REGRESO DE UN ALCALAÍNO




Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Spanish original
In San Antonio, one of the old roads leading into Alcalá, there was a big courtyard and a stable. Once a year, stud-horses were brought from the Cartuja de Jerez to cover the mares of the town. This event had two announcements: one official, for the breeders who had stables and wanted to get pure-bred foals; the other clandestine, for the children, communicated via their friends, to go and watch the spectacle of the covering of the mares.
Four soldiers from the cavalry breeding stables brought them from Jerez in a lorry the day before, and put them in the stable to rest and get a good feed. It was a mystery how the kids found out about the arrival of the stallions, but however it happened the word soon got round, and the next day after school a little group of us went through the Plazuela and down the hill to San Antonio without telling anyone where we were going.
As if up to no good, we silently approached the half-open gate to the yard where the stud-horses were. In the middle of the yard were two formidable equine examples; alert, well-endowed, skittish, ready to accomplish the mission that had been entrusted to them. The owners of the mares waited in the entrance. The mares were cleaned, bare-backed, and held only by the bridle. The stallions appeared to be conscious of what they had to do, but the mares were distracted, haughty, looking out of the corner of their eye as if suspicious of the encounter.
A soldier ordered the men to bring in the mares. They told us children we could not come in but they left the door ajar so as not to deprive us of the spectacle. The mares were led to one corner to await their turn. We did not miss a single detail. They brought out a sorrel, the colour of cinnamon, well-groomed, handsome and raring to go, as if it were his wedding night. They gave the signal for a mare to be brought over. The soldier started to tease the stallion's organ to bring it to a state of readiness. The stallion gave a snort and started to tremble.
When he saw the mare, his erection grew enormous, he raised his front legs violently and placed himself on top of her. After a few seconds, he suddenly thrust his penis into the mare's vulva and flooded it with semen, doing honour to his name [stallion in Spanish is semental]. You could have heard a pin drop; it was like a sacred ritual. The spectacle lasted several minutes. The horse withdrew, satisfied, and we children watched every move. The soldiers closed the gate and off we went, going over the details of everything we had seen. It was a masterly lesson, honest and educational, which we would never forget.
We went back through the Calle Centeno, the Callejón del Gato and the Calle las Brozas to the Calle Real. We were pleased with ourselves, we had learned a good lesson, much better than those conversations we'd had so many times and which never left you any the wiser. From then on, we would feel ourselves one grade up from our companions who hadn't been there.
And now, when we see fine horses going through the streets of Alcalá or on the Romeria to Los Santos, we say to each other: “That's the son of a stud-horse”. In those days there were indeed some fine equine specimens in Alcalá, and good riders. I recall that during the 1940s in Alcalá there were only three or four cars, a couple of lorries, and the buses that passed through on the way to Cádiz and Algeciras. Horses, carriages and carts were the norm.
Every morning the men rode off on a horse, a mule or a donkey and came back at dusk. The animals were left tied to rings at the entrances to the bars while the men drank a few glasses of wine. Some, having drunk more than they could pay for, would appeal to friendship and exchange their packets of tobacco, their flint lighters or even their donkeys. But that night, the children dreamed of the wonders of nature and the stallions.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, caballos, evocaciones, juan leiva, niños, posguerra
Organiza esta Exposición la Asociación "Los Alcornocales, Asociación de Criadores Gaditanos de Gallinas Andaluzas", con sede en Alcalá de los Gazules. De los 12 socios fundadores, 10 son nacidos en Alcalá de los Gazules. Nuestro agradecimiento a Francisco Manuel Gallego Puerto por todo el interés que se toma para fomentar la crianza de estas gallinas.
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Spanish original
In Alcalá there existed a rich variety of edible wild plants. They were eaten as wild vegetable produce or as seasonal fruit, much appreciated especially by the children. Nobody cultivated them and they appeared punctually each year on the commons and wasteland. The children knew them all, and on Thursday afternoons, when there was no school, we would go out into the countryside in search of its fruits. They were the plants which God gave to the poor and to the children, without anyone having planted them. In the postwar era there were many families who made a living from wild asparagus and edible thistles.
Another plant of well-deserved fame was the tagarnina [Scolymus hispanicus - golden thistle or Spanish oyster thistle]. It was given its name by the Moors: “ta-karnin” or milky thistle. It is a species of edible thistle belonging to the family Compositae. The stems of its leaves, stripped of their spines when still tender, are much enjoyed sautéed with other components of the famous berza alcaláina [a type of stew]. But it was also used in combination with asparagus-based dishes. It couldn't be used on its own, because it was a tough, wild plant which grew in the most difficult places. It was the cookery of Alcalá which made the most use of the tagarnina. In other places they didn't know how to combine it with the other ingredients of the berza.
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: evocaciones, gastronomía, infancia, juan leiva, paisaje, posguerra
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, evocaciones, juan leiva, Los Santos, romería, santuario
Spanish original
This Memory of Alcalá is not about my childhood, but it came to mind when I was recalling those years in the 1940s when I was an altar-boy in La Victoria, with Father Manuel. This article commemorates two of the most relevant professions of those times, especially at burials and in the funeral services of San Jorge: the sochantre [chanter], and the organist.
The sochantre was a type of singer who chanted the motets and psalms at Mass and the Divine Offices. In the 1940s the choir had almost disappeared, only performing at Christmas and the celebrations of the Virgin of the Saints. At that time the sochantre was Don Antonio Cobos, who had a deep, rich bass voice. His voice was more powerful than those of all the priests combined. The organist was Don Arsenio, an educated man, knowledgeable about music, who produced unforgettable sounds from the organ of San Jorge, and was a very good singer as well.
The parish of Alcalá had a tradition of excellent singers and organists, I can bring to mind at least thirty, whose duty it was to turn up each day and sing the Divine Office in the choir stalls of San Jorge. The construction of that choir is an excellent example of 18th century choral seating, made by Agustin de Medina y Flores. The organ is a formidable musical instrument, made by Francisco Pérez of Valladolid. No-one could deny that the chanters and organists of San Jorge did justice to their surroundings.
At the end of the 19th century, one of those chanters was Antonio Periáñez Lagos, married to Gertrudis del Manzano, both from Alcalá de los Gazules. In 1879 they arrived in El Puerto de Santa Maria with a nephew, Manuel Almendra Periáñez, an 18-year-old orphan, his sister Maria, one year younger, and a great-uncle, Francisco Periáñez Salcedo. They were all natives of Alcalá. Uncle Antonio sang all his life, and made a good living for his family acting as chanter in the Mayor Prioral Church in El Puerto. The Prioral was at that time among the ten richest parishes in the archdiocese of Seville. It also had a flourishing choir of clerics who sang the Divine Office every day.
On 2 June 1897, at 9 o'clock at night, Manuel Almendra Periáñez, 23 years old and suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis, was certified dead by the medic Don Lorenzo Barrios after a dreadful attack of asthma which not even inhaling eucalyptus vapours could alleviate. The illness had prevented him from being able to lie down, so he had spent the hours and the days seated in the front bay window of the house, No 9, Calle de Santa Clara in El Puerto, on the left-hand side as seen from Calle Cielos.
On 24 November 1996, Enrique Pérez Fernández from Jerez, a teacher and writer in El Puerto de Santa Maria, published in the Diario de Cádiz a curious anecdote which he had dug out from the old periodical Revista Portuense. It was entitled “A Ghost in Santa Clara” and the sub-title was “You'll end up like Almendrita”.
Two weeks after the death of Manuel Almendra, the Revista Portuense, under the heading “Appearance of a Dead Man”, reported the following item: “Popular fantasy, which is so given to exaggeration, has led to a large crowd of people gathering every day in Calle Santa Clara to see imprinted, so they say, on a pane of glass in a bay window, the face of a young man who passed away a short time ago. The old wives of the neighbourhood mentioned this to the people of the town, and unfortunately it spread to people outside the town, giving an air of credibility to what was just an amusing fiction.”
Incredulous, the journalist went that afternoon of 16 June 1897 to the place of the supposed apparition and the following day published a report on the event with the facts he had been able to gather there. It turned out that a little girl from that street, accustomed to seeing Almendra sitting in the window, believed that she could still see his face on a window-pane even after his death. The news ran through the whole city and in no time at all, many of the townsfolk turned up to take a look at the apparition.
The journalist reported that half the city had lined up opposite the window, until the point at which the window-frame had been removed, but people said they could still see it in the glass in the other window-frame. There were even some who said they could see it in one of the glass sides of a nearby gas-lamp, and had stayed there looking at it until well into the early hours. Señor Periáñez had complained bitterly about what was going on, because his wife had become gravely ill, and on top of the pain of his nephew's death was now added the commotion caused by these people. He had asked the Mayor to send a couple of civil guards to put a stop to what was going on.
The lawyer and writer Luis Suárez, who learned the story from his maternal grandmother, Doña Candelaria Leal, gave another version of the events in a later journal called Cruzados, in the early 1960s, under the title “Characters by Word of Mouth”. He was sure that this event gave rise to the popular saying in El Puerto, “You'll end up like Almendrita”.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: canción, diario de cadiz, evocaciones, juan leiva, música, san jorge
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Spanish original
One of the first pastimes the children of Alcalá learned was the hunting of small birds. At dawn, songbirds swarmed over the riverbank and the animal pens of La Coracha. On La Coracha many people raised a couple of pigs for slaughter and had a hen-house for domestic consumption. The birds came to get their first feed of the day, and created a great commotion. At daybreak they could satisfy their needs, because the fields provided plenty of seeds of all types. The flocks rose in a perfectly ordered group to fall upon the grasses and eat their fill. This took place very early, at the hour when the nuns of the Order of St Clare were getting up for Mass.
It was difficult to get up at that hour without waking the family. Francisco Almagro had two brothers, Juan and Pepe; his friend Gaspar had five brothers and five sisters. On Sundays they went to help the nuns with Mass and afterwards went down to El “Prao” to trap songbirds. They devised a rudimentary home-made alarm system. Francisco lived on the corner of Callejón Osorio and had an alarm clock. Gaspar had no alarm clock and lived on the other corner of the Calle la Amiga, right opposite Francisco. Gaspar tied one end of a cord round his ankle. The other end Francisco had in his bed. At exactly half past five, Francisco pulled the string and Gaspar jumped out of bed. They both went off together to help with Mass at the convent of the nuns of St Clare, which was at six in the morning.
The sun had not yet reached the Lario by the time they were putting out the liría at El “Prao”. They kept it in a tin; a natural glue, made of a sticky white substance and tree resin. Any bird which set foot on it could not get away and flapped its wings desperately trying to free itself. They also used various sorts of traps, but they preferred the liría. The traps broke the birds' legs or necks, whereas with the liría they could catch the birds without harming them and put them in cages. There, alongside another singing bird, the canaries, goldfinches, greenfinches and other songbirds would very quickly learn to sing. All the houses had songbirds in cages.
The early hours of the morning were the best for hunting. Vast flocks of small birds invaded the banks of the Barbate and the other rivers. The birds ate, drank and carried off seeds to their nests. All this coming and going took place before the heat of day impregnated the shady corners. They did a fair bit of damage in the sown fields. Insecticides, herbicides and fungicides had not yet made their merciless appearance. At the break of day, the birds had already begun their morning chorus.
The children knew inside out the flying species which crossed the skies of Alcalá. There were those of certain proportions, like partridges, geese, ducks, common pigeons and wood-pigeons, thrushes, turtle doves, starlings. And then there were the smaller ones, like siskins, greenfinches, goldfinches, crested larks, whitethroats, linnets, hummingbirds1, skylarks, nightingales, lapwings, cuckoos … Round about noon, when the heat was threatening, the trapped birds were collected and tied into a bundle. Then the boys would take a last look round at the liria traps and put the live birds into a cage.
They would return home very pleased with themselves. Their mothers would pluck the birds and daub them with aromatic herbs. The smell went right up the Callejón Osorio and the Calle la Amiga. From the kitchens of the bars, Dominguitos and Los Panaderos, came indescribable smells that the old folks could not resist. That flavour has remained forever in my childhood memories. Sometimes I return to Alcalá with the hope of finding it again. And on occasions it might waft from some house – I can smell it, remember it, crave it, but I cannot taste it.
Fortunately the little birds are coming back again to the Alcalá countryside, but not in the great flocks of the old days. And, equally fortunately, they are not slaughtered as they were then, because it is banned, although they are still under threat from herbicides. Modern hunting legislation has succeeded in eradicating it almost completely. These days children don't co-exist with the birds and animals of the countryside. Ordinary people can't go hunting any more because it is a hobby for the wealthy. Even the deer, wild boar and rabbits have to abide by the law in the Alcornocales.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Note
1. Hummingbirds are not found in Spain, but there is a large moth, the mariposa esfinge colibri, that looks like a hummingbird and behaves in a very similar manner.
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, convento, evocaciones, juan leiva, niños, paisaje, posguerra
Spanish original
I was about eight years old. It was the postwar era, those years of famine, the 1940s. Alcalá at that time had around 12,000 inhabitants. But many people died, especially children, and many young men never came back from the war. The ravages of hunger showed no mercy to the weak. The basic foodstuffs were in short supply. People made a fortune from contraband and the black market. Earnings from wild asparagus, tagarninas [edible thistles] and poached game were the salvation of many families. Others were forced to emigrate.
One day my father said to me: “ Father Manuel has asked me if you would like to be an altar-boy at La Victoria, with Manolo Mancilla”. “Of course!” I answered. “I would go anywhere with Manolo, and I'd like to be an altar-boy too.” Father Manuel knew what he was proposing. We would have to present ourselves, therefore, at the Victoria that afternoon at the Rosary Hour. La Victoria was just a stone's throw from the Calle la Amiga, where I lived, and from the Calle Real, where Manolo lived.
The priest was a good man and young, although he was overweight which made him look older. He managed the Church of La Victoria, the old monastery of the Padres Minimos, founded by San Francisco de Paula, a 15th-century Italian hermit. Father Manuel was very shy and people said that he wouldn't preach because he was afraid of getting it wrong. Once he was obliged to preach to the Brotherhood of the Nazarenes and the good priest, before getting up into the pulpit, trembled and perspired like a condemned man.
His name was Manuel Cid Benitez and he lived in the rooms of the 'upper cloister' of La Victoria, with his brother Pepe Cid and his sister-in-law. I think he was a native of Alcalá, because people had great trust in him. The rooms of the 'lower cloister' were used for meetings of Acción Católica. The arches of the cloister were covered in honeysuckle and creepers. In almost all towns in Andalucia there was a monastery of victorian monks. Tit was said that in the 19th century, the monastery of La Victoria in Alcalá had nearly thirty monks. The fame of their founding saint had spread throughout Italy, France and Spain and many young men had followed him. But the Ecclesiastical Confiscations of Mendizábal1 closed all monasteries with less than eleven monks.
At the Rosary Hour we were there waiting. Father Manuel gave us a little book so we could learn the responses of the mass in Latin. Introibo ad alterem Dei / Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam. It was difficult for us, but we kept asking Father Manuel about the pronunciation, and after a week we almost knew it. A few days later, he told us that at 6 o'clock that afternoon there would be a funeral. It was a big event for us. We put on our red cassocks, white surplices and coloured capes, and Father Manuel wore a black cassock, white surplice, stole and black cape. Manolo carried the sprinkler and a bowl of holy water, and I the incense burner and boat. We waited in the doorway of La Victoria.
Soon we saw a procession coming down Calle Los Pozos. A man was carrying in his arms a white coffin, no more than a metre long, accompanied by a group of neighbours. He was weeping and sorrowfully calling out the child's name. The crowd accompanied him in complete silence. Women did not attend funerals, they stayed at home accompanied by female neighbours and prayed. It was a paradoxical image to see a man of the land, strong and tough, crying like a child, with a white coffin in his arms.
From that day on I noticed that children's funerals were very common. Just the opposite to what happens today. Some children died at birth; others of hunger; the rest from tuberculosis. Treatment with penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1929, had not yet reached Spain. The children's funerals surprised me, because I couldn't work out how a child could die of hunger or TB or how a man could cry.
Father Manuel gave a blessing and led the procession with the cross and the altar-boys. From time to time I sang in my poor Latin, while we climbed up to the Church of San Jorge. In the Plaza Alta the clergy and the mourners departed. They took the path that led to the cemetery. It was a dirt track indicated by two rows of mulberry trees. The relatives attended the burial and the deceased was placed in a niche or in the ground, according to the means of the family. It was said that the coffin remained there but that the soul of the child went off to glory.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
1. A set of decrees in the 1830s that resulted in the expropriation of monasteries in Spain, promulgated by Prime Minister Juan Alvarez Mendizábal, in an attempt to redistribute under-used monastic lands to enterprising land-owners.
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, evocaciones, juan leiva, niños, posguerra
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
1 comentarios
Spanish original
Alcalá could have been called “the Mesopotamia of Cádiz”. In the same way as in Iraq the term Mesopotamia, or “land between rivers” is used to define the region between the Tigris and the Euphrates, Alcalá could be designated “town or hill between rivers” because it is surrounded by five rivers and a rich network of springs, streams, sources and waterfalls. Its moist earth sustains an impressive range of vegetation. Federico Garcia Lorca fell in love with Alcalá and cited it as an Andalucian town par excellence. When in The House of Bernarda Alba he said that towns with no river or sea were cursed, he recalled Alcalá as a town that was blessed.
Alcalá has no sea, but it is surrounded by five rivers: therefore it doesn't meet Lorca's qualification for being cursed. The most important is the Barbate, which maintains its waters the whole year round and is the only one which runs into the sea, over on the coast at the town of the same name. The other four are the Fraja and the Alamo which join it on the right, on the way to Benalup, and the Rocinejo and Alberite which do so on the left, on the way to Algeciras. Thus, Alcalá has no coastline but it has abundant rivers.
In the decade of the 1940s, the Barbate maintained its waters even in the driest years. It went through the "Prao" [el Prado] and in summer left big ponds and pools of crystalline water. It was the only place where the youngsters could go and bathe. There were no swimming pools or beaches, even though the Paseo was called “La Playa” [the beach]. It seems to have been called that because on rainy days the water streamed down from the top square converting the streets into rivers and the Paseo into a beach. However this didn't last long, because the water found its way down the hills of “La Salá” [now C/ Nuestra Señora de los Santos] and San Antonio, and the streams of the Ortega hill, ending up in the rivers.
In summer the pools of the Barbate presented no danger, but the hollows created whirlpools and the smallest children didn't have the strength to escape them, and had to be helped. Our parents didn't want us to go down to the "Prao" to bathe. They shouted warnings that the river had swallowed up too many children, but we were not convinced because never in those years was there a serious accident. They said that some child was always drowned in the Barbate in summer. They were exaggerating and we did not believe them.
The banks of the river were a garden clothed in oleanders, reeds, rushes, small palms and lentiscos … We left our clothes piled in a heap and swam completely naked; a swimming costume was a luxury item in those days. We jumped into the water from some round rocks, which the river itself had shaped in its passing, and then we stretched out to dry ourselves on those wonderful platforms. We filled ourselves with the pure joys of Nature. We went home newly restored, our legs whitened by the limestone dragged along by the water, and in fear of our parents' reprimands. It left scratches on our legs, and if we had been swimming we were left with tell-tale marks.
One day my father found out that we had been bathing in the river. Immediately he sent a policeman to the "Prao" to take away our clothes without us noticing. He took the clothes and waited by the chapel of the Virgin of the Saints, halfway up the hill on the Calle La Salá. The policeman did the job as my father had asked him to. When we children noticed that our clothes had gone, we were full of fear and shame. We waited until dusk to go back up, running like criminals. At the chapel the policeman was waiting for us and gave us back our clothes.
We were able to enter the town with our shameful bits covered, but with our tails between our legs. In our respective houses they were waiting for us with the strap ready. We stayed away from the river for several days, but once we had got over the fright, we got back into our old habits. The Rio Barbate in the "Prao" was the place where we could be free and let off steam. The older lads had already started smoking, because it was the first act of manhood. They found it difficult to go up and down the hill of La Salá, but the younger ones went down flying and came up running.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, evocaciones, juan leiva, niños, paisaje
Ha pasado ya casi medio siglo, cuando un puñado de chavales con su hatillo al hombro y una afición desmedida, caminaban cargados de ilusiones en busca de la gloria del toreo, por estas tierras sureñas. La mayoría deambulaban por cortijos y dehesas de la llamada ruta del toro bravo, siendo su epicentro Alcalá de los Gazules. Unos no llegaron y otros menos consiguieron lo que buscaban. A pesar de los años estos chavales de ayer, hoy hombres peinando canas, no olvidan sus vivencias, aventuras y desventuras, ni tampoco el bocadillo oportuno, que les proporcionaba cualquier lugareño, como bien recordaba el alcalde de Alcalá de los Gazules, Arsenio Cordero,en la presentación del cartel y programa de actos, en la Diputación provincial. Acompañando al Alcalde estaban el presidente de la entusiasta Peña alcalaína “Amigos del Camino”, Rafael Crespo, el coordinador del comité de organización Juan Rodríguez Ulloa y un puñado de buenos aficionados socios de la Peña que han hecho un enorme esfuerzo par a que sea una realidad este reencuentro.Un extenso y programa que se inicia el viernes 30 de octubre con la inauguración de la exposición Homenaje Nacional al Maletilla, para seguir los días siguientes con coloquios y conferencias y la participación de toreros, rejoneadores, ganaderos, periodistas y aficionados y un tentadero. En la gala de clausura se presentará la maqueta del conjunto escultórico al Maletilla, obra del artista Jesús Cuesta Arana y que ha causado impacto en cuantos la han visto y que se considera como objetivo prioritario de este homenaje.
La prensa se está haciendo eco del homenaje al maletilla que, organizado por la Peña Amigos del Camino, tendrá lugar en Alcalá de los Gazules entre el día 30 de Octubre y el 1 de Noviembre próximos y que tendrá ámbito estatal.
Este texto anterior pertenece al Andalucía Información, pero también encontraras más datos en la Guía de Cádiz , La plaza.net y en la Voz Digital.
Programa:
Todas las actividades anteriores se realizarán en el Centro Cultural Santo Domingo.
Publicado por
Antonio Casado
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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En días pasados se procedió a la elección del pregonero de la Hermandad de la Esperanza de Triana para el próximo año de 2010, recayendo dicho nombramiento finalmente sobre el hermano Marco Antonio Huelga de la Luz, joven sacerdote de 33 años de edad que actualmente es párroco en la gaditana localidad de Alcalá de los Gazules. En 2007 pronunció el Pregón de la Semana Santa de Cádiz en el Gran Teatro Falla, además de haber tenido a su cargo numerosas disertaciones, si bien esta será la primera vez que se posicione tras un atril en nuestra ciudad.
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Spanish original
From my house in the Calle la Amiga I heard shouts coming from the Calle Real. As a seven-year-old I could not resist going to find out what event had given rise to such an uproarious hullabaloo. I shot off like an arrow without a second thought, and went to the corner of Calle Real and Rio Verde, where Manolo's father Antonio Mancilla had his tannery. I was sure that Manolo would be waiting for me there. We were the same age and knew each other inside out.
It was a grey autumn afternoon, raining slightly. The year was 1939, when the Civil War was about to end and the postwar era was starting. Two young men had found an injured griffon vulture in El Lario. They were carrying it along in such a way that the poor creature could hardly touch the ground with its claws. There was blood on one of its wings, as if it had been shot with a rifle. The wings must have measured nearly three metres from tip to tip, reaching from one pavement to the other and blocking the whole of the Calle Real.
A group of children came up behind the creature, wanting to get a closer look. But the young men wouldn't let them, for fear that it would try and defend itself. One of them carried a stick. Whenever the vulture made an attempt to flee, he gave it a warning prod and the poor animal looked from one side to the other, as if realising the hopelessness of getting away. On one of these occasions I was able to see its head and its neck, featherless, with the ruff further down forming the plumage that gives it the name leonado. Its expressionless eyes gave out a profound sadness.
Griffon vultures [buitres leonados] were frequently seen in the sky over Alcalá. When they smelled carrion, they would come from the mountain peaks and circle round and round at a great height, as if working out a strategy for falling on a dead mule on the Coracha, a sick cow in the Prado or a wounded deer in the Alcornocales. Later, the band of vultures would remain motionless high in the sky above Alcalá. In the crags of the Alcornocales there were many birds of prey, hunters with robust beaks, strong claws and large wing spans. The Park is one of the biggest in Andalucia and maintains perfect ecosystems for all species; a real treasure of Nature.
People said that they were birds of bad omen, but nobody knew why. The only reason would have been that, when they appeared, they indicated the presence of dead animals and came down to feed on the carrion. For vultures and other carrion-eaters there was no shortage of food in the countryside around Alcalá. As well as carrion, they fed on lizards, snakes, rabbits and any animal left behind by huntsmen. They combed the hills for caza mayor [lit. “big game” e.g.deer, wild boar] and would always find some dead beast left in the undergrowth. Or else they would find animals caught in poachers' traps and never collected.
Luis Berenguer (El Ferrol 1923-Cadiz 1979) was a military sailor, poet and novelist. Attracted by the life of an Alcalá poacher, he wrote in 1966 El Mundo de Juan Lobón, a novel which won the Critics' Prize in 1967. Later he wrote another novel, Marea Escorada, but just as his life as an author was promising to become more fruitful, he died suddenly. Nevertheless El Mundo de Juan Lobón has remained noteworthy as his great literary work.
The retinue followed after the vulture, shouting. They went down the Calle Real from the Plazuela to the Alameda. I don't know how many times they went up and down. Some men who saw them said it was a griffon vulture and that they came from Grazalema. Others said it was a golden eagle. But the young men were certain that the strong, curved beak and the claws were those of a vulture. The poor creature moved its head in sorrow, as if awaiting its sentence. The discussion ended and they dragged the vulture along, forcing it with the stick.
Halfway down the Calle Real, near the house where Dr Antonio Armenta lived, the animal refused to get up again. The young man thrashed it until he could do so no longer. Finally, the creature hung its head and died. Don Antonio stood in his doorway, making a gesture of disapproval at such a death. Later, with his authority as Doctor, he ordered it to be carried to the common land by the Playa, where we played football, and buried. That night, the vulture's sorrowful eyes would not let us sleep.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, ave protegida, evocaciones, juan leiva, niños, posguerra
Spanish original
"Juan, go and get the cakes from Juan Ramos's", my father would say to me while he was drinking his camomile tea. My father was a man with a delicate stomach, which meant that he had to watch what he ate, almost everything made him feel ill. Perhaps that was why he got in a bad mood sometimes.
But my mother understood this well and took good care of him. Every morning before breakfast, she brought him a cup of strained camomile and some of Juan Ramos's cakes. Father tipped the camomile tea into a bowl to cool it down, and drank it in small sips. I sat at his side to watch him drink the infusion and await the order.
The camomile of Alcalá was famous. It was a wild plant which a man brought in a sack from the Sierra del Aljibe, over by the peaks of the “Pilita de la Reina”. Many excellent aromatic plants for making infusions grew up there; thyme, rosemary, camomile, lime flower, lavender … But the camomile was the best in the world. The people of Alcalá appreciated it greatly and were addicted to it.
When my father gave the order I jumped up, grabbed the money, went through the gate and ran like the wind up the Calle la Amiga. I passed by the barracks of the Guardia Civil, where in summer there was always a guard in the entrance, sweating, with his jacket undone and a jug of water on the floor, typing away. I took the “Carril Alto” and went down the street drawn by the smell of hot bread, buns and cakes. That street now seems to be called “Fernando Casas” and opens up into the Plazuela. On that corner where the Carril joins the Calle Real, Juan Ramos's little shop used to be.
Juan Ramos was an easy-going chap, a shopkeeper by vocation, who knew all his customers so well that as soon as someone came in he knew what they wanted. For me he would wrap up half a dozen round, soft, warm, sweet-smelling tarts … They looked like the famous macaroons from Utrera, but they were even better. Their smell and their flavour have remained forever in between my salivary glands and my childhood memories.
I went back the same way, running, because my father was very impatient and had to be at the Town Hall by half past eight. I would watch closely as he dunked the cakes in the cup to moisten them with the coffee. Sometimes there wasn't time for them to get from cup to mouth, and they would fall on the table. Then he would say “This one is for my Juan”. My mother would bring me coffee with milk and some toasted bread with oil and sugar, but by then the cake would already have disappeared.
Alcalá's home-baked sweets and pastries were excellent; cakes made with olive oil, almond cakes, tortas de chicharrones1, cakes with raisins, “angel hair” cakes, meringues, marzipan ... the latter was also one of Juan Ramos's specialities. He made elaborate little marzipan figurines and sold them to the kids in the streets, to the delight of the little girls and boys. They were playful figures of animals and real-life characters from Alcalá.
The fried sweets were equally exquisite; doughnuts, honeyed fritters, fried bread or picatostes, leche frita2, fried pastry rings, tejeringos3 made by a gipsy who had a stall on the Alalameda … And the sweets made at Christmas and Easter: rice with milk; pumpkin in honey, the honey of the Alcornocales; stuffed cheese with honey; quince in syrup …
They say that we were taught how to make many of these sweets by the Moors. And in truth, when I've been over to Morocco I have seen them in refreshment stalls on the city streets, at fiestas, in the soukhs and in the markets. But the buns of Juan Ramos I have never come across since. Sometimes, when I pass through Alcalá, I go to the Horno de Luna in the Callejón de Bernadino and buy bread, soft rolls, tortas de pellizco4, and other whims to stir up my childhood memories. But those cakes and those marzipan figures have disappeared forever along with Juan Ramos.
Notes
1. A savoury-sweet cake made with sugar, lard and crumbled pork scratchings.
2. Dessert made of milk thickened with flour, coated with egg and fried.
3. Local name for churros, thick batter squirted through a syringe and deep-fried.
4. Sweet buns leavened with yeast and sprinkled with cinnamon.
JUAN LEIVA
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
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Etiquetas: evocaciones, juan leiva
Publicado por
Andrés Moreno Camacho
1 comentarios
Con la furia de la primavera –abril-, y las golondrinas poniendo notas fusas en el pentagrama de los cables de la calle; dieron aviso y bulla a la matrona que asoma con todos los avíos como una centella y nazco en Alcalá de los Gazules. Mientras de la calle viene el sonar tremendo de los tambores y cornetas a todo pulmón. Es que a uno quiso la casualidad de parirlo la madre cuando pasa por mi calle el Nazareno en procesión. (Por eso e pusieron Jesús).
Publicado por
Antonio Casado
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Etiquetas: artículo, jesús cuesta
Translation of the Opening Speech of the Alcalá de los Gazules Feria1, 28 August 2009, by Bibiana Aído, Minister of Equality
Spanish original
Dear Mayor, Consejero, President of the Deputation, Senior Romera2, Honorary Romeras, Authorities and Friends,
I could have begun tonight by acknowledging how honoured I am to have been invited to give this opening address; I could have begun by dedicating eulogies to our town, or talking about the history of our feria over more than century and a half; I could have begun with the famous phrase of Lorca's3, or with some borrowed verse. But of all the possibilities that occurred to me, I want to begin tonight by giving thanks to those of you who are listening to me, the people of Alcalá.
Thank you for being noble, genuine, straightforward, tenacious people … good people. Thank you for always having been so. Because although I have never left Alcalá, I have daily proof that Alcalá has never left me either. I notice it every day, whether I am close by or far away, for wherever my steps lead me in life, I run into my fellow countrymen and women.
I always have someone from Alcalá nearby. And when life brings me pain or melancholy, my memory always returns here, to Alcalá, to unite me with the memory of my own people.
To unite me with the memory of my people, that history which stretches from the Laja de los Hierros, with its prehistoric rock carvings from the era of the Turdetanos, or the first Roman inscription in Spain, which was found on the Mesa del Esparragal and which today is conserved in the Louvre museum. In the jigsaw puzzle of my memories, they are pieced together with the long-disappeared Visigoth churches, or the two sentinels which stand watch over our town; the castle and the Parroquia3.
To open any festival or a fair is a great responsibility; you are made welcome and invited to enjoy a few days of greetings and shared embraces, but this is more than that, it is about opening the feria which formed part of your childhood longings and concerns; you are obliged to carry out an exercise of confronting your memories and returning to the past; you are obliged to sit down and contemplate part of your own life, and also to acknowledge the selective gaps in your memory.
With this backward look, the first feelings of nostalgia start to flower, distant voices make themselves present, places you no longer visit start to become familiar again.
I was back once more in the courtyard of the Beaterio4 during the break, and found myself once again trying to avoid the attentive eyes of the Sisters and teachers in order to to go off and play. I was back on a Saturday afternoon in this park, which once again had walls, and we ran round and hid from Angelito when he turned off the lights and it was time for the curfew. I was back eating bread from the Puerto la Pará, and once again I rode on horseback in Las Porquerizas, I spent a rainy afternoon drinking stewed coffee in the Venta de Patriste, and I was back doing sums again, and I didn't have enough fingers to count the loved ones I still have in my town.
I was able, as well, to wander through past ferias which filled me with excitement every September like the sun setting on a summer which refuses to end. And I saw myself in my new costume, in the house of my grandmother Pepa, who gave me 20 duros to buy odds and ends; I saw myself waiting in line to buy candyfloss, while thinking that there had to be something magic about that pink cloud which you could eat; I saw myself frightened to death on the ghost-train, and I saw myself holding my parents' hands to go up on that big wheel which appeared to me so enormous and majestic.
I was very small, and I remember that I wanted to grow up so I could go up in those swinging cradles on my own, to fly up high, to go round and round without stopping, to discover what it felt like to be alone so high up, and to stay in that same place for ever.
To come home, year after year, to meet up with people who are pleased to see us and whom we are pleased to see, to go back to our beginnings, to know that we are not alone; that is what the feria still means to me and to the majority of those who had to go away in search of a better future.
There were many such people, and there continue to be too many. People from Alcalá have gone away to all parts of the world. We are everywhere. But in each man or woman from Alcalá who goes away, we have an ambassador for our town, extending our geographical limits, our living space; because nobody can take away our love for our roots, for our people, and we extend these sentiments to many other people who are also starting to feel like part of our community.
And Alcalá goes on welcoming its newly-adopted children, like Matthew Coman, member of one of the best musical groups in the UK and one of the founders of the International Music Festival 'Al-Kalat', today consolidated as once of the Province's unmissable cultural dates in the summer. Or, in the past, like Maria Francisca Ulloa la Partera, the midwife who came from Utrera to help give birth to three generations of Alcalainos, and after whom one of our streets is named.
I have been able also to return to my adolescence, when a yellow card on the bumper cars was a treasure which gave us enormous but short-lived power. I revisited the Alambique, the Luca, the Paco Nono disco, the municipal marquee, the bullfighting club, and that of the Friends of the Camino, when those exciting September days arrived. I went back to my first auction to be allocated a room at [the Sanctuary of] Los Santos, which we called the “wardrobe” because of its diminutive size, and another one some years later, in which we managed to get the “dining room”, the biggest and most desirable room of all. I went back to dancing sevillanas and taking part in the procession, partly on the cart, partly on horseback and partly walking, and getting some soup at the stopping-point on the way to build up the strength to reach Los Santos.
To reach Los Santos, and to see it - because as the words of that popular sevillana go, “We are all happy under your cloak”. And that's the great thing about it, that everybody loves it. As I once heard from our world-famous Alejandro Sanz5, there may be atheists in Alcalá, but they can't touch the Virgin of the Saints. There may be people who don't believe in gods or in religions, but who still believe in the Virgin of the Saints, in that old lady who is waiting in a corner for anyone who leaves her an offering, a prayer or a complicit wink.
I remember how proud I felt when, as the provincial delegate for Culture, I was able to contribute to the restoration of the paintings in the dome of the Sanctuary. Deep down, here amongst us, I felt as happy as if I was contributing to the restoration of the house of an old friend.
How many people have you seen born! How much talent under these skies! I could speak of philosophers like Antonio Millán Puelles or Fernando Casas; of writers like Juan Leiva, who from Jerez continues to ecupulavoke memories of Manuel Marchante´s old school and his escapades on the Alcalá hilltops.
I could speak of flamenco artists like Joaquin Herrera, and recallthat even El Camarón had flamenco roots in Alcalá according to a native of these parts, or Juan Romero, who is married to the poet Lola Peche from Algeciras, who has given us one of the most beautiful descriptions of our town:
Alcalá de los Gazules … the unordered white cluster of your houses, hanging amongst the gay greenery, blown by the wind like a victory flag, bordered with evergreen laurels. Give me a welcome, under your resounding blue sky, that I will remember you by with joy, forever, forever ...”
I could speak of politicians too, many of them but one amongst all others: Alfonso Perales6, whose name I still can't conjugate in the past tense.
I could speak of Sainz de Andino, who founded the Madrid Stock Exchange but whose liberal ideas led him into exile in France on two occasions. He opposed the return of the absolutism of Fernando VII, like many of us who continue to oppose absolutism of any kind, above all that of people who believe they are always in the right.
I could speak of Juan Lobón and his world 7, which is a world of adventure, of the emotion of the woods, that forest of cork-oaks which surrounds us and reminds us that the human being is not the king of creation but a just a fragile part of it, and full of questions about this marvellous spectacle we call nature.
I could speak of other legendary characters of ours, like Batata or Potoco. I could speak of the cork-gatherers, the farmers, and in general, the efforts of workers to bring forward our land.
But above all, tonight I would like to bring to mind and express my recognition and gratitude to all the women of Alcalá. To those remembered and those anonymous, to those of yesterday and those of today. To those who carried out their household tasks day after day. To the young women who struggled, studied and worked to have a better future. To the grandmothers, to all those women who gave up their leisure time to dedicate themselves once more to caring for children, this time their grandchildren. To them, because they are supporting us in these years of change between the reality we have now and that which we aspire to construct.
To their daughters, mothers in their turn, who don't want to give up their dreams, their professional careers, their own lives. Women who have to balance their time, coping with being away from the home, doing two or even three jobs each day … And to all the others, those who have gone away, those who have returned, those who have come here for the first time. Those who crave knowledge and who go to the Adult Learning Centre to study what they couldn't before. Those who make ends meet, those who can't make it to the end of the month, the widows, those who live alone, those who don't get discouraged, those who help others, those who suffer in silence, those who decide to speak out, those who resist, those who dream … To those many women that make this town, each day, a better place to live in.
One of the best places to live in, to share. A place of “sailors of the land”, of mermaids stranded on the banks of La Janda, and perhaps that is why, maybe because we pine for the cool air of the seaports, we have so many marine names8 in our midst, which go on causing confusion to some of our visitors.
And it's true that names don't matter much here, as we well know from the Calle Real, which has had so many other names but which goes on proudly calling itself Calle Real. Like the Plaza de la Cruz, which is known as the Alameda.
A capricious construction of playing-cards, fragile and whiter-than-white, on a hill which rises up from the emerald green of the countryside. This is how Alcalá is described by Manuel Peréz Regordán from Arcos de la Frontera.
For me, that deck of cards takes shape as if forming part of the story of Alice in Wonderland. And in any case it is a hand full of hearts, including gazpacho, la Coracha, el Picacho, and the fervour for our patron lady.
But above all, it is somewhere we can take real pride in feeling ourselves brothers and sisters of this landscape, witnesses to the centuries, accomplices of the Gazuls, that keeps us trying to prevent our town getting gored by life's horns. According to our contrary names, Alcalá has a beach, it has a port and it has salt mines. But above all, it has a supportive and charitable heart which beats more strongly than ever when the feria arrives.
A few years ago, I had the honour of giving the opening address at the celebrations of St George and I asked our patron saint to convert himself into a messenger of peace. I requested that friendship and conviviality should be the queens of the Fiesta, with tolerance and respect as our dancing partners. I implored him to slay the dragon of ignorance, evil and injustice, and to go on fighting every day for a future full of hope and love.
Today I address our patroness, our Virgin of the Saints, patroness both of those who believe and those who don't. And I ask her to banish evil and meanness. That she should not forget us in the business of living our lives, nor in the worthy business of working each day with energy and confidence in a better tomorrow. To liberate us from attacks of fanaticism, and also from resentment, tension and confrontation: “That which unites us is always greater than that which separates us”. Let us build a culture of peace, where there is no room for contempt toward the dignity of others. Let prosperity and well-being reign in our town.
And let time stand still during these days of Feria, let the hours not pass. Let us all be together and let nobody be left out.
They say that the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Today I went back to seeing things the way I did when I was a little girl, how I longed to be able go up alone in the big wheel to see what it felt like, and I can assure you all, that nothing would have given me more pleasure, then, than to see myself standing here right now, shouting out:
LONG LIVE THE FERIA!
LONG LIVE ALCALÁ!
Translated by Claire Lloyd
Footnotes
1. A Spanish “feria” is a cross between a fair and a festival, lasting for several days and involving music, dancing, fairground rides, eating, drinking and dressing up in traditional flamenco costume.
2. A participant in a religious procession, in this case the “Romeria” from Alcalá to the Sanctuario de los Santos which takes place early in September.
3. The Parroquia de San Jorge, or Church of St George, at the top of the town.
4. Colegio Beaterio Jesus María y José – a Catholic infant school in Alcalá.
5. A famous pop singer whose family comes from Alcalá.
6. A leading socialist politician and former government minister who died in 2006.
7. A fictitious local poacher in a novel by Luis Berenguer, El Mundo de Juan Lobón.
8. For example the oddly-named Paseo de la Playa.
Publicado por
Claire Lloyd
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Etiquetas: Alcalá, feria, infancia, Los Santos, niños, romería