Borderland village

I was back down at El Portico for a couple of hours this morning to chat with people during the regular drop-in session. Then I went off to the station to buy a ticket to travel to Barcelona on Sunday afternoon but after I'd put some fuel in the car, thought I didn't have enough cash on me, so I drove home instead. After lunch, I drove out in the direction of town of La Senia, and visited the village of St Rafael which sits on the south bank of the riu Senia. 

The river flows under the porous limestone surface of the river bed rather than over it, but there's long been a bridge crossing the border hereabouts. On the north bank, the Catalunya side, is a hamlet called El Castello, equally as old. There's a water conduit running along the river bank. A history panel on this side of the river spoke about mills along the river line. I imagine these were wind driven, for pumping water to the surface and for grinding grain or olives.

The Parish Church of St Raphael seems to have been completely rebuilt to a modern sixties design. On another history panel was a photo of the old church building taken in 1957, not ruinous, but maybe in a poor enough state of repair to warrant a a new start. A commemorative monument in the placa nearby stated the the village only received its charter in 1917. Its original schoolhouse was re-purposed as the town's ajuntament. A public works information panel in the village spoke of a new school under construction, probably to replace whatever was built in 1917.

As I had only another hour of daylight left, rather than travel on to La Senia, I went south on a different road back to Vinaros, which took me to Traiguera, a hill town overlooking the N232 road from Vinaros to Morella. The town dates back to antiquity, and in modern times belongs to a free association of 22 municipalities in this cross border region area, with 100,000 citizens called the Taula del Senia. This exists to represent common economic and cultural interests of an area which is remote from the centres of Valencian and Catalunyan power and governance. Interestingly this area is similar in extent to the ancient historical region of llercavonia, mentioned in the mid 2nd century writings of Ptolemy, as is Traiguera itself.

I looked around the narrow winding streets with their three storey houses in the oldest quarter on the hilltop surrounding the Parish Church of our Lady of the Assumption, dating back to reconquista times. There was a tourist sign pointing away from the town to the Reial Santuari de la Mer de Deu de la Font de la Salut, in the mountains a few kilometres away, a local pilgrimage and tourist venue, where Mary is honoured with the title Fount of Salvation. As the sun was setting, there was no time to go there today, and indeed not enough time to see the whole village. There was lots more to see, as I discovered when I looked at the photos I took on my visit here two years ago. The last half of the journey home was again in the dark.