Valencia City Quotes

Valencia. City by the sea, birthplace of her favorite painter, Sorolla. Hotel guests speak of Valencia’s tranquil beauty, fragrant orange trees, and rolling blue waters. What does a large body of water sound and smell like? Ana wonders. Landlocked, fenced by circumstance, she has never seen the sea. She sees Spain only through images on postcards that guests collect in their rooms. If she transfers to the hotel business office, perhaps one day she too will walk along the beach in Valencia.

Living in the same city as Microsoft, I’m only too aware that, even in low-technology businesses like coffee, the Next Big Thing could knock the dominant player into second place tomorrow. I keep pushing to make sure that Starbucks thinks of the Next Big Thing before it has even crossed anybody else’s mind. In fact, Don Valencia is working on it even as I’m writing this book.

Early Cuban liberation movements, like the one headed by Narciso López, continued to plague the Spanish government. Narciso López was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on November 2, 1797. As a young man, he was conscripted, or drafted, to serve in the Spanish army. During his service to Spain, he fought against the freedom fighters of Simón Bolívar, the liberator of South America, in the city of Valencia, Venezuela. Withdrawing in defeat after the Battle of Lake Maracaibo, the Spanish army left for sanctuary in Cuba. Narciso López was only twenty-one years of age when he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. After the war, he was discharged in Spain and worked for the city administration of Seville. He lost his position when the government experienced a drastic change in 1843. Disillusioned, Narciso López returned to Cuba where he joined the existing anti-Spanish movement. Becoming a partisan of the anti-Spanish faction in Cuba, he joined these forces to liberate Cuba from Spain. Withdrawing to the United States, he later returned to Cuba with reinforcements. In August of 1851, López with several hundred men marched inland where they were outnumbered and surrounded by Spanish forces. During this battle his troops carried a flag that López had designed and which later became the flag of modern Cuba. López and many of his men were captured with some being sent to work in mining labor camps. Unfortunately he and some of his followers, including some American mercenaries, were sent to Castle La Punta of Havana where they were executed.

Cholera thrived on such features of early industrial development as chaotic and unplanned urbanization, rapid demographic growth, crowded slums with inadequate and insecure water supplies, substandard housing, an inadequate diet, ubiquitous filth, and the absence of sewers. When the vibrio disembarked in the port cities of Marseille, Hamburg, Valencia, and Naples, it found ideal conditions awaiting it.

The city skyline rose up; the lights from millions of windows hung like water droplets in a spiderweb.

It is the disease of youth to mistake speed for strategy. Gravel mixed with honey: the perfect tone for delivering lies and ultimatums. Poverty doesn't bring men dignity. On the contrary it encourages envy and crime. A diplomat's face must be as unreadable as his mind. Kingdoms fall through luxury. Cities rise through virtue. No diplomat worth his salt should say everything that he is thinking. For all the bombast and hyperbole about the wonders of Rome, It was Valencia that had made Rodrigo Borgia what he is: a churchman in love with women, wealth, orange blossom and the taste of sardines. Dreams are what men use to comfort themselves when they cannot get what they want. It is my conjecture that the great men of history did without sleep.