PALOMA

Is this a paloma, dove of peace, colombe? I’m not a bird expert, but I know that there are quite a few among the bloggers, so we will hopefully know. At least to me it looks like one! I saw it yesterday among some pigeons in “my” park.

Let’s here “forget” about this bird as a symbol for peace, its significance in religion etc., known by everybody.

La Paloma is also a song, which is supposed to have the world record of number of recordings, several thousands. You would possibly believe it’s a folk song, but it was composed around 1860 by a Spanish composer (Iradier or Yradier). By the way, George Bizet thought that another song by the same composer was also a folk song and used it as basis for his “Habanera” in Carmen.

Many artists have pictured “palomas”, but here I will just mention Picasso, who liked to represent “palomas” as an artist and was also the father of a Paloma.

My granddaughter is called Paloma. I believe I have already said this somewhere, but one reason for this name was that the whole big family saw the Almodovar film “Hable con ella” (“Talk to her”) a couple of weeks before Paloma’s birth and were extremely touched by the film and by Caetano Veloso’s performance of “Cucurrucu Paloma”.