The Savage Frontier: The Pyrenees in History and the Imagination

by Matthew Carr

Overview

A sweeping historical travelogue of the contentious border of France and Spain, in the great tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Jan Morris

With the Catalonia crisis making international headlines, the unique cultural and geographic region bordering Spain and France has once again moved to the center of the world's attention. In The Savage Frontier, acclaimed author and journalist Matthew Carr uncovers the fascinating, multilayered story of the Pyrenees region—at once a forbidding, mountainous frontier zone of stunning beauty, home to a unique culture, and a site of sharp conflict between nations and empires.

Carr follows the routes taken by monks, soldiers, poets, pilgrims, and refugees. He examines the people and events that have shaped the Pyrenees across the centuries, with a cast of characters including Napoleon, Hannibal, and Charlemagne; the eccentric British climber Henry Russell; Francisco Sabaté Llopart, the Catalan anarchist who waged a lone war against the Franco regime across the Pyrenees for years after the civil war; Camino de Santiago pilgrims; and the cellist Pablo Casals, who spent twenty-three years in exile only a few miles from the Spanish border to show his disgust and disapproval of the Spanish regime.

The Savage Frontier is a book that will spark a new awareness and appreciation of one of the most haunting, magical, and dramatic landscapes on earth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620974278
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	12/18/2018
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matthew Carr is the author of several books of nonfiction, including Blood and Faith, and a novel, The Devils of Cardona. He has written for a variety of publications, including the New York Times, The Observer, The Guardian, and others. He lives in the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: From the Sacred Mountain 1

Part I The Perfect Border

1 The Land 11

2 The Vanishing Border 22

3 "Africa Begins at the Pyrenees" 35

Part II Pyrenean Crossings

4 Scholars, Pilgrims, and Troubadours 53

5 The Zone of War 69

6 Safe Havens 100

Part III The Magic Mountains

7 Pioneers: The "Discovery" of the Pyrenees 129

8 Visitors 159

9 Lost Kingdoms 199

Part IV A Home Above the World

10 Mountain People 225

11 Wild Things 244

12 Ghost Towns 270

Epilogue: The Future in the Past: The Pyrenees in the Twenty-First Century 289

Notes 297

Index 315

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Savage Frontier:
“A vivid, deeply informed travelogue”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Matthew Carr has woven an unwaveringly colorful tapestry of a beautiful, dramatic landscape. Its inhabitants past and present—shepherds, smugglers, soldiers, spies, saints, heretics, bandits, freaks—all pass in review in this meticulously researched love letter to the Pyrenees.”
—Stephen O'Shea, author of The Alps: A Human History from Hannibal to Heidi and Beyond

“Matthew Carr has climbed mountains of research as well as stone to stake his claim as the premier 'pyreneist' of the age.”
—Franz Nicolay, author of The Humorless Ladies of Border Control

“Matthew Carr has written a rich, deeply researched and absorbing history, full of extraordinary and surprising tales and an impassioned sense of the unique beauty of one of Europe's lesser-known places.”
—Roger Crowley, author of Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

“Carr conjures up a magical account of the mountainous divide between Spain and France, with its witches and heretics, its isolated villages, its ancient traditions of independence, and its babel of languages. A beautifully written book that nimbly weaves together his own travels and the history of the Pyrenees.”
—David Abulafia, Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History, University of Cambridge, and author of The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

Praise for Sherman's Ghosts:
“Thought-provoking.”
—The New York Times

“A concise and excellent account.”
—The Wall Street Journal

Praise for Fortress Europe:
“The power of this stirring, authentic account comes from Carr’s ability to capture the refugee experience through his face-to-face interviews and his passionate observation of the current scene, including human trafficking, in which women and minors are forced to choose between deportation and exploitation.”
—Booklist

“This disturbing but hopeful book humanizes the face of 21st-century immigration.”
—Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Devils of Cardona:
“A thrilling quest for justice... [A] novel that is as exciting as it is enlightening from its first pages to its satisfying end.”
—The New York Times Book Review

“A page-turner in the proper sense… Mr. Carr has written a gripping and enjoyable novel.”
—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher

2018-08-27

A storied mountain range reflects its tumultuous history.

Journalist and novelist Carr (The Devils of Cordona, 2016, etc.) mines a prodigious number of memoirs, travelogues, histories, and literary works to create a richly textured examination of a liminal region: the mountainous border between Spain and France. The Pyrenees, he writes, "are a mirror of our world, with all its follies, tragedies, cruelties, and absurdities." Unlike other mountain ranges, which are seen as physical barriers to invaders and obstacles for travelers, the Pyrenees have been depicted "as a savage and inhuman wilderness," "the dividing line between Europe and an Africanized Iberia." The stark, rugged area has long attracted artists, poets, and writers inspired by the striking wonder of the landscape, as well as naturalists who engaged in geological, botanical, archaeological, and zoological exploration. Throughout the 19th century, when strenuous tourism became popular, climbers and hikers combed the peaks in search of the dramatic and picturesque. In 1874, the French Alpine Club built a chain of refuges and shelters to house tourists, and in the early 20th century, the first guidebooks began to appear. Besides chronicling the advent of tourism, Carr offers a detailed history of the significance of the Pyrenees as a military barrier: In 218 B.C.E., for example, Hannibal took an army of nearly 60,000 troops, and 36 elephants, across the Pyrenees to avoid confronting the Roman army. The mountains served as a refuge and escape route as far back as the eighth century, when Spanish Christians fled to escape Moorish invaders; later, Jews fled from French persecution; and during the Spanish Civil War and both world wars, the mountains offered hiding places and strategic posts. Arts and crafts have flourished in various mountain towns; mining and metallurgy in others; and "health tourism" has made the Pyrenees a popular recreational landscape, as has the area's mystical reputation. The market town of Lourdes, the author notes, is one among several sites for religious pilgrimages.

A vivid, deeply informed travelogue.

Kirkus Reviews