Esparto - from shoes to baskets
If you've ever seen people in Alicante or Murcia dressed in traditional clothes, you may have noticed that they are wearing rope-soled shoes. Before I moved to Spain, I'd have called them espadrilles. Here, they are called alpargatas. They are made from esparto grass which, like hemp or sisal, can be woven and sewn to make numerous everyday items. Once upon a time ordinary people wore alpargatas all the time for everything form climbing palm trees and working the earth to dancing at fiesta time. I have a friend who, often, when we go somewhere new, asks me how people who live or lived in that place make or made a living. Usually I guess that it's web design or selling insurance or running a bar, just like everywhere else but even if I have a better answer it can seem unlikely. We're in some forgotten village in Teruel in front of a gigantic old house, palace-sized and the answer is that all that money came from sheep. Hmm, a likely story. It's true, though; wool gen...