Green is beautiful

The parched tablelands of central Spain have a kind of mesmerizing beauty, even in the heat of summer — a seemingly endless sea of golden brown wheat straw after the harvest. But planted amid those tracts of wheat are immense plots of sunflowers, turning their brilliant yellow faces as they track the sun. They’re not there just for ornamentation. When we pulled our rental Audi A3 diesel into the station to fill up, one entire set of pumps was dedicated to sunflower biodiesel. It’s still not cheap (fuel in Spain works out to about $9 per US gallon), but at least it’s clean. And as we drove around the region, wherever ridges rose above the plain, we also saw modern windmills that would have given Don Quixote pause to admire their bird-like grace—turbines churning out electricity for the Spanish grid. Green can be beautiful indeed.

Posted by Patricia Harris & David Lyon, Globe Correspondent