Life in Culebrón

Villena is a town forty minutes up the road from Pinoso. It's a town I like: there's often something going on there. The theatre is lovely, there's a train station in town and another, the quietest AVE station in Spain, in a field near enough to be called Villena and, of course, it has 22 kilos of Bronze Age gold—the Villena Treasure. And if none of those are enough, then Ferri, the huge ironmongers, is really good for any unreformed men with all those tool belts and strange bits of machinery. I also find the occasional mispronunciation of the name quite amusing; when I think that someone is off to the Austrian capital rather than popping up the road for a new pool pump. Anyway, I'm listening to Nieves Concostrina doing one of her little history slots on the radio. She's talking about the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 with her usual mix of dry humour and anticlerical sarcasm. It's pretty obvious from her description that the two kingdoms that would la...

The first time we went to Villena was in 2006, a few days before Christmas. We were just about to leave when we bumped into a lot of carolers crossing the road. We followed them to a spot outside a chemist where they gave a little concert. It was lovely. I've had a bit of a soft spot for Villena ever since. Sometime later, goodness knows when, we were by the Town Hall in Villena, next to the Iglesia Arciprestal de Santiago, the main church, just beside the Town Hall and Tourist Office. A woman came over and asked us if we were tourists. We were Brits and that was tourist enough for her. She took us in the church. She told us how the spiral columns were very uncommon in other churches. She told us how the patron saint of Villena and the church in Villena had been set on fire in the Spanish Civil War. When we'd done there she took us to see the Villena Treasure - 90 pieces of 3,000 year old solid gold objects, bowls, bracelets, necklaces and the like, weighing in at nine kilos.  ...

Though it's not something we're likely to make a habit we went for a walk in the country today. Near Villena there are some old kilns that were used to turn gypsum into the raw material for plaster - the Hornos de Yeso - and they are near where the Villena Treasure was found. It wasn't the most scenic spot in Alicante. There was a tip close by and lots of people seemed to have lost heart within sight of their goal and just dumped stuff by the side of the track. Nonetheless, the spot did have a certain charm and lots of lizards. We followed a public footpath. There's a very simple system in Spain for marking paths. Red and white bands are used for long distance paths, yellow and white for shorter paths and green and white for the local stuff. The bands are usually painted on rocks, fenceposts, walls etc and they are normally well maintained. If the bands are crossed it means not to go there and a hinged symbol marks a turn. The markings for the path we followe...

There is a huge ironmongers shop in Villena, a town close to us in Alicante, and being the hosts with the mosts that we are, that is where we were taking our houseguests. What man could resist three, or it may be four, floors of tools, fastenings, machinery and gadgets? We thought we may even have a meal in their canteen afterwards. Our plan was foiled when the place was closed. Never mind. We did get to see the town Archaeological Museum. In 1963 a couple of workmen in Villena, found a bracelet in the gravel they were spreading. The foreman hung the bracelet up on the wall so that whoever had dropped it could reclaim it. A bit later one of the workers thought they might just pop it around to the local jeweller to see if it was worth anything. As it was made of half a kilo of 24 carat gold it did have a certain value but the jeweller thought there was something odd about it and suggested showing it to a local archaeologist. In turn this chap recognised it as being 3,000 years ol...