Shabbat in Cordoba, and Madrid

The main attraction of Cordoba was our ability to spend Shabbat there. Spanish Jewry has all essentially disappeared since the inquisition. We had Friday night and Saturday morning services in a historical Sephardic home (it is now a tourist site) and we were the first group of any sort of Jews to hold a service there, and in all of Cordoba in hundreds, literally hundreds of years. Coincidentally there was a touring group of secular Israeli teens in Cordoba and they joined us for services on Friday night. On Saturday morning we read from a Torah that had been donated by the father of a man we had met and had services with in Morocco.
Spending Shabbat there was wonderful, it was peaceful and it was incredible to know that we were the first ones doing it in a very long time. There were several people on our program who had Aliyahs (the act of being called to a Torah, which usually happens on one's bat/bar mitzvah) for the first time. One girl had had a Bat Torah (celebration at the time of one's bat mitzvah without being called to the Torah). There was one girl (the one student from Mexico) who had had no celebration at Bat-Mitzvah age. She had an aliyah and read from the Torah, so she essentially had a bat- mitzvah in Spain. This was not only historical for her, but this was the first time possibly ever that a girl had had a bat-mitzvah in Cordoba let alone all of Spain.
After Havdalah we took a two hour bullet train to Madrid. The next morning we met with the Israeli ambassador to Spain. He was quite engaging. He's been a diplomat for several decades and has also been the ambassador to other countries including Chile. Then we spent a couple hours at the Prado then we flew home. The Prado was absolutely incredible, the time we were given was not nearly enough to see all of much of it. We had a guided tour and they focused mainly on the Spanish painters, Diego, Velasquez and Greco, the painting were unbelievable but there was so much else there that we didn't get a chance to see.
All in all Spain was absolutely amazing. It's somewhere I definitely want to return to and spend more time. But by far it was the best trip yet.