December
27
/ 2023
Girona in Catalonia, Spain, is an experience in polarities, capturing the romance of Paris but also a tinge of foreboding prevalent in Moscow. Girona is both a very popular modern destination and an ancient town filled with occulted history and occult symbolism. Somehow these polar opposites manage to coexist, perhaps because the former is ignorant of the latter, and the latter could not care less about the former. As Patrice Chaplin explains in her memoir City of Secrets, Girona discloses its secrets slowly, and only to the privileged few, and then only layer by layer, like peeling an onion. Patrice has spent her lifetime writing about the mysteries that she first encountered as a 15-year-old bohemian fleeing England who arrived
