Last Saturday Mercedes and I did a tour of La Vera, another valley that is close by to Plasencia. Mercedes had invited me to stay with her and her boyfriend at his family’s home in Garganta La Olla. We arrived on Friday evening to a dark pueblo of streets without lights and that were definitely not made for cars. We stopped at Antonio’s parents house and I got to meet his parents. Antonio and Carmen were so warm and opening and offered to cook us dinner, refusing to let us go home and eat by ourselves. Antonio was seated at the table and Carmen started cooking right away but before anything she took out a jar of freshly made Potato Leek puree and gave both Mercedes and me a spoonful to try. It was delicious and then she started to fry fish, which I had to explain I didn’t eat, she took out home made cheese from their pantry and brought us bread and olives. There were no questions asked about why I was really there and I only felt love and warmth in Antonio and Carmen’s home. They are both from Garganta and had lived there their whole lives. Antonio’s hands were hardened from working with the land, growing olives, cherries, and many other products for so many years. Carmen’s demeanor was stern and loving, insisting on feeding us all to the brim (including her husband). They had a dynamic in a relationship that I don’t know if I’ve seen before. She would feed him, he would ask for water but at the same time there was so much respect between them. Antonio would tell his son, to listen to his mother, and they insisted that we had to return to eat there the next day to have his mother’s cooking.
Later on we put our things down and settled in the house. We went to a bar, Tsunami, in the center plaza and met some of Antonio’s friends. Mercedes and I had a long conversation with a neighbor of Antonio’s who told us what good people they are and even though I had only known them for a few hours, I knew he was so right. The next day Mercedes and I took our tour of La Vera (pictures and words below). On Saturday night we went back to Antonio’s parents for dinner again, where I ended up watching a nude scene in the movie La Vaquilla with just Antonio’s parents. We went out that night and saw some pueblo lifestyle, which was fun and relaxed. The next morning we slept in late, enjoyed the sun and saw more of Garganta (because Mercedes and I hadn’t explored it that much the day before). Antonio walked us around his home with pride, showed us their chicken house, where they also dry peppers and store vegetables, and the house where his father grew up. His father’s childhood home is now where he makes wine, dries meet, and where Carmen makes cheese and olives. It felt like a working museum of the past. Almost everything Antonio’s family eats comes from their finca and comes from what they store in that house. There were also buckets of homemade soap and other knickknacks that they had stored in the house. We saw one of their fincas (like an orchard), where he and his father worked the day before, prepping the cherry trees for the coming blossom. We cut fresh asparagus from the ground and brought it back with us. We ate an amazing lunch with Antonio’s parents and went for hike to see the garganta and take in some of the sun.
Going to the pueblo last weekend was like taking a rejuvenating step back into time. Hearing Antonio’s father tell us stories about when he was young and would walk for three hours up a mountain to get to Piornal for a dance, just made me really have appreciation for the lifestyle I am surrounded by here in Extremadura. Its preserved, not completely, but there is magic here. It lives in these little pueblos, it lives in the kids who come home from the cities and connect with their friends, it lives in those stories, it lives in the way that Antonio’s father told me to take what I have learned about Garganta back to “my land.” “My land” of the United States, he wants me to take Garganta back with me to New York, to Brooklyn, to Dighton, to my friends, to my family, or to wherever I go and I am positive that I will.
La Vera…
Garganta la Olla. What gives the pueblo it’s name…
Monasterio El Yuste. The monestary where Carlos V spent the last of his days.
Cuacos de Yuste. The theater of Don Juan de Austia
Valverde de la vera. In this pueblo we saw castle ruins and a church where a small man “hombrino” gave us a very strange tour of the church and was very insistant on dos besos.
Villanueva de la Vera. Where we ate lunch
Mardrigal de la Vera. The last pueblo we visited in La Vera
Una Extremena Nueva 