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Men shaped liked cannonballs, bars full of people who do not drink, firework spitting bulls and storms that wreck entire villages. These are the delights of the Mataraña region of Spain. Lost and forgotten in the Portals of Beceite almost as distant from the sea as it is from Barcelona, this place is as far from "fast food land" as you can get. Foreign tourists rarely visit here unless they are hopelessly lost. English is not spoken and, in many cases, neither is Spanish.
Valjunquera has gone
All viable villages in this area are wired for sound. We first experienced the system
when staying at El Convent, the only hotel in La Fresneda. On our first morning there
I went for a run before breakfast, as I usually do, and my wife went for a walk.
We met, purely by chance, at the point where the main street which leads up the hill,
branches off into the streets that lace the hillside. I was running down she was
walking up. At the moment of our meeting a loudspeaker immediately above our heads
crackled into life. Loud guitar music preceded some singing by a wailing Spanish
lady. Every dog in the village joined in. The howling of the dogs and the wailing
notes of the singer made us both laugh, the whole thing was a complete surprise in
this otherwise sleepy village. The short song ended with some more frantic guitar
music and then there was a brief period of silence, more crackling and then a very
serious male voice made a number of announcements. The smiles on our faces died away.
Something serious must surely have happened for an announcement to be made to the
whole village. Perhaps the water supply had failed or was contaminated. Perhaps the
electricity was about to be cut off. Perhaps the mayor had died. Perhaps there had
been some greater disaster which affected the whole world, something that we, in
our language-
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