It's November again in Álora and that means the mandarinas are ripe, the oranges are nearly ripe and the olives are ready to pick for olive oil.
Mmmmm. It's beginning to smell a bit like Christmas.
Mrs. Sánchez and I took Monty for a walk on the Canca yesterday morning and came across a couple of muchachos hard at it with nets, branch shaking machine and vara (a long stick for bashing olive branches).
"Qué tal la cosecha?" (How's the harvest going?)
"Regular" (Not very well)
And that's how it is all over Andalucía. A very poor harvest everywhere after two dry winters. Jaén, in the north of Andalucía is the biggest olive oil producing area in the world - it's the biggest 'man-made forest' in Europe! Production there will be down by 50% this year -so expect olive oil prices to soar.
Olivars in Jaén Province
There was hardly any blossom on our trees this Spring, so we knew we wouldn't have many olives to pick´, and certainly not enough to meet the 600Kg. minimum for the olive mill to tool up for a 'private pressing'. We had decided to call it off this year, even though our regular volunteer picker and olive grove gauleiter, Colin, was raring to go...'I'm like a coiled spring' he quipped, whilst waiting at John Lennon Airport for his first flight to Málaga for two years.
Colin
Thanks to a good friend, Mike, and his little huerta (orchard) in Bermejo, a barriada of Álora, we were able to add to our meagre harvest by about 550 Kg. and we've now got a very respectable 100 litres of delicious olive oil...
160Kg. of olives
....although Mike warned us, before we started picking, that some branches were very high up, and to be careful not to disturb the cages of his lad's fighting cockerels, which he breeds and trains there. They could 'do us a bit of damage ' if they got out. We pick all our olives by hand or with a small plastic rake. All that bashing with sticks looks a bit agressive to me and it can't do the trees any good. The belligerent birds didn't take kindly to branches laden with jucy olives rattling on their tin roofs.
Two of the 'grumpy' fighting cocks.
Cockfighting, as you might expect, is illegal in Spain, ...apart from in Andalucia and The Canary Islands, that is. Who'd have thought?
Come and have a go, if you think you're hard enough!
So if you fancy a bet on a bird battle... nip down to Álora before this charming traditional practice is banned.
November 11th. is an important date in the Sánchez calendar because it's Mrs. Sanchez's birthday. We usually have a day off from olive picking and head off to Málaga for a 'slap up meal' as people used to say. This year it coincided with a national rail strike, so we didn't go. Instead I marked the day by driving our car into a (dangerously sited) builder's skip on Calle Algorrobo.
Ouch! (police photgraphs).
Just my bad luck that two bright sparks had put an immovable object in the narrow street, which also happens to be a key section of Álora's creative circulatory road system. The local Policía took a dim view of my decommissioning of Calle Algarrobo for two hours and took lots of photos to show to their mates back in the comisaría.
"Some shortsighted guiri just hit that skip on Algarrobo"
"Can we fine him? Ja ja ja ja!"
That little bump cost me 1,465 euros (£1,274) to fix.
I put the whole incident down to a stroke of bad luck. We've had to postpone our plans for returning to Blighty by over a week, lost the only pet-friendly cabin left this year on Brittany Ferries' 'MV Galicia,' and now have to drive up through France. Pretty annoying.
Álora's
leading mystic and numerologist , Liz, just happens to be our neighbour
and, for no charge at all, pointed out that November 11th is St. Martin's Day and if think I was unlucky it's the day that pigs are traditionally slaughtered all over Spain.
St. Martin of Tours giving half his cloak to a beggar
(El Greco)
A cada cerdo le llega su San Martín
(Every pig gets his San Martín)
This means that everyone will get their 'come-uppance' one day. I hope that's my San Martin´s Day over and done with.
Warning! The following section may upset anyone eating a bacon sarnie.
The San Martín saying dates back to the days when pigs were kept by most village families and slaughtered at home in the annual 'matanza' - a fun day for the family, where the unfortunate porker has its throat cut and bleeds to death. The blood is collected to make morcilla (black pudding, mmmmm.), and the carcass is cut up to make jamon, embutidos, solomillo, manitas, carillada and callos, to name but a few porky products.
The geography of a pig.
They say that the only part of the pig not used is the squeal - a familiar rural sound even today on November 11th in rural Spain, including Álora
washing the entrails cerca 1994, Ardales
The vast majority of the 32 million pigs slaughtered in Spain every year meet their end in official mataderos. (Spain has the biggest pig population in Europe ...until after November 11th. that is.)
The number of pigs killed annually in Spain often exceeds the total population of Spain, currently at 47 million.
Private slaughtering was banned in 1995, but a 'special EU edict' give the backyard matanzas the green light providing that nobody complained about the noise, and the pig was knocked out first. Nobody has officially complained so far, and there were no takers for the stun-guns given out free of charge by the Junta de Andalucía.
Vegetarianism and veganism are on the increase in Spain.
In Andaluca, ham is does not count as meat ,(and tinned tuna is not really fish.)
Ardales, a village just up the road from here has an annual Fiesta de la Matanza every March, where they give away hundreds of kilos of pork products. They don´t actually kill any pigs, as far as I know. I've never been to the Ardales pork day.
I haven't noticed any 'vegetarian butchers' around here.
I can only say 'Sorry' to anyone who has been offended by any or all of the above - and for anything that follows.
I was surprised to find out that St. Martin (of Tours) is not the patron saint of pigs, but of 'recovering alcoholics' and
'geese' - which have a particularly bad time of it in France.
St. Anthony, writing a pork recipe.
The patron saint of pigs, swineherds and bacon is St. Anthony the Abbot. His special day is January 17th. and is marked in Spain by the consumption of lots of chacina (pork products).
The other night, Mrs. Sánchez fell asleep reading and when she woke up she had completely squashed her glasses - an expensive pair, and she has no spare pair here in Spain. This disaster also took place the night of November 11th.!!! -the eve of our birthday trip to Málaga.
Being a Saturday, Álora Optica was shut, so off we scampered to General Optica in Málaga, where a super-hero in a blue suit cobbled together a new pair from the twisted wreckage and an old pair of mine. Good as new. No charge! A perfect birthday present for Mrs. Sánchez, who was hoping for a new handbag.
Bar News
El Taller
Bad news! El Taller, our latest favourite bar/restaurant is going to close!!! and Paco was doing so well, too.
Antonio Gil
Also, it looks as though Antonio Gil has retired from the hospitality business - he of the Jamonería in the 'callejon' and before that the the Bar Lo D'Antonio on La Rampa opposite the Teatro Cervantes (which became El Taller).
Changuay
