Panoramic
From the Col of Rehoyos, in the North face of Brown Mountain range, the Valley of Alcudia seems an open cardboard box for eggs. 25 km to the North, the bluish Mountain range of Brown hide the populations of Brazatortas, Brown and Road of Calatrava after inclines that as soon as they surpass the 1,000 M.s on the level of the distant sea. Yes Cabezarrubias and Hinojosas in the South skirt of the Mountain range and Mestanza in the valley are seen. In the extreme Northwest, after surpassing it jeopardize curve of Almodovar, such AVE bird which they have put in the map this region and others of Royal City, they are sent towards Cordova and they close the valley by the West. After an impenetrable mountain drop curtain by highway, beyond the Hole, the Railcar of Andalusia closes it by the East to the Despeñaperros height. In the hondanadas ones, Pantano of Montoro on the river of he himself name and its small affluents and streams, shine like a lazy key ring of silver to fall at random in the box for eggs. In mounts, to about 800 M.s on the level of the sea, the houses of the Alhorín, Green Hill, the Belesar, the Zote, Herraderos, Burned and the Pizarrosa they are ignited as candles when they pass the shades of the clouds that cross the valley of the West to This. To stone shot of the Col of Rehoyos are the villages of Mine Diogenes and Baño of the Tiñosas; both must their existence to the activities that give name them. To the other side of the first mountain row of Brown Mountain range, the Solana of the Pine is the last population of Castile the Spot in the highway that after crossing the valley of North to South passs by the Sanctuary of the Virgin of the Head and arrives at Andujar.
The stone to hope
Zerynthia rumina |
By the highway the eyes melted to me savoring the fields of poppies, daisies and lilas that hoped to photograph in the landscapes of my childhood after many years of absence. I made two shutdowns, one to refuel gasoline (there is no a damn powerboat in all the valley) and other to photograph an evicted yellow car to the side of a way. It was a premonition. In the Valley of Alcudia it had not rained months in the last and in the field, next to the ways, single the left cars had grown like mushrooms. There those are the shepherds that take apart the old earthenware vessels that cannot surpass the Technical Inspection of Vehicles. They shepherd by the mount with them and finally they leave them under the oak in which they are pierced for the last time.
- You I can make a photo? -it was in the Belesar, before the landscapes of my childhood. A boy with a toy gun had left the house. In one of my favourite photos he sees himself me as a child with the gun of hunting of my father in that same landscape.
- How you are called.
- Peter.
- Like I. Life in this same house when it had your age and somebody did a photo to me with the gun of my father in this same site.
Before to Peter, who could not understand it, was said it to its mother.
- Slight is Pedrito!, it told me. Her sister is calmer. There you have, seeing it tele all the day, as if it was not. But it is a tiny beast. He does not stop. They finish to him clearing a stucco because one broke ten ribs. It had the custom to leave running behind the cars. We had not realized because always it walks that way, to its air. My brother in law nor saw it. He did not strike himself with the car because he did not have wounded. We do not know as it were but he were very bad. 3 hours of trip. And what 3 hours. Longest of my life. We did not know if were going away we to have left in the way. And there you have it again. Quítate the cap.
It offered a coffee or a beer to me. It did not desire anything, to perhaps see the house me on the inside, in special the one that had been my room as a child.
- What small. I remember grandísima, with the very high ceiling.
And the stone to hope. By the same scale of size of the room it could be a small rock that was to the left of the way. In my memory he was greater and it was to the right. They could have turned aside the way or could have been in a small excavation that was to the other side, as if they had brought a machine arrancapiedras and they had made a demonstration with the one hope. My seated sister and I had passed our childhood at the top of this rock hoping to that somebody came or to that passed something: we did not have tele.
- We are serranos, of the North of the province of Guadalajara.
The serranos, originating also of Soria and the Mountainous area of River basin, began to come with their families when cars were bought. Formerly they came walking by the gorges from the Mesta and later in train, always with the cattle, that is the one that really travels looking for the best grass and the best climate all the year.
- There also we have earth. My husband and his two brothers distribute the obligations: a family must most of spend here the winter with the children of all so that they do not lose the school and with the cattle. Although this year, with the drought, better we in our house had done having left. By the drought of the interior of Love Spain | l´Espagne aîme | Spain also smells garlic wandered in April of 1971 Pamela or Patricia nonmemory until that puntazo with Jim Morrison Morocco footpath. Lower to the foot of the highway that goes from Puertollano to Cordova to the height of the tails of the Montoro marsh porquen Easter came uncles and cousins from Madrí and also did of sherpa hastal dequipaje to them cortijo of the Belesar in the stop the hill. It stopped before the traveller a black and gray Shark from which it was very showy that inside was a woman who seemed fall of 2º already amphitheatre of a cinema short while ago with the barefoot feet sobrel salpicadero, taking the indifferent Sun to everything. Jim under the flat Shark conun arrugao but I lay down patrás.
- Water, to water said Jim while the hand took to the mouth and indicated the marsh near, but then did not suspect that it could happen to me anything or similar and it did not have greater importance.
Polyporus floccipes Rostk. [as
floccopes], Deutschl. Flora 3(27 & 28): 25 (1848).
The bitter water
Orchis papilionacea.
There is drought. In Pantano of Montoro, inaugurated by Franco in 1956, the silhouette of the bridge began to guess itself on the Tablillas river, a submerged place that the oldest and some confused diver had seen solely with their own eyes. The industries of Brown that use great amounts of water in their productive processes had been paralyzed months. Not yet there were restrictions for the public consumption, but in an atmosphere in which the first rains are celebrated with rockets and borracheras, the laborious aspect of the prey, very below the level in which one began to measure the dammed water, filled to the valley of sadness and uneasiness. If the time follows thus, Baño of the Tiñosas and its surroundings, on the foot of Montain range Madrona, will be an oasis. In the village they indicated the way to arrive at Baño. A small door in a mud wall just encalada gave access to a patio with a pool filled with a greenish liquid. The ferruginous water with curativas properties on the skin borbotoneaba on a frothy and dirty surface that did not let guess the bottom.
- How I can come here from vacations.
- Impossible -it animated to me to try it the guard of the property. All the houses are rented per whole years and are many applicants hoping. But it is very difficult. The rents are very cheap and happen of parents to children. Very little people know this and we are, very well here very calm. That if the water cures. Now, with the modern medicine, nobody wants to bathe in the mud. Single people with diseases come from the skin that they do not have cures. And some are cured. I myself I have seen many cases. If you want to drink bitter water, a little beyond you have a source. Sabes what is the bitter water.
By all means. It is a drinkable ferruginous water with digestive properties among others. It knows like gaseous without bubbles and sugar, concessions when paladar but nondisagreeable a. Water the bitter source of the Stroll of Saint Gregorio of Brown was the symbol of the city until the first AVE bird arrived. Whenever somebody of my family happened that way brought a bottle that we took (to my enchanted to me) in the meals. I threw a good drink in the small source of Baño of the Tiñosas and crossed the valley to photograph the line of the horizon of the petrochemical industries of Brown to the dusk from the Port of Mestanza. Nothing, too much behind schedule. I arrived until the source of the rejuvenated Stroll of San Gregorio and threw another good drink of bitter water. In Mestanza, like in other towns, the nights go drinking great amounts of alcohol in the bars. That night I alternated until the end.
The spot of the Mountain range
It is probable that the been born ones in Mestanza we have engraving in the brain a spot similar to the figure made oval like a tear that forms the escombrera of the mine of Encinarejo in the South side of the Mountain range of Brown, the spot of the mountain range. Towards the end of century XX the mining is a vague memory that is entered almost in the territories of the unconscious group.
- Of your companions of school -I asked to him my father, born in 1940, teaching one to him of the photos that had obtained in the distribution of a familiar inheritance how many they were miners.
- No I create -the lead mines of the Valley of Alcudia and those of coal of Brown, probably discovered by the Romans, survived the Civil War by the blockade international that underwent Spain in the first years of the dictatorship of Franc. The lead Mine of Diogenes was the last one in closing itself towards 1970. Those of coal of Brown they reopened years ago, this time to open sky. The mine was the second destiny, after the pasturing and at the same time often, of the born inhabitants of the valley before the Civil War. Less hours worked, took them and brought of the edge, had economatos, medical aid, nonsubject regular pays to droughts, and silicosis, a pulmonary disease produced by dust inhalations that all the miners of the valley underwent years of their lives in the last, shorter without a doubt than those of the shepherds.
- Those that were not dedicated to the cattle ranch -made count my father- worked in the prey of Pantano, the highways which they became or were fixed by those years and in the refinery of Brown. The emigration towards Madrid and Catalunya began in 1960, with them the family of the bullfigther Sergio of the Valley that settled down by the runner of the Henares, to the East of Madrid where Sergio was born the 20 of December of 1981.
Wide is Castile but Sergio, whose family is original of Village of the King in the highway that unites Brown & Road off Calatrava must fight with the defective bulls of the rejected ones for the fight in the
Sales, some of which him revolcó in almost all you send with the thin prize of a return to the rotation regañada by some after a sonorous request of prize of all the seat, bruised as valentía usually finishes the one of Village its tasks without stopping the return to his until the infirmary, nobody to them is prophet in its earth but the best thing is the bullring of the
Sales of Madrid than it can hope is to continue stepping on his hard surface many afternoons and to leave raised with high the affluent head.
- It hears -it was photographing the postmining landscapes of Brown and it had to me lost in a rubble steppe, plastics and sweepings, near the mines to opened sky, by this way I arrive at the petroleum refinery.
- You must give the return by the highway of Road -it responded the retired paseante to me which I asked. You are professional photographer. I was it kill time. I am Garcia, of Brown.
- Espere, hopes! -I requested to him while it sent to me like a possessed person towards the pocket in which it had kept the familiar photos that that same morning had obtained. In one of them it is seen me as a child on a Vespa in which PHOTO is reflxed GARCIA. Behind they are my near parents and some relatives.
- This is in Mestanza. I worked in the mine until I retired with 50 years. Also photography knew and it removed another pay to me in the celebrations from the towns. I sent the photos and not like others, that did not put nor the spool and soon people complained. For that reason we have so bad fame the photographers.
- You Are family of Cristina Garcia Rodero, the famous photographer born here in Brown.
- The one of the jeweler. Those are rich! -Garcia did not know Rodero. I requested it that he put to me and took to me before the Tower of the North Well, where had worked until he closed himself twenty years ago. “A little beyond, directed Garcia to me to the time that put of profile for the photos, that sees the mine well. I no longer can make photos, shakes the hand to me, you see it”.
- Where it keeps the negatives.
- There behind I burned them. Two whole boxes. They said to me that they contaminated the house and I burned them.
Arbustus unedo Linnaeus, madroño, normally shrub or matorrar that it arrives at tree if gets rid of the fire, the axe and the tooth of ganao of orange crust, white leaves green dark bright, flowers and fruits in intermediate tonalities between the yellow and the red one maturing to the Sun of the autumn.
Faces & Cruises
A cousin of my age which she did not see years ago, almost from the childhood, when we hunted butterflies in the Belesar at the same time throwing to us on them, taught the nocturnal atmosphere to me of Brown, in the street Bitterness, near the bitter source and of the Stroll of Saint Gregorio. No newness, although these things always agree to verify them on the land. In exchange for its amiability I began to explain to my premium my theory to him on the face and the cross that have all the projects that are tried in the
life.
- People face a thing supposedly opposite other and in fact she is within the same thing where always there is a face and a cross.
-
Talk of Faces & Cruises of Road? -it interrupted a waiter to us. They have been today (Friday of Easter). I have gained 60,00 €.
The Saturday of Easter there was in Road of Calatrava an atmosphere of undertow, cansino emptiness, lack of appetite by the streets engalanadas with Spanish flags. “The celebration was yesterday”, explained a young person to me in the door of a bar after doing an exhibition to me on the launching of the currencies. Faces & Cruises in Road of Calatrava and of other towns of the Spot are a chance game that was still made in the times of the dictatorship. At sight money in a group of people drawn in the ground and somebody of the public lance are crossed yet bets two old currencies to the air. If they fall expensive gain the apostantes, with crossings the bank takes everything to it and if they fall descasadas they return to send to the air after being increased the bets. “There were much people betting and groups of people by all the town. Today there is nothing. If you want to know more things it asks in the Casino. There it is where more fort gambles”.
- If you want to make photos, it said a old one to me in the Casino, right now are playing in the outskirts of the town.
Camera in brigand I appeared in the group of people of better the most recalcitrant ones. The game was allowed and supported by the authorities the Good Friday. The other days of the year he was illegal. I passed the test of payasadas for the photo looking for its complicity until they got tired, who consist.
- From where are you? -he asked to a gypsy of great presence and authority to me before the others.
- Now alive in
Madrid, but I was born in Mestanza.
- I have dealt with much people of Mestanza.
- My father is called Peter, my uncles Joaquin…
- You are the son of Peter, the one that was in the Belesar. I knew you as a child. I to your father have bought him many heads of cattle. You do the photos that you want.
The apostantes sang the amount and those of the bank, 2 or 3, among them the friend of my father, covered the bet.
- And my stone? -the stones with which the money was stepped on were solicitadisimas that windy morning of spring.
- I have left 50,00 €.
- I Can play.
I left my ticket in the ground. The friend of my father left his. I stepped on them with the camera. Somebody of between people sent the 2 currencies. The luck was in the air.
Bibliography: Published in
Indigo nº 1 1993, University of Castile the Spot (.pdf)
The valley of Alcudia during century XVIII, Francisco Gascón Bueno, Editions of the Orto, Madrid, 2º edition, 1994.
Jim Morrison The Doors Dark Star de Dylan Jones, Editorial the Mask, 1990.
Book of the Mushrooms of Castile the Spot, Carlos Enrique Hermosilla & Julian Sanchez, collectable of the Tribune of Albacete and Junta of Communities of Castile the Spot, 2003.
Mestanza, something of its history, Miguel Martin Triggerman, Provincial Delegation of Royal City, 2005.
JP Clemente | apartado 271 | 28910 Leganes Spain | www.tirapocket.info | gracias | merçi | tanks
