Around Alcala de Henares (by the whole family)

We thought we could tell you a little bit about the town we live in. I don't know why we haven't already. Alcala is a great place with lots of history and personality and we love it here.
Here are the ancient walls of the city that date back to the 1200s. (It looks like I risked my life to get this mediocre shot, doesn't it? I didn't.)

Famous things about Alcala:

• Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, was born here. Here are the boys on the new bronze statue in front of his house/museum. It gets lots of action from local children who climb all over it and then every tourist takes their obligatory photo in this spot. We love Cervantes so it is great to be in his birthplace.
• Alcala used to be a Roman town called Complutum. We'll have to do a blog after we see the ruins.
• Another claim to fame is that long ago there were two small children who were beheaded here by the Romans for being Christians. They are now sainted and there are pilgramages to Alcala to pay tribute to our patron saints' graves at the Catedral de Los Santos Ninos.
• It was here in Alcala de Henares that Columbus first pitched his idea to Queen Isabel and she turned him down. Yes, right here a mile from our house! In fact, on Columbus Day we took a walk to where that happened and took a picture at the Isabel statue.

• Catherine of Aragon was born here. (She was the daughter of Isabel and Ferdinand who married Henry VIII and then didn't produce any male heirs for him, so he tried to divorce her. Remember the story with Thomas More?)
• Alcala is the home of one of the major ancient universities of Europe. It is still a great university-town with lots of wonderful old architecture scattered throughout it.
• Last, but not least, Alcala was in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest comic strip, measuring 175ft 6in x 4ft 11in! (We only know this because we have a 2000 Guinness Book here and the kids love to read it.)
  

Because of the cool things above, Alcala is one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.

Other interesting things about Alcala:

• Nearly 18% of the population are foreigners, especially Romanians.
• Population 200,000 and it is about the physical size of Springville (there are lots of apartments) and situated about 20 miles from Madrid.
  
• Sadly, 3 years ago, on March 11th there was a major AlQaida terrorist attack on the train line going into Madrid. The terrorists are believed to have boarded the train at our station here; their van was found, I think, about two blocks from our house here. 191 people died and over 1000 were injured, many of them were from Alcala.

Some of our favorite things about Alcala:

• DAVE: "Entire families going for walks in the evening, with the old abuelas dressed to the 9s and gossiping; the Plaza de Cervantes, where something is always going on; the Colegio de los Irlandeses, the 16th century building where our students meet for their classes."
• MICHELLE, "I love the plazas, our ward (church congregation) and several times we've come across people dancing which always makes me smile."

• ALEX, "The closeness of the Torrejon de Ardoz air force base. Every day F-18s, C-130s and Mirages fly overhead. Sometimes they fly much lower than you would see in a air show (and louder too.) I also love the Plaza de Cervantes (pictured above-stolen from a website) because it is so big and clean and there is always something interesting going on there."

• SIMON, "It doesn't smell as much like smoke as it does in Madrid and it is cleaner. And I love the Plaza Cervantes."
• EVA, "I like living near the train and riding on it."