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.

A grave situation in the dead centre of the town

I did a summer stint on parks, gardens and cemeteries when I was a boy. I still tell stories of those few months. The first time was, I think, in Hollywell Green. A Victorian mausoleum appropriate for the status of one of the mill owning families of the time. Before anyone thought to brick in the heavy, lead lined mahogany coffins, putrefaction and excellent craftsmanship produced a splendid time bomb designed to spew bone fragments left right and centre. One of my gofer jobs was to check for bones and sweep them up before the family and undertakers turned up with the latest of the family line.

Spanish graveyards are different to British ones. Well different and the same. Spaniards have mausoleums too for those old powerful families. I suppose it was wine or saffron or something instead of wool. Who knows. The idea is the same though, rich folk lording it over the people who made them rich even when they are all dead.

So there are mausoleums and there are graves, the sort where the coffins are lowered into a pit dug into the ground. Think of the scene in one of those old cowboys where the makeshift wooden cross marks the spot and one cowboy, hat in hand says "Someone should say some words". So far, then, Britain and Spain are much of a muchness.

But Spaniards are flat dwellers. Not so much where we live, in the country, surrounded by trilling birds and old blokes in straw hats working the earth, but in anywhere with any population Spaniards tend to live in flats, in apartments if you prefer. In the older blocks, the one without lifts, the top floor flats are cheaper. Nobody wants to haul their degradable plastic bags full of groceries up six flights of stairs to the third floor and older people don't want to buy a flat and then spend the rest of their days as semi prisoners, staring out of the window.

It's the same when they're dead. Nowadays cremation is growing in popularity but until recently it was always burial. Burial with a difference for we Brits. The Spaniards build a sort of thick wall, or a double faced chalet. In the outside walls they leave space for something akin to lengthened pigeon holes; pigeon holes long enough to take a coffin. When the time comes the coffin is hoisted up, horizontally and slid into a hole in the wall. The pigeon hole is sealed with something rough and ready and later, probably, with a commemorative stone. The rental on the nichos, niches, that's what the pigeon holes are called, is very low. And, just as with the flats, the higher niches, the ones you need a ladder to get to to put on flowers and to clean the stone are cheaper. If you're really poor, if nobody is willing to pay for your disposal then the town hall will bury you but you go into a common grave. Bones cleaned out of older niches, to make way for new occupants, also go into the same space. If I've mis-remembered that the correct version is in this article that I wrote for the old TIM magazine

Nowadays, with cremations, lots of the urns also go into niches, smaller niches, sometime with the urn on view but more often the urn is treated like a coffin and walled in and given a commemorative stone.

I like Spanish cemeteries. The architecture of the mausoleums is often incredible. The rows and rows of niches are nearly always well cared for and the system itself is neat. They are usually very colourful too because the niches that don't have fresh flowers nearly always have colourful plastic ones instead. Alcoy does tours around their cemetery so I thought it must be worth a look and I went over there yesterday. The snaps are here. Usually Spanish cemeteries are oases of tranquillity but, at the start of November, on All Saint's Day, most families turn out to spruce up the family plot. The graveyards become just as noisy as anywhere else with hundreds of people out and taking advantage of the opportunity to greet friends and neighbours alike.

One last, very positive, thing about Spanish cemeteries is that they always have toilets. Nowadays, knowing where the nearest toilet is is often important to me.