Our Andalucian paradise

I would never have thought that ham cutting could be a competitive sport, until we paid our first visit to our Andalusian town several years back.

At the end of a European holiday, a sudden shower forced us to seek shelter in Ronda’s Convento de Santo Domingo. We stumbled into a courtyard full of locals, staring intently at the sharp knives of half a dozen men dressed in head-to-toe black including long aprons. Each man was allocated a table where a leg of Iberian ham was fastened with screws and clamps into a torturous stand. Each had his battery of knives and sharpeners upon which his logo or initials were engraved. Unbeknownst to us, we had come upon our first national ham-cutting competition, an event the Spanish and the competitors evidently took very seriously.

Every year in the month of May, competitors from all over Spain meet in our town for El Concurso Nacional de Cortadores de Jamón, the national Iberian ham cutting championships. This year marked the 17^th edition, still taking place in the same courtyard we inadvertently stumbled into way back when. The event was created and is still organized by Ronda’s Casa del Jamón, a local family business with no less than four national champion ham cutters.

The patriarch, Leocadio Corbacho, began cutting ham as a teenager, long before it became a profession, let alone a nation-wide competitive event. In those days, the quality and control of the Iberian ham production was poor compared to today.

When he was contracted to supply the local military with ham, he began to cut the slices finer - not because it was the going trend, but so that more sandwiches could be made with less ham, hence feeding more soldiers. Recognizing the Spanish love of talking, he began to cut the slices fine enough that the consumer could continue a conversation while eating it. He discovered that this was a far more comfortable way of eating what eventually became a real delicacy. Only in the past couple of decades has the Iberian ham industry achieved the international fame it now enjoys. Jamón Ibérico, which is unique to Spain, is now part of the national patrimony on line with bull fighting.

Eight professionals from Madrid to Huelva were selected from hundreds of applicants to participate in this year’s championship. Thought all were male, women have begun to enter the testosterone-driven ham-cutting scene. In fact, the winner of the 2018 Ronda championship was a cortadora from Salamanca and Leocadio’s daughter Lourdes is not only the first but the only female to have won first prize at the national ham cutting championships, not once, but twice!

Alberto Corbacho, another champion cutter in the family, explains that the competitors must be professionals and good standing members of the Asociación Nacional de Cortadores de Jamón. According to the rules, each participant is presented with a leg of Premium Iberian Bellota ham, allocated by lotto prior to the competition. The legs must have similar physical characteristics and weigh approx. 8 kilos - the optimal size for an Iberian ham. Otherwise, the contestants are responsible for their own tools and aids, such as knives, tweezers, ham stand etc.

I noted that the latter had changed in the past decade. All the stands are now stainless steel, whereas in the past some would have been made of wood, bone and more traditional materials. Alberto tells me that the space age looking stainless tabla is the Ferrari of all ham stands with ability to twist, tilt and swivel almost 360 degrees in all directions.

As in any competitive event, there is tension before the games begin. One participant carefully sharpens an already razor-sharp knife, while another re-tightens the screws of his ham stand.

Like before a ski race, one of the contestants sends a look towards the heavens and crosses himself. We are in Spain, after all.

Next comes the count down and they are off! Knifes twinkle as the men in black begin to shear off long pieces of fat that protects the precious meat. The competitors are deadly serious about their craft. Each contestant appears to have his own style of handling the leg, holding the knife and building the plates. Ages vary from mid thirties to early sixties, with looks from classic 50’s Pompadour and wiry bullfighter-ish Brylcreme comb-over, to hairless minimalism.

During the course of the two-hour showdown, they must cut the leg clean, while producing plate after plate of impeccably presented and carefully cut slices or lonchas of ham. To add to the pressure, each plate should contain 100 grams of ham, on the nose. The slices need to be so thin that you can see the blade of the knife through the ham. As they say in the jamón industry, the slices must be fino como papel de fumar (fine like cigarette paper).

Half a dozen professionals from the industry (including two females) judge the event, wandering about watching the competitors’ every move.

Not only is the end product important for the awards. The discarded fatty cut-offs are also carefully inspected to verify that not a morsel of edible ham is wasted. It is the judges’ job to determine the most original plate presentations and to announce the winner – the one who demonstrates superior dexterity with the knife, as well as the utmost style and creativity when it comes to the platter presentations.You cannot be any old chopper. A jamón master must have confidence, rhythm, elegance and panache. “There is an art to ham cutting. It is all in the wrist,” says Leocadio.

I am not much of a ham person myself, but there is ham and then there is Iberian ham, particularly when speaking about Premium Bellota ham, which can cost more than 500 euros for a mere hairy leg. A certified Bellota ham comes with its own personal id, specifying place of birth and the age of the animal. Iberian Bellota ham is often said to come from pigs that have had an exclusive life-long diet of acorns, but this is not the case. Acorns are only in season from September to March, and the free roaming Iberian pigs only eat the bellota superfood during the last six months of their lives.

The Serranía around Ronda has always had the perfect climate for the rearing of the slim bluish black Iberian pigs. It also holds near optimal conditions for curing the Iberian ham. In contrast to regular Serrano ham, an Iberian ham will be immersed in salt (one day per kg) and then spend a minimum of two years curing in a humid place. Finally, the leg is hung to air, traditionally in a farm loft, to get that perfect Iberian flavour. The special Mediterranean mountain climate is likely the reason why the Asians haven’t managed to reproduce the quality of the Spanish ham yet, in spite of their effort and keen taste for jamón Ibérico.

The fat of the ham is part of the morphology of the leg muscle. The more marbling, the ‘sweeter’ the meat, the experts say. It is fundamental, not only for the richness of the taste, but also for aesthetical reasons, as proven when the competitors present their free-style creative platters.

The popularity of the championships might be partly due to the fact that during the course of the cutting, spectators are able to purchase a plate of the very ham that has been cut in front of them. Add to this the sale of tinto (red wine) from the Tempranillo grape produced by the local Chinchilla vineyard, and one is bound to have a successful event!

So, lovers of Jamón Ibérico out there, be sure to be in Ronda next May for the 18^th edition of the concurso. And if you cannot wait that long or are looking for more of a challenge, there is apparently an upcoming course in jamón cutting including 10 hours of knife practice in Malaga in June. 

(For more information, contact Alberto at Casa del Jamón)

There is nothing more peaceful than a trickling fountain. We always wanted one in our backyard, but living in rainy Vancouver it was a mute idea. Then, after moving to Andalucía, long before we bought our reform-needy ruin, I began plotting our future terrace water feature.

The first summer came and then another one, and we still hadn’t find our fountain. Nor did we have a home to put it in for that matter, as our Casita 26 was awaiting a building permit. Meanwhile the search continued. We saw some lovely colourful tile fountains in Morocco, but like any good design, they were copied in infinite reincarnations. We weren’t looking for a-dime-a-dozen fountain, we wanted something unique that reflected our new home turf.

A fountain (from Latin fons - source of a spring) is a water supply regulated into a man-made construction, whose function is to send water by gravity into a basin, or propel it skywards by jets. In the past it would usually serve a dual function, both supplying drinking water and being a decorative feature. In other cultures it also had a religious significance.

The earliest fountain builders were possibly the Mesopotamians, who made a series of stone basins connected by a natural water source in about 3000 BC. Greeks and Romans employed similar systems, while mechanical fountains appeared in the Italian Renaissance.  

Here in rural Andalucía, where most residents were dependent upon livestock, fountains began as water troughs for animals. The base of the fountain would be a long pileta (pond) carved of a single stone, while a backing would contain spouts and at times decorative carvings. Some of these fountains were made in the Visigoth era (after the Romans and before the Berber invasion). An example of this is a water trough in the village of Grazalema, which is still in use today.

People will still bring their horses to drink at the trough built by the old town gate in our neighbourhood. Farmers will also come and fill up jerrycans of water for their olive trees, as it is said to come from a special spring. Every farm we have visited here in Andalucía will have at least one of these piletas. With such an intriguing past, we agreed that our fountain needed to somehow reflect this part of our local history.

In addition to digging the stone troughs, we loved the warm sand colour of Ronda’s Tajo. Initially we wanted to make some walls in our home from the same stones, but since we bought a 3-meter wide ruin, we could not allow the extra padding of exposed rocks. Making a stone fountain became the solution.

Finding an ancient stone trough to fit into in the limited space available on our terrace turned out to be impossible. When we told this to our friend Juan, he suggested that we went to a former stone quarry in la Serranía to find a rock, and then to carve it ourselves. Never ones to say no to a challenge, we took off with Juan on a stone finding expedition a few days later. The quarry, like many rural businesses had had to close down due to lack of costumers. There were mountains of rocks to choose from. One could get lost in the piles, and these were just the broken rejects that had been pitched off the lot onto the nearest hillside.

Having the exact measure of our pileta to be and tape measure in hand, we finally found a rock that could do. We dragged the monster to Juan’s jeep, me of course bringing a few extra piedras along, heading back to his property where the real work was to begin.

Already having driven us to get the rock and helped carry it to the car and bring it to his property, Juan said that he might have a more suitable rock for us. It turned out to be an already chiselled stone that had once been part of an entrance arch. The stones were now a garden wall, but Juan persisted that we take one, while he would use the less perfect quarry stone in its place.

Before we knew it, he had wedged the rock out and fetched two different sizes of rotary saws. Though he was supposed to build a bench at his rural estate that day, he began to make vertical, horizontal and finally diagonal cuts in the rock, making it easier for us to dig out the hollow centre.

What would have taken us days with a hammer and a chisel now took us mere hours. The rest was almost a breeze, at least if one was used to working with stone, which neither of us were. I managed to swing the heavy hammer off target and ended up with a few blood blisters, but nothing that time wouldn’t heel. Miraculously, I still had all my fingers.

Driving home with our prized pileta, we left it in the car to wait until a couple of young and strong neighbours could help Jaime hew-hawing it into the space. I would not trust myself to lift it, even if I could do so. Manolo, our neighbour who is near 90 saw us arrive and asked to look at the rock. “Oh that! I can lift that on my own over my back”, he claimed. We said that we were sure that that was the case, but that we felt it was safer to wait until there were more available hands. Not Manolo. He began to shimmy the rock off the back seat giving Jaime barely time to grab onto the other end. They walked into our house, across the living room, past the kitchen and onto the terrace. I could not believe my eyes. Manolo’s hands and step did not falter as he carried the rock, dressed in his customary suit and black leather shoes. There was the typical rural Andalusian man of centuries past: low to the ground, strong as a toro and tough as nails.

Once we had our pileta into place, we began searching for rocks for the backsplash. This is no problem when one lives in rural Andalucía where every trail and field is covered in rocks. Juan let us have free range of his property, and we returned home with 10 kilos each in our backpacks.

Once we had enough material to choose from, some encrusted with fossils, I drew the shape on a piece of cardboard and plotted in the rocks like a puzzle on the ground (Once a designer, always a designer).

The only thing remaining was to get somebody to apply my rock puzzle onto the wall. Though half the neighbourhood told us how easy it was to do this ourselves, we wanted a pro, to assure that it would not collapse on us. We spoke to four different contractors, all promising to come and nobody showing up. Finally Salvador, a friend and handiman agreed to do it. I will be there at 10 am tomorrow he said, and five minutes to ten he was there, tools in hand.

In the morning he applied the rocks to the wall, and the same afternoon he came back to put in the sand coloured grout that we had requested. Écolo, it was done.

Our fountain is the first thing we see when we enter our house and look out onto the terrace. Though the grout still needs drying and we still need to attach our solar powered water system, we cannot be more pleased. Like we had envisioned, it echoes the sandstone coloured cliffs around us, bringing a little bit of Ronda’s Tajo into our home. More importantly, it is a labour of love, not only by our own hands, but by the help of some of our wonderful rondeño friends and neighbours. Our fuente is already like a piece of Andalusian history, hecho a mano en Ronda.

Ever since I read The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho in the latter part of the last century followed by Shirley MacLaine’s movie-star-incognito account of the route, I have wanted to do El Camino. When Coelho walked it in the 1980s, there were barely any people venturing on the almost-forgotten pilgrim trail. On the other hand, there were allegedly ghosts abound, packs of wild dogs and even an occasional wolf to spice up the route, while lack of signage made one sure to get lost.

Not anymore…

Today El Camino de Santiago or the Way of St. James is as busy as it was in its hay day - the Middle Ages. Decidedly one of the most popular cross-continent walking routes in the world, the contemporary caminos attract scores of people every year. 2018 was a record year with 327.342 registered pilgrims! Most pilgrims are Spanish, though Italians, Germans, Americans and more surprisingly Koreans and Mexicans are also frequent camino walkers. There are now several different routes to choose from, with starting points in Roncevaux, Lisbon, Seville or San Sebastian, just to mention a few.

Many years after my literary exploration of the pilgrimage, we had an opportunity to do the walk ourselves. As we only had a week off and could therefore only do a partial route, I call our experience El Camino Light. As it is, walkers are of no obligation to do the entire way from start to finish. One can begin wherever one desires. To receive la Compostela, the official document proving that one has walked el Camino, pilgrims simply need to walk a minimum of 100 km or bike 200 km along the trails. (One can also do it on horseback or in a wheelchair.) Particularly for national walkers, it is quite common and practical to split the way into chunks, doing a portion each year depending on ones availability, family plans, wallet, physique, desire, or possibly, how many sins one has committed.

Speaking of sinners, though walkers are still called peregrinos or pilgrims, the reasons that most people take to the road now are quite different from that of the original pilgrims. Being the most important Christian pilgrimage after the ones leading to Rome or Jerusalem, the way was primarily shared by devout and repentant sinners. The road to Santiago attracted peasants and beggars, adventurers and dreamers, as well as nobles and royalty. One would also meet criminals whom the court had ordered to make the pilgrimage instead of serving a prison sentence. Doing El Camino was a dangerous proposition, as you also risked being attacked by muggers. And if you survived all the way to Santiago, you would face the challenge of getting back home - most likely on foot.

We prepared for our walk from our Ronda home, spending weeks on online research finding the best socks and the perfect insoles, as el Camino is all about the feet. Or more specifically, ones legs and ones pack. Whether one walks for a month, or a week, one basically needs the same things in the backpack, you just reuse the items more times on a longer camino.

Before our departure, a friend from Delhi asked me why my husband and I wanted to do El Camino, adding that Indian people often believe that they are the only ones making pilgrimages. I thought about it for a moment. Why were we, neither of us Catholic, attracted to doing this Christian pilgrimage? I told her that there were many reasons: our love of walking, history and the outdoors, as well as the challenge and the adventure. We wanted to approach the way like a walking meditation, doing it for friends who couldn’t walk the way themselves. We would dedicate our daily walk to a friend who was sick with cancer, a neighbour with a collapsed lung, and a pal with a diabetic foot. We would walk out if gratitude for being blessed and healthy enough to be there, and to be on this life's journey at all...

The day before we were scheduled to leave, our friend with cancer passed away, making us feel a stronger urge than ever to begin our Camino.

Spring is a glorious time of the year to travel, making a pleasurable 10-hour drive from the very south to north western Spain. Galicia displayed the most electrifying green landscape as we followed meandering roads towards our starting point, the town of Sarria.

We had chosen to stay in what they call pensiones, where we had our own room and usually our own bathroom. Though some might find this a huge indulgence, we felt the extra couple of euros per night were a worthwhile investment. We saw no need to suffer in bunk beds, while sharing room with 20 other pilgrims. After all, we were not doing this to repent our sins, as ours are far too many…

Each day, we walked about 20-30 kilometres, which is the daily average for most of the caminos. Since we didn’t have to hurry in order to get a bed in the next town (our rooms were booked in advance online), we could leave leisurely after daybreak, enjoying not only the walk, seeing where we were going without using head lanterns.

Taking our time, we discovered some magical creatures along the way. 

The designer in me went amok as we passed one stunning timeless stone barn after another, complete with black natural slate roves. The yards would have old farm tools, as well as a traditional stilted, wooden granary.

Otherwise, some of the more recent Galician architecture was not as impressive. Most buildings in the towns we passed seemed to have been slapped together right after the Spanish Civil War with little maintenance since. Though there were some lovely restored or reproduced homes using slate and stone, many recent houses had an Edward Scissorhands meets 1971 American Dream home feel. I regret to say, once a snob, always a snob…

Spring is still relatively cool and wet in Galicia, so we did not meet as many pilgrims on the trail as we would have had in the summer months. Being Semana Santa (Easter), we were happily surprised to see many Spanish families with younger children on the trail. (Almost 1/3 of the Santiago pilgrims are under 30.) We didn’t meet anyone talking in tongues or doing the Camino bare feet while whipping themselves, which one might expect after watching the 2010 Hollywood movie The Way. Our trail mates were quite ordinary people, happy to be there, enjoying the walk. Actually one of the most memorable things about el Camino was our trail-mates. Most walkers would greet you as you laboured along. As everybody was moving in the same direction, we would run into the same people at least every couple of days. If we didn’t know their names, we called each other by nationality. Hola Portugal. Como estás, Brazil? We became known as los Mexicanos, since my husband had the emblem of his former military college in Mexico on his pack.

I sometimes would ask our co-walkers why they were doing el Camino. A woman from Toronto told me she was doing is as a Social Media Cleanse. It was probably the best reason I heard, though most of the peregrinos had their mobile in hand to take photos, check out the next village, send WhatsApps to friends and to verify their mileage, calories or daily steps.

The youngest pilgrim we met en route was 6-year-old Amor. She walked with a huge staff, accompanied by her older sister, two cousins, parents and an uncle. We had great admirations for the youngsters and their brave guardians, taking to the trail as a family in a time when most kids get their ‘exercise’ through online battles. Amor would boldly ask us our names, where we came from and how old we were, which to her of course might as well have been from the Middle Ages. I never knew her sisters name, but I imagined it would be Paz, as what better companions to have on a pilgrim trail than Paz y Amor (Peace and Love)!

Walking anywhere these days except possibly in the jungles of Borneo one is bound to have to cross over or walk along a few sections of highway. We were grateful to find that most days we were on old farm roads and country trails. The Camino crossed ancient bridges and lead along beautiful moss-covered stone fences.

Each day we needed to get our passes stamped twice to prove that we had actually walked the way. Most frequently, these were stamped in hostels and restaurants. However, a couple of times we passed a ‘stamp station’, once in a chapel where a blind man urged the pilgrims to lead his hands so he would stamp the correct space. Another time, a former Romanian Paralympic athlete had set up a rickety table by a river, offering stamps against a symbolic donation. I didn’t really care if their stories and afflictions were true, as they offered a welcome diversion for road-wary pilgrims.

As far as The Way is concerned, the trails we walked were usually wide and fairly level, certainly compared to the rocky mountain paths we are used to in Andalucía. Most sections were well marked and decently serviced, passing villages with hostels and eateries every few kilometres. Even tiny hamlets would have a pilgrim shop selling beverages, rain covers, walking sticks, trail snacks and cheap Camino souvenirs. And then there was the occasional oasis…

As we had chosen the most frequented Camino Francés, we were hard pressed to get lost at all - unless, like me, one has a natural tendency to choose el camino malo or the wrong way. There were stone markers every kilometre, sometimes made into shrines by passing pilgrims.

In addition, there were yellow arrows painted on houses and fences.

Likewise, we could follow the symbol of the camino, the shell, which would be embedded into the pavement in more urban areas.

We still managed to do a few unintended detours and some rutas complementarias, but when you think about it, what is the right way anyway, especially in a land where all roads seem to lead to Santiago de Compostela?

Though the scalloped shell has been the symbol of el Camino since the pilgrim route began, it actually predates the way as the symbol of the Roman goddess Venus. If you remember the famous Botticelli painting, it was from this same scalloped shell that the goddess rose from the sea. Be this as it may, el Camino has become synonymous with the shell, which one can see dangling from virtually all the pilgrim packs.

No camino is complete without a bit of hardship, so of course we were bound to hit a storm. On day two, with a 30 km of road ahead of us, it began dripping, then falling and finally pouring down. Fighting windblasts and trotting in mud, our knee-length one-size-fits-all rain ponchos or chubasqueros came into good use. As I said, el Camino is all about the feet. In spite of all our preparations, I had forgotten to pre-wash some of my double anti-blister socks, so my heels became open wounds. But what would a pilgrimage be without a bit of pain and suffering?

When the rain eased up, the Eucalyptus trees released their refreshing scent, clearing our sinuses and spurring us on. At other times, the Eau de Camino would have quite a strong bovine aroma, as we passed farms and fields with the large Galician cattle.

The region, by the way, produces Spain’s best beef, so that even I who always order fish and vegetables would break down and have an enormous steak, cooked on a stone griddle, on day four of our walk. (This time. there was only meat on the menu...)

We knew we were near the end when we reached Monte do Gozo (Hill of Joy) from where we could see Santiago de Compostela at a distance. The city has spread out, so we had to walk through an extensive commercial suburb area with crossing motorways, loosing the sense of the pilgrim path until we entered the old town and finally could discern the tower of La Santa Apostólica y Metropolitana Iglesia Catedral de Santiago de Compostela. That was our roads end, or rather the Office of the diocese, where we would receive our final stamp of the journey.

Speaking for us, Santiago was a bit of a let down. Not so much because the cathedral was under construction and we could not see the famous pendulous botafumeiro incense dispenser at work, but because of the people. Being used to the warmth of the Andalucians, the Galicians we had met thus far had been polite, but not exactly overly friendly. Here in Santiago de Compostela however, many locals we met were downright rude. Not that we deserved applauds for our achievement, but we hadn’t expected an almost Paris-style coldness and disinterest. Granted, there are thousands of pilgrims passing through town, so locals might be fed up of seeing yet another backpacker, but pilgrims are still the main business of the town. Alas. I say no more.

What was special about El Camino was the walk, not the destination. Maybe I had felt different if I was Catholic, but to me, it was not a religious experience. It was a human experience. There was a special feeling of communion as we the pilgrims moved in the same direction. The daily walking, step ahead of step, hour by hour, sometimes in pain, intrigued me. If it weren’t for my blisters, I would have wanted to walk on, possibly forever. Your life at home did not exist anymore, all you could think about was the way and the road in front of you. 

On a more spiritual level, I see the camino as an analogy for life. We all go in the same direction. Whichever faith or religious belief we may hold, our final destination is the same. There will always be people before us and there will always be someone who will come after us. We can choose to walk quickly or slowly, but whatever speed we go at, at one point we will get to the end. Like it or not, when it comes to life, we are all on the same camino…