Letter from the Algarve: Castro Marim to Trigueros via El
Bulli
It's a shopping day. And I dont just mean a trip down to the
supermarket to buy some food for the week. I mean proper shopping,
which means we need to get to a proper town. The nearest proper town is
Huelva, across the border in Spain. However, that is only a provincial
capital. It is still a bit small for real shopping. To get anything
slightly out of the ordinary you need to go either to Lisbon or to
Seville. Seville has by far the better choice for almost everything you
could want. It is also marginally closer. Lisbon is about 180 miles
away. Seville is about 160.
So, we are off to Seville. The first stop is Castro Marim because,
unfortunately, I dont have enough petrol in the tank to make it over
the border. Petrol in the Algarve costs a painful 125 euros a litre.
The cost in Spain is closer to 95 cents.
Castro Marim is an odd little place. Way back in neolithic times (about
5000 B.C.) the place was an island surrounded by shallow water. It was
a port used by the Phoenicians from about 1500 B.C., followed by the
Romans. They used to sail up the Guadiana river to the iron ore mines
at Alcoutim and Mertola.
The Romans built a road from the settlement up to Beja, and then across
to Lisbon.
As the sea retreated so did the economic importance of the town, and it
entered into a long period of decline, from which it does not appear to
have recovered. Even now, when tourism is a viable source of income,
the place still takes a back seat to the nearby town of Monte Gordo.
Today, the place has an air of dereliction. There are derelict houses
everywhere, even in the main street. There is the occasional new build
on the surrounding hills, including one rather large development, now
abandoned of course.
The place is dominated by a hill fort, and a significant length of
fortifications. Towards the sea is a large salt marsh which is a nature
reserve, and the reserve's biggest attraction is undoubtedly the large
number of birds - especially aquatic birds - that can be seen here.
There are 153 species to spot, including storks, avocets, sand pipers,
mallards and flamingos.
The area has long been used for the collection of salt from the salt
pans that have been here for several millenia.
Just across the river is a new tourist development. It is vast empty
and silent. I cant even guess how many houses and flats there are in
the development, but there was evidence of perhaps fifty or sixty
people in the place. If there were any more they were certainly being
very coy and secretive.
(Just have
a look at the pictures to see the
size of the place and its emptiness.)
The golf course was empty. The shopping centre was not even being
built. There was one truck on site, with three guys working not very
enthusiastically. Concrete columns rose half-heartedly out of a mess of
rubble.
It was a stark reminder of what has happened to a whole concept. Three
years ago it was the done thing to buy into a hugely over-priced
off-plan deal, with the intention of renting out your newly acquired
pad to the hordes of tourists who were expected to come. Where they
were coming from no-one seemed to know. And still no-one knows.
The alternative was to sell on when the place was fully built. You
would naturally sell at a profit to the other hordes who were bound to
come. How one was supposed to sell at a profit when the original prices
were so hyped up I dont know, nor who one was supposed to be selling
to. Presumably all those folks who didn't want to rent their holiday
pads, but wanted to own them to rent out to other people instead.
The dream has crashed. It will take a decade to sell the vast backlog
of these places. The Spanish holiday property market will not be
recovering any time soon. These empty places must fill first, and that
isn't going to happen in the near future.
After a rather depressing drive round we returned to the motorway and
our shopping trip to Seville.
On the way back we stayed at the Hacienda Benazuza hotel at Sanlucar la
Mayor, where we had a 13 course
surrealist meal devised by that highly
original chef Ferran Adria.
The following day we zigzagged our way back through the byeways of
Seville and Huelva provinces. From Sanlucar we drove along the old road
west (A 472), passing miles and miles of corn fields
To the north of the motorway are some quaint little villages with
rather a lot of semi-ruined houses. Some of them are quite large, and
would be very nice indeed if renovated.
Further along is the town of Trigueros. I am here because just down the
road is what they call a dolmen. The odd thing is that it is more like
a cave. But this is a stone age encampment miles down some side road,
which becomes a dust track in places. You need to be a stone age freak
to get much from the trip, but I liked the nearby town; especially
after a short conversation with the local police sergeant. I pulled
into the main square to have a little something at the cafe next to the
police station. I parked blocking in the police car's designated spot.
I was only going to be there for a few minutes, and deliberately left
the keys in the ignition.
Five minutes later in drives the cop car, and I make for mine to move
it. "Oh, that's okay, you are eating?"
"Yes, but I can move the car."
"No problem, just move it down this way two metres and you can stay."
What a friendly place. We have a massive plate of solomillo and fries,
and a half decent red wine. And we sit in the square talking with a
German girl who has moved into the area.
How easy it is to get stuck in to a Spanish town. You simply arrive,
say hello, order a drink together with a plate of something nice, and
start talking to your neighbour. The afternoon moves on, you fill your
glass, and it is as if one has lived there for years.
john clare. October
2009.
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