EASTER IN GUAJAR ALTO

Time has a way of passing very quickly when you live in the mountains so that the early Easter of this year was upon us before we’d hardly recovered from Christmas.
In Spain, Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the most important religious festival of all and Guájar Alto, as with all other villages, towns and cities throughout the country, celebrates it with solemn processions through the streets to the church. Thursday and Good Friday are public holidays but there is no Easter Monday. Nationwide, it’s a very busy week with a great deal of traffic movement hampered this year by awful weather in the northern part of Spain. Here in Guájar Alto, March has been a month of glorious, summery days interspersed with unpleasant, windy spells which means that temperatures have fluctuated wildly. April can also be a very changeable month but with the arrival of May, we can look forward to calm, settled weather.
This year, the stewards responsible for organizing village events suggested an excursion into the mountains on Easter Saturday which turned out to be an extremely successful, enjoyable occasion. Those of us with appropriate vehicles turned up at the appointed time, 0900, to pick up passengers but, this being Spain where, on principle, lateness is the norm, it was almost an hour later, with Mari-Carmen and Antonio from the village on board, that we eventually set off.
In a slow-moving convoy of vehicles, each displaying an orange ribbon to complement the orange scarves, worn scout-wise by the stewards, we climbed northwards out of the village, stopping at intervals to get out to admire the lovely views. It was a fresh, sunny day of clear, brilliant light and an intensely blue sky. Eventually, we reached the track which runs through extensive pine forests inhabited by herds of deer. The forestry people have recently carried out a great deal of work and the thinning out of trees has allowed light in which, in turn, has produced a profusion of wild flowers. Many parts are carpeted with leaves of what I think will be asphodels - tall plants with spikes of small, white flowers- or possibly St. Bernard’s lilies, which are very similar in appearance. Whatever they are, they will certainly be spectacular when they come into flower and so I intend to return in a week or two, depending on the weather, to identify them.
The track through the forest seems to go on forever but, at last, at a height of 1,400 metres, we reached the road called Camino de Cabra (Goat Road) which is the old road from Almuñecar on the c oast to Granada. Here, looking through the pines, there is a beautiful view of the Sierra Nevada. Turning on to the road, we found ourselves in a completely different landscape with vast, rolling hills of almonds and olives. We stopped at a roadside bar for refreshments where we were served the local wine and delicious tapas that included wild boar stew and an elaborate potato salad. We were also able to purchase jars of the local honey. Afterwards we drove a little further along the Camino de Cabra and returned through the pine forest by a different route which took us to open countryside beyond which was a vast, panoramic view of the Lecrin Valley, with all its towns and villages, dominated by the towering Sierra Nevada. We wound our way onwards until, eventually, we reached the spot where we were going to have our picnic, on the northern boundary of Guajar Alto.
The invigorating mountain air had given us appetites which was just as well considering the amount of food everyone had brought. As usual, the homemade village wine was passed around and food shared. We had a big bag of broad beans from our vegetablr garden, picked that morning, which met with much approval because the Spanish love to eat them raw. The Spanish - especially the women - adore sweet things and so the chocolate-coated almonds we’d brought especially were also appreciated. In Spain, when you are invited to someone’s house, it is the custom to take not only beer or a bottle of wine, but also some kind of sweet confection.
After the picnic we set off again through the mountains along a winding route which would eventually bring us back to Guajar Alto. As before, we made frequent stops to admire the wonderful views. I think now until mid-May is the best time of year to explore the mountains simply because the wild flowers are so lovely. There are poppies, marigolds and marguerites in their myriads as well as wild pinks, lavatera and snapdragons; bushes of cistus, with pink or white flowers, cascade down the steep sides of ravines. Overhead, the eagles glide, always a thrilling sight.
It was early evening as we returned to Guajar Alto and the village was deserted apart from one lone soul whose Easter Saturday had evidently been celebrated so well that he’d staggered out of a bar and passed out in the gutter.