033 - The Immaculate Confection
Andalucia - 25th February 2005
¡Buenos Dias, todo el mundo!
So there we were, still parked up on Mark and Becky's land, enjoying warm sunny days and experiencing chilly, chilly nights, all cosied up in The Lorry with Fruitbat Soz and Auntie Wendy on board at this point of the proceedings as well. As we mentioned, Wendy's visit was to be a brief one, so we packed in as much sightseeing as we could so she could make the most of her few days with us.
¡Que Bonita!
Mark and Becky live on the edge of the Sierra Subbetica natural park, so even the drives to local towns and villages are stunning. Priego de Cordoba was on our 'must visit' list, so we meandered along the twisty turny roads through the hills for a look-see. It is a wonderful little town, with picturesque squares and multiple small park-ettes. It also features the most astonishing number of Baroque churches for such a tiny town. We visited it on a fiesta bank-holiday, so it was the traditional family day out that is still such a feature of Spanish life, especially here in the sticks. Whole posses of toddlers and tots were abroad in the sunshine in their smartest clothes, with gran, grandad, mums and dads in tow.
Having one or more children in any team seems to be an open invitation to anyone and everyone to descend, start talking and admiring 'los pequenos', the little ones. Even after just two or three days in Spain, Soz realised that she too had to submit to being coo-ed over, patted on the head, chucked under the chin and universally admired - '¡Niña guapa!' ('Good looking girl!') they'd cry - '¡Que bonita!' ('What a pretty little one!'). Soz began to enjoy herself even more with all the attention. This was to be her fate for the whole month she spent with us - and many were the entreaties to her to go and move in with various Spanish households - she was a big hit!
We whistled through the interestingly named Cabra (yes, 'cabra' is Spanish for goat!), another charming, unspoiled little town with picturesque streets and squares, and an old quarter of steep, winding streets lined with . Cabra also has an unfeasibly large number of beautiful churches for its size - devout lot round here, obviously.
Thence to Lucena, with its own historically interesting features, like the church of San Mateo, said to be one of the Baroque glories of the province, and Torre del Moral, the last surviving tower of a castle in which Boabadil (the last Moorish sultan of Granada) was imprisoned in the 15th century. Being the seasoned comfort-seekers and people-watchers we are, we satisfied ourselves with a look at just the outsides of these fine buildings and opted for a coffee stop in the modern town square. This was heaving with families in their Sunday Best Coats promenading round and round, with the sole purpose, it appeared, of admiring each other's children and showing off their own. A local orchestra was positioned outside the town hall at one end of the square and, in full black-and-white orchestral dress regalia, they played a medley of harmonious tunes, presumably as a pre-festive treat for the assembled townsfolk, their kith and kin, and anyone else, like us, who'd stumbled across this rather pleasing scene.
Sanctuary!
We'd gone through Lucena in an attempt to find a particular 'sanctuario' which had been recommended to us as a wonderfully scenic spot on a high hill top outside the town. We could see it at various points, but had a right old to-do trying to find the road out from the town up the hill. This is definitely not tourist country, so they don't go a bundle on carefully signposted routes. Eventually, however, we found the way, which wound in ever steeper hairpin bends up to the sanctuary. It's a small church, shrine to the Virgin of Andalucia, who is depicted, in statue form, babe in arms, in utterly crustaceous gilts and Baroquely decorative lavishness (bit like our language here!), surrounded by mountains of fresh flowers, in a dimly lit large recess at the back of the chapel. Quite remarkable. For 50 centimos you could have a 30 second blast of flood-lighting, the better to examine the crowned Virgin-and-Child extravaganza, but alas we didn't have the right coin and, despite loitering as several other, rather more devout than us, visitors arrived, we still didn't get the fully illuminated version.
By this stage of our stay in the area, Jeni was getting pretty desperate to track down some postcards of anything, but anything, local (told you it wasn't an area given to pandering to tourists). She felt pretty certain that somewhere there would be postcards of the sanctuario on offer, so set off in search of same. Well, she did find a young woman in a small corner of the building outside the chapel selling things, but - you might have guessed it - they were distinctly of the items-for-the-devout variety. There, behind the glass counter, full of rosary beads, relic-souvenirs and the like, were indeed some cards.
In her best phrase book Spanish, Jeni asked to see the cards, por favor. Quizzical look from the Senorita. She passed one across for Jeni to examine. Hmm, not of the sanctuario, though it did depict another local church's astonishingly ornate altar and incorporated a few devotional verses on the back. 'Could I see the one next to it please? Is that of this Sanctuario?'. This went on for some time, with one card at a time being almost reluctantly passed across, but eventually did result in the purchase of three rather naff postcards of the little church, with the crusty Virgin floating ethereally above. Not much room there for spontaneous multiple purchases stimulated by browsing among the alluring merchandise! Wethinks they've missed some marketing opportunities here … but then, it's meant to be a place of pilgrimage first and foremost isn't it?
Once outside, Wendy and Jeni walked round the surprisingly large building. Oddly, the actual church seemed to occupy a relatively small part of the whole. Whether it was church offices, meeting or meditation rooms or whatever, we never did find out (and this particular sanctuario isn't mentioned in any of the guide books we've got despite its importance locally) - but, utterly bizarrely, there did seem to be a bar or café of some kind attached to the church, which was heaving with Spanish families. Being reticent English folk, we didn't like to hazard a look in case it was some kind of private party and/or in case we got swept in on torrents of incomprehensible Spanish. So there's one to go back to when our language skills are more finely honed, eh?
It's possible to see five provinces from the top of this hill, and there was a beautiful marble pavement illustrating where each province was situated. Now that would have made a great postcard! Despite its being a fairly hazy day, the views were great and it was definitely a worthwhile jaunt, for all sorts of reasons.
Reluctance Rules in Rute
This reticence about giving strangers information which might enhance the quality of their visit (and possibly result in modest injections of funds to the local economy) seemed to be a particular feature of the whole area. Now, don't get us wrong, we much, much prefer off-the-beaten-track and feel sad at seeing places utterly given over to mass tourism. However, coming across a Tourist Information Office staffed by a woman who clearly resented her leaflet budget being wasted by the wanton giving away of leaflets, was frankly frustrating. But we did find one such.
Becky and Mark had primed us about this emporium of non-information in Rute, so we had at least had a modicum of warning. Now Rute is a relatively unremarkable small country market town, but it does have some interesting streets and buildings, is situated in fantastic countryside, is home to what was Spain's first ever donkey sanctuary and on high days and holidays is, as far as we could see, a mecca for coach-loads of Spanish people on gastronomic outings. So you would have thought that the Senora in the Información Turistica would have swelled with pride at sharing snippets about the town and its surrounds. Not a bit of it.
Rather like the approach to retailing in the sanctuario, it was a question of the customer squinting at the out-of-reach leaflets behind the counter and asking 'Do you have some information about walks in the area/local historical buildings/the donkey sanctuary/a town plan?'. And one leaflet at a time would be passed across. That seemed to be the quota for any one visit. (Oh, this, by the way, was when the office was open at all, which seemed to be a rare occurrence and nothing as helpful as an opening hours timetable was provided on the door.)
Mark and Becky had discovered on previous visits that the most effective approach was to go in singly and thus maximise the chances of coming away with a less-than-generous handful of information sheets. We wondered whether we should combine forces and go prepared with a dressing up box full of disguises for multiple visits.
Gastronomic Tourism
As we mentioned, one of Rute's remarkable features was as a centre for gastronomically inclined visitors. It has a ham museum and shop. It is a focal point for cake, sweet and biscuit production, with several local manufacturers having shops and tasting departments, and it is home to the Flor de Rute brand which is famous across Spain, with flocks of people sending great gift boxes to friends and relatives for the fiestas. It has an anis museum and numerous bodegas where you can sample the potent brew, made with spring water from the nearby Sierra (anis being a local liqueur for the more sober types among you). It has a couple of olive oil factories with direct sales straight from the vats. And ... roll of drums ... at this time of year Rute is the location of Spain's largest chocolate nativity scene in one of the confectionary factories. Yes, that's right, a chocolate nativity scene!
The Immaculate Confection
Many, probably most, Spanish villages, towns and cities have their nativity scene, or 'belén' around the Christmas and New Year period, and some of these are quite elaborate, with real animals, brick-built stables in the town square, oh all sorts. But Rute can also offer you a fully edible belén, folks. In fact you might call it the Immaculate Confection. (Groan.) If you've visited Junior Fruitbowl you'll see that Spain's largest chocolate belén inspired quite a lot of silliness in Team Fruitbat.
It was a truly - well - bizarre experience if the truth be told (and Jeni had to visit twice just to make sure it was a goofy as she'd thought first time). It had taken six people four months to make, out of an astonishing 1250 kilogrammes of chocolate. It attracted coachloads, indeed lines of coachloads of visitors throughout November and December and presumably into January. As we drove past one fiesta bank holiday weekend, we could see that the factory had had to introduce crowd control as well as car park control and traffic control on the approach road!
Yet in a way it was totally underwhelming - you went up a flight of stairs (sorry folks, no concession to accessibility here), along an open balcony above the confectionary factory (perhaps sneezing your germs down onto the open production areas below?!) and into a room where the belén was housed, behind its partial glass screen. This latter precaution was perhaps to prevent an actual occurrence of the situation which Dave concocted on his visit. We were following a gaggle of schoolchildren, perhaps five or six years old. 'Please Miss, Miguel's eaten the baby Jesus!' Dave said in a loud voice from the back, to the amusement of Soz and a couple of people who understood English.
Actually, it may be that young Miguel did get to eat the baby Jesus - or at least a palm tree or two - since at the end of the season, the belén gets broken up and distributed to local schools.
Hit and Miss
Discovering treasures of the area could be a bit of a hit-and-miss affair because of the lack of information. Mark and Becky only discovered the actual whereabouts of the donkey sanctuary, for example, because Manolo, their wonderful vet, leapt on his moped (breaking off in the middle of a surgery session) and led them there!
On another occasion, whilst Dave made an unscheduled visit to the local dentist, Jeni and Soz had a chance to explore Iznajar's old winding streets. It was a long haul up through the pretty narrow streets to the top of the hill to the 8th century Moorish alcazaba (closed for restoration), close to the beautiful old building which housed the library and local information centre (just closing as its minder was off on an errand) and near the fascinating-looking museum of local farming and ethnography (locked with no indication of opening hours). But it was all jolly picturesque and the views out over Lake Iznajar were stunning. Soz was rather taken with the whole concept of the local cemetery, just by the huge church of Santiago. Here each person had their own little niche in the marble walls, usually decorated with fresh flowers, a picture of the Dearly Departed and often some personal items to reflect their lives and loves. It created one of those extraordinary and unexpected moments for deep and philosophical conversations about the universe and everything. All while Grandad was having his broken tooth repaired!
Plantings
It wasn't all sight-seeing of course. Soz had other important calls on her time, not least walking the dogs through the olive groves with Becky (or Tia [Auntie] Pesky as she became known, thanks to Rafael's continued attempts to get somewhere near the pronunciation of 'Becky'), playing circus horse games with Grandad on the threshing circle, chasing (or being chased by) Chip round the orchard and watching out for Rafael's daily meander across the land with his goats. It was quite a sight, Rafael and Soz, hunkered down facing each other, trying to communicate. Soz was picking up Spanish words and phrases at a tremendous rate (Dave was mortified to find that within a week of arriving, she was counting fluently up to 60 while he was still hesitating on the numbers up to 10!), and she'd try out her new-found language skills on a delighted Rafael. In turn, she tried to teach him to count in English … the whole thing was wonderful to behold.
It was obviously sinking deep into Soz's brain, since she woke up one night calling out in Spanish - 'No! No! España, España! Este mia! Este mia!'.
Rafael was very anxious that Mark and Becky should be planting up their vegetables at precisely the right time, so frequently he would come across from his own cortijo, mattock across his shoulder, with a basket in his hand. Thus Tia Pesky and Soz set about learning how to plant the garlic, onions, lettuces and broad beans, among other produce.
Now there's a thing, the broad beans (habas). Rafael swore by goats dung as the secret to excellent habas. What, we wondered, would be the reaction from Paco, our elderly farmer friend over near Orgiva? His recipe for the best habas in the Alpujarras was liberal waterings with mule's urine. Nothing else would do. We went off into flights of fancy, Fruitbat-style, about grow-offs between Rafael and Paco - surely the stuff of several episodes of a Spanish rural-life-style gardening programme on the TV?!
Alpujarras here we come!
And then it was time to head South East again towards Orgiva, where we had invitations for the forthcoming festivities and urgent requests for Dave's tool box! So the Lorry was packed ready for the off, our fond goodbyes said (with promises of a return before long) and it was 'Wagons, Roll!' once again.
More soon, Amigos y Amigas.
Yours, in full fruititude,
Jeni y Dave
xxx
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