Today was the first opportunity to benefit from the easing of lock-down restrictions in Ibiza's rural areas. Solveig drove over after finishing her shopping run mid morning, and I followed her back to their finca in the deep countryside north of St Antoni, a journey of about 20km from the chaplain's house. We stopped on the ascent through the hills so that Solveig could point out the trajectory of devastation through the forests, left by the tornado which hit the island six months ago. It's the first time I've seen damage of that kind on that scale.
Fabian and Solveig live in the commune of Sta Agnès de Corona, up a kilometre of bumpy track off the narrow winding road through the hills. It's a community of scattered farms, and the centre of the village is hardly built up at all. There's a restaurant, a bar and the traditional style of parish church with a flat roof, few doors and windows, and a two storey clergy house behind the sanctuary. Thanks to the flat roof the residents have a large south facing terrace.
The cool dark church is open again for private prayer, though not yet for Masses. Pews have already been marked with white arrows to indicate where people may sit at a safe distance between them. Sta Agnès occupies a colourful niche with baroque angels behind the free standing altar. I couldn't help telling Solveig about my pilgrimage to the catacombi de Santa Agnesi in Rome, with my local Roman Catholic colleague Fr Mike Healey, when I was Vicar of St Agnes in Bristol forty two years ago. I've always had a soft spot for her martyrdom story, a teenage resister of forced marriage with a passionate sense of the freedom Christ gave her in baptism.
Where the old high altar used to stand, in Sta Agnès church, the wall beneath the niche has been painted with a simple naive mural depicting hundreds of almond trees in blossom, this is one of the crops which flourish here in abundance. During the Civil War, agitators from the mainland came over and desecrated churches. setting fire to the old baroque altarpiece. Fortunately the priest was ahead of the vandals, spirited Sta Agnès away from the church and hid her in a traditional conical haystack for the duration of hostilities.
Eventually when the church was restored, Sta Agnès once more took pride of place, freshly painted and with her niche reconstructed and decorated in the way the priest had remembered it in times past. A lovely story. Sta Agnès is her name in Catalan, but in Castellano, I discovered, it's Sta Inez, which reminded my of Mrs Inez Smith, wife of Charlie Smith the bus driving NSM of the parish. Both were Jamaican, but I think she might have been a girl from Spanishtown Ja. After all these years, I join the dots and see a picture I didn't see before.
The house Fabian and Solveig live in is one of the oldest in their area, several hundred years old. It runs on solar electricity, with rainwater collection and waste water recycled to feed their orchard and vegetable. Rather than hack the building about to 'modernise' it, they decided to live with the original layout of rooms with low narrow doors and small windows, with a main sala opening out on to a courtyard through double doors (adding glazed double doors internally later, with a solid canopy for outside shade. A house with thick walls that stays cool and takes advantage of breezes, so important in the months of summer heat. The main concession to the desire for more natural light internally is to insert a glazed panel into the glass roof in a couple of rooms. It works well.
There's a swimming pool, where swallows like to dip and drink on the wing, and a giant fig tree all of fifteen metres in diameter, what a wonderful shady place! I was their first house visitor after two months of social isolation. Thankfully they had obtained broadband via landline which they had to dig a 100m trench for themselves., and it's old type copper medium, though fibre-optic should be with them soon. For many people in remote areas this will be a domestic life changer.
There are few cell network towers in such a sparsely populated area, so getting a mobile 'phone signal involves a walk to a vantage point, or else put up with slow wi-fi speeds. The pace of life is that much slower in any case, so maybe it doesn't make that much difference until government or business start to presume everyone has decent internet access. With every new technological development a new 'digital divide' emerges somewhere, either predictably or unexpectedly.
After Kaffee und Kuchen - vegan carrot cake with chocolate sauce to be precise, Solveig and I went for a two hour walk right up to the forestry fire-watch tower, and to the edge of the cliff overlooking a rocky bay which is actually quite close to where they live, but hidden from sight in their valley. The sea was deep blue fringed with turquoise along the shore. It was breath-taking in every sense, as an exhilarating wind came in off the sea to greet us. After a long slow stony climb through the pine forest, it was such a surprise to emerge so suddenly with a view westwards which at sunset might give us a glimpse of sierras on the Costa Blanca behind Denia.
On the way back down to the car, I learned about scarred tree trunks and pine resin collection, and was shown the abandoned sites of traditional Ibizan bee hives, small constructions of stone slabs with clay lined interiors and layers of pine needles for insulation. Also in the forest the still solid remains of a traditional lime-kiln. Quick-lime and charcoal were two of the islands export products from ancient times, apparently. There's so much to see, when you know how to look!
After a walk of nearly seven kilometres, we had lunch, huge doradas perfectly cooked in a smoke box with a salad from produce grown in the kitchen garden, followed by more Kaffee und Kuchen and most enjoyable conversation with two people who show what it is, to the best of their ability to develop a low carbon footprint lifestyle and still be rooted in the modern world. It involves them both in a fair amout of hard physical labour in the fresh air from time to time, but that must surely be preferable to paying out for gym membership to stay fit and healthy?
It was gone six when I made my way home. I missed a turning by the Mercadona in St Antoni that was confusingly signed (in my opinion), and was taken on a long detour through narrow streets until I could turn around and return to where I'd gone wrong. Nothing was lost, however, as it gave me a view of a part of town I wouldn't otherwise make an effort to visit. Cramped and ugly is a simple way to describe it. The kind of urban development the world doesn't need any more, never needed, in fact. It's what happens when profitability saps human reason.
Nothing could take away from the beauty of today's time en el campo, however. My photos are here
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