Unique Property Blog

Medieval Spain -  1960-1965



(To the right is a link to an audio version of this article if you would prefer to have it read to you.)

Where Have all the Spaniards Gone?

I stand on a hill. I can see for miles in every direction. Thirty miles away to the south-east is a mountain rising out of the great Spanish plain, that massive table-land called the meseta, or large table, which is home to those who see no reason to live by the sea.

To the north is flat; fields of stubble reaching as far as the eye can see. To the west the land drops gently away to the horizon. To the south-west the peaks of a range of mountains stick up. Another sierra, but which one? It cant be the Sierra de Gredos. There must be another I've forgotten. There are so many.

But whichever way I look I can see no people, no villages, no towns. Where the heck are all the people who till this land? You can go for miles and miles and see no-one, and then suddenly there are thousands of them all milling around, blocking the pavements, jamming up the side-streets, and shouting at each other as if some frightful argument involving the whole town is taking place.

I am sitting at a table outside a cafe. The tapas have been ordered, there is a glass of Rioja in front of me. Two old men at a nearby table are talking about a restaurant down in Ayamonte, which is about thirty kilometres to the south. They are commenting on the cooking. Another man walks in, shakes hands, booms a greeting. The laughter is hearty and loud. Yes, this is Spain. I know where I am. I recognize the language, the food, the gestures. And yet.....

I am standing on a roadway. It is dark and cold. There is a wet wind blowing at me from across the great open spaces. I stare to the north. Lights glare and flicker in all directions. How many people are living out there for god's sake? The place was deserted when I last came here with my wife thirty years ago. We hitched along this road. It was empty. It was narrow. The first car came along after an hour and a half, and turned off onto a dirt track a hundred metres up the road. Now I cant hear myself breathe as the cars roar past me.

I drive through the village of Consuegra with its castle on the hillside to the south. I remember wandering around the ruins and talking with the archeologists digging for any evidence to corroborate the tale that this was the castle Cervantes took for his stories of that crazy knight, Don Quixote.

The village at night was dark. Every two hundred metres was a bare electric bulb to light the streets. Every house was lit by a gas lamp hissing in the middle of the room. Faces looked out thru the open doors as Ann and I walked past.

This was a Spain I knew. This was what Spain had been like for years. It was the Spain from the stories in the books I read. This was medieval Spain, and Spain had been medieval for as long as anyone could remember.

I am standing on the roof of a house. This house is for sale. I have added it to my website of unusual properties. It has been renovated, or, as they say in Spain, reformed. The reformation makes the place look somehow absurd, out of place. It is modern, no longer rustic. The modernity has robbed this home of all its character and charm.

This village is just outside Granada. The rooms have been dug out of the soft rock. As the air reaches the newly exposed rock it hardens, and you have solid walls for a house, with the chimney poking up through the earth, with windows to the front, and a few shafts in the roof to the ground above. This is a cheap home, cool in summer, warm in winter, and it is easy to expand back into the rock when you need an extra bedroom.

I walk across the roof, past the chimney sticking up. I look up at the sky. This house should not be a modern gimmick. These homes are part of a folklore. I sit with my back against the chimney and start to recite the Ballad of the Sleepwalker written by Lorca seventy years ago. I speak louder and louder as I get into the poem. I translated it back in the sixties, and can remember most of the words. I reach the part where the two men go up onto the balconies of the moon. They are standing on the roof of the house. They would be roughly where I am now.

I stop, but a soft voice behind me carries on the lines of the poem.


He reaches the end of the stanza, and pauses. Without turning round I start the next stanza, and then I reach the haunting refrain. We both speak it very softly together.


It is only then that I turn round and smile. I get up, shrug my shoulders, and we walk down to a cafe and drink coffee, and remember the old days, and look at the moon, and remember the smuggler with his dreams that cannot be fulfilled.

I am in the car park at the Alhambra. I look around. There are coaches everywhere, and concrete. There are fences and offices, and guards with guns.

Somewhere may be an Alhambra, but it isn't here. This is a shop, a very modern shop, but there are no gardens of Spain. They were scrubbed, gift-wrapped, and destroyed years ago.

But although Spain has gradually eroded into something European, maybe the Spaniards I once knew are still here, if only I can find them.


You can buy volume one of this multi-volume set from Amazon. Here's the link:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OMZZAPO

john

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