{"id":1753,"date":"2026-10-08T08:49:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T21:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/?p=1753"},"modified":"2026-10-08T08:49:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T21:49:54","slug":"tuesday-6-october-maritime-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/08\/tuesday-6-october-maritime-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday 6 October – Maritime Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I am aware that among my readers there are those that lived through the Vietnam War. To my best approximation, this must have been an experience of asymmetric death, worry and funerals – all with an unpalatable ideological justification.\u00a0So to speak of a military museum in any positive terms will seem incongruous.\u00a0 Keeping that in mind, I\u2019m aiming to draw out positive themes from a time of fewer opportunities for advancement and seeing the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Museums are about a narrative. How did the thing become great? What caused it? What replaced it? Why did it become insufficient?\u00a0If you narrow the scope to history museums, then you can ask: How did they fund it? Did whoever was paying for it keep having money, or did they run out for some reason and stuff up the whole dream?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But – you might ask – why in Madrid? It’s about as distant from the Coast as possible! The answer comes back to funding and project management. To get your ship built, you need a design and you need funding. So you need to go to Madrid (where the money is) with a design (a wooden model) and convince them that yours is better than the other designs going. Then you take the wooden model and give it to the Carpenters and Shipbuilders, along with your massive cheque, and get them to build it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So a potted summary – the history of the Spanish Navy in three distinct phases:
Phase 1: Ascent & Mediterranean Hegemony (1469\u20131580s) – The marriage of Isabella I of Castille and Ferdinand II of Aragon laid the foundation for a unified state. In 1492 they finished conquering it all, plus the conquest of the Americas brought wealth to fund state military power. The Naval dominance reached its peak with the defeat of the Turks in 1571 – ending the Ottoman domination of the Mediterrean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phase 2 – Atlantic Overextension & Growing Rivals (1580s\u20131650s)
In 1588 Phillip the second dispatched the Armada to invade England, which was a disaster. The Spanish did rebuild their fleet quickly, it did mean that they no longer had uncontested control over Atlantic trade routes. In 1639 the Dutch destroyed a massive trade fleet – ending Spanish control of the Northern European Seas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phase 3 – The Long Twilight & Collapse (1700s\u20131930s)
A brief Naval rival under the Bourbon was cut short after the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). Spain lost its line of battle ships, and its control over the American empire. Internal instability, culminating in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) consumed all state revenues and capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Museum would like to say that Spain has recovered to a degree today, and is building ships and projecting its Navy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A section devoted to discovery of North America:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So much not just about ships, but the yards and machines for building ships as well.\u00a0I suppose those need funding proposals too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Rock of Gibraltar. So many Patrick O’Brian stories from there. I’ll get there one day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A painting pointing out that the Spanish came to Australia well before the English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The battle of Trafalgar is parked quietly in a corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is a wing devoted to the Spanish navy running out of money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a painting of Isabella the first – looking very Catholic and dour. I imagine her life involved many people close to her battling Moors – and keeping everyone motivated to that cause. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I ponder how we teach trigonometry in classrooms compared to that period. Back then it was much more concrete, more life and death. Now it\u2019s just semi-circles and numbers on a blackboard.\u00a0I look at my own kids experience (and to some degree my own) and wonder if we could make it more engaging. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the bookstore a dedication to Patrick OBrian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Madrid Navel museum wants to say that the future is bright for Spain, and they are a player on the world stage. They have had plenty of knock-backs over the past 500 years, but always manage to pick themselves up again. (Quite a different message to what Portugal projects). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brief visit to Reina Sofia museum.\u00a0I have to fill in some of the blanks here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of Picasso’s paintings on display is the Guernica. It talks about the Bombing of Basque by the Germans and Italians in 1937, condemning fascism, giving voice to the defenceless. It also speaks into a deeper war-torn feeling of a Spain that had come out of WWI and the Civil War. Whilst recent generations in Australia remember the horrors WWII and the Vietnam War, Australia is the kind of place where you hide away from that, it’s not as much part of the national story (thank goodness) except for Anzac Day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of Picasso’s most famous Sculptures is the She Goat. It represents post-war optimism and his life with Fran\u00e7oise Gilot and the birth of their children. These themes resonate with me. You kind of have to contextualise it in in the horrors of war, and the simple life of can-do attitude afterward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Artists (William Blake – 1795) talk of Newton splitting the fusion between art and science, leaving a cold stark mathematical world view. In Madrid they work to reject that idea, and hold strongly to the idea that art and science are part of everyday life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the way back we get caught in the rain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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No one feels like dinner after that lunch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am aware that among my readers there are those that lived through the Vietnam War. To my best approximation, this must have been an experience of asymmetric death, worry and funerals – all with an unpalatable ideological justification.\u00a0So to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1753"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1772,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1753\/revisions\/1772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juliangamble.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}