I Love Puerto

Todd playing the Air Jamón, instrument of his own invention.

This blog entry is an ode to Puerto, our adopted city-town, "Ciudad de Cien Palacios." Not quite big enough to call a city per se (funny, coming from us, inhabitants of the “City” of Imperial Beach, population roughly 14,000), Puerto has a delightful small-town feel despite a population of nearly 90,000.  El centro where we live has closer to a third that amount, making it really more town than city.   So here’s some of what I love, accompanied by photos as I enter the wonderful world of photography.  A note to visitors:  Summer 2013 is filling up fast, put in your bid now!

El Castillo de San Marcos:  One of the best things about Puerto is the beautiful little castle nestled into the city center.  Privately owned by the same family that owns the Caballero bodega, Castillo San Marcos was renovated in the 1940s, where they found an entire mihrab (muslim prayer nook) behind the Catholic altar.  The castle was originally built over an old mosque and Roman ruins in 1264 by King Alfonso X El Sabio (“The Wise,” due to his great interest in mathematics and science).  King Alfonso X swept most of the Moors out of Spain, leaving only Granada as a final stronghold.  Christopher Columbus spent more than a year living in the castle tower.  We get to walk past it every day on our way to school, and our terrace overlooks its walls.

On the way to school...

La Iglesia Mayor Prioral:  As you walk down Calle Palacios, past both crumbling and renovated palaces, a golden sight awaits you:  the central plaza of Puerto, with its very own mini-cathedral (really a large church).  The square is medium-sized, not huge, and the church dominates, its weathered façade with gargoyles and saints looming over the small fountain.  Storks have set up shop, probably for decades now, on the upper perches of the spires; their strange clack-clacking bills announce their presence (I counted no fewer than 8 nesting pairs when taking these photos).  Inside the church, dramatically decorated with incongruous crystal chandeliers, the gilded and ornate altars compete for your attention.  Tia and Sasha are fascinated by the realistic depictions of saints and suffering and the elaborately dressed statues (“Did they really dress like that back then??”).  

(church slideshow link)

El Resbaladero:  We have a love-hate (or maybe a love-annoyance) relationship with this beautiful old building.  Built in the 18th century on the banks of the Rio Guadalete, it served as the local fishmarket until the change in river flow and reclamation of land moved the riverbank several blocks south.  Right across the street from us, and next door to the castle, El Resbaladero now houses a number of clubs and discotecas, along with a notorious after-hours club that OPENS at 4 am, closing down at noon when it finally shoves the last party-hardiers out its doors, blinking drunkenly in the bright sunlight.  Todd is thoroughly amused, me not so much.  Though it IS an easy walk home at four in the morning!

Oh, La Penultima Locura de Lola!  (Locura = Craziness)

La Puntilla, Our Little Beach:  a 14-minute walk to the west lands you at our own city beach, complete with industrial skyline and absolutely empty during the winter.  Todd is tackling the art of kite-surfing in his ample spare time; despite my exhortations to buy good equipment, he insists on repairing and improving the 15-year-old gear we hauled over from IB, cheerfully repeating to himself that “figuring it out is half the fun.”  The kids love to walk to the end of the jetty to look out across the Bay to the city of Cádiz.  

El Mercado:  The kids hate it, but I love it.  Inundated by the pungent smell of fresh-caught fish, the Mercado de la Concepción is a round building that houses stall upon stall of every imaginable type of sea creature.  Butchers also carry your requisite chicken, pork, and beef, along with rabbit, quail, and pheasant.  Sausages and hams of every variety hang from the rafters, and vegetables are sold upstairs (although I prefer my little fruteria right around the corner).  Snails of all sorts can be found just outside the Mercado, along with olives, asparagus, and tiny ghost-like shrimp still flipping around the bucket. 

El Horno de las Cañas: Right around the corner, too, is our own bakery/panaderia.  What a treat to run outside and buy fresh chapatas, long loaves of bread, croissants, even eggs and milk when I need them!  This panaderia turns out to be quite famous in Puerto; its mixers (chugging away at low decibles) and ovens (oh! the smell of fresh bread every day when we wake up!) churn out hundreds of loaves overnight, and you can hear them loading up the small delivery trucks in the wee hours of the morning

La Casa Rosa: When we first came to Puerto, we rented a flat in a tiny Palacio, La Casa Rosa.  The owners, Luis and Conchi, are now fast friends, and continue to provide us with insider’s knowledge about Puerto and Spain.  We walk past La Casa Rosa at least once a week, as it is a mere three blocks from our house, and drop in to visit with Conchi and her two boys, Guillermo and Jaime, on a regular basis.  This wonderful spot can be found on the homeaway site: http://www.homeaway.com/vacation-rental/p419666

Nuestra Señora de la Merced: We have fallen completely in love with our tiny school.  A Catholic school turned public (known as a concertada), “La Merced” provides a basic education, including lessons in music and art.  While it is very “old-school,” with lots of textbook-copying involved, and while there is little that is high-tech or fancy (they still have chalk blackboards and wooden chairs), Tia and Sasha are happy, happy, happy here.  Their teachers are caring and considerate, and the school is so tiny (one class of each grade, 15-20 kids per class, grades 1-6) that everyone knows everyone else and there is lots of cross-grade playing that goes on at recess. 

Walking to school; the school is on the right where all the people are congregated!

Our Palacio Conde de Osborne:  Finally, our house is so incredible, so perfectly situated, so brimming with everything we need (and want!) that I feel pride and embarrassment in turns when I show friends around.  Not only is it in an 18th-century renovated palace, with conserved Sevillana tiles, an archway, very high beamed ceilings, and a courtyard with pool to boot, but it is new, with a beautiful modern kitchen, in-floor heating, wood floors with balconies looking out from every bedroom, and then there’s the attic, our guest quarters!  Here’s a slideshow to enjoy:

(slideshow link coming!)

Playing in the pool with cousin Sophie

Up next in the June blog:

El Centro Ecuestre Las Marias:  Our horse-riding place. We love Puerto because of this place, too. It is worthy of its own blog entry, along with a paen to the Andalusian horse.  Coming up in June!

¡Viva la Feria!

Las guapas de la feria de Rota

My mother would hate the Feria.  A mild agoraphobic, she sometimes has trouble going into a supermarket, and the packed-wild hubbub burbling cacophony that are Andalucia’s Ferias makes even the stoutest non-Spanish heart tremble a little.  

¡Ole!  Feria de Jerez de la Frontera, with friends Victoria and Ana

A little background on the ferias of Andalucía: the origins of feria or “fair” in Spain, England and the U.S. (as well as elsewhere) began with a mercantile slant sometime in the 12th century; the intent was to allow vendors to move from place to place to sell their wares at set times during the year.  The modern Andalusian version of feria, which traces back to the Feria de Abril in Sevilla in 1846, now has no selling of ordinary livestock.  Instead, they have extravagant shows of the beautiful Andalusian breeds, old-time carriages drawn by matched sets of horses, and men and women decked in traditional costumes parading through the temporary streets of the feria grounds.  Casetas, or temporary structures similar to a tent, but extravagantly decorated inside complete with a full bar/tapas restaurant and bathrooms, line these streets.  Sevilla’s casetas are mostly private, which means you need to know someone to get in, but the other towns’ casetas are public or have a dedicated public space open to everyone. Most women wear a traditional Andalusian costume, while the men just dress dapperly (for the most part!).  Huge lighted gates mark the entrance, and at night the grounds glow with thousands of decorative bulbs.  Food and drink, in particular rebujito, are sold at stands and in the casetas, and there is of course a huge area of carnival rides for kids and adults alike called the Calle del Infierno.  Flamenco music of all types—but everywhere the sevillanas—compete with each other for your attention.   It is a raucous, crowded, happy, wild, noisy craziness, a temporary city of fun and fiesta, and yep, my mom would last about a minute.

Sasha in expensive feria dress

Dressed-up horses in Jerez

But we loved it.  Why?

First, the sheer joy of seeing an entire town turn out.  Puerto’s downtown has been virtually deserted since the start of its Feria.  Teachers plan for low attendance for the two weekdays of Feria, and sure enough, they combined Tia and Sasha’s 3rd and 4th grade classes and had a grand total of 15 students.  Despite a bus strike that crippled the usually-efficient bus system ferrying thousands of feria-goers to the casetas, the portuenses (people from Puerto) took it in stride good-naturedly, ambling in huge groups down the sidewalks of the highway out to the feria grounds, and patiently waiting (and paying) for parking if they couldn’t walk.   Women dressed to the nines made this a hugely colorful spontaneous parade, and I couldn’t stop gaping at the sheer number of people out, happily squeezing through the crowds with their strollers, stopping to chat and blocking the pathways through the casetas and carnival rides, laughing and chatting and cheek-kissing and hugging and paying exorbitant prices to ride the impressive-sized cacharritos, the kids squealing and screaming with delight. 

The dresses take a prancin' and keep on dancin'

Even the weather couldn’t dampen the portuenses’ fiesta; despite a weather report that predicted a constant drizzle for the first three days of Feria, and heavy downpours on the fourth day, as soon as the weather let up the people showed up, not minding the mud and puddles, ducking into the casetas during the showers.  On one of the rainy days, I mentioned to my friend Luis how crowded it was.  “Crowded?”  he said.  “Oh, this is empty.”  And sure enough, the sun finally shone the last two days, and you could barely move, it was so full.  I didn’t even know there were that many people in Puerto!

With friends Isabela, Daniela, and Guillermo

Second, we are ardent horse-lovers (except for Todd, who is afraid of them), and there couldn’t be a better place to horse-watch.  In fancy places like Sevilla and Jerez de la Frontera, the horses are often better-dressed than many of the people, and that is saying something in Spain.  Shampooed, groomed and braided and wrapped and curried until they shine, these gorgeous Andalusians prance and paw through the streets, necks arched and jaunty, with their riders stiffly showing off, the women mostly sidesaddle, and everyone in the traditional caballero costume.  Carriages drawn by 2, 3, 4, 5, or even 6 horses wheel through the streets picking up and dropping off passengers just like in the days of old.  Tia, Sasha, and I are determined to ride in the feria next year; we’re already taking side-saddle lessons!

Best-dressed horses

Dressed head to tail!

Cinderellas at the Feria

Third, there are the sevillanas.  A courtship dance from the 15^th century, the sevillanas as they are known today were part of the first Feria de Abril de Sevilla, hence the name.  Consisting of 4 separate sevillanas, which we as a family dutifully learned before the Feria, each sevillana indicates a different phase of the courtship:  first sight, falling in love, the fight, and making up.  We congratulated ourselves on learning all four sevillanas before the Feria, only to gawk in disbelief when a friend played the sevillana music at Feria speed!  Nevertheless, we practiced and practiced until we had it down.  “Are you SURE your kids don’t have some Spanish blood from somewhere??”  a friend asked me after seeing Tia and Sasha dance, dance and dance, going from one lady to another to find a partner to dance with.  Want to hear the music?  CanalSur has a special channel online dedicated to 24-hour sevillanas, just hit the Feria button in the upper righthand corner of their website: http://www.canalsur.es/

(Sevillanas movie coming!)

To fuel all this dancing, you need food and drink.  A fourth reason I LOVE Spain, and the Feria in particular, is because I fit right in.  The official drink of choice for Feria is rebujito, a cool, refreshing mixture of fino sherry and Sprite!  This sweet concotion is right up my ally: it goes down easy, not too strong, it’s served in little wine or plastic cups, and you buy it in pitchers to share with friends.  Put rebujito together with tapas—Spanish tortillas, jamón bellota, eggplant with manchego y salmorejo—and you have the perfect setting for a delicious fiesta, all night long.  And that’s the average span of feria:  arrive in the afternoon, after siesta, and amble from caseta to caseta, meeting different groups of friends along the way, nibbling tapas and sipping rebujitos from the pitcher that you take along into the street, dancing and drinking and eating in turn, until all of a sudden you realize it’s four in the morning.   

Risas, rumba, and rebujito in a caseta

Finally, and by far the most awe-inspiring reason I love Feria, is the Andalusian national costume, the traje flamenco.  The only regional costume that gets updated EVERY season (so everyone knows who bought what that year?), these dresses outdo wedding dresses in their extravagancia (and so does their price tag!).  Not only that, the accessorizing that goes with them puts a bridal veil to shame:  huge outsized fabric roses of all colors is de rigeur, as are the largest earrings you can find that your ears will tolerate (mine this year hung past my collarbone).   Brightly beaded necklaces, 12-inch-long fringe collars, and/or a mantón (shawl) complete your look.  I found a flamenco consignment store behind the Mercado in a hardware shop (of all places!) and went nuts.  I own five of these dresses so far, and am far from finished with shopping!  Tia and Sasha are just as crazy for them; one of our favorite pastimes is perusing the dresses that have just been brought in, and trying to figure out the year and whether we want THIS one or THAT one!

 

 

So enjoy the pictures—and plan to come visit during Feria next year!

A wide variety of feria outfits...not everyone dresses up