Valencia’s Caped Crusaders
They say that recognition is a pigeon sitting (or worse) on your head, in the sense that so many dignitaries are remembered by a statue or bust tucked away in some park for the benefit of a handful of pigeons or (in the best of cases) to serve as a goalpost in some kids’ football match.
The word ‘penguin’ is one of the few words to survive in the English language that is of Celtic origin, and means ‘white head’; which isn’t a bad way to describe a lot of the statuary that inhabits our parks.
One statue that has found an original way to avoid its fate at the ‘hands?’ of the pigeons is the Monument to the Spanish Cape, that suddenly appeared in the Glorieta Park, and at first sight appears to be a victim of vandalism.
The headless statue was an initiative of the Valencian Order of Knights of the Cape, founded in 2008, who although they sound like super-heroes, are in fact just a group of elderly friends who eat out a lot and complain about the loss of values in modern society; a loss that they combat by wearing capes.
These gentleman wear distinctive black capes with bright red inner lining that bring to mind the more conventional versions of Dracula, although I’m sure they are all frightfully well mannered and neither bite off the heads of chickens nor the heads of the other statues at midnight in the park when the only sound to be heard is the cooing of contented pigeons.
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