Cómpeta, Spain, Saturday December 20th

We were up and ready to leave for Cómpeta in time to visit the market and have breakfast with a group of English friends of Jane's and Brian's. On the way we stopped at a lookout where there were Gaudiesque curves and tile mosaics and more spectacular views.
It is possible to completely lose your sense of direction here since every road winds around and around and the view of the snow capped tallest mountain is seen from everywhere.
The market at Cómpeta had the most perfect piles of mouth watering fruits and vegetables and lots of clothes and accessories as well. We bought a bag of mixed nuts to have after dinner and then set off for a little exploration of the village, which included the church. The church had two unusual paintings. The one which was the altarpiece portrayed angels who looked very much like young Spanish men of this region, flying but without any wings. The other was at the back of the church and had a South American look to its characters, and was painted in the 1960s.
We have not seen modern art in other churches in Spain so it was interesting to speculate on how it came to be here. We didn't ever find out, but we learnt a little about the last priest. He was granted permission to have leave from his parish duties to stand as mayor in the local elections. He has great appeal for the younger generation because he is also a charismatic hip swivelling singer. Another of his roles is to carry the cross at Easter to the football ground where the cross is raised and he is left on it for a few hours, wearing only a loin cloth. That has appeal for all sectors of the community. He was elected with a landslide of over ninety percent and is now doing a good job as mayor.
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Narrow roads lead up and out from the main square near the church, with every building attached to the next and all painted white. It is a regulation here to use only white to maintain the traditional look of the villages. Statues paid homage to the grape and olive harvests which have been the backbone of the economy here.
We walked down to the café near the town hall where Jane and Brian were ensconced with a table full of British ex-pats. The terrace tables had been claimed by the German contingent, with harsh guttural sounds telling us that they definitely weren't Spanish. People from many different Northern European countries live in and around Cómpeta. They have provided a boost to the building industry as well as an influx of funds, mostly sourced from their countries of origin in the form of pensions and earnings from investments. There are a few younger ex-pats who live and work here but in general people have retired here for the climate and the life style and what was, before the financial crisis of this year, a cheaper cost of living. Jane and Brian have a daughter, two sons-in-law and two grandsons living here as well, but it is more usual for the older generation to have moved and the rest of the family to have remained behind. There have been some issues with building permits, with some being issued by the local authorities but not approved at regional level. That resulted in illegal buildings, with the owners being under the impression that all was well. I am not sure whether buildings have had to be demolished but it has certainly been a political hot potato here.
It seemed like a very friendly and supportive group gathered together for the regular Saturday morning breakfast, and we chatted with them and tucked into delicious hot omelette rolls and coffee.
When we returned home, Brian, Keith, all the dogs and I went for a walk. It was a wonderful walk because Brian told us many interesting things and we were not on the roads that anyone could use, but on tracks around the mountains that Brian uses for his rambles. We walked beside the neighbour's house and admired a large outside room that Brian was helping his now absent English friend to build. It was a rendered brick and cement building and would have cooking facilities and power in it in the end. A narrow path crossed a border into a Spanish man's landlocked fields, and another invisible line marked a third property that we walked across. That farmer, well on in years, harvests the olives from a thousand olive trees with only the help of his equally aged wife. At an average of about eight trees a day, given that the sacks must be carried to a van, because on a steep, terraced hillside it is impossible to drive in close to all the trees,
They had sunk a well and put in a watering system and their trees were certainly covered. Brian said that there is little interest in a life of dawn to dusk toil amongst the olives and the grapes among the younger generation, and of course greater mobility and communication has opened up new worlds of opportunity that the grandparents would never have dreamed of. Selling land to ex-pats, building their houses and providing services have offered other ways to make money for locals. The financial crisis has put a stop to that and it remains to be seen how deeply that will affect people here. Other signs of change which are disturbing to more traditional older people are the easy acquisition of cars, fast driving around the mountains and villages and the pumping beat of car stereos belting out music at maximum volume. Credit is very easy to come by in Spain and has great appeal since it provides instant access to goods. It is the same in America and everywhere, it seems.
The walk took us to the top of the hill, where we could see how steep and rugged many of the surrounding mountains were, and yet people were farming much of this virtually vertical land. Brian told us of how important it was to drive very carefully on the mountain roads where the edges are soft and subject to landfalls from above and dropping off into the valleys below. He had recently noticed car tracks leading to the edge of the road whilst on a walk with friends, and had stopped to look over. He could see nothing but heard a voice calling for help. A man and his wife had gone over in their car on the previous rainy night. The man lay face down in mud, part of the way up, but could go no further. He had crawled up in pouring rain with broken ribs and other injuries, calling to his wife below every now and then. She hadn’t been answering and he now asked Brian if he could go down and check on her. Brian's friends phoned the ambulance, police and so on, and Brian and his son-in-law, Paul, made the perilous descent to the bottom. There they found the completely wrecked and compressed car, and the wife caught under it with a huge rock on her head. She was cold and definitely dead. We looked out at the soft green of the folding mountains around us with different eyes, seeing them as a hostile environment to be respected, not just as romantically beautiful. Olives grow but there is little in the way of other trees on the slopes and evidence of sudden and dramatic erosion was everywhere.
The day was warm and the sky was a strong blue. Jane was immersed in the English newspaper and battling the crosswords, with occasional triumphant sounds telling us that she was Wellington at the battle of the cryptic clues. We sat outside in the lovely garden that Brian has created – paved with a pond and rocky fountain and many beds of plants including cacti, roses and hardy perennials. It seemed to be an oasis of warmth, and like cats, we lapped it all up. In chatting with Brian, I learnt that there are indeed effects of the Civil war and its aftermath still felt today. After the end of the Franco regime, the Guardia Civil, the level of police concerned with crime and enforcement, continued under the same leaders. The Guardia Civil was known to have taken people away at night, to have killed them and to have buried people in mass graves. People knew where the mass graves were, but the fear of the Guardia Civil and the fear of the knowledge that the Guardia Civil leadership had of the past, prevented people speaking out. Only now, after the old leadership and Civil Guards of that era are gone, are the graves being uncovered, the bodies being identified and families finding out what happened to their relatives. Towns which took opposite sides in the Civil War still have resentment between them, as do individual families and groups. Brian said that it was still more complicated than that, and that Jane had an interesting book about this area called 'Between Two Fires – Spain's Forgotten War' by David Baird. The book had been lent to Brian's daughter but Jane said that she would see if she could borrow it back for the duration of my stay.
We used their maps and the atlas to talk them though our trip, and they were keen to hear lots of details as well as the grand overview. They themselves have taken extended journeys, with one to America starting out as a matter of months and ending up as a two year odyssey. They have also been to New Zealand and Australia, and continue their connections through friends and listening to ‘Macka’ every Sunday morning. One of the nicest things about talking with Jane and Brian is that they are thinkers and analysers and it encouraged us to be both in the moment and aware of the significance of the moment in the bigger picture of our year and our lives.
Really this day was a lovely relax in preparation for the real business; the finals of 'Strictly Come Dancing', a British program which pairs non-dancer celebrities with professional dancers and involves judges and the public in weekly eliminations. A blip the previous week had left three couples in the finals, so there was to be a double whammy of dancing to eliminate one couple and then the dance-off to establish the ultimate winners.
Jane is a brilliant cook and so every meal was something special, deserving of a whole evening around the dinner table in digestion and discussion. However, on this sacred night, we were all lined up in front of the television on time and even Toffee sat expectantly waiting for it all to start. It was an absolute gem of a program, with all the couples obviously having developed great skill and close relationships. Over the weeks the public had gone crazy and voted regularly for a popular older celebrity who tried hard but was definitely not a dancer. That skewed the results to the point that there was anxiety that he might ultimately win the series, and with a fine noble act he had retired, much to the acclaim and admiration of all. A stumble by one of the contestants in his first dance seemed surely to doom him to elimination, but the half-time public vote eliminated a technically fantastic couple instead, and kept the sweet guy, Tom, who had changed the date of his wedding and delayed his honeymoon, such was his commitment to the series. Although having no favourites, Jane and Brian now groaned at this travesty of justice and we all deplored a system where the public was in control at this crucial stage. The eliminated couple was able to perform their show dance as a swan song, and then the other two did theirs. We clapped for Tom and his partner, who absolutely stole the show, and the title, with choreography that was perfect for their personalities and took their skills to new heights. Now we were glad that the public had kept him there, and not so concerned about the technically best dancers winning. We enjoyed the show and its cult appeal with the audience, and the lovely dresses added to it all for me.
The gap between the two halves of the dancing program was filled with a discussion of how to have another bathroom in our house and about ways to conserve energy. Brian has lots of practical knowledge and responds to a challenge with gusto. We drew our house plan, and couldn't remember some details that to him would be second nature to know. He gave us some very good ideas and told us about products and methods that we had never heard of.
We watched another program, and then talked on until the wee small hours of the morning, learning about each other's lives. At last we called it quits and went off to bed, feeling that we had known each other much longer than one and a half days.