The following description is from my Spanish-set novel Indiscretion:

At La Linea, just outside Gibraltar, where she had arrived by passenger ship, she had found a train heading north, up the coast to Puerto de Santa Maria, via Cadiz. Coming face to face with the trenmixto, Alexandra had momentarily been tempted to switch to the more civilised and comfortable rápido. The carriages of the passenger and freight train had been stuffed to bursting with baskets of clucking hens, men whistling and shouting to each other, women with luggage and paraphernalia piled high against the windows, and even the odd goat or two; but after taking a deep breath, she struggled with her cases into the hot and stuffy compartment and gamely squeezed herself into an empty seat next to an elderly woman.

The train had high-backed wooden benches, the seating arranged in cubicles on either side of a gangway. Some of the windows were broken, and people climbed through them to grab a seat. A chattering, shouting medley of voices had filled the carriage – there was none of the usual reserved and dignified behaviour Alexandra had read about in the books about the Spanish that she’d picked up at her local library. The strange smells of food, sweat and livestock permeated the atmosphere.

Now, looking around at her fellow travellers, Alexandra made a mental note of their various characteristics, so that she might, if she wished, use them in her writing. Some were ugly as sin, with screwed-up wrinkled faces, and flabby mouths hanging open, but there were so many alert and twinkling eyes , animated by one lively expression after another. Knotted, pudgy or skinny hands gesticulated energetically with each conversation. Accompanying their mothers or grandmothers were a few young boys and girls with bright, dark eyes, red lips and olive skins that in some cases had been washed and others not. Alexandra had seen such familiar scenes and characters in dozens of Spanish paintings, and now it seemed these Goyaesque figures had come to life in front of her.

‘Goyaesque.’ Are you familiar with the work of Francisco Goya?

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes(1746–1828) is one of my favourite artists, and one of the most important in Spanish art history. During his career, which spanned some fifty years, he created prolifically: paintings, etchings, frescos.

Known as a romantic artist, Goya straddled the boundary between old and new: he is seen by many as the last Old Master and the first modern artist. What is most interesting about Goya’s art, as I touch upon in Indiscretion, is that it chronicled a time in history in great detail. But it also embodied sentiment. His early works are fairly joyful – for example, he painted cartoons for tapestries to hang in the royal palace. But over time Goya became, by way of his art, a social and political commentator, as in his damming depiction of the atrocities of war in a series of eighty-five prints called The Disasters of War.

Unlike many great artists, Goya’s art was highly regarded during his lifetime. In 1786, aged forty, he was appointed a court painter to the Spanish crown, and he painted many portraits of prominent Spaniards in the aristocracy. By 1799 he had been given the highest ranking title for a Spanish court painter, Primer Pintor de Càmara, and he was commissioned to paint Charles IV of Spain and His Family.

Of all Goya’s works, my favourites are La Maja Vestida(The Clothed Maja) and La Maja Desnuda(The Nude Maja):

La Maja Desnudawas the earlier work (1797–1800). Art historians believe it was commissioned by Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, a womaniser who was very appreciative of nude paintings. Supposedly, La Maja Vestidawas also painted for de Godoy, and it was hung in his home on top of La Maja Desnuda in such a way that the two paintings could be swapped through a pulley system.

Why would de Godoy want to swap the works? Presumably for his own amusement, but also to conceal the nude version should it offend a visitor – for La Maja Desnuda was a controversial work in its day. The alluring gaze of the model combined with the glimpse of her private area was most upsetting to the Church authorities – and most exciting to everyone else!

But upsetting ecclesiastical authority figures in the early 1800s was unwise, as Goya found when he was pulled before the Spanish Inquisition to explain his ‘moral depravity’ in painting the nude. After miserable proceedings, he was cleared of the charge on the grounds that he had emulated the Velázquez paintingVenus which Philip IV had loved. Certainly, Goya was very influenced by Diego Velázquez; he said, ‘I have had three masters, Nature, Velasquez, and Rembrandt.’

Goya’s legacy in the art world has been immensely powerful. But he is also memorialised in Spanish culture. Back to Indiscretion:

‘Ronda is the city of outlaws and bullfighters. And if you want to see a bullfight, of course Ronda is the place to be.’ Ramón nudged Alexandra, offering her a flask of water. ‘Needless to say, the corrida is a very important part of Spanish culture. If you’re here in September, you could see the Feria Goyesca. That would be a real Spanish spectacle for your book, mi permita. Do you know Goya’s paintings?’

She sipped some water and returned the bottle. ‘Some. A few of his portraits in the National Gallery in London.’

‘You won’t have seen his bullfight paintings then. Very realistic, even today. And at the Feria Goyesca, everyone dresses in traditional eighteenth- and nineteenth-century costumes; some as toreros, others  spectators. There are parades, eating, drinking, dancing. It’s all very colourful. I think it would appeal to the romantic in you, even if you didn’t care to see the bullfight.’

The Ronda Feria Goyesca is dedicated to three people of importance: the 18th-century bullfighter Pedro Romero, the 20th-century bullfighter Antoñio Ordóñez, and Francisco de la Goya. Why connect the three? Pedro Romero was the grandson of Francisco, head of the Romeros of Ronda and the father of modern bullfighting, and he was a very accomplished bullfighter (some say he killed six thousand bulls!). Goya was keenly interested in all aspects of Spanish culture, but the emerging bullfighting really captured his imagination. He painted Pedro Romero’s portrait, and many other scenes of corridas. As for Ordóñez, in the 1950s he decided to pay homage to Romero and Goya with a corrida to capture both the electrifying bullfighting of Romero and the colourful spectacles depicted by Goya. The result is the Ronda Feria Goyesca – well worth attending if you are in Andalucia in the first week of September.