Blasts of conviviality
A red desert where the mountains end. The street as a center while words are rolling like bullets. The suburb as a motionless, confident mindscape. Proximity and human relationships as anchor of well being.
Thanks to: Ajar, Ivan, Ramon, Jesus
Recorded in: Arguedes, Bardenas Reales
LONG STORY SHORT
The iron peaks of the Pyrenees gradually crumble into unexpected canyons of mineral-rich soils and sands, the past fortunes of the Catalan and Republican countries embedded in these precipitous valleys.
We skirt westward along the mountainsides. In Aragon we encounter only dozens of birds of prey circling as high as the passes that our Dacia proudly climbs over. The first clouds have arrived, it rains all the way to Navarra, where we glide swiftly inundated by the splashes of huge trucks loaded with agricultural products, building materials and frozen foods. The peaks are no longer visible, nothing in these immense plains brackes the wind except long, horizontal hills lying among the tomatoes fields with a few villages sleeping on their backs. The sky changes again and the iron, in the mountains hidden under the rock, surrenders to the lashings that have insisted for millennia: there it is, the royal desert, reddish and yellow, streaked and crumbling. The peasants who inhabited its caves have given it away to military areas, a few tourists, and windy silence.
Maybe it’s the fear that this cold wind will take away your words, but Ajar, Ivan, and Ramon always speak loudly, very loudly, words roll, tossed from side to side at the bar hotel restaurant by the roadside. They serve Calamari a la Romana and tortillas. Workers come in at the end of work on big Geeps, kids on bikes, lonely old men and young girls in suits, drinking berry liquor, eating nice greasy sandwiches, playing slots, watching television or just to see who’s there. Salud to them, to their proud choice to stay where they are, cheerfully together, or perhaps terribly alone, we can’t quite tell, it may be because of this strange background noise papering everything, or maybe is just the wind.