ARAGON ON A BUS (2004)
Ethel was in BCN visiting the Forum with friends and on Wednesday I took off on my own for a “walkabout”, which is a solo trip on foot and public transportation. I’ve spent three days crossing the region of Aragon from South to North.
Tarragona-Zaragoza by train, and then to Daroca, Teruel, back to Zaragoza, Huesca and up to Sabiñánigo by bus. There by foot to the “Valle de Basa” ending up in Allué, the tiniest village where the Allués come from.
Day 1.
Off from Tarragona train station. Talgo train to Bilbao, around 13.30 h., with the Tarjeta Dorada1 discount, just 8.95€. The Spanish Social System at work: cheap travelling for the elderly. A stupid movie on the train TV.
Shortly after 4 p.m. reached Saragossa brand new Delicias station. Looks like a modern bank or a state-of-the-(modern)art museum. A sweet hostess in the information office addresses me to a city bus that will take me to another bus station in the center of Saragossa. I got the ticket for a bus to Daroca in an hour’s time. Just enough to get some food supplies in a nearby supermarket and take a short stroll along a semi-deserted avenue just in front of the old and abandoned El Portillo train station.
On the bus to Daroca. Stops in just about every town on the road. Most impressive the vineyards of the Cariñena region.
On the glass pane behind the driver a sign in bold letters: “Prohibido comer y beber”. Food and beverages not allowed in the bus. Let alone smoke. I just could not imagine Spaniards on a moving collective vehicle without having anything to do but watch the landscape.
The passengers of the bus are mostly women of any age, occasional elderly men and, and that is new, immigrants. Sub-Saharan Africans that probably work in the vineyards, just now finishing this year’s vintage.
The Spaniards, the men, would consider somewhat diminishing to ride a bus. With a carpool of some 30 million vehicles, just about every Spaniard owns a car. Probably only women born before 1960 cannot operate a motor vehicle.
In today’s Aragon, country people and city dwellers are indistinguishable. The ladies in the bus were well dressed and made up, sported a few jewels and dyed up hairdos. No “moños”, nape buns so common in the old days, Spanish women dye their hair well into their old age. To sport a white mane is not seen as respectable as in other countries. A couple of giggling young girls in the back of the bus wore low-waist jeans and short tank-tops that exposed pierced belly buttons. No one wears a headpiece, hat or cap. The once-popular black beret, “la boina”, that capped most rural Spaniards has disappeared completely. You may occasionally find a very old grandpa that sports a beaked cap. Straw hats may be used while toiling in the fields to stave off the fierce Spanish sun but they are stashed away as soon as the user gets to town. Also missing are the black shawls that once covered the heads of widows and orphans, nowadays only used by elderly gipsy women.
We got to Daroca around 7 pm. After riding a high plain2, more than 1000 mt. above sea level, the road suddenly sinks in a crevice of the land that leads to Daroca’s Puerta Alta, the higher gate. A now sleepy town of some 5000 people it used to be the key to the Jiloca Valley. The city walls still preserved surround the town in a circle of some 4 kilometres. Built originally by the Moors in the VIII century, later became a Christian stronghold and an important defence of the Kingdom of Aragon against the constantly warring Castilians in the troubled X, XI, XIII, and XIV centuries. They recovered some use during the Carlists Wars, the long civil struggle for the throne of Spain along the XIX century.
Daroca. View from the east, 8 am
The bus dropped me in the “Puerta baja”, the lower gate so I had to walk back all the way across town to find a hotel: La pensión de Almohadi, Almohadi’s Inn, as many Spanish entrepreneurs in the tourist sector now tend to recover the Arabic Spanish heritage and use ancient Moorish local names for their business.3
Day 2.
Daroca is just another town of Middle Age origin with a castle and a big church and a popular legend to go with it: “Los corporals de Daroca”, a confusing story of some eucharistic wafers turned bloody before some battle eventually won by the Christians, and preserved ever since as miraculous relics.
One peculiar public work calls the attention of the visitor: “La mina”, the mine. Actually a tunnel, it was perforated in the XVI century to divert the rain waters that flooded the town every time a big rain came over the high plains. A 750 meters long, 5 meters high tunnel represented a magnificent work for the age.
La mina de Daroca. South end.
The next morning I did walk all the way through it and then climb back over the hill to return to town. I took some pictures and by mid-morning I was ready to keep going.
Funny thing: while breakfasting in the hotel a middle-age couple next table kept looking at me until the man addressed me and asked me if I was who I am. It turned out to be a former employee in the engineering department of my hospital, now retired and nursing his second kidney transplant. Small world, and getting smaller.
Another funny thing: While visiting the church I saw a traffic sign in the plaza saying: No parking except for “turismos”. I failed to understand until I realized that “turismos” is the official word in Spanish for passenger cars, non-commercial vehicles. A town regulation to keep the plaza neat. But a small van was parked just in front of the church gate. It was more like a hatchback station wagon of some European brand. On both sides and over the back window panels it sported a “tricolour” Spanish republican flag: three wide stripes, red, yellow and purple. I looked in inside and the car was full of construction items: boards, tools, cement bags and the like. Well, there it was: an old working-class Spanish republican proud of flaunting his colours in this neck of the woods.
I took the bus to Teruel. It rode over ample sprawling plains through Calamocha4, famous for its salted hams, and few other forlorn towns. Reached Teruel in time for lunch. Found a hostal5 and got a shower for the morning walk through the tunnel and over the hill made me sweat quite a lot. I then set to recognize the town.
“Teruel existe” runs the newly proposed city motto. It comes from the local feeling that the rest of Spain and particularly the Spanish government hardly pay any consideration to this particular part of the country. No trains, no major thoroughfares or highways go by Teruel, at least some 200 km away from any other city or provincial capital, Teruel really lies in the middle of nowhere. Its 40.000 inhabitants feel left to their fate, isolated and distant, more than even the Spanish island territories, The Balearic and Canary islands. And still, Teruel is truly representative of what Spain is all about:
Climate: Dry, sunny, bitter cold in winter, fiery hot in summer. They say: “nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno”, nine months of winter and three of hell, in an easy rhyme. That’s more like Spain. In Burgos, for instance, they say they only have two seasons, called in Spanish “estaciones”, stations, that being the (estación) winter, and the train (station). At 900 mt. (2000 ft.) above sea level, the air is dry and thin. The sun shines brightly most of the year and the rains are scarce. The temperature changes in any given day may differ up to 15 ºC (30 ºF) from early morning to midday.
History: probably an Iberian settlement of old of the “turdetans” Iberic tribes, was made a colony by Julius Caesar as “Turia-Julia”. Reconstructed as a Moorish fortress in the middle ages, the tradition claims it was actually a Christian fortress built by two cavaliers from Northern Aragon, Sanchez Muñoz and Garcia de Marcilla who chose the place where a bull was bellowing. The bull became the city symbol. My father used to say that a place that had been settled by Ibers, Romans, Moors and Christians, had a river by, a big church/cathedral and a Catholic bishop must be a good place to be: so many people and such an old “corporation” as the Catholic Church can’t be all wrong.
Teruel saw the fiercest battles during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. Taken originally by the Nationalist rebels, was recovered by the Republicans for some time and lost again.
Teruel Cathedral
Architecture: the most beautiful buildings representing the “mudejar” architecture can be seen in Teruel. The cathedral and the towers of El Salvador, San Pedro and San Martín, built with bricks and beautifully decorated with colourful glazed tiles are quite unique.
And the bull. The city center is the “Plaza del torico”, The little bull’s Plaza, a triangular-shaped space porticoaded in the sides and with modest four-story buildings, some of them “modernistic”, art-decó style. In the middle of the plaza, a 10 ft. column sustains the bronze statue of a bull. A very small bull, the size of a small poodle. More than a monument looks like a “minument”. That’s very odd. Unbecoming of boasting leaders or peoples. There is a story that goes with the “Torico” but, somehow, it came to me as representative of Teruel’s natural modesty.
The plaza was the setting of killings by firing squad of people rounded up immediately after the Republicans took over the city in December 1937 as I was to find out a little later.
I crisscrossed the town letting myself get lost in the maze of streets and alleys: the cathedral, the church of the “Amantes”, what is left of the Jewish call, etc. I shall skip the descriptions, otherwise easily found on the Internet. And the story of the “Amantes”, just another tragic anecdote of youngsters in love, also profusely retold in many Internet web pages about Teruel. I shall just mention an old rhyme saying in Spanish: “Los amantes de Teruel/tonta ella y tonto él” The Teruel lovers/both bummers. Street cynicism applied to love’s labours lost.
Teruel skyline from the RR station
I even walked down to the now abandoned railroad station at the bottom of the chasm that surrounds Teruel to take a picture of both the station and the Teruel skyline.
After some more walking, I ended up at the plaza del “Seminario” the catholic Conciliar Seminar, a large twin-towered building very representative of Teruel’s skyline I had photographed from the railroad station. I am not sure but the way priest vocations are going in Spain most likely the Seminar must be all but empty. In one side of the plaza stood the Public Library, a renovated classic building with a large decorated glass window in the staircase showing the Francoist Spanish emblem, the one with an eagle and the Falange trappings, a leftover from Franco’s era. Today is known as the “unconstitutional emblem” and is usually sported by Spanish extreme-rightists. Symbols, symbols. This is the other side of the coin in relation to the Republican flag in the Daroca builder’s van. Almost three-quarters of a century have gone by and the Spanish Civil War is still present everywhere.
I asked the librarian for some titles about the war in Teruel and surprisingly they only listed three or four volumes. From what I know of the SCW bibliography, I am quite sure there are more than one hundred titles on the Civil War in Teruel. But then again, this is a Spanish public library: underfunded, poorly attended and trying to be aseptic if not politically correct. A place for high school students to sit down and do their homework. The Franco regime did not care much for books and libraries. The governments since the advent of democracy had so many other needs to attend. And then the Internet. Libraries in Spain saved the big ones like the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid and the several big specialized libraries in Barcelona, where the oldest tradition of fostering culture prevailed, are usually very sorry affairs.
Of the volumes, I chose a personal recall of a then (1937) 10-year-old child, memoirs written sometime in the 1970s that I was not careful enough to record as a reference in the 3x5 cards I usually carry around for notes nor the field workbook I pack in the hospital or while travelling. Somehow this time I have decided to confide everything to memory, lest Alzheimer’s catches up with me.
The book rambled through the Civil War in Teruel with a mixture of personal remembrances and recorded experiences and interviews with survivors. Not exquisitely written but understandable and nice. I would say that given the time it was written, enough even-handed, which is not quite easy in the subject of the SCW6.
As I walked out of the library I filed a verbal complaint with the chief librarian regarding the presence, the persistence, of the unconstitutional emblem in the library glass window. She was nice and understanding and justified the thing on the fact that those were very valuable glasses made with an ancient lead technique and difficult to reproduce or remake. I thanked her for her attention and mumbled some warning about the possibility of somebody hauling a brick through the glass with the only purpose of giving her a little hard time and entertain some secret boyish feeling about something that, at my ageing present, I would not dare to do.
I ended up in a bistro by the “Ovalo”, an open space overlooking the cliff that borders Teruel facing West, having a supper of ham, sausages, and wine and enjoying the balmy evening.
Day 3.
I got up early because there was a lot of ground to cover. You’ll see.
Took a bus at 7.00 am from Teruel to Saragossa. A sleepy ride because sunrise caught up with us halfway through, a little after 8.00 am. It took me to a different bus station from which I had to walk all across the town to another bus station to catch one for Northern Aragon. Morning in a big city, the sidewalks bustling with people going to work. After I got the information and the bus ticket for a mid-morning bus to Jaca, I settled in a nearby cafeteria for breakfast. “Churros con chocolate”. Those are the perks of a big old city like Saragossa. That is a classic for Spanish breakfast: a steaming hot bowl of chocolate, rather thick, and those fried long pieces of dough the Spaniards are so fond off.
The bartender was a peculiar fellow. As was the cafeteria. In one corner and on a small round table there was a handwritten sign in bold letters saying something like “Travel kit”. It was a roll of toilet paper and an old urinal, one of those ceramic potty bowls that people used to keep under the bed in old times. Rather gross. Aragon's humour at its best.
Suddenly he shouted something and went to the door, bolted it and turned over the “Closed” sign. Then addressing no one said something about “…another busload of shit…” Through the window, I could see that a bus was pulling over the sidewalk and started unloading passengers but I did not pay much attention. Then I saw a black young man coming to the door, trying to push it open and seeing it was closed turned around and left. A grin on the bartender’s face and some comments with one of the customers told me the tale. The buses use to carry many immigrants and they were not welcome. I was revolted by this outraging bout of racism but, then again, some things are changing in Spain.
I will not elaborate on immigration this time, but just for the record, Spain has turned from a net emigrating country, with some two million Spaniards living abroad, to an immigration destiny for many North-Africans, Sub-Saharians, Central and South Americans and Eastern Europeans. 1.8 million legally and perhaps more than 1 million illegals. And this in just 8-10 years. Other rich European countries have a long-standing history of immigration and somehow are coping with it. Do you know that the most popular dish in British kitchens today is Tandoori chicken?
Out of the cafeteria, I had time to take a stroll in downtown Saragossa. Four blocks from the bus station and on the same avenue is the old Medical School. I took a picture of the building to use perhaps in a conference. Saragossa Medical School is the alma mater of many of my fellow doctors in my hospital and I am sure they will welcome a reference. It is a nice building, from the late XIX century, now used only for ceremonial purposes. In the central staircase, there is a large bronze statue of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the one and only Spanish Nobel Price, who went to school there and later taught, before moving to Valencia.
Then I went to a newsstand to get a newspaper to read on the bus but I got a book instead. Spanish newsstands sell books attached to large colourful cardboard posters with the promotion of full collections. They publish one volume a week, usually classic books or history, and they come rather inexpensive. 2.99 € for a hardcover edition of Gabriel Jackson “The Spanish Republic and the Civil War”, a 2004 reprint of the 1979 Spanish edition that I had not read.
I had decided to take a bus all the way up to Sabiñánigo, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, the closest spot to Allué, the town where my name comes from. I took my seat in the bus, half full of similar people I had encountered before but this time a Catholic priest hopped in and, sure enough, he came to seat by my side. I nodded a “good morning” and kept to myself, starting reading my book.
The priest pulled his prayer black book, crossed himself and started to pray silently moving his lips. He was a young man in neck stoked black shirt, bespectacled and obviously South American, as they say in Spain, Amerindian. Ecuadorian, as I was to find out soon. Priests in Spain no longer dress in tunics and frocks. Most of them wear plain clothes. Some may wear a grey suit with a cross in their lapel.
He kept on praying while the bus speeded (legal cruising speed for buses in Spain is 90 km/h. Up to 100 km/h, that is 60 mph, in four-lane highways and toll roads and drivers keep their pedal floored) through the new “autovia”, a four-lane road all the way to Huesca. Northbound roads in Aragon are better as the local government is favouring the (Pyrenees) mountain tourism. From Madrid, it takes 4-5 hours to get to the ski resorts North of Huesca. The landscape was also rolling plains, dry cereal growing expanses, a little bit greener than South from Saragossa, particularly close to the (several) rivers coming down from the mountains into the Ebro river.
I went on reading and, by the time we were reaching Huesca, my fellow traveller in frock had finished flipping back and forth his prayer book and crossed himself several times when, all of a sudden, asked me bluntly: “Are you a professor?”, He actually said “catedrático” which means a full tenured university professor. It caught me by surprise so I asked him back why he thought so. He answered that because I was reading a history book with a pencil in my hand. Such naiveté was really becoming of his (young) age, ethnic origin and personal (a priest) condition: a nice young missioner from Ecuador trying to be conversational. I was not at all interested in talking about myself so with a natural and easy “Where are you from?” I got him telling his story. It turned out to be an ordained priest from Quito, now enrolled as a Canonical Law student in the University of Navarra, in Pamplona, on his way to some church business in Jaca, the final destination of the bus. He mentioned that he had been sent to Pamplona as it was the best Canonical School in Spanish speaking countries. The University of Navarra is own and operated by the almighty Opus Dei, the most influential Catholic Church organisation presently. Members of the Opus Dei tend to occult their belonging to the “Instituto Secular” so to get around the question I resorted to a mildly malignant trick. I asked if he knew about the “Universidad de Comillas” as a good Canonical Law school. He didn't. The “Universidad de Comillas” in the province of Cantabria, in Santander, was indeed one of the most prestigious schools for Canonical Law, but this is owned and operated by the Jesuits. Jesuits and Opusdeians have been at each other throats, albeit symbolically, for the past fifty years, as they competed for the power around the Vatican. If he had not even heard about Comillas he was most likely Opus Dei.
He asked me if I was a practising Catholic, which I answered with a short: “Not anymore” in a tone that did not leave much ground to further enquires so he then started commenting on Spain. How he had found the country, supposedly very materialistic, and sadly without a view of the future, the youth lost to God and whatnot. I sort of felt sorry for him. I was about to draw my biggest dialectical sword and crush him with facts, figures and ideas about the excellent shape I thought the country was, once recovered from 40 years of National-Catholicism oppressive dictatorship, sailing the friendly waters of the European Union and enjoying a brand new Socialist government set on putting the church where it belonged: economically supported by its parish, out of the school system, and having to bitterly chew the new laws about gay marriage and freer abortions… but it was not the poor fellow’s fault. I smiled beatifically and, while avoiding patronising, I sort of agreed with him about the materialistic bit and slowly I took him to talk about the poor role the Catholic Church has played in South America and lamenting the little help the all-powerful Spanish Catholic Church during the years of Franco’s dictatorship had offered the South American missions. He had to agree with that, although a bit confusedly so, seeing him getting uncomfortable I changed the subject.
It all reminded me of railroad travelling in Spain as a youngster with my father. Those days the trains had compartments that seat six people and it was relatively easy to get to travel with a priest. Conversational as many Spaniards are, the close quarters of a train compartment were an excellent ground for dialectical fights and my father really relished them. Alas!, and being the times what they were, the discussions were more theological than social or political, but many times I have thought of a priest as a travel companion just to chew him on…
We reached Sabiñánigo in a whiffy with the talk and all, and I stepped out while “el curita”7 gave me all sorts of blessings and desires of the recovering of my soul to God and so on. Nice try, mate.
Sabiñánigo is at the foothills of the Pyrenees. It is considered the gate to the high valleys, ski resorts and mountain climbs. Many of the most popular ski stations of the Aragon Pyrenees, the ones favoured by ski bums like, for instance, the King of Spain, are within one hour drive. But it is not a real mountain town. Sabiñánigo is still an industrial town, housing a large chemical industrial complex (Aragonesas works) that uses the water from the nearby dam on the Gállego river.
I asked directions for a hotel or hostel and checking in the first one I found it out full, even this late in the (summer) season and so early for the winter. I finally settled in a nice “pension” just a stone throw from the railroad station that I planned to use the next morning.
It was just around noon so, after I unpacked, I took a small backpack with food and water and I set for Allué on foot. I have been there once but I could not get to the village itself because the river had destroyed the bridge and there was no way to cross it. The bridge was still gone but this time, at the end of the summer, the river was almost dry and should be easily fordable.
The road to the Basa Valley forks out from the main road at El Puente, a suburb of Sabiñánigo, and indicates to Yebra de Basa, the main town in the valley. They are redoing the road, so I walked on the side of the road under construction that I had all by myself, away from passing cars. The weather was nice and as as walked I soon pulled a good sweat. I kept a good stride and after one hour I had to rest and have some drink. Some 50 minutes later I left the road to walk a little on the river (Basa) bed and, as I found the dirt road to Allué I crossed the almost dry stream. From there about one more kilometre, uphill, took me to the 4 or 5 houses of Allué.
The village is now deserted. It seats on the North slope, on a narrow plateau of no more than 500 meters of pastures and cereal stubble. Then the mountain rises, covered by thick woods. One of the buildings is a little church, with a presbytery and a stunted bell tower. The largest building has a scaffold on the side and looks like they are repairing the ceiling and replacing the tiles.
A silent, abandoned little village.
Allué from the South
Facing North, the cloud caped Jaca Mountains show their might. It is quite obvious that, in winter, this place must be rather unpleasant. Not very much to do here. It became evident that the one thing to do in Allué is, actually, leave, get away.
That is what probably have done generation after generation of young men born there. And that is why there are so many of us Allues around, men that took the name of their town of origin as their own, as is customary in Aragon.
My family lore traces the Allués back to Asín de Broto, another tiny village in the next valley, across the mountains at the bottom of the Basa river valley. And probably back to this God-forsaken place.
I turned on my cellular phone and mailed a written message to all the Allues I had in my personal directory, brothers, sons and cousins, telling them where I was. Drank some water and left.
So much for Allué.
I found a narrow path that bordered the woods turning back towards Sabiñánigo and I walked again down to the river. I almost broke my neck when the path suddenly stopped on a cliff overhanging some 20 meters above the river bed that I descended grasping branches of the underbrush. I crossed the river back and set again along the road in construction back to Sabiñánigo.
As I was getting closer to the town I found the cemetery that I have missed on my way in. The names in the tombs were naturally from the area. Several Allues, some Satué, Escartín, Escuer. The names of other little villages lost in the foothills of the Pyrenees.
Back to the hostel, shower, rest and supper. Before I took a stroll in town and purchased five walking sticks, 4 ft. long ash poles with a metal tip, very inexpensive. They were to be a gift to the friends we are walking with in “El Camino de Santiago” next week.
I asked the inn-keeper to wake me up in time for breakfast and the train back to Saragossa and, to my surprise, he said that they do not wake up until 9, so I better settle my account there and then, and was advised to drop my room key on the counter on my way out. No breakfast contemplated. OK?
Day 4.
I got up at 7.30 and went to the railroad station, deserted but for one young woman waiting by the ticket booth. There was ample time before the train would come so I entered the cafeteria that served both the railroad and the bus station, where a small crowd of men in working clothes were having their morning coffees. I had a latte coffee and a fair size omelette sandwich for breakfast that I finished just in time to board the train. Well, a real train it was not: a one single coach automotor on rails. That is not a “train” since it did not “train”, pull, anything. Just one wagon.
The railroad back to Saragossa did not follow the same direction that the road up had. Actually, it was following the sinuous path of the Gállego river on its way to meet the Ebro through a beautiful forested valley just awakening to the new morning sun. It made a wide ample turn westward that really took twice as much time and distance to reach Huesca. The train stopped in every little town along the way. Some stops were abandoned-looking stations with no town in sight.
In one of the stops, a young Moroccan man got in, and shortly after addressed himself to the train inspector, a bespectacled scrawny guy that was seating a couple of rows ahead of me, and asked where could he smoke. Even though the train was full of “No smoking” signs when I got in the train the inspector had been smoking. He had at least another cigarette since. The inspector got up and told the Moroccan in a voice for everyone to hear that it was all right if nobody objected. I just could not help but chide the guy. “Hey, man! You’ve been smoking all along and now you’re telling this poor fellow to ask permission from us all? You’ve gotta be joking!”. “Is this because he is a poor “moro”? Just leave him alone!” The rest of the few passengers in the train stared at the inspector as if expecting to see what was he going to do. Authority is still very much, if not respected, at least feared in Spain.
I did not give a damn about anyone smoking at all. I have come to realize that I have been a passive smoker most of my life and a short trip in a smoke-filled train wagon was not going to change my risks for lung cancer. What I cannot stand is racist patronising. And at my age, I am done with fearing any authority whatsoever. My stance might have had some effect because the inspector was all apologies, and the Moroccan went to the back of the coach to have his smoke. The hell with it all… but inside I was having a ball. (“laugh, laugh!!)
The train stopped in Huesca and the apologetic inspector very politely announced to me that I could step out and have a coffee or something because the stop will last half an hour. I did and got bored walking around the large, apparently brand new station. “Estacion intermodal” read a large sign. It meant that it was both a train and a bus station.
With more minutes to kill I got outside and saw a bookstore across the street. I browsed around a little and finally bought a new map of the Huesca Pyrenees.
Back to the train and on to Saragossa. We got to the new Saragossa-Delicias station shortly after 10 am, back to the same station where I started the trip. So I have come around. I got a ticket back to Tarragona for a train that would not leave until 2 pm. But with these 4 hours left I decided to make a short visit to Saragossa.
I dropped my bag in the luggage locker area at the station after going through very thorough scrutiny by two burly security officers. There is no record of anyone planting a bomb in a locker in the long history of Spain bombings, but this is the XXI Century and the War on Terror rages on, a bull era for security investment. No security measures have avoided the bombing of Spanish Prime ministers in the past: Franco’s premier Luis Carrero, blown, armoured limo and all, over a three-story high building in 1973, and Jose Maria Aznar in 1996, alive but scared shitless ever since. So there.
I decided to walk all the way to Saragossa downtown. That was like a 2 ½ mile walk so I figured it would take most of the time I had to kill there. And a good exercise in the sunny late summer morning. It was Saturday and traffic was heavy and shoppers were all around.
I stopped at a “Churreria” to treat myself to another midmorning breakfast: “chocolate y una porra por 1.20 €”, a bowl of hot chocolate again, this time with a “porra”, a foot-long dough fritter oddly shaped, like a stick. There is something phallic in dipping the “porra” in the chocolate.
I walked past the Alfajeria palace. This is the palace of the Moorish sovereigns of Saragossa, built by Aben-Aljafe in the mid-IX century. According to the panel guides set up just in front, it had been reconstructed and remodelled several times, not all of them fortunate. They say it is quite beautiful with typical Mudejar-Moorish structures comparable to the Alhambra, but I decided to pass this time. I also passed by the seat of the Aragon Government, another palace with a remarkable golden dome quite similar to the ones you see in Middle-East mosques. It is not just that the Muslim kings reigned over Saragossa for four centuries. It is that the following Aragon kings and the people there kept on enjoying one particular type of architecture and decoration.
In less than 30 minutes I was in the Plaza del Pilar, the large span in front of the highly worshipped basilica dedicated to Saragossa’s patroness: The” Virgen del Pilar”, The Virgin on a column. Another of the found Virgin Marys, like the ones in Montserrat, Lourdes, Fatima or Katowice, that stir up so much devotion in Catholic countries. A Saturday at El Pilar is just a show.
A very large boisterous crowd was standing in the plaza and milling around. Some tourists but mainly local people, all dressed up in their best clothes: women stuffed in three-piece dresses and men half choked and congested by buttoned collars and ties. They all looked uncomfortably happy. I had to line up for a while to get into the church. Inside it was packed full but the crowd was not still. There was a mass being celebrated at the main altar, but a whole lot of people did not pay much attention to the service. Four or five weddings and at least two baptism ceremonies must have taken place recently because I spotted several brides surrounded by guests and family, and a large family with a young mother holding a baby was lined up for a picture to be taken in one of the sides of the church.
In the back of the main altar, another crowd surrounded a dozen or so of young girls dressed up in the typical Aragones regalia for a fiesta, all colourful and made up. Someone told me that they were there for the ceremony of the flower offering to the Virgin, something they do once a year, two weeks before the annual celebration of El Pilar, on October 12th.
A little dizzy I got out of the church.
Across the plaza, they have set up a very large tent, like half an acre big, with some signs about the Guardia Civil. I found the door in one side of the tent and in I went. It contained an exhibition of the struggle of the Guardia Civil against terrorism. Posters, large pictures, memorabilia, weapons taken to the terrorist, a reproduction, full scale, of one of the cells where kidnapped victims had been held in captivity8, mannequins in the different uniforms of the force, etc.
I have never been very fond of the Guardia Civil. The dark side of the history of the force is difficult to forget. The ominous presence of the three-horned hats still gives me shivers. But one has to realise they have been in the front line in the fight against crime and terrorism and that they have lost more than 300 men in the past quarter of a century. All in all, there is no question that they are very representative of Spain, for whatever is worth.
I got out and set to walk back to the train station. The trip to Tarragona was fast. These new trains travel 300 km/h so by mid-afternoon I was home.
Viva Aragon!
X. Allué
(12 October 2004. “Dia del Pilar” in Spain, Columbus Day in America)
NOTES
1 Any Spaniard over 60 may get the Golden Card from the national railroad system. Big discounts, up to 45% of the cost of tickets to travel all over the country.
2 One of my nephews, commenting on the Aragon landscape around Monreal del Campo said: “Its like Nebraska”. For all it’s worth, it could be Northern Oklahoma…
3 I will elaborate further on the presence of the Spanish Arabic culture, even after the 9/11 and March 11th catastrophic events, later on.
4 There are many “Cala-something” towns in Aragón and in Eastern Spain: Calatayud, Calahorra, Calatorao, Calatrava, Calasparra, Calatañazor, etc. Calat or Khalat is an ancient Moorish word for high tower, castle. This is Moorish country.
5 A “hostal”, just one notch under a 2 ** hotel. A room rates some 20 to 25 € a night, usually family operated, nice and clean.
6 For a taste of how the SCW still rages on I recommend to visit the discussion list “Guerra Civil” in the Internet. URL: http://arxiu-llistes.tinet.org/mllistes/gce/current/welcome.html
7 The little priest, a diminutive common in Spain, referring to young or actually short and small priests.
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