Our Andalucian paradise

When we bought the ruin that eventually became our Spanish home, the former owner did not know how to write her name on the sales contract. Granted she was over 90, but I had not expected to find illiteracy amongst the older populations in southern Europe. Was this still a common phenomenon in these parts, I wondered?

We live in Ronda, a small town in rural Andalucía. The local community was primarily agrarian just a couple of generations back, but after the building boom of the late 20^th Century most rondeños today work in the service industry.

Our part of town, the Barrio San Francisco is a typical multi-generational neighbourhood with nearly as many nonagenarians as new-borns. While 99% of the children growing up here today start school at 3 years old, some of the older generation, particularly the women, were never taught how to read or write.

Wanting to know more about the history of rural education and the changing role of Andalusian women over the past decades, I decided to have a chat with a family on our street where three generations live under the same roof.

My interviewees were the 83 year-old grandmother, her 50 year-old daughter and her almost 18 year-old granddaughter.

The Grandmother

Name: Antonia

Age: 83

Occupation: Dressmaker

Level of education: Illiterate

Antonia was born in Alpandeire (current population 252) in 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

“My father died when I was three months old, leaving my mother alone with my brother and myself”, she tells me. Her mother gave birth to five children, though the first three didn’t survive. As a widow with two youngsters, she had to do whatever she could to make ends meet. She would walk nearly 19 km to Ronda to be a farm labourer for a few days, after which she would walk back again in her Alpargatas, the typical Spanish rope and cloth sandals. “We walked everywhere, says Antonia. There was no other way.”

Though there were schools in most villages and travelling teachers visiting larger rural farms, her mother had to move around so much that the children never attended school. When Antonia was four years old, they moved into a cave called la Cueva del Albanico located on the trail from Alpandeire to Ronda. Her mother had by this point met a widower, whom she later married. Antonia remember her stepfather as un buen hombre (a good man), even building a bread oven for their cave house. He worked for a landowner, receiving part of the crop as his only renumeration. Life was not easy by our standards, but at least they had food. “The four of us would walk to the farm where we would work all day. There were no machines, so everything had to be done by hand.”

Some years later the family moved to Ronda where Antonia became apprenticed to a dressmaker. From the age of 12 until she became widowed at 62, Antonia sewed clothes for the families in our neighbourhood, most of whom paid her only when the completed outfits were delivered. Some didn’t pay at all. Although she was illiterate, Antonia learned how to write basic numbers and letters and developed her own code to jot down her client’s measurements. She would bring her old sewing machine under her arm if the clients couldn’t lend her theirs. Antonia clearly remembers the day when she finally had money to buy a sewing machine with a manual foot pedal – a great improvement. Only decades later would her daughter buy her an electric sewing machine.

Antonia married a football player and carpenter in 1961 and they had three children. “I would have liked to have more, but there was no space”, she says. The whole family, 12 people - her mother (again widowed), her brother with his wife and four children, as well as herself with her husband and their children lived in a small two-story home. Her brother’s family had the only bathroom, so her lot had to make do with a honey-house in the courtyard, with a curtain serving as door.

Since her husband’s income mostly disappeared in cigarettes and alcohol, Antonia was the main breadwinner. Like her mother before her, she was tough as nails. She fed her family and bought a house through her own labour. When she became a widow in 1996, Antonia finally stopped sewing and moved in with her daughter and her family. I ask her what she likes to do now. “Nothing. Watch TV…  I sewed a lot, and I am tired”, says Antonia.  At 83 she can finally allow herself to rest a bit.

Talking of resting, Antonia’s mother died at 93, never having had any serious illnesses in her long and hard life.

The Mother

Name: María del Mar

Age: 50

Occupation: Self employed jeweller

Level of education: Primary

Like mother like daughter they say, and this is certainly the case when it comes to Antonia and her daughter.

María del Mar was born in 1969, when Spain was still under Franco’s autocratic rule. Though tourism had started on the coast, life in rural inland Andalucía was still quite harsh. “There was no social security then,” she tells me. “We had no money to pay for doctors and medicine, so we simply couldn’t get sick.” María del Mar had to leave school after her primary education and start work to help support the family, while her brothers helped their father in his carpentry business. “I would have liked to study and become a secretary, but it wasn’t possible,” she says.

At 13, she got a job in a shop in our neighbourhood - one of those tiny corner stores that had everything from fresh food to house paint. She worked from 9 in the morning until 11 at night tending the shop, with only a short lunch break in the afternoon. Although they were long days, she loved dealing with the public. Luckily, her boss was a fair man, even paying for half her wedding dress when she got married. In the morning before work, María del Mar had to pick up a pail of milk for the family, and to get a few extra pesetas she also prepared a doctor’s young son for school. Every cent she earned went to her family. “We bought only what we needed for each day, if there was money. We ate what we had and NOTHING was ever thrown out.”

Life was very different in Andalucía then.

 “I picked up the milk every morning until I was 21, and even then it came straight from the cow.”

” What”, I ask?

“I mean that the man milked the cow into a bucket straight in front of my eyes”, she explains.

Different indeed. This was just back in the 1980s, when we, the kids up in Scandinavia, were worried about learning the latest Disco moves…

María del Mar married in 1992 and had two children, but she never stopped working. She would take any job she could find, sewing toys by the unit after work at night and going to nearby villages to sell jewellery. Through her and her husband’s thriftiness, they managed to save up enough to buy a home and a property in the country. “People do not buy as much jewellery as in the past”, she tells me, but she still makes, repairs and sells jewellery 23 years later. As her husband José lost his job recently and needs to retrain for a new profession, at 50, María del Mar is back being the main breadwinner. Nothing seems to stop the women of this family!

The Daughter

Name: María del Mar

Age: Soon 18

Occupation: Student

Level of education: Completed Sr. High school. Entering University

María del Mar Jr. was born in 2001, a whole new era in rural Andalucía. Primary and lower secondary school has become compulsory in Spain. Boys and girls receive the same education and have equal chances at attending university.

Like her fellow classmates, she began school when she was 3 and has never had to help support her family.  With only one parent working now, she must look to scholarships to pay for her university degree. “I would like to find a job besides university,” she says, “but it depends on the obligations of my degree.”

I do not worry about our young neighbour. She is as hardworking as her mother and grandmother, the only difference being that she is dedicating her time to her studies. She completed her Bachillerato with top marks. At soon 18, she speaks English and French, in addition to having learned ancient Greek and Latin. “I have offered to teach my grandma how to read and write, but she says it is too late. More than anything I believe she enjoys eating, because she experienced so much hardship in her childhood.“

With an illiterate (but very capable) grandmother, and an equally well-versed mother with only basic primary education, María del Mar Jr. will be the first person in her immediate family to get a university degree.

She is not alone: 45% of young Spaniards today have attained a higher educational level than their parents. Spain is today amongst those countries with the highest levels of upward intergenerational mobility in education, particularly for young women. María del Mar tells me that about 2/3 of her classmates plan to attend university, of which most are female. According to her, it is rare to have stay-at-home mothers nowadays in Ronda. Most of her friends’ mothers work outside the home, but the gender roles are still quite traditional. Whereas the fathers tend to be employed in retail, auto industries or restaurants, the mothers work in health services, house cleaning, secretarial jobs or education.

María del Mar wants to be a teacher. I ask her whether the fact that she grew up with a grandparent who could not read or write affected her career choice.

“Maybe…” she smiles shyly. After all, she is not even 18.

Norwegians sing about not wasting precious time sleeping during their luminous summer nights. And with those long and dark winters, who can blame them?

I have noted however, a similar nocturnal awakeness phenomenon here in the Spanish south. In our hometown of Ronda people also choose to stay awake longer and later, or seemingly not sleep at all in summer. This is not due to the midnight sun of course. The reason is simply that at this time of the year the nights are ironically the best part of the ‘day’.

When daytime temperatures exceed 30 degrees Centigrade in the shade and eggs can fry upon any sunny ledge, it is wise to seek shelter. Unless you must go out, the safest alternative is to stay indoors and only cautiously emerge from hiding in the late evening. Ronda is not as hot as Córdoba, otherwise known as Spain’s frying pan, whose temperatures can get near 50 degrees. Our town’s saving grace is its altitude and the mountains that surround us, which brings overnight temperatures down into the mid-teens. This dip provides a welcome break from the sizzling rays and a much needed cooling down of all systems.

As soon as darkness falls the people of Ronda flock out on the street, young and old, to seize the day by night. Actually, we do not have to leave our home to observe part of this summer night tradition. While our street is almost eerily quiet during summer days, when we head to bed around 11 pm it seems that all the three-year-olds in the neighbourhood have suddenly been let out to play, not to be called home until the wee hours of the morning.

For once, my husband and I decide to stay up and join the locals in a nocturnal summer stroll to see what happens in Ronda in midsummer after dark.

The restaurants in our local square are popular all year around, but on summer evenings there can be dozens of groups waiting for tables. Whether the guests get seated at 10 pm or at midnight, never mind, appetites are only sharpened. Families, including frail grandparents and toddlers way past recommended bedtimes, order drinks and food enough for a small army, while the barrio’s stray cats lurks about, waiting for a spare morsel.

The playground swings are in demand long after midnight. Children run around on permanent sugar highs, only coming back to their parent’s table to hurl down a last sip of Coca Cola or to get maternal comfort over a scraped knee. While elderly residents occupy the surrounding benches, youngsters on bikes and scooters zoom around the plaza in semi darkness. Older boys play a game of football, booting the ball onto the street or under restaurant tables without anybody taking much notice.  

The local teenage girls have other games on their mind. With almost three months of holiday and generally no obligations other than rolling out of bed in time to be served lunch, their main occupation is parading about. The girls gather in large groups, generally scantily dressed in identical far-too-brief (practically cheeky) shorts, crop tops, sockless white sneakers, long ironed hair and the latest in dental-brace technology. They head downtown where similar groups of the opposite sex are waiting. Later, we see the girls again, one dragging along a pimply boyfriend, whose squeaky voice doesn’t seem to take away from his many charms. Like the tomcats in the barrio, the teenage lads circle around the females, ready to pounce, hoping to end the night with a hand snuck into bodily crevices that daylight hours would not permit. Such is teenage love and young lust readily on display on hot summer nights.

In the Alameda park, proud parents promenade with strollers, dogs chase balls and couples watch as the sky goes from pink to purple to deep cobalt blue.

Ronda isn’t yet offering midnight shopping to jetlagged travellers, so the street-long pedestrian mall turns into a bar hopping exploit. There are no lack of patrons in any of the town’s restorantes, courtyard cafés, rooftop bars and street-side eating establishments.

Waves of loud conversation and happy cheers are only interrupted by an occasional late night lover’s quarrel. Inevitably, a woman will be seen weeping into her cell phone, later to be reunited with her betrothed, proving that hot nights may lead to happy endings.

We notice a lot of parents with young children hurrying across the Puente Nuevo into the historic quarter of town. Are they finally recognizing that the witching hour has long passed and are going home to put their kids to bed? Following the crowd, we come to an impromptu outside cinema, set up against the old city wall. Several hundred popcorn-fuelled children with parental guides stare wide-eyed at the screen. The town is offering free movie Wednesdays with today’s feature being the latest animated version of Ferdinand. All the bulls are speaking Spanish, as they should, of course.

The church bells of Santa María la Mayor strike twelve, but nobody budges.

Like some other churches in the south, Santa María has opened their roof for visitations. We decide to end our night by climbing onto the catwalk leading around the church towers. We soon realize that we are not the only ones with this idea, as moon gazers and hobby astronomers naming star constellations join us in enjoying Ronda’s best night views.

Feeling content with our expedition, we head home through the old town, careful not to be flattened by nocturnal speeding bikers, pizza delivery mopeds or a lonesome brave runner. For night owls who have had enough of street roaming, there is always an until-sunrise concert on offer, or if less festively inclined, night walks with head lanterns.

Even the animals in town seem to keep summer hours. A canine choir competes with a lame 1980’s remix band playing at a wedding somewhere up on the cliff.

The town does eventually quiet down, except for the occasional braying sheep, love struck cats or partying neighbours, but by this time we are in bed with our windows open, letting in the cool night breeze and the scent of night blooming jasmine. 

The other day a neighbour asked if we wanted to come over to her house and pick some plums. Not being able to resist an offer of organic fruit, we happily agreed. Subjected to the customary Andalucian generosity, we returned home with two heaping bags of organic plums, one bag of organic almonds, three humongous branches of their spectacular flowering bougainvillea and a potted seedling of a most rare type of cactus.

In addition, as if that weren’t enough, they waved us off with the carte blanche invitation to come back for more any time. They also extended a personal invitation for me to raid their bitter almond tree in the fall, as few people share my love of this unappreciated delicacy.   

That was last night, so when we woke up this morning with plums galore and still only two mouths to feed, my first question was how to utilize them. I have never made plum liqueur before, but since I have made quaffable liqueurs from cherries, pears, lemons, oranges, almonds, walnuts, quince and god knows what else, plums were next in line.

ANDALUSIAN GOLDEN PLUM LIQUEUR

Ingredients:

Ca. 1.5 kilo plums

1 large or 2 small organic lemons (only the peel is used, so choose accordingly)

100-ish grams of sugar (I haven’t yet succeeded with stevia, so I use the smallest amount of sugar possible)

750 ml vodka, or 500 ml vodka and a generous glass of brandy

Condiments (feel free to add/subtract)

A few pods of green cardamom

A drizzle of whole coriander seeds

A slug of Mexican vanilla extract (genuine or nada!)

And a shake of Sichuan peppercorns

Method:

* Peel the lemons.

* Add lemon rind, sugar, spices, vanilla and vodka to a 2-litre sealable glass jar.

* Fill with whole clean plums until the fruit reach the top of the liquid.

* Store out of sight and mind for 4-6 months.

* Remove the plums. Most recipes will tell you to discard the liqueur-infused fruit, but I do nothing of the kind. I usually boil them to get rid of some of the alcohol, which also makes them easier to pit. Then I chop them and use them in baking with very tasty results.

* Decanter into a bottle and enjoy.

Before you get brewing, I want to make it clear that this is not an official recipe. It is more of a loose suggestion to encourage other plum lovers to get creative.  No measurements are accurate and all may be altered according to taste. Furthermore, I cannot guarantee the result, as it really shouldn’t be opened until near Christmastime. What I can promise is that nobody has died of drinking my liqueurs yet, none of my liqueurs-in-progress has ever exploded, and all who have partaken in my happy hooch experiments have rather enjoyed them.

As far as the inherited bag of organic almonds is concerned, it almost forces me to revamp our supply of homemade Amaretto, but I will leave that project for the fall.

Ronda in southern Andalucía is world-renown for its stunning views, fascinating past, and for the famous artists who have come here to write and paint throughout history. What Ronda is not known for is cutting-edge architecture, innovative global marketing, forward thinking ecological production, and least of all, world famous designers. It might therefore come as a surprise to some that merely a couple of kilometres outside our town-centre lies Spain’s most progressive and unique olive oil production and Oleo Tourism facility - LA Organic Experience.

Imagine the chatter in our little town some years back when a local company engaged none other than Philippe Starck to design their olive oil bottles! At that point, the words ‘organic’ and ‘cutting edge’ were rarely seen together, certainly not here in rural Andalucía. Yet LA Organic went against the current, creating a line of organic olive oils using Starck’s vanguard product designs. I have been an admirer of his ever since I got his space age lemon press thirty years ago. For those do not know of him, Philippe Starck is a French designer, inventor and architect with 10,000 creations to his name, ranging from cooking tools to wind turbines. For some rondeños, many of whom make their own oil or buy magnum bottles directly from the mill, hiring a celebrity designer for such a ‘basic’ task must have been seen as extremely extravagant or even foolish. However, for the creators of LA Organic Experience, it was time to give the national industry of Spain the attention it deserves.

Olives have grown on the Iberian Peninsula for millennia. The Romans started mass-producing and exporting millions of litres of Spanish olive oil. Later, the Arabs improved on the production process and expanded its uses, and while they were exiled from Spain 5 centuries ago, the Arab name for oil, aceite, still remains.

Spain is by far the world’s largest producer of olive oil accounting for more than 50% of the current global production, and most is produced right here in Andalucía. It is therefore vital for the economy to scrutinize and at times rethink its production and marketing process. In contrast to Italy which has a reputation for supreme quality and design, made in Spain is still often regarded as ‘cheap and cheery’ by international consumers. LA Organic Experience aims to change this perception.

To know more about the Company, I made an appointment with the General Director, Santiago Muguiro. Coming to meet me straight from the olive fields, it immediately became clear that running this Oleo Tourism facility is no desk job. Santiago is young, passionate and full of ideas. “I come from a wine background” he tells me, adding that his family are the proprietors of the venerable Marqués de Riscal winery. “Like some Rioja vineyards have done with wine, we want to educate the public and become pioneers of olive oil tourism in Spain,” he says. Whereas Marqués de Riscal engaged architect Frank Gehry to create a luxury hotel for wine lovers, LA Organics partnered up with Starck to create the branding, packaging and the landscape of LA Organic Experience.

Just to clarify, the name has nothing to do with Los Angeles. It refers to La Amarilla, a Ronda farm owned by the Gómez de Baeza family, located in an area where nuns produced olive oil for centuries. In 1990 the family decided to re-establish the Sisters’ tradition and founded LA Organic. The Company expanded to their present location due to increasing demand for their premium oil. With investments from six international visionaries like Starch and wine expert Michel Rolland, LA Organic Experience now covers 25 hectares with 9000 olive trees of 20 varieties. The fully organic crop is planted with variable spacing to demonstrate the difference between traditional and new intensive farming methods. The latter area is composed of the fast-growing Oliana olive, which future visitors will be able to harvest and bottle themselves as part of the Experience.

But LA Organic Experience goes far beyond oil. It is a journey that combines culture, nature and gastronomy. The Experience starts immediately as one enters the property through industrial design gates. The iconic symbol of Mediterranean gastronomy is everywhere, including the window in the guard booth in the shape of an olive.

The parking lot also has a Starck signature - a vast terra-cotta-coloured plaza framed by rust and stone walls with massive artistic photographs. In fact, everything including a bespoke adjacent hotel has a touch of the master, whose designs tend to be subversive, ethical, ecological, political, and last but not least, humorous.

Santiago offers to bring me on their guided tour, which starts and ends in a brightly painted warehouse where olive tasting and mill demonstration take place. From here we begin a one-kilometre route lined by newly planted poplars and fragrant lavender bushes. Our first stop is an Arab-inspired organic vegetable and herb garden designed by Navarra horticulturist Floren Domezáin.

The tour continues past fields of olives, a shallow resting pool surrounded by orange trees, an austere 19^th Century chapel, as well as a stunning plaza of century old olive trees framing the footprint of where once an old farmhouse stood.

Since olives and wine go hand in hand, the property also includes a sloped hill of a thousand grapevines of the Pinot Noir variety, perfectly suited for growing at these altitudes (approx. 800 meters over sea level). The vines are planted in terraces, thus recapturing a tradition the Romans established here 2000 years ago. With internationally acclaimed oenologist Michel Rolland at the forefront of this particular project, visitors should be able to enjoy world class LA Organic wine in a couple of years’ time.

En route, we pass several architectonic elements called the Six Surprises by Starck. For me however, the surprise of LA Organic Experience is the overall effect. With outmost attention to detail and deep respect for the natural surroundings, the Company has managed to create an unforgettable living tour – a visual, sensory and olfactory experience where something as small as an olive is the grand protagonist.

What we see today is only the tip of the innovative iceberg. Future plans include a sustainable bottling and labelling plant and the first-ever designer organic olive mill. Another Starck invention, La Almazara olive press and museum will be a high quality production facility with cutting edge technology dedicated to ecological agriculture and organic olive oil production. Wherever the future takes them, the LA Organic team is on the right track with their oil already available in 25 countries.

In the meantime, I wonder if the creator of the emblematic Alessi lemon press will become the inventor of an avant-garde design home olive press? What do you say, Philippe?

For more information, please go to www.laexperience.net