Valencia: an edgy and vibrant expat city

Expat author Jason Webster explains why the ever-changing city of Valencia is the perfect setting for his novels - and for him.

If I’d had a choice about where to come and live in Spain I probably wouldn’t have plumped for Valencia. But that was over 10 years ago, and the city was a very different place then.

Only in recent years has this Mediterranean city - the third largest in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona - emerged from an ugly-duckling image it has suffered for decades. Not without reason did the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan dub it ‘the world capital of anti-tourism’ forty years ago, revelling in the city’s griminess, perverseness and lack of attention to the needs of visitors.

“To be alone in Valencia,” he quoted Lady Harlech as saying at the time, “is to be permanently twenty minutes this side of suicide.”

Punished by Franco for being the capital of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, and unloved by much of the rest of the country, Valencia was a backwater, a jewel so encrusted with dirt that almost no one could see the treasure that was lying underneath - least of all the Valencians themselves.

But all that has changed. As I write, the very first high-speed trains are arriving in the city from Madrid, bringing passengers in from the capital - over 350 km away - in barely an hour and a half.

Yet this is only the latest in a long string of recent developments that have transformed Valencia into the most exciting city in Spain. Madrid may be the centre of power, and Barcelona a cultural mecca, but Valencia offers the light and vibrancy of a major Mediterranean port, without the stress of an oversized metropolis.

Perhaps the most emblematic symbol of the new Valencia is the City of Arts and Sciences - a vast space-age complex of buildings designed by Valencian wunderkind Santiago Calatrava, one of the most feted architects around. An opera house, a science museum, aquarium and showcase tennis court have all been constructed, attracting visitors from all over the world, and are frequently used as the backdrop in adverts for new sports cars.

The attractions of the older part of the city have also been given some much-needed attention. When I first arrived, chunks of the Moorish city walls and wonderful 19th century town houses were close to falling down. Valencia felt neglected and down-at-heel. Now, however, a great number of these buildings have been restored and painted, their facades shining bright pinks, reds and blues.

For this is a city that loves colour, pageantry and show, in all its forms. Fallas, the biggest fiesta of the year here - and one of the most important in the country - heralds the coming of Spring. And Valencians like to mark the changing of the seasons with a concentration of fireworks, "fire-cracker concerts" and bonfires that would pull at the heart-strings of any self-respecting arsonist. Tonne after tonne of gunpowder is ignited in a seemingly endless display of pyrotechnics, both during the day and at night. While on the last day of the festivities, eight-metre-high statues of wood and papier-mâché, standing at almost every crossroads, are set ablaze, often scorching nearby buildings - and anyone foolish enough to stand too close.

There’s more to the city than a strong pyromaniac tendency, though. Valencia is the home of Spain’s national dish - paella. Here, the real thing is made with chicken and rabbit, not seafood - although there are fish and shellfish versions. But with the sea close by, and surrounded by a belt of fertile market gardens growing everything from oranges and artichokes to spinach and olives, this is an ideal place to test for oneself the health-giving benefits of the famous "Mediterranean diet".

Yet despite all this abundance and renewal, all is not rosy in Valencia. There is a dark side to the city, one that rarely comes to light or is seen by the visitor or recently arrived expat. Which was one of the reasons why I decided to write a series of detective novels set here. Having set down my roots over ten years before, I wanted to describe the place that had become my home, but to do so in a way that expressed the nuances, the shadows and tones of grey as well as all the colour and the attractions. Today no one could insist that this is a capital of "anti-tourism", but the dirty, edgy city that Tynan saw hasn’t gone away, not entirely.

Accusations of corruption in the city’s politics are so common now they barely warrant front-page attention. All that money that was used to help revamp the place was also used to line a few pockets, it would appear.

Then some of the decisions made in the name of progress have been very controversial. The Cabanyal is an old fishermen’s quarter north of the port area, running parallel to the beach. Here tightly packed houses from the turn of the century display facades of delicate ceramic work, with blue, green and turquoise zig-zag patterns or checker-board effects, with decorations showing sea creatures or the faces of water spirits. The area has been described by more than one visitor as an "open-air museum", a showcase of Art Nouveau design. Yet the Town Hall wants to bulldoze a great hole through the neighbourhood to extend a modern avenue through to the seafront. Local people have staged protests, and there have been clashes with the police, but the plans continue.

And of course, as with almost any modern city, Valencia has its own fair share of problems with drugs and the sex trade. In fact, the city had an official red-light district as far back as the Middle Ages. And as you drive along the local roads today you will often find a lonely building somewhere, the word "club" in fluorescent lights over the door. Don’t be fooled: this is not the local equivalent of White’s or the Atheneum, but a brothel.

Despite its faults, though, I have developed a deep attachment to Valencia. I came originally because I had fallen in love with a Valencian woman; today she is my wife. And although, in that sense, the choice of where I was to come and live in Spain was made for me, I now know I would have it no other way. Valencia is, and will continue to be, a great Spanish city. And there is more than enough material here for many more crime novels to come.

Jason Webster has lived in Spain since 1993.

from_http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/8237127/Valencia-an-edgy-and-vibrant-expat-city.html

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