino. The sensation of otherworldliness he feels when crashing into the authenticity of rural life is shared with his readers in the pages of Siete Palabras [Seven Words]. Suso de Toro is driving a car. A shepherd warms himself by a fire in the middle of a heath. We have copied the passage below, a wonderful reflection about the stranger’s gaze, and the ethics of taking a photograph.
Ramiro y sus ovejas
Fontanillas de Castro (Zamora)
Colección La Photo
“You are about to stop the car, looking for the camera in your backpack and going down to take a picture of him. You feel disgusted with yourself, you know it’s completely disrespectful, you are not respecting him, it is sacrilege. You recognise in him more human substance, more reality than you have. You’re envious of him, he has something you couldn’t have if you wanted it, something an innocent has, or a savage. He exists, and he is in the midst of time and the world, and you don’t exist, or else you’re locked up in a prison, you are diluted, living in the noise that surrounds you and that you carry within yourself. His reality is that if it rains, he gets wet, he doesn’t have a waterproof coat or heating, and if he doesn’t keep a look out, a wolf or a wild dog will kill his sheep. That is precisely why he’s here, he is a reality, the witness to the fact that life is terrible. If he isn’t here, someone will steal the sheep and kill them. That is the great wisdom of the shepherd. And he knows this because he raises them so that he can kill them.”
Suso de Toro
A shepherd on the heat in Seven Words
Alianza Editorial, 2010
The house where St. Teresa lived
Zamora. 1970-2005
Archivo Agromayor, IPCE, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
Toro. River Douro as it flows through Zamora
Zamora. 1970-2005
Archivo Agromayor, IPCE, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
We do not know whether the writer crossed the stone bridge to gaze on the collegiate church from a distance. Here, the trace of wine is in every corner of a city:
«Mornings in Toro are a world of peace, time is slow and provincial, you strolled the streets together and José would be pointing out the palaces and churches, indicating the ventilation shafts from the wine cellars under the city’s houses. The city is full of holes, hollow underneath, and beneath the houses there are chambers that are empty now, where the wine was kept, red and thick as blood. The whole city is a sounding box full of echoes».
Suso de Toro
The last angel in Seven Words
Alianza Editorial, 2010
Toro (Zamora). The cathedral seen from the roundabout.
1860-1886
Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, IPCE,
Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
Toro. The Clocktower
1860-1886
Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, IPCE,
Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
Bollo de Santos Square
1860-1886
Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, IPCE,
Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
Toro.
The eternity of an instant
Zamora
Far away in Old Castile,
In a distant, forgotten corner,
Zamora was its name,
The well-encircled Zamora;
Enclosed on one side by the Douro,
On the other by the sliced-off rock face;
Yet another by the Moorish quarter.
A greatly treasured object,
Whoever takes you, my daughter,
May my curse fall on them.
Everyone says Amen, Amen,
Save Lord Sancho, who keeps silent.
Romance of Lady Urraca [Fragment].
Anonymous
Zamora Cathedral
Drawing ; lith. by Bichebois
Biblioteca Digital de Castilla y León
Luis Salvador
Lavandera a orillas del Duero
Aceñas de Cabañales (Zamora)
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Niños en las barcas
Parque de los Tres Árboles (Zamora)
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Indicando el camino
Puerta del Obispo (Zamora)
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La despedida
Aceñas de Olivares (Zamora)
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La riada del humor
Orillas del río Duero (Zamora)
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Iron bridges
Zamora. The two iron bridges over the Douro
1927-1936
Archivo Loty, IPCE, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
The house of El Cid
The photographer Jean Laurent´s walking laboratory, during his continuous journeying around the lands of Spain, also moved to Zamora. A man appears, sitting in front of the gate to the House of El Cid, that occupies part of the Romanesque city wall. If we close our eyes, we can imagine the fine view over the Douro river and transport ourselves back to the times of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar and Lady Urraca.
The House of El Cid
Zamora. 1860-1886
Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, IPCE, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte
