Smoke signals

There's quite a lot of stuff that I'm aware of because I'm English. Stuff like knowing that Belgravia and Chelsea are rich parts of London, that Trafalgar Square is the (English) place to be for New Year, that Land of Hope and Glory will get a lung bashing the Last Night of the Proms and that haddock is not the usual fish in fish and chips but it was where I grew up. One of the pleasures and pitfalls of living in a place you were not born is that the common knowledge in the new place will be different. I've mentioned this in blogs lots of times before. I find it interesting, otherwise why would I be in the least interested in the story of Suavina lip balm and why would I keep going on about how strange Spaniards find it that we drink hot drinks with food or think that cheese and onion sandwiches are normal?

Last month we stayed over in Alcoy during the weekend of their Modernista Fair. Modernista, modernism is something else that I'd never really heard of till I got here. I thought you might not know either so I went in search of the two-line definition so necessary for the TikTok or Instagram generation we've become. In fact, there wasn't an obvious one. Most of the descriptions were quite long so this is a cobbled-together attempt: Modernism is an international style of art, often referred to by its French name of Art Nouveau. It was popular from the 1890s through to the first decade or so of the 20th Century. Modernism embraced architecture and applied art, especially the decorative arts. It frequently incorporates natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and flowers. The style is often asymmetrical and although wood was widely used there was a tendency towards modern, industrial materials like cast iron, glass, ceramics and concrete. If you know any Gaudí stuff he was very Modernista.

So there we are, in Alcoy, amidst a slew of people dressed in "Edwardian" costume demanding the vote for women and dancing very lively dances wearing bowler hats and tailcoats. As we strolled we came across a stall promoting PAY-PAY (pronounced like the pie in pork pie - so it's pie pie) cigarette papers. To be honest I haven't really thought of cigarette papers since my student days when I used to carry around Rizla King Size just in case anyone asked and then felt that sharing was appropriate. I noticed the stall though and wondered if this was another example of "every day is a school day". True enough there's a bit of history.

It says, on the PAY-PAY website that PAY-PAY is the oldest cigarette paper in the world. The papers were first manufactured in 1764 in Alcoy from where they were exported to many countries, especially to Latin America, often in exchange for tobacco. That's why the stand at the Modernista fair in Alcoy. 

The thing is though that on the Rizla website, they say their story begins in 1532 when Pierre Lacroix traded some of his rolling paper in return for a bottle of Perigord champagne. They go on to say that over a hundred years later, after Pierre’s rolling paper had been passed down for generations within his family, high volume production began. For years, for ordinary people, pipes were probably the most common way to smoke tobacco and the most common form of tobacco was the powder that we'd now call snuff. Rich people smoked their tobacco leaf wrapped in other tobacco leaves - cigars. If you didn't have a pipe to hand and the craving came over you then smoking the powder in any old scrap of paper was the way to go. Rizla say that, when they introduced a dedicated, rice based rolling paper in the late 1880s it took the market by storm. 

I found another website too about the history of smoking and cigarette papers. There there were lots of photos of people surrounded by clouds of smoke, quite unlike the gentle fug from Golden Virginia or Samson. That website suggests that Rizla, Raw and Smoking were the first important rolling paper brands. There is no mention of PAY-PAY though the site does say that the original cigarette papers were called Spanish papers. Who knows; were the Spanish there first or was it the French Rizla people? Do we really care?

In fact, having read all the PAY-PAY history it turns out that all that remains of the original company is the name; a bit like the Chinese MG cars. It looked for a while as though PAY-PAY were claiming that they invented the cigarette paper booklet, the interleaved papers of an appropriate size for rolling a ciggy, because they talk about the invention as being that of a Dominican friar from Xátiva, which is very close to Alcoy, in 1815. They give the game away though by saying that the PAY-PAY workshop was just one of several in Alcoy making the interleaved papers and that PAY-PAY was a brand name for the Pascual Ivorra workshop. Apparently this bloke's marketing strategy was to print allegorical engravings, to tell a moralistic or Christian story, on the outside of the packets. Over time the packets were to bear a long series on the history of Spain and others on famous people and on customs, costumes and traditional sayings. If you're as old as me you're now thinking of those little cards that used to come with PG Tips and if you're even older maybe cigarette cards.

At the end of this the only thing worth remembering is that if you get sent for some Rizlas down at the local estanco and there aren't any you have a name in reserve - but remember, pie pie not pay pay.