Annie and I had an extended trip during September and October 2007. We first toured through Morocco for a fortnight, then we were in Spain for several weeks before stopping off in Dubai for three days on the way home. Our Morocco schedule was full, and the experience bountiful, but I didn’t keep a diary. The diary that follows covers most of our time in Spain, although not the final few days in Barcelona. We found Dubai to be a most disagreeable place, and I didn’t want to write about it, even after I’d cooled down. This diary was transcribed in 2017, and revisiting it I have inserted a number of photographs, and split the diary into three for successive blog postings.
There were a lot of books at our second Spanish villa, Corteja Santa Cecilia, both Spanish- and English-language. Plenty of fiction, but a preponderance of volumes on art, antiques and bird-life, presumably reflecting the interests of the owner. Among the coffee table-sized volumes was the Reader’s Digest Great World Atlas, vintage 1961; so I was able to research the mystery, the mystery of why the dawn was so late. It was quite dark at 7 a.m., and not really light until well after 8.00. The simple explanation is that Spanish time is Greenwich plus 2 hours (remembering that Eastern Australia is Greenwich plus 10 hours, except in summer), and the Atlas confirmed that this is screwy. To be properly on GMT+2 hours the locality would be centred on 30 degrees east, but Spain sits between 9 degrees west of Greenwich and 3 degrees east of Greenwich, and is really plumb below Britain. In Spain sunrise and sunset are not equidistant from noon – say 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. – but are grossly out of line. So much for the “simple” explanation; now I had to find out why it is so. I found out later that Spain was on summer time while we were there - GMT+3 hours - thus compounding the anomaly. Spain’s “wrong” time zone has been in place since October 1940 when General Franco, while resisting Hitler’s request for formal support of the Axis powers’ war campaigns, changed Spain’s time zone to parallel Germany’s. It has never been changed back. Spain is geographically aligned with Britain and Portugal, but its clocks are aligned with Germany and France, and countries as far east as Poland and Hungary.
The journey across from our first Spanish villa (at Acequias) to the second (at Ermita Nueva) was leisurely and interesting. The requirement was to vacate Villa Vista by 10 a.m., and we’d resolved to wash the sheets and towels before departure; and knowing that the washing machine took a long time through its cycle (nearly an hour!), and knowing that we had been sleeping late, we set the alarm on the phone. We had been keeping the phone on Melbourne time, so as to check that we were not phoning home in the middle of the night, and in the process of re-setting the time and then setting the alarm Annie forgot that it’s a 24-hour clock. The alarm didn’t go off at 7.00 as expected, but fortunately – despite the pitch black – I awoke at 7.15, and we had plenty of time.
The business of “moving on” is somewhat mechanical: pack the cases; gather up the toiletries from the bathroom; collect all the loose bits for the backpacks; hold out the paperwork for the day ahead; double check the vital things like passports, money and cameras - although after nearly three weeks of travel we were pretty used to it. The exodus from Villa Vista was a little different from touring through Morocco, because we had the car. Shirts and trousers and jackets didn’t have to be packed, and were able to be thrown into the boot. Moreover, we had several supermarket bags of groceries and fruit to take with us. We had stocked up at the small supermarket at nearby Durcal on the afternoon of our arrival at Acequias four days back - spent about 75 euros (approximately $125, including a mere $15 for a bottle of brandy!) - and much of these provisions remained for us to take with us to Ermita Nueva. A general tidy up, clean the bathroom and the kitchen, and we were on our way about 9.30. There was, not surprisingly, no obligation to do the laundry etc., but we wanted to make the transition to the next occupants easier for the caretaker.
But back to Acequias: there were two open spaces in the village, the lower one in front of the church, and the upper one – about 50 metres further on – with some benches, a pergola, and a non-functioning fountain, actually the tiny town square. Our place, Villa Vista, opened off a little zigzag alley that entered the square, and we parked just there, about one-third on the footpath to allow cars to go further up village. Very narrow streets. When we came to leave, our way was stymied by a recently-arrived truck which completely blocked the way out. No problemo! There was a way to skirt around, by exiting from the other side of the square – except that this way was even narrower, involving a three-point turn to get around one corner, with the mirrors having about an inch to spare on either side. And our car was not big! It was a VW Golf 4-seater four door hatchback automatic. It was diesel, and surprisingly nippy, although I never got used to the engine’s motor-mower sound upon ignition, and when accelerating through the gears. From a “Spain Holiday” website: "Acequias is a small whitewashed village high on the banks of the Rio Torrente, a deep gorge that was carved out by the river flowing down from the Sierra Nevada Mountains National Park that makes the backdrop for this pretty village.
The river is now tamed and is used for hydro electricity generation, and for feeding the irrigation channels that water the fields and orchards of this lush valley. The National Park runs along the edge of the village and there are numerous footpaths leading out of the village, including the Gran Recorrido long distance footpath.
The village does not have any shops or bars but local delivery vans call on a daily basis. The surrounding villages have the usual array of bars, banks and supermarkets. Acequias is situated on the edge of the Sierra Nevada. It is within easy reach of many historic towns and villages. The area is an ideal spot for those who enjoy walking and sight-seeing. Located two hours from Malaga airport." We had arrived at Malaga from Morocco.
Acequias and Villa Vista are about 30 km south of Granada, in the Andalusian south of Spain. Ermita Nueva and Corteja Santa Cecilia are about 50 km north-west of Granada. Our only imperative in driving from one to the other was to avoid the Granada city traffic – we would “do” Granada on another day. We successfully circumnavigated, courtesy of Annie’s spot-on map reading. We travelled at a pace that gave ample opportunity to view the spectacular mountainous countryside. We were on a freeway but stopped at one point to marvel at some major roadworks – including a valley-straddling viaduct that seemed to be a new freeway going in the same direction and merely intended to supersede the one we were on. Wherever we’ve driven, the open roads have been excellent. But the roads in towns, including the main roads passing through, have been narrow and difficult, and choked with cars. It’s no wonder that 99% of the cars are small like the Golf.
The owner of Corteja Santa Cecilia is Sheila Batas, a widow of boundless energy, in her 70s. She is/was English, but married a Spaniard, and has lived in Spain for 52 years. Her children were born here (and are Spanish), but we’ve met her son Nicholas and he speaks English with the best Oxbridge accent – he’s clearly been educated in the U.K. and may have lived there for an extended period.
Sheila is a businesswoman par excellence. She has lived in a number of places in Andalusian Spain and, in the course of several conversations, we have learned that she has built and sold a number of houses, she has made tidy sums from the buying and selling of artworks, she has developed a housing estate, and she once had a rabbit farm with thousands of bunnies. She did all the breeding and crossing herself, but eventually sold the business “because you can’t really get rid of the smell and the fur!” For relaxation she does botanical paintings. Since her husband died, a few years ago, she has moved to the hillside near Ermita Nueva. The house we’re staying in is really her daughter Cecilia’s, and named after her, but Cecilia is an art restorer working in Cordoba, and the house in the country is of no interest to her. The word “corteja”, incidentally, means “farmhouse”, but Sheila says it’s now applied to any house in the country whether or not attached to a farm. Sheila lived in this house until recently, until she moved to her newly-built property about a kilometre further from the town. Between the two is a house owned by Sheila’s brother (who occasionally pops over from England), and further down the slope son Nicholas has a place – although he mostly lives in Granada. Attached to the several properties Sheila has a few hundred olive trees, although for her the oil production is just a sideline – not a business as it is for many of the locals. Sheila made this point when describing the severe storm they’d had the week before our arrival – hailstones the size of golf balls. In 52 years Sheila had seen nothing like it; and many of the olive trees were stripped of leaves and fruit. Hard for those whose livelihoods depend on the annual crop.
From our terrace there are olive groves over 180 degrees of hillside.
In this general area – the province of Jaen – there are said to be 150 million olive trees, and they produce 10% of the world’s oil. Prodigious figures. One wonders about genetics, production techniques, small-scale farming, and whether the huge plantations being established in Australia will eventually impact on the economic situation of the people hereabouts. Maybe the protectionism of the E.E.C. will ensure the status quo. Still, insofar as the Australian producers achieve import replacement in other markets the exporters of Spain must be affected.
Our instruction had been to call ahead to the key-holder for Corteja Santa Cecilia, which we did, not knowing that Sheila was both the key-holder and the owner. Because we’d had a whole Saturday to travel 80 or 90 kilometres between one lodging and the next we had deliberately overshot the turn-off to Ermita Nueva and gone on to the town of Alcala la Real. Whereas Ermita Nueva is a tiny village, with a couple of small eating places [you can eat outside in summer, says Sheila, but not much doing now half way through autumn], and a mini supermarket, Alcala la Real is a town of some substance (population 22000), with a lovely plaza and gardens, with a number of supermarkets, and with a main avenue of sophisticated shopping.
[Sheila thinks Alcala la Real is the next real estate opportunity and, with prices much less than Granada, she has her eyes open!] We spent several hours mooching around Alcala la Real before phoning Sheila. She herself was shopping in town (partly to get our “arrival pack” of champagne and other necessaries), and we agreed to meet outside the little store at Ermita Nueva later in the afternoon. The booking agency had provided quite detailed instructions on how to find each of our Spanish lodgings, but the Corteja Santa Cecilia instructions failed us at the last moment, and we took the left instead of the right fork; and after sensing that things weren’t right we had to back-track. When we arrived at the store there was Sheila in her car, window rolled down: “follow me”, she commanded, and a couple of minutes later we were on the terrace overlooking the pool, the valley below, and the hills all around bristling with their olive trees.
Because Corteja Santa Cecilia has until recently been Sheila Batas’ country home it is still filled with her furnishings, artefacts and books. There is also a three-inch-thick “visitors’ book”, started by Sheila and her husband Pedro in 1984 to record family, friends and guests’ comings and goings. Lots of photos and stories of earlier days near the coast, with groups of bird watchers and hunters. Many slain pigs, and heads adorned with antlers, and outdoor feasts. A gap of some years covering, I imagine, the move to the hills and the death of Pedro; and then a resumption, with affectionate messages from holidaymakers like ourselves. Sheila’s injunction: if you put your address in the book I shall send you a Christmas card. We have not resisted.
The books in the house are I guess about 30% in Spanish and about 70% in English, and - as previously noted - there are many books on art and antiques, and books on hunting, and books on botany. Many of the visitors in the old days were on botany field trips. And a set of Britannica. And a heap of paperback popular fiction. So we have had plenty to choose from, and have been busy doing so.
The day after our arrival we “did nothing”,
For a place only one-and-one-half hours from Granada with its two million tourists a year, Alcala la Real is sleepily unaware of its tourist potential – or perversely determined not to be seduced. The fort, the Conjunto Monumental Fortaleza de la Mota (Mota Fortress), is a spectacular reminder of Spain’s colourful past.
Perhaps there were no coffins – which would have required more uniformity in the dimensions of the holes. All very interesting [to quote my uncle Bill, who in turn was quoting a naturalist who used to broadcast in the early days of radio in Melbourne, and whose mantra was “it’s all very interesting”], but the most spectacular feature of the restoration is that much of the church’s floor has been replaced by thick glass or perspex, and the visitor has an overhead view by being able to walk above the burial holes. I must say that one’s first couple of steps are rather tentative. We are not used to, and are more than a little uncomfortable with, walking on a glass floor; but, once braved, the impact is spectacular. Also spectacular was the “sound and light” presentation going on in the church as we entered. Very professional audio-visual, huge screen – but in Spanish only, so we mostly had to guess what it was all about. Worst of all was the fact that during the presentation the attendants had closed the front door of the church, and if we hadn’t, almost accidentally, discovered a side door we would have totally missed the show, and missed the transparent floor; and missed the archaeological museum, the lot. The municipality of Alcala la Real, or whoever is in charge of this very significant touristic asset, needs a shake-up.
To be continued…………
Gary Andrews
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