Standing in the footsteps of Columbus
Last Wednesday, thanks to the generosity of Tile of Spain and the Spanish Trade Commission , I toured the grounds of the Aljafería Palace in Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, Spain.
Of course, my camera's battery was dying so I have to use a Wikimedia shot for the outside of the castle. The rest of the photos here are original though.
The Aljafería Palace is the largest, preserved Moorish structure in Spain and it tells a history that won't stop. It dates from the mid-11th Century and it was the fortified palace of Ahmad I al-Muqtadir. Moorish Spain wasn't a single entity, rather, it was a collection of independent kingdoms.
The Moors were a force in Northern Spain until mid-11th century and even after the reconquest of northern Spain, a now Christian Aragon remained an independent nation and the Aljafería remained the seat of power.
Fast forward to the mid-15th Century and the marriage of Isabella, Queen of Castile and Ferdinand II, King of Aragon. Their union formed the foundation of the modern nation of Spain and they ruled over their newly joined kingdom from the Aljafería Palace.
Fast forward another 540 years and some guy from St. Petersburg, FL (me) found himself standing in the inner courtyard of the Aljafería.
I've been fortunate to stand in some pretty significant places in my life and I can't be in a place like the Aljafería and not feel the humanity of the people who've been there before me. So as I was standing there it hit me like a rock that since this was the palace of Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus would have passed through this courtyard on his way up to his audience with them.
Christopher Columbus was an idea man. Contrary to popular belief, people had known that the earth was round since the Egyptians ruled over the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Columbus was a visionary and he was determined to find someone to fund his great idea to sail across the Ocean Sea to reap the riches of India. For eight years he'd been pestering royal courts all over Europe and it was in Spain that he found a receptive audience.
It took him years to convince the Spanish Monarchs that his was a can't lose proposition. Ultimately, they decided to fund his expedition from an encampment in Granada but the preliminary meetings took place in the Aljafería.
So as I became standing in that Courtyard, I had a flash of insight into Columbus. I supply pitches all of the time. I'm an concept guy too. In reality, I actually have some other pitch these days at 10am. I'm worried about it and I know Columbus changed into fearful approximately his too. The stakes for him had been infinitely better than my stakes are however the tension he felt then and the anxiety I sense now are the same.
As unique as the sector is now from what it appeared like 500 years in the past, what the ones worlds have in common is humans. We're the equal now as we've ever been. We may also know greater stuff but our emotional degrees haven't modified. Anxiety now could be the same as it's ever been. The same thing's true for love, or pleasure, or anger, or fear.
It's great to have the opportunity to stand in a truly old place such as the Aljafería Palace and to see and feel those common threads of humanity. Places like that help me put myself into some kind of historical context and to see that I'm really not so important or significant after all. I mean, I'm pretty important in the context of my own life but so far as the big picture goes, I'm not such a big deal. I find that comforting, that perspective.
Places that find the money for that sort of mirrored image are a dime a dozen throughout Europe however they may be pretty unusual in this facet of the Atlantic. I recognise that the profusion of such locations is what attracts me to Europe so strongly. But the very reality that I'm drawn so strongly marks me as an American. It's a curious aspect.