Hola. This is Barbara with some exciting news from the Spanish-speaking cultures. The Turkish Netflix series KulĂŒp (The Club) takes center stage in this volume because it depicts life of the Sephardic community in Istanbul. In the second story, Iâll take you to the Camino de Santiago. Plus, I have an update about the Salvadoran documentary Imperdonable. So, «ultreia», letâs go.
KulĂŒp: The Sephardic heritage of Istanbul
Have you heard about the latest Netflix drama series? Well, there are so many and probably this one hasnât popped up in your recommendations. KulĂŒp (The Club) is a Turkish mini-series consisting of six episodes. I think the Times of Israel summarises its focus very well:
âThe Clubâ is a Turkish drama about a Sephardic family in 1950s Istanbul, and itâs both reshaping what representation feels like for the roughly 15,000 Jews living in Turkey today and offering American audiences a window into an underexplored corner of the Jewish world.
The show has not only become very popular in Turkey, but also in Israel and the U.S. where a majority of todayâs sephardic communities live. It narrates the destiny of Matilda Aseo, who works in one of Istanbulâs most cosmopolitan clubs, and her family.
Jews have been living in Turkey for more than 2000 years, but their numbers increased significantly when the Catholic Kings of Spain expelled the Spanish Jews (Sephardic Jews) from their territory. Many of them found a new home in the Ottoman Empire, keeping many traditions they took with them, including the language. Many emigrated to Israel after its creation as an independent state so that the current Jewish population in Turkey is getting smaller and smaller. It came as a big surprise that a Turkish series would put this cultural minority at its center stage and there was considerable fear it might reproduce stereotypes.
The main language of the series is Turkish, but it includes conversations in Ladino, Sephardic songs, Jewish customs, and does not shy away from alluding to the cultural tensions and repressions at that time. In this respect, it reminded me of the novel The beauty queen of Jerusalem (which I only know as a book, I havenât had a chance to watch the series yet). I am not a big fan of soap operas and, yes, the show uses elements of this genre, such as a focus on domestic scenes, a tendency towards sentimentality and melodrama. However, it does not have any trashy tendencies or this typical neglect of a mass production. I especially liked how carefully the multicultural setting of Istanbul was worked out, which finds its adequate representation in the microcosm of the club. It shows specific care to get Sephardic things correctly. Izzet Bana, one of the actors of the series, advised the production team as âcultural translatorâ. He recounts his experience during the shooting of the film in this article from eSefarad. Kudos to director Zeynep GĂŒnay Tan for her strive at excellence.
Ladino researcher Bryan Kirschen assembled the most important Ladino sayings and proverbs from the series and explained them in a gorgeous and long Twitter thread.:
I have to admit that I found the Ladino of the series difficult to understand, maybe because it often came out of the blue, which is a situation that is hard to deal with as a language learner. Furthermore, I found the accent difficult because all other Ladino speakers that I know speak modern Spanish as their first language đ. And maybe it also plays a role that none of the main actors was an everyday Ladino speaker.
The series also features one of the most popular Ladino songs of all times, covered by innumerable artists, here sung by Yasmin Levy. I canât resist sharing it with you, âAdio keridaâ (Goodbye, my beloved):
Give the series a try. Itâs worth it - if not for the plot, but for its cultural value.
Crimes on St. Jamesâs Way
Luis GarcĂa Jambrina, professor of literature at the University of Salamanca, combines elements of historical fiction and thriller in his latest novel El manuscrito de barro (2021, The Earthen manuscript). In 1525, on their way to Santiago de Compostela, pilgrims had to face all kinds of dangers and were often victims of stormy weather, diseases, petty theft, false prophets, traders of fake relics, and even murder. At the onset of the novel, the bishop of Santiago de Compostela asks Fernando de Rojas to solve a series of murders that have happened on the «Camino francĂ©s» in Northern Spain. Yes, you are reading right, Jambrina has recreated the author of the famous La Celestina Fernando de Rojas and has turned him into a detective. All of these murders follow the same scheme and it soon starts to look like a series of ritual homicides. De Rojas and his partner ElĂas de Cebreiro, a priest and principal archivist at the cathedral of Santiago, encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, enter mysterious and hidden places and meet numerous pilgrims, each with their own secrets on their way to the apostleâs grave.
Jambrina uses the thriller plot to explain the history and myths, the conspiracies and power plays along the «camino» and what it meant to finally reach Santiago de Compostela. For somebody, who is primarily interested in complex thriller plots with surprising twists, the book might be disappointing. The detectiveâs work is not excelling. The crime plot is rather a pretext to tell stories about the camino. What we learn about the origins of the camino up to its decline in the early times of the reformation when the story takes place, is embedded very carefully and with great love to detail. I very much enjoyed reading the novel.
I ordered the book because of its historical setting and I wanted to get into the right pilgrimâs mood: Getting tired from endless trails, just thinking about nothing else but the very next step, having wonderful conversations with complete strangers, learning about the local culture, and being happy that you find a clean bed and a warm shower in the evening - thatâs what the «camino» is about. I am not a spiritual pilgrim in the traditional sense, but the physical exertion provides its own awakenings. We are actually planning to do the stretch from Seville to MĂ©rida on the «VĂa de la Plata», which connects the South of Spain to Santiago de Compostela, in January.
With the Corona cases on a sharp rise again all over Europe, we have been reluctant to book a flight. Well, if we canât go, I will look for more books about the Camino or dwell in my memories. If I finally go, you will get a special newsletter with updates from my pilgrimage ;).
I did my first camino together with 7 friends from Spain, the Netherlands and Hungary in 2019. We walked the 112 kms of the «Camino inglés» from El Ferrol to Santiago de Compostela at the end of August. We were luckier with the weather than the pilgrims in the novel. It never rained.
Imperdonable - Revisited
Remember that I recommended the Salvadoran documentary Imperdonable (Unforgivable) in my newsletter (vol. 3, Amor de mis amores)? It tells the story of a young homosexual hitman serving time in a Salvadoran prison. I am very happy to announce that the documentary won the Gabo award in the Image category. The Gabo Awards are the most important recognition for journalism in Spanish and Portuguese and are granted in four categories: text, coverage, image, and innovation.
In the case of Imperdonable, the jury came to the conclusion that the film makes fantastic use of narrative resources to show a different approach to a very well known and researched issue in El Salvador and Latin America: gangs. However, it starts from a personal story that reflects a much more general problem in the whole region: the rejection of dissident sexualities.
The producers of the documentary, the news outlet El Faro, would actually deserve their own story. Iâll keep that for another newsletter.
This is all for this week. Youâll hear back from me before we all start into winter break.