This book is a collection of personal reminiscences collected over 60 years and originally intended as part of a larger work to cover all our journeys on the Iberian peninsula, but it was soon clear that it would be too expensive as a self-published work. A dictionary definition cites a Sketch as something rough or unfinished, though one cannot think that of the Miles Davis-Gil Evans successful jazz arrangements Sketches of Spain. Evans based this work on the hugely popular Adagio from Joaquín Rodrigo’s guitar Concierto de Aranjuez.

Our sketches are reminiscences about the places, things and people we met with during a dozen intensive journeys deep into the Spanish heartland. We travelled by motorcycle, train, bus or auto going from east to west and north to south, preferring the parts least affected by modern times — to places where old world manners and propriety still prevailed. The accessible southern coast from the French border to Cadiz was rarely on our itinerary because much of that region had already been ravaged by tasteless tourism, reckless building projects and fields of strawberry beds covered in plastic.