What do people think when I let slip that we have a place in Spain? Sun, sea, villas, sangria and tapas perhaps. However, an overriding feeling that comes to mind when I am in our village (which is nowhere near the sea) is warmth. Not of the climate, which is quite variable and sometimes vicious, no not that: I mean the warmth of the people.
Well, our village of La Fresneda is small so that could
account for the residents open friendliness, something you could hardly expect
in a city. However, we often overnight in villages on our travels and reactions
to the presence of strangers such as ourselves can range between outright suspicion,
wariness, ignorance and just the occasional friendliness. In La Fresneda it is
the norm to warmly greet a passing stranger. The locals even tolerate the
crowds of Spanish visitors that teem out of coaches below, then struggle up the
steep hill on their way to the church and tiny ruined castle. Those visitors usually
pass our house along the way and some of them pull the cord that rings the bell
in the shrine to Santa Agueda just outside our main windows. I have plans for
that cord.
Of course, having visited regularly for 25 years and despite
my declining ability to speak or understand Spanish and their inclination to
converse in their own local language, we do know quite a few people by sight
and association. On this trip “the man who looks like his dad” was surprisingly
friendly, even inviting me to steal beer from the tap whilst Vincente, the bar
owner, was busy in the kitchen. By the way that man’s dad passed away some time
ago so we are thinking of renaming him.
Margaret has a much better memory and much greater interest in the reproductive side of the place than me. She can identify adults who were toddlers when we first came and seems to know their lineage. This time our grandson and his very nice girlfriend came to stay and we dined in the wonderful Mataranya Restaurant: wonderful both in its architecture and décor plus its unusual menu which owes a lot to the fruits of local hunting. I had jabali which is wild boar. The original owners and waiters were still there, and we regard them as friends, and they now employ their sons as servers and probably future inheritors. Many years ago during the village fiesta, one of those sons was the guilty party in inducing our then fourteen-year-old grandson to imbibe some “special water” thus sending him home to us quite drunk.
On this trip we visited many French and Spanish villages on our way to and from our own, but none so warm and welcoming as ours. That aside the main memory of the two thousand plus mile trip was the colours.
October is a great month for autumnal forest glory, and we observed the most outstanding greens, browns, yellows, orange and reds was as we crossed the Pyrenees on our return journey. Stunning, though the photos barely portray what we saw.
