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National Geographic : 1950 Apr
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The National Geographic Magazine pots of geraniums and carnations, and copper smiths ply their trade (page 447). In little plazas and at street intersections domed structures cover aljibes, the under ground water cisterns built by the Moors. Subterranean conduits bring fresh water to the system of cisterns, and people draw water up through a door in the cupola as from a well. About 2,500 of Granada's 166,000 inhabit ants are Gypsies. To see them one must climb still higher from the Albaicin on the road to the Sacro Monte. Here they live for the most part in whitewashed caves hollowed in the soft rock (page 456). Gypsies have been in Spain so long that no one remembers exactly when they first ap peared. By now their dark good looks, spit curls, flounced dresses, and abandoned dances have become part of the Spanish tradition. Spanish Gypsies are a bold, insouciant lot. They speak with the familiar to immediately on meeting one, and have a glib tongue. "All Gypsies," they say, "are direct de scendants of Jesus Christ, and for that rea son we are privileged to live without having to work." Out of the green valley of Granada and over arid hills I drove east toward the Medi terranean coast and Valencia. The automo bilist in Spain must look out for big stones left on steep roads by carters. Drivers use the paving-block-sized stones for chocks when they stop their tandem mulecarts on a hill. The road from Granada joins the main north-south Mediterranean coast highway at Puerto Lumbreras. Just before entering this town I stopped at a thatched shelter to watch women pack mounds of white eggs in straw for shipment to Valencia and Barcelona. One countryman, wearing a black pleated smock and sitting cross-legged on full saddle bags, rode up (page 436). Eying my license plates, he asked, "French?" I told him I came from the United States. Suddenly lapsing into English, he said, "I once spent four years in Ohio." North along the coast the road runs through Murcia, center of a fertile plain crisscrossed with irrigation canals originally laid out by the Moors. Noted for its silk production since the Middle Ages, Murcia is the world center for silkworm gut, the filament used in fishing and for some surgical sutures. To make gut, culturists do not wait for the silkworm to spin its cocoon. They take the worm at the moment it prepares to spin, kill it and toughen it by immersion in a vinegar solution, then split it open and draw the two silk sacs out into threads 12 to 16 inches long. Farther north I passed through Elche, with its forests of palms. Growers tie cloths around the palm fronds to keep them from the sun. The fronds, almost bereft of chlorophyll, remain a pale white for use on Palm Sunday. Then comes the port of Alicante, and finally the flat vega (cultivated plain) of Valencia. From Alicante north, people speak Valen cian, a dialect of Catalan. Catalan has nine vowel sounds, including two a's, three e's, and two o's. For miles around Valencia the flat country is a "succession of rice fields. Vivid green stalks project from blue water as far as one can see, and stooped workers standing knee deep in water increase the similarity to an Oriental scene. Close to the big seaport stretches the lagoon of Albufera, a large fresh-water lake. Sepa rated from the sea by a narrow neck of land, Albufera is rich in fish life and aquatic birds. In season, duck shooting becomes a major occupation and pastime here. Canals lead from the lake to villages and hamlets, and sailing boats with triangular sails appear to be sliding along on dry land when progressing across the flat landscape. How to Catch Baby Eels At Perellonet (the Valencian names sound strange after Castile), at one of the outlets to the sea controlled by sluice gates, I watched fishermen dip up angulas one night. Angulas are two- to three-inch elvers, the transparent young of eels. The scene was like something from a Japa nese print. Two wavering lines of light showed where fishermen, in boats with candle lan terns, scooped up the invisible elvers by mak ing methodical sweeps with a fine-meshed screen dip net. Fishermen later throw them in water with a pinch of powdered tobacco. "The nicotine kills them," one man told me. "Then we boil them for a minute or two and dry them between folded cloth." Thus prepared, they look like bean sprouts or dry noodles. Restaurants fry them in olive oil seasoned with garlic and hot peppers. Valencia is one of Spain's many gastronomic oases. Here one may get grilled cuttlefish, fried squid, and broiled Dublin prawns. But the great local specialties naturally center around rice, prepared in twenty ways. The paella leads all the rest. Paella, a meal in itself, is a noble dish of rice flavored with saffron and contains chicken, squid, mussels, clams, crayfish, prawns, and snails. I had always thought I could hold up my end at table, but I found I was an object of concern to my Spanish friends. 438
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