Madrid to Gibraltar: Part 2 Great Continental Railway Journeys

I'm embarking on a new railway adventure

that will take me across the heart of Europe.

I will be using this,

my Bradshaw's Continental Railway Guide, dated 1913,

which opened up an exotic world of foreign travel

for the British tourist.

It told travellers where to go,

what to see and how to navigate

the thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossing the continent.

Now, a century later,

I'm using my copy to reveal an era of great optimism and energy,

when technology, industry, science and the arts were flourishing.

I want to rediscover that lost Europe

that in 1913 couldn't know

that its way of life would shortly be swept aside

by the advent of war.

I'm continuing my journey which started in the Spanish capital Madrid.

I travelled south-west to historic Cordoba,

a city with ancient Moorish roots,

Today I cross Andalusia to Seville

and on to Jerez in the south-west.

The hilltop town of Ronda will be my final inland stop,

before I descend to the Costa Del Sol.

And my journey ends on the Rock of Gibraltar.

On this second part of my journey, I find out why a tobacco factory

Seville became an Edwardian tourist attraction.

'..Discover in Jerez

'how we have been getting a British tradition so wrong'.

-How do we drink sherry?

-Well, in England, very badly.

'And find out the lengths that the British went to

'to keep the Rock of Gibraltar.'

Six men were prepared to entomb themselves

literally inside the rock. It's a total James Bond story.

Oh! It's an absolutely perfectly designed lookout.

When my guidebook was published, the exotic

and adventurous rail journey across Spain would have been slow.

Now the country has over 3,000km of track and its high-speed system

serves a staggering 60% of the population.

My journey of around 130km through Andalusia's rolling hills

would take me just 40 minutes.

Bradshaw says that Seville is the capital of Andalusia.

"The streets present a bright cheerfulness of life

"and a charm that go far to justify the boast..."

HE QUOTES IN SPANISH

"Who hasn't seen Seville has not seen a wonder", and indeed,

with its avenues and fountains and gardens and cathedral, all enveloped

in the scent of orange blossom,

it is indeed one of the world's wonders.

Seville's fortunes have been shaped by its river port.

The 16th century was its golden age, when it became the major

European point of departure for the New World of the Americas.

During the 19th century's rapid industrialisation,

rail connections brought an influx of artists and intellectuals,

keen to escape the manufacturing cities of northern Europe.

Touring the city of Seville in 1913 would have been made easier

for the traveller by the tram system.

Bradshaw's tells me that the cathedral in Seville is

"a Gothic edifice of surpassing architectural and historic interest.

"It suffered much from earthquake and two or three times,

"the dome has collapsed, the last collapse being on August 1st, 1888".

I've often been in Seville and I didn't know that.

But what I DO remember is that the vast majority of the steeple

was formerly an Islamic minaret and it has an exact twin in Marrakech.

I love Seville so much that now I have a house near here,

in a town ringed by Roman walls.

It means that I can truly enjoy this beautiful city

and THIS place has always intrigued me.

"The tobacco factory is usually included among the sites

"of Seville", says Bradshaw's. I'm curious to know why.

"It's an immense building where are employed 5,000 cigareras" -

that is, of course women cigar workers.

That could be the clue.

Columbus's sailors brought the first tobacco plants

from the Americas at the end of the 15th century.

By 1728, Spanish King Philip V began work on what is

possibly the grandest tobacco factory ever built.

Originally, only men were employed in the tobacco industry,

to make snuff, but by 1829,

the nimbler and cheaper fingers of women were in demand to make cigars.

Today, the Seville factory houses the city's university.

I want to find out why it became such a tourist attraction.

My Bradshaw's guide recommends visitors to come to the factory

and I'm just wondering why visitors would want to come here.

Most of the 19th-century travellers came to Spain

escaping from the dreary life of industrial Europe.

The first thing they visited was a factory, which is

a bit of a paradox!

But of course there was this added charm of seeing lots of ladies.

And how would the tourists see them?

They had to be invited by the administrator,

but normally people of some standing,

some social standing, had no problem in getting here.

And were these women very beautiful?

Well, according to the visitors, yes, they were.

But in fact, the photographs we have of them taken at the end

of the 19th century show that most of them were pretty awful.

It's a myth of the cigareras - it was obviously an imaginary thing!

Well, my experience of Seville women is that they're very beautiful!

My experience, too!

MUSIC: "Habanera" from Carmen by Bizet

These fierce cigareras were immortalised by the French

composer George Bizet in his passionate opera, Carmen.

Bizet depicted the heroine Carmen as an amoral seductress with

both men and women behaving badly.

Did Spanish people get a bit offended that their women

-and their men were being represented as libertines in opera?

-No.

Not really, I don't think so.

This sort of reaction took place in the very recent

times in the dictatorship of Franco

when some composer decided to create a figure which was the good

and virtuous Carmen, which embodied the virtues of the Spanish people,

to come to balance the influence of the French Carmen,

which was, er...rather libertine.

It was composer Manuel Quiroga who wrote the more reserved

Spanish version.

WOMAN SINGS IN SPANISH

Ole!

The next stop on my journey will be Jerez de la Frontera -

the sherry capital of the world,

thanks to the town's perfect conditions for growing

the palomino grape.

As well as being famous for its fortified wine,

Jerez is the transport and communication hub of its province.

Mucho gusto.

Adios. Hasta luego.

Throughout my Spanish journey so far, I've been at stations

which are utilitarian, modern, made of concrete and glass, reflecting

how much railway building has been done in the last two decades.

It's so nice to arrive now at a traditional station,

here covered in ceramic tiles in these brilliant, bright colours,

so typical of the south of Spain.

Jerez's success and the British love affair with sherry all

started with a military incident.

In 1587, Sir Francis Drake made a daring raid on the Spanish fleet.

His triumphal return from Spain included

a cargo of 2,900 butts of sherry.

His liquid spoils of war were instantly popular.

In 1855, British businessmen Robert Byass joined forces with

Manuel Gonzalez and their sherry empire started

with the production of 7.5 hectares of vineyards.

Today, it's his great-great-grandson

and my friend Gonzalo del Rio who is a leading light at Gonzales-Byass.

-Gonzalo!

-Michael!

Lovely to see you. I'm good. Is it time for a little sherry?

I've heard you love sherry, now you follow trains!

I do, I'm a trainspotter!

-Is there any connection between sherry and trains?

-Yes, a lot.

Look, this is a book written by my grandfather and where he does a

big description about the project of the railway

to Jerez Puerto in 1829.

This is about the time of the very earliest railways in England.

So this is going down to the port?

This is going down to the port of Santa Maria.

This was a way to try

and transport the barrels of wine

in a faster way and in a better way.

And the founder of this company, my great-great-grandfather,

-he financed all that project.

-So he was very forward-looking?

Yes, and used to go all the way through the different

sellers of the winery to fetch the barrels of wine.

-So the railway wasn't just picking up from this bodega?

-No, no.

All the different wineries - or bodegas - had their own place

to put all the barrels inside the train.

Sherry is produced in a variety of styles, from the driest

and palest fino to the darkest and smoothest oloroso.

Probably the oldest brand is Tio Pepe.

..Michael Portillo.

-How do you do?

-He's going to give us a glass of Tio Pepe.

At last, I thought you'd never ask!

Now, Gonzalo, how do we drink sherry?

Well, in England, very badly!

We failed in that - it's not your fault, it's our fault.

We haven't shown people how to drink sherry properly.

Two different ways - one way, because they don't have it cold.

In the second way, they open it on Sunday lunch

and after three months, they go back to it.

A bottle of wine should be drank immediately.

You're absolutely right.

I remember I had some lovely aunts and they would always

serve us a glass of sherry, but we might go there every three

months and it would be the same bottle again and again and again!

Then you agree with me?

Yes, but I didn't realise it was a bad thing to do -

-sherry doesn't last that long, no?

-No, no. This is alive.

So, two easy rules - drink it cold and drink it fast!

To sherry and to the railways!

-Thank you.

-Thank you.

-Mm!

-How was that?

-I

-think it's pretty good!

-Smell it, smell it.

It's REALLY good!

I can't think of a better way to finish my day than

a glass of sherry, catching up with an old friend.

A new day and I'm taking the Algeciras to Bobadilla line,

climbing high into the Andalusian mountains.

My next stop will be Ronda.

Bradshaw's tells me "it's a finely-situated,

"interesting town, 2,460 feet above sea,

"on a projection of the Sierra Nevada,

"in the midst of a magnificent range of mountains."

Bradshaw's tells me that here in Ronda, the old

Moorish town is separated from the modern quarter by the "tajo",

an imposing gorge over the River Guadalevin,

350 feet deep.

This is known as the New Bridge, built in the 1790s, but the

previous effort collapsed into the ravine

with massive loss of life.

You might think this is pretty unpromising territory

for railway builders, but that would be to underestimate

British engineers at the height of their powers.

To discover more about how they tamed this rugged

and inaccessible landscape, I'm travelling on the Ronda to

Algeciras line, heading south towards my final stop, Gibraltar.

I'm meeting railway enthusiast and guide Mani,

who knows about the engineers' epic achievement.

-Hello, Mani.

-Hi, Michael.

-Well met!

I think this ride is quite a treat, isn't it? Beautiful scenery.

-Yes, it really is.

-Who built this railway line?

It was built by the British, Greenwood and Company, out of London.

-Did they have experience of difficult terrain?

-Yes,

they had been... The owner of the company was called Mr Henderson

and together with Morrison, they'd already installed

lots of the trains in South America, Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina.

So this was 180km through very, very difficult terrain,

but to them, it wasn't too much of a challenge.

For the British, there was

also another reason for wanting to build the railway.

Beyond the end of the line is Gibraltar,

which was totally cut off and only reachable by sea.

Originally, they wanted to take the train

all the way to the border with Gibraltar

and the Spanish didn't allow that - that's why this train

finishes in the Spanish city of Algeciras. Because they couldn't

take the train there, Mr Henderson's company had to build a link by sea

and there were two steamboats that crossed the Bay of Gibraltar.

With the line in place, soldiers stationed at the British

garrison on Gibraltar had a chance to escape and relax,

drawn by the excitement of the bullfights

and the hilltop pleasures of the Ronda.

And what were the challenges of the terrain?

They were vast, one because of the elevation - climb -

sea level to Ronda is 750m.

And the second because of the actual terrain.

We're just about to go into the gorge,

we're following the track of the river, the Guadiaro River.

They literally had to bevel out the tunnels from rock, from pure rock.

They had to build a series of switchbacks over the river -

16 tunnels and about six bridges.

-Tunnel number one.

-Tunnel number one!

So what was the impact of this railway when it opened

at the end of the 19th century, on the communities here?

Vast - they called it railway fever.

The great thing about this railway and I suppose all railways

that opened at that time is that they transcended class.

They were important for everybody,

because all these communities were very,

very cut off and it gave them all a vital lifeline to the rest of Spain.

-What is the future of the railway?

-Right now, it's up in the air.

Renfe, the national rail company,

they are studying the closure of about eight lines in Andalusia.

It makes me very sad that this is one of the lines that might be close.

-And is there a fuss going on about that?

-Yes.

A lot of people are reliant on this railway, not just for pleasure

but to get to work, to get to school, to go shopping.

So there's a campaign under way

-and some poor politician has to make the decision!

-I think so.

My last stop by railway is Algeciras,

which was very different in 1913 from what it is today.

The then-quiet beaches are now obscured by a vast

network of cranes, ships and lorries.

It's Spain's second-busiest container port.

Having constructed the railway line,

Mr Henderson built a hotel for his travellers in Ronda.

Its sister hotel is here in Algeciras.

This irresistible advertisement in Bradshaw's guide has

brought me to the hotel Reina Cristina.

"Modern hotel, furnished by maples.

"Frequent saloon steamers daily to and from Gibraltar.

"Best sanitary arrangements."

It's also the very first hotel to be built on the Costa Del Sol

and very early in its history, it welcomed Winston Churchill

to the Algeciras Conference to resolve the Moroccan Crisis.

In 1905, Germany was eager to expand its empire to rival

those of Britain and France.

Kaiser Wilhelm landed in Morocco and controversially backed

the Sultan in his bid for independence from France.

The French were furious and the Algeciras Conference was

called to try to get France and Germany to negotiate.

A diplomatic solution was found,

but Britain, France and Russia allied themselves against Germany.

-Hola, buenas tardes.

-Hola!

Michael Portillo, por favor.

The hotel became a firm favourite with the garrison officers

in Gibraltar, who wanted to get off the Rock to relax,

which is exactly what I'm going to do.

Algeciras is very definitely in Spain, but this morning I've

chosen an English breakfast, because Gibraltar is very close by and it's

my next destination, so today, it's eggs, bacon and baked beans.

Gibraltar is 2.5 square miles of Jurassic limestone,

rising in a bold headland fronting the Straits of Africa.

On a clear day, you appreciate how narrow those straits are

and why that little stretch of water was so important to the British.

For three centuries,

British artillery on the Rock has been able to deny access to

shipping from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and vice versa.

Given its strategic importance, you can see why

the British have clung to it like a limpet to a rock.

In 1704, the British took Gibraltar by force and ever since,

there have been Anglo-Spanish tensions.

The best place to understand why the British were prepared to

fight to keep possession of Gibraltar is up here.

BIRDSONG

Hello.

It's like taking off in a plane, the views come rushing into sight.

We're going up 412m, so we're going up about the height

of the very top of the Empire State Building in New York.

I think the panorama today is going to be spectacular.

Spain is laid out before me today like a map.

The coastline snaking away there towards Malaga,

and on that side towards, eventually, Portugal.

Ronda will be up there, and then of course the railway

snakes its way down to...Algeciras, there.

And my early 20th-century travellers would then have taken

a saloon steamer across here

to Gibraltar.

But my crow's-nest view also reveals why the British

so badly wanted Gibraltar.

It was only 14 miles away from the coast of North Africa

and the waters were a shortcut for shipping through to the

Mediterranean and the rest of the British Empire.

Without access to Gibraltar, ships would have had to go all

the way round the African coast, taking more time

and more risks.

With tensions over Africa hotting up between the European powers,

Gibraltar looked as though it might be the front line in war.

I'm meeting Prof Clive Finlayson, director of Gibraltar's museum.

Clive, in 1913,

we're only, as it turned out, a year away from war and already

the colonial powers were in dispute over bits of North Africa.

The visitor from Britain, clutching his Bradshaw's guide,

what might he have noticed in Gibraltar at that time?

Well, intense activity related to the dockyards

and the whole of the port was built over a period of 12 years.

That really transformed the whole of Gibraltar.

There was intense quarrying,

the whole physical landscape of Gibraltar changed completely.

It was of course related to the fact that the British knew

the German submarines, U-boats, posed a threat

and they wanted to construct a torpedo-proof harbour.

So that's what they would have seen.

Was this traditionally the Royal Navy area of Gibraltar?

Right from the start, in 1704, the port had been in the North,

but suddenly, the enemy was in the North, so they had to move

the harbour, the naval facility, away from the land and the guns.

So it was brought here.

Tunnels begun in the 18th century were used to store naval

ammunition during the First World War.

During the Second World War,

they were developed into a clandestine network and Clive's got

a recently-declassified top-secret surprise for me.

Well, we've come through a huge number of tunnels - what was

the purpose of this, Clive?

Well, this was one of the most secret projects of the Second World War.

The British planned that should Franco reach an agreement

and allow Hitler through Spain, Germany took Gibraltar.

Six men were prepared to entomb themselves,

literally inside the Rock and spy on the Germans from the inside.

It's a total James Bond story.

So we're coming through another tunnel, we're now pointing west.

If you don't mind, to go up there and look through that little slit.

Ho!

This tiny slit, which can only be what, six inches long

and half an inch wide, I can see all the bay down to Algeciras...

And actually, I can see down to the wharfs of Gibraltar as well.

An absolutely perfectly-planned lookout.

From inside, you could see any movement of enemy ships

and then push an aerial out at night when nobody is watching

and transmit that information back to London.

Hopefully, they'd be able to come and re-take Gibraltar.

Having served as Defence Secretary, I can appreciate here that the

Rock is the best sentry box in the Mediterranean.

Although the Rock was bombed

during the Second World War, Nazi Germany did not invade Gibraltar.

But in the years after the war,

struggles between Spain's military leader General Franco

and the British have left their mark on its 30,000 inhabitants.

To find out how it's affected this multinational population,

I'm meeting local, Tito Vallejo.

-Hello, Tito.

-Hello, Mike. How are you?

-Good to see you.

I see you're here with your fish and chips

and of course I see the post-boxes

and telephone boxes - all of it very reminiscent of the UK.

But you're a Gibraltarian - what does that mean, really?

We are British, obviously, British subjects, but the English

usually call us Spanish and the Spanish call of English.

But we cannot say that,

because we have our own roots - for example, I am half and half.

Given there are so many nationalities in Gibraltar,

why are they so pro-British?

I wonder if it's partly

because of the difficulties that there have been with Spain.

That is one of the main problems. The constant strangulation of Gibraltar.

It didn't intensify until the Queen came to Gibraltar in 1954.

Franco got annoyed.

He said, from now on, I'm going to strangle Gibraltar

and I want it back. From then on, things started to heat up.

Because of that rift,

our young children are now losing the way of speaking Spanish.

It's a very great pity about that.

-How do you describe your nationality or ethnicity?

-British.

British to the core. But how about you? You're in the same boat!

Well, I regard myself as British AND Spanish,

but I think they're both so different and so marvellous

and so distinct, I don't see them being put together in one country.

I find it frustrating that Spain and Britain are in dispute.

If the two countries could only work together, Gibraltarians

and Spaniards could reap richer rewards.

I've travelled down across Spain on fast and efficient trains,

quite a change since my guide book was written.

The early 20th-century traveller would have been struck at the end

of the journey as I am that Africa

is almost within touching distance.

Invaders from there occupied Spain for centuries.

Perhaps that helps to explain why, for all its modernity,

in its food, its customs, its dances and its architecture,

Spain remains today unlike anywhere else in Europe.

Next time, I find out how the Edwardian traveller

discovered a love of the high life.

A traveller with my Bradshaw's guide in 1913 could have gone

-up in a plane and seen this wonderful view.

-Absolutely.

And on the Grand Canal,

I hear about the amorous conquests

-of Venice's most famous son.

-Casanova loved women.

He only had 130 lovers.

-That's extremely moderate.

-Absolutely!

Viva Italia!