The rural idyll

We all have our favourite words and expressions. One of my oft repeated phrases, when I'm saying where I live, in Spanish, to a Spaniard, is to say that I'm paleto and cateto. I thought these were two synonyms to describe country bumpkins. It turns out to be much more complex than that. And all I really wanted to say, with just a touch of humour, is that I live in the countryside.

As I write I'm sitting outside the front of our house. The birds are chirping and I can hear a tractor working somewhere up on the hillside. There are dogs barking, of course there are dogs barking!, thankfully in the distance. I can see three of our four cats in various shady spots. I can see roses and trees and lots of other greenery, including far too many weeds, and piles of fallen blossom from our neighbour's tree. Country life.

We country dwellers represent a small percentage of the total Spanish population. Exactly how small a percentage depends a bit on how you do your sums. Yecla isn't exactly a throbbing metropolis but it's not exactly thatched cottage either - is it rural or urban? Pinoso is less than an hour from a couple of cities of 200,000+ and the seventh largest city in Spain. On the other hand our nearest hospitals are half an hour distant. Even within Pinoso the access to services varies substantially from, say, a house in Bulevar to one in Lel. A figure that is definite is that 90% of the Spanish population lives in Madrid or on the coast.

Nonetheless we country folk can claim a different majority. Of the more than 8,000 municipalities here in Spain over 5,000 of them have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. That means that nearby villages like Algueña or Salinas are a bit above average size for small municipalities and la Romana, with 2,300 inhabitants, is, well, big. About seven and a half million Spaniards, or about 16% of the population, live in rural towns - the definition being fewer than 30,000 inhabitants with a density of population below 100 people per square kilometre. That would include Jumilla but not Villena, Petrer or Yecla. Pinoso has a population of 8,478 and a density of 64 per km².

Lots of figures there but the principal point is that the population lives on the coast and in Madrid or in lots and lots of very small municipalities. 

Because we live in a small, rural, town our life is somewhat different to the majority of the population; the urban dwellers. Our lives are anachronistic because of lots of things. Examples might be that, generally, workers go home for the middy break, that lots of us have outside space, that the restaurants serve mainly Spanish cuisine, that agriculture is still an important part of the economy and that we see nothing strange in having to negotiate tractors as we drive home. It's also a place where it may be uncertain whether your house will have mains water and electric but you can be pretty sure that there won't be a traffic jam.

Of course Spanish cities aren't like that. There there are people delivering food on scooters, there are buses and taxis. Your house is probably a flat in a block and only the smallest blocks would house fewer people than a village like Culebrón. You'd expect to share the noise of other people living their lives - washing machines on spin, that click as the plug is pushed in, a bit of music or maybe the telly and, of course, those barking dogs. It's a life where if you don't have a designated parking space you will spend a few to several minutes of your day searching for one, where you will meet lots of other dog walkers, where the overflowing and disrespected rubbish bins, the stained pavements around lamp posts and graffiti are a part of the landscape and where youngsters play, and old people mutter, about the failings of the modern world in public spaces like playgrounds, parks and basketball courts.

Then again we're not really in "Deep Spain" either. The one where villages have a handful of inhabitants all of advanced years, the ones where there are adverts to attract young families with tasty offers of work or a business so long as they bring children to keep the village school open. The villages where, if you have a medical emergency, they will send a helicopter because, even in the countryside, in Spain at least, it's unacceptable to let people die because of the distance to the nearest hospital.

In the end it's all a bit of a trade off between peace and quiet and some space as against there being no arts centre or bar or shop, never mind shopping centre, or taxi or doctor or bank within striking distance of your front door. It's a choice that is conditioned by your mobility but it's not a place to forget the bread or the milk!

Think Walden Pond

Maggie often comes home and tells me about a house that she's shown or a new house on the books of the estate agency she works for. At the best I'm vaguely interested. The other way around I often start a conversation with "I'm reading this book about ....," and Maggie is just as responsive. So, if I can't tell her I'll tell you. Don't think of it as a book review though, think more of it as a bastardisation of the book alongside my own ramblings.

The book in question was written by a woman called María Sánchez. This is the sort of Spanish name I approve of. It's like one of the names in a Learn Spanish text book. There are plenty of Spanish names that are easy to say like Fernández or García but there seem to be many more which don't exactly trip off the Anglo tongue: Úrsula Corberó, Sandra Sabatés, Lidia Torrent or Isabel Díaz Ayuso for instance. Maria's book title is dead obvious too, at least in Spanish - Tierra de mujeres. It's not quite so easy to translate effectively into English, the idea behind the words isn't quite the same. Land of Women, Women's Land, Soil of Women etc. don't capture the multiple meanings about the ownership, or the place and number of women wedded to the earth, to the soil, to the land. It happens the other way round too. T.S. Eliot's "At the still point of the turning world." can be translated into Spanish as the point that doesn't move or the point that is quiet and peaceful but there is no single word to give the same double meaning as in English.

Anyway, back at the page face. The book is largely about demanding recognition for the significant role that women have always played on the land, in the countryside, as shepherds, herders, planters, collectors, labourers and the like alongside their role as homeworkers. One of her key arguments is that the men get the praise for the horny handed sons of toil role whilst the women are only recognised as the sweepers of floors, the laundresses of overalls and the bakers of bread. There is no mention of Jill Archer or Annie Sugden but, as the author is a vet, James Herriot's Christmas cake baking heroines get a mention.

I've talked about rural Spain in the past. Partly because we have a friend who is politically active about rural issues and lives in a very rustic bit of Teruel and also because of where we live. Pinoso, is hardly urban, Culebrón less so. Here agriculture is important and everyday but where there is other work too and we are close to major centres of population. Part of Maria's argument is that we are all very quick to accept a view, forged by city dwellers, that lots of Spain is empty, a nice place to go for the weekend to relax, a place where we (Spaniards in this case) all came from but where none of us (Spaniards again) would like to stay too long. A place full of country bumpkins, good with their hands maybe, people who know all the gossip about their neighbours as well as being able to name birds, plants and trees the people who live in a place where doors can be left unlocked and where neighbours pop in all the time leaving trays of fruit, veg. and fresh baked pastries but who have been left behind by the modern world. Plenty tractor drivers and very few JavaScript developers.

She suggests that view needs a reappraisal. That rural Spain needs services more than it needs poetic praise and bucolic representation. Spain, lots of Spain, doesn't have much population but that doesn't mean it's empty. Just because it's not built up, or full of people, doesn't mean that it's abandoned. Sometimes the farming is extensive rather than intensive. There are places where the combines and the logging trucks roam, where the monster tractors equipped with tree shakers and catcher nets roar but equally there are places where herds of goats belch and fart overseen by a solitary figure and his or her dog and where families stop for a bucolic lunch with their backs against the olive trees that they have spent all morning beating with sticks to collect the crop. One fills supermarket shelves with cheap and accessible product and the other produces the high value local cheese and specialist olives of more "select" outlets. Both are alive and well, both have their place.

There was lots more too, it was a short book, fewer than 200 pages, but it was interesting given our situation. I suppose less so to someone enjoying the 3am traffic jams in Madrid. Well, according to one of the possible candidates for Mayor of Madrid that's one of the things that Madrileños enjoy.