FELIZ NAVIDAD!

Christmas lights in the little village of Pozo de los Frailes:

It is traditional here for each parish and each local municipality to create a nativity scene called a Belén. However, these are not nativity scenes such as we have in the UK because they don't only tell the Christmas story but include local buildings and places, even local people.

Yesterday we visited Almeria, my favourite city. I love its shabby charm and its atmosphere full of a lost elegance of past years. And it has some of the best graffiti I've ever seen!

Its municipal Belén was vast, filling a hall in the Museo de la Guitarra.  In it we found buildings from Almeria and its surrounding area, such as the Alcazabar (the old Moorish fort), the Cathedral, and the iconic church from the salt works near the salinas (salt marshes) on the Cabo de Gata. Here are some photos, first of a market scene just as you can find in any village here on market day:

I loved this little cat curled up asleep!

The church at the salinas with a pile of salt next to it:

Finally, a shepherd with the Alcazabar up above him:

We visited the Alcazabar yesterday but more on that in my next post!

San José in December.

We have been here in San José for a week now although it doesn't seem like it. It's taken me a long while to recover from the journey, longer than I would have expected. I suppose it's inevitable given the worrying acceleration of my degenerative problems and nerve damage over the last couple of years.

The house we're staying in is a real home. Last year, the place in Rodalquilar, although lovely, felt much more like a rental property. It's true it is a little strange being in someone else's home, with their family photos and personal possessions around us, but it feels welcoming, and it's so easy to get to the sea, to the shops, and anywhere else without any difficulty. Given that San José is built up the hillsides surrounding the bay, this is a real boon.

I have a space where I can work, with a terrace on either side giving me views of the hills and the Eucalyptus trees that surround the house - their smell is wonderful.

We had a couple of minor teething problems when we arrived, such as the fridge not working, and the house being terribly cold as it hadn't been heated for some time. L & L, our kind and generous landlords, sorted everything out - even driving all the way from Granada to buy a new fridge!

San José has that special atmosphere of an out-of-season seaside town.  Today, being Sunday, the market was set up in the Rambla and we bought our week's vegetables and fruit, also an impressive Poinsetta to decorate the house for Christmas.  My sister will be visiting us for the holiday, so S is battling with the old and uncooperative vacuum cleaner and swearing and cursing in a manner that would make a sailor blush - even a seasoned fisherman from the Cabo!

Landscape, Inscape

After several days travelling, and a couple more days to recover from travelling, we are settled at last in San José, the Cabo de Gata.

The journey seemed more of an ordeal this year, although I don’t know why since the ferry crossing was painless and we took a two night break in La Cabrera, just north of Madrid.

Crossing the Bay of Biscay, I couldn’t help feeling a little sad, even if it was contrary of me, that in this world of satellite and instant communication, we are always in touch - through Facebook, email, WhatsApp. The world has become so much smaller and lost some of its mystery.

I have this romantic idea of travelling as being neither here nor there, totally inaccessible, somewhere imbetween, outside the world we know and the world to come. 

It is a place of infinite possibilities because we could always change our minds, go to another destination, never arrive, leaving those expecting us puzzled and bewildered.  We could disappear through a portal to somewhere beyond, like death itself, destination unknown.

La Cabrera was beautiful, the jagged Pico de Miel hills are like peaks from a folktale, the creation of someone’s vivid imagination.

We have been lucky as we left London only just in time, now it is covered in snow! We left La Cabrera and northern Spain only just in time as well, as they have been lashed with torrential rain and gale-force winds. Even here we had strong winds and some rain yesterday, but today the sky is a cloudless blue once more.

Another year, a new project!

We will be returning to the Cabo de Gata in December and I'm planning another adventure this winter so I'll be keeping this blog again. I'm not sure what the theme will be this time - last year I was following in the footsteps of the socialist writer Juan Goytisolo in his book, Nijar Country. I shall do something different this year.

Some final reflections.

Now we're back in the UK, I have a chance to reflect on the experience of living for a short while in the province of Almeria.

One of the things that struck me most was just how much has changed on the Cabo de Gata, and particularly in Rodalquilar, within living memory. It's only 50 years since the gold mine closed in the village, and there are still people whose fathers and grandfathers worked in the mine.
Reading Juan Goytisolo, I am shocked by the conditions under which they lived and worked such a short time ago. Many of the miners died from emphysema, and many more had accidents since health and safety in the mine was minimal, and following those accidents they had to wait months or even years before they received any sort of compensation.

In the 1950s, when Goytisolo visited Rodalquilar, we already had a National Health Service in the UK, although it was recently established. Reading 'Campos de Nijar', brings it home to me what a difference it makes when you don't have to pay for basic health care. Not just from the story of the woman dying from gangrene in her leg, but because of a blind baby Goytisolo tells us about when he reaches the small town of Nijar after leaving Rodalquilar. One of the miners he has travelled with, invites him into his home where he meets the man's wife, Modesta, and their children.
The miner takes his 18-month-old baby on his knee and "kisses him all over his face.
     'Lovely, ain't he?'
    The baby does seem to be sturdier than his brothers, but I look at his squinting, apparently lifeless eyes, and Modesta anticipates my question:
     'It's a pity he's blind.'
     'He don't see a thing,' the man adds. 'Bin like that ever since he was born.'
     I ask them if a doctor's ever looked at him.
     'They took him to Almeria once. They said they'd have to operate on him.'
     'There?'
     'No. In Barcelona.'
     'They say there's a very good doctor in Barcelona.'
     'It's all the same to us, whether he's good or bad.'
     'I don' know why you say that,' his wife complains.
     'Because it's true. We won't find a soul to pay the fare…'
     The father cradles the baby in a strange, loving way."
It's shocking to think that this little boy will grown up blind when he could be cured if his parents could afford the fare to Barcelona and the fee for the operation.

Goytisolo points out that Almeria province has been neglected ever since the Moors were expelled from Spain. Under the Moorish Empire, the city of Almeria was of great importance but no government since has cared about it or invested the much-needed money into it.
Even today, when the "plasti-culture" produces vegetables that are exported all over Europe, there is a great deal of poverty in this area. Tourism is on the increase in the Cabo de Gata, particularly ecotourism owing to the National Park and the Marine reserve around the coast. This, perhaps more than anything, offers a real future and a way forward for the area.

There are other things that have struck both S and I about Spain; striking differences between that country and the UK.  I think at least some of these differences are owing to the legacy of Franco. The Spanish people, as we have experienced them, are noticeably less materialistic than British people. Society in Spain is far less consumer-driven. The priorities there are first and foremost the family, then the immediate community, then society as a whole.
The Spanish seem to have a far better attitude towards life, maybe because they still seem rooted in the land. Spain doesn't seem to have experienced the kind of industrial revolution and consequent uprooting of the workforce that Britain went through in the 19th century. People still have a strong identity with particular area, even a particular village.

Sadly, I have to say that they seem far kinder and more compassionate on the whole. The UK seems to have lost much of its humanity by comparison. Just two examples of this: first, we were surprised by the reporting in the news on national television of the disappearance of a young woman from a northern village six months earlier. In the UK, unless the woman was a "celebrity", after months had gone by, her disappearance would not be considered newsworthy. Second, when the body of a refugee child was washed up on a beach in southern Spain the whole country was appalled and horrified, and it wasn't just a nine-day wonder, people all over the country demanded that the government take more refugees into Spain. In Barcelona there was even a huge demonstration.
I feel very sad and ashamed to acknowledge it, but I can't imagine British people turning out in their thousands to demand that the government take more refugees into the UK.

On a personal level, we were deeply moved by the kindness and helpfulness shown to us by the Spanish we met everywhere; in Almeria, on the Cabo, and on our journey home through Spain to Santander on the north coast.

Leaving the Cabo.

I can't believe our stay here is nearly over! We leave Rodalquilar tomorrow, Monday 27th February, arriving home on Thursday.  I hope the Bay of Biscay is as calm as it was coming - the sea was like a sheet of glass - but unfortunately there have been a lot of storms recently! 

We're both feeling very sad to be going.  It's been a really interesting experience, especially comparing life on the Cabo de Gata now with life in the 1950s, as Goytisolo describes it in 'Campos de Nijar'.  It's striking both how much and how little has changed.  At the end of his visit here, Juan talks of his endless "anger and despair" over the relentless poverty and suffering he has witnessed.  Things have improved vastly in the last 50 years since then, yet some things are oddly unchanged.  More on this later as I'm very busy now packing up and getting ready to travel. 

Rodalquilar - colour and light.

Rodalquilarte is having a facelift!  The old art works that have grown rather shabby from being displayed on the walls for months are being replaced by fresh new ones.  Our friend in the panaderia says there will be another festival in the summer too.  Sadly, we won't be here to enjoy it - well, I doubt it.

Here are some of my favourites among the new pictures that have been put up around the village:

But the whole village is like an artwork!  An eye-catching cacti garden:

A colourful corner:

We went down to El Playazo yesterday.  The wildflowers blooming everywhere grow more and more stunning; just when we think they can't get any better, something new comes into flower.  The clifftops look like giant rock gardens:

Flowers bloom on the very edge of the beaches, in the sand.

I liked this gorgeously painted camper van in the car park at the beach:

This morning in El Abardinal botanic garden, there was a sunflower out - the first time I've ever seen a sunflower in February!

Only one more day here and then we have to go home to grey, colourless London.

Water in a dry land.

We get a lot of our basic shopping in San Jose since it has a supermarket, if a small one, unlike Rodalquilar. One day on our way there, we stopped off in Pozo de los Frailes ('Monks' Well') and looked at the well in the centre of the village. It has been restored and provides an interesting example of the kind of communal amenities that used to be widely used here, right up until recently.

It worked by a donkey pulling a wheel round and round to hoist up pots of water.

When Juan Goytisolo came through the village in the 1950s, also on his way to San Jose, he watched the well being used:
    "After a fifteen-minute descent, a new settlement appears . . . It is Pozo de los Frailes, which has a school and looks bigger than the last one. By the side of the road a blindfolded ass is pulling on the axle of the draw-well. The wheel turns slowly, hoisting bucketfuls of water from the well which are then poured into the trough.
    "The children crowd around to see me, and some run-off to tell their mothers. 'A foreigner, a foreigner,' they shout. Women appear out of their hallways; there is an atmosphere of expectation. Rather intimidated, I pretend I'm looking at the cloudlets gathering over the mountains"

The trough Juan mentions, into which the water is channeled:

By chance, we discovered there was another beautifully restored well in the Rodalquilar valley down near El Playazo beach. In this case, it's a double well with an impressive reservoir tank in between the two wheels.

Why it's so far from Rodalquilar village seems a mystery.  Maybe it dates back to the alum mining settlement built by Francisco de Vasco at the beginning of the 17th century?
It's right over on the far side of the large bay, there is no obvious path leading to it and no sign to tell you that it's there, which seems strange since the restoration cost nearly a quarter of €1 million!  But this is typical of the Cabo!
After the Moors were driven out of Almeria, the people continued to use the aljibes (the Moorish wells and reservoirs) which centuries on can still be seen dotted about the landscape, but De Vasco's settlement was built after the Moors had left and so it would have needed a new water system.

Where wild boar roam . . .

In many of the valleys and steep ravines leading down to isolated coves, such as Cala del Carnaje and Cala de los Toros, we've seen wild boar tracks and the characteristic signs of their rootling.

The valley of Cala del Carnaje:

A steep ravine leads to Cala de los Toros:

But it was up above Rodalquilar, in the valleys among the volcanic hills, that we found the freshest tracks.

"Here be wild boar"!

At the cove, Cala de los Toros - I don't look much like a hunter!

A Recipe for Lizard!

Flowers aren't the only wildlife here in abundance; we've seen (and heard!) many bullfrogs croaking to attract a mate; a small black snake slithered at speed in front of us, across the dirt road to El Playazo; and a lizard was basking in the sun in a sheltered ravine leading down to one of the isolated coves. He's lucky he is small and alive today - in the 1950s, when Juan Goytisolo was here, large lizards were eaten.

While Juan is travelling away from Rodalquilar, in the truck taking the workers home from the mine, they see a lizard half a metre long.  One of the miners comments that if the truck stopped, they would catch the lizard: "'We cook them with tomato and a spot of garlic and parsley.  They're very tasty.'"
 Juan tells him that in Catalonia "the farmworkers like them roasted."

I doubt anyone eats lizards here now, although the locals do often go foraging for food on the hillsides.  Besides the multitude of herbs, at this time of year wild asparagus grows everywhere and we've seen many people gathering it.  Our favourite bar in Rodalquilar, Casa Pintau, serves a wonderful soup with wild asparagus from the "campo."

In the ravines leading down to the hidden coves, and in the valleys among the volcanic hills above Rodalquilar, we have seen the tracks of wild boar, usually near great patches of churned up earth where they have been rooting:

I'm thankful we haven't met one - although judging from the freshness of the tracks, we have come close - as the wild boar in Spain can be large!

Then there are great numbers of birds here. Hundreds of swallows, come south like the camper vans in search of warmth, swoop about the village after insects; also, to my surprise, they fly about the clifftops.  I've never associated swallows with the seashore.  In fact, I always thought swallows migrated to Africa, but I suppose these must be tough northern swallows, from Scandinavia or the far north of Scotland!  And we aren't very far from North Africa here - the Cabo de Gata only lies about 350kms across the Alboran sea from Melilla and the Moroccan coast.

Flocks of crested larks hop about the hillsides, and the fields and scrub, taking off into the air when we approach with their characteristic fluty song.

We've seen siskins on the hills and by the side of footpaths.  Here is a male siskin in his bright plumage for the mating season:

There are hoopoes in Rodalquilar but although I've seen them at least four times, they have evaded my attempts to photograph them so far, and the eagles and buzzards that soar above the valleys, riding the thermal air currents, have proved equally as difficult to capture!
Most exotic of all are the flamingos on the salt lake at Las Salinas, near Cabo de Gata village, picking their way on long, delicate legs through the saline water.

Cats, flowers, and camper vans!

There are three things you find everywhere on the Cabo de Gata at the moment: the first are cats, the second wildflowers, and the third are camper vans. Cats, of course, you will find here all year round, whereas January and February seem to be the best time of year for wildflowers - also, almond blossom which has fully opened now. As for camper vans, in the summer I think they are more closely controlled and kept to the campsites, but now they are everywhere; on any piece of waste ground they can find, filling the village car parks, and even parking down at El Playazo and other beaches.

The majority of cats on the Cabo are among the most well-fed and sleek I have seen anywhere, possibly because of the amount of fresh fish here! In Rodalquilar, which is set 3 kms inland, they seem to live in a separate, if parallel, universe to the humans. They are friendly on the whole but not interested in people, going about their lives in relation to each other, occasionally agreeing to a stroke or a cuddle but seeming mostly rather bored by the human desire to make contact with them.

 There are exceptions - twice we have seen cats going for a walk with their humans; one walking around the olive grove with a man and a woman, and another walking down the main street with an elderly man. On our road there are just two (among many) who are sociable and enjoy it when we make a fuss of them.

In the fishing villages, Las Negras, La Isleta del Moro, San Jose,  the cats are a lot friendlier and the bars and cafes (especially, but not only, those on the seafront) all have an attendant cat or two going from table to table to share titbits with the customers.

We hadn't expected there to be so many wildflowers out, but they are everywhere in masses of stunning colour, along the side of the roads, all over the hillsides, the clifftops, even the beaches - on Monsul beach we found sand crocuses in vast numbers:

 By the sides of the road and in the meadows there are poppies, bermuda buttercups, daisies, and on the hills and the cliffs there are flowering thyme and rosemary, lavender, broom, asphodels - both common and white, bermuda buttercups, many kinds of daisies, succulents and cacti.  Here are just a few:

Bermuda buttercups:

Spectacular "common" asphodels which are certainly common here, coming up everywhere on the cliffs and the seashore:

Flowering broom:

One of the most iconic plants of Almeria province are the agaves, whose flower stalks can be as tall as trees! 

Finally, the almond blossom is spectacular at the moment:

The incursion of camper vans is another unexpected thing to find at this time of year.  There are campsites where they're supposed to stay, but as they have to pay for these many of them try to avoid it and park for free instead! I think there are more camper vans than usual this year because it has been such a terrible winter throughout Europe. While it has been colder here than I would have liked, it is still warmer and drier than anywhere else. Many of the camper vans carry plates from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, as well as Britain and Ireland. A few are Spanish but not many. They divide into two groups; the old shabby vans owned by young travellers (who we have christened the "alties") and the smart big comfortable ones owned mainly by the retired.  It seems rather mean of them to invade the car parks of these small villages, paying nothing for doing so and leaving the local townhall to pay for disposing of their rubbish, especially since this is such a poverty-stricken area.  I hope they contribute to the poor communities here by spending money in the village shops and bars!
One day we counted at least 20 parked in the car park at San Jose: