This town, a 25 minute train ride north of Valencia, was known as Sagunto by the Romans and then as Murviejo (“Old walls”) for about a thousand subsequent years of its impossibly complex history – before reacquiring the old name 100 years or so ago.

Today one visits for the chance to explore the remains of the castle/fortress/stronghold which stands above the city.

Mentioned in Greek texts from 600 BCE. Built up by the Romans. Besieged for 9 months and then taken by Hannibal. Taken back from the Carthaginians by the Romans > Visigoths > Muslims > Spanish Christians > French > Valencian Spanish (hence Sagunt > Republican anti-fascist Partisans > Franco’s Falange > tourists.

The castle complex is over 1km long. This is one end of it, viewed from the middle:

Below is the ruin of a Roman theatre (built in the first century CE) with (very controversially) a huge new brick theatre built directly on top of the ruin in the 1990s:

Great acoustics, I have to give them that.

A chilly, cloudy day and alas the once-magnificent views out to the coast are an industrial wasteland:

Carved into the hills below the castle are the remains of old Jewish graves. Their history is not known, other than the relative certainty that they were abandoned by the late 1400s due to the Spanish Inquisition.

We had the chance for a bit of a wander through the old part of town before the chilly air chased the group back into the relative warmth of the train.

Now back in Valencia and, having moved out of the student residence, we are at the clean and modern if slightly utilitarian Hotel Kramer, just outside the old city.

Or trying to. It’s Saturday and we’re done with our two weeks of classes. The school is well-run and our two teachers, Yolanda and Rosa, were I think quite good, mostly. But I found class exhausting on the good days (as in: four hours of speed chess against an opponent who is consistently better than you) – and some days it felt humiliating and borderline useless. I’ve been pondering why I experienced it that way.

The school uses the standard Cervantes Institute layers of A1-A2 (beginner), B1-B2 (intermediate) etc, except they  distinguish also between B1.1 and B1.2. I tested  into B1.1, but probably only just, and was with students (including K) who are more solidly at that level or close to B2. It was definitely the right level for me in terms of material – in fact my vocabulary and grammar are in some respects B2-ish. But I have a shaky grip even on the elementary stuff. And the bigger problem is that I have, at least at this level, a terrible ear for what people are saying, to a degree that I felt the teachers consistently didn’t understand or make allowance for. I could have understood 90-95% of their words, in writing, but orally, at speed, I was often completely lost even after they’d repeated it three times. (I  experience this as being literally like a hearing problem: there’s a noise, and I know it’s Spanish, but the words refuse to emerge from it.)

Finally, K and others seemed much better at getting by with what they have in conversation. I can make a comment or ask a question, but when I don’t fully understand the response – or I do, but realize I’ve forgotten some basic word I need for the next step – I freeze.

I feel that for me there’s some deeply buried psychology here. Even at the age of 10 or 12 I recall being reasonably confident intellectually in every area – except terrified of French. What was that about?

Having said all this, some progress for sure. I did have simple conversations in Spanish with several people – including once while on a bicycle next to a beach. I even had kind people say “Your Spanish is good!” and know enough to say “¡Que va!” – which is roughly the equivalent of “get out of here.”

Still, the capacity for a fluent hour-long discussion of Spanish history or social issues – in which I’m grasping more than a rough outline of what the other person is saying – is a loooong way away.

Pero la solución es claro – vamos a ello: let’s get to it.