Your ordinary everyday stories
JIMENA DE LA FRONTERA

There are some interesting placenames around. I once drove through a village in Spain called Cabeza de Buey (Head of Ox). It was a nice village, as Spanish villages usually are, but there was nothing exceptionally memorable about it except its name. But thinking about names of places reminded me of another little vignette in my memories of Spain.

When I was 26 my wife and I spent several months in Madrid teaching English for a living. During the summer holidays we hired a little SEAT car and went on a tour of the south of Spain. As it was 1974 (the second last year of the Franco era) some of the little villages off the main roads were still very isolated and hadn't seen many tourists or much of 'modern' life. These were our favourite places.

One such place we visited, in the province of Seville, was Jimena de la Frontera. It was not so far from Jerez de la Frontera, home of that famous fortified wine that we know as "Sherry". (Once upon a time in Spanish the -j- [in earlier times written as -x-] was pronounced like the English -sh-. Hence Quixote was pronounced /kishote/ and is still Quichotte /kishot/ in French). The "de la Frontera" indicates that at one stage it was in the vicinity of the border (frontier) between Christian Spain and the Moorish (Islamic) Kingdom of Granada, which finally fell to Spanish control in 1492.

As we approached the village my wife was feeling tired and didn't want to look around, so I went alone. I parked the car under a huge eucalyptus of the type which abound in Spain. The biggest and healthiest gum trees I've ever seen were in Spain (and Gibraltar!), but unfortunately most Spaniards believe (or did then) that eucalypts are 'un árbol californiano'. (But then again pizza - not very common at that stage - was also generally regarded as an example of 'cocina americana' - and indeed, maybe they were right).

The village was at the edge of wooded hill, which I was soon to discover was the home of the 'jabalí' or wild boar. It was the typical village of narrow streets, cobble-stoned roads, stone buildings (some whitewashed, some not) with the red Spanish roof tiles, a bit different form the standard Australian type of roof tiles. I walked past an old abandoned mosque. This is no novelty in the south of Spain, and some of the mosques have even been turned into churches, like the famous cathedral of Córdoba. But this mosque looked as if it had sat derelict since 1492, and quite possibly it had.

I  had my eye on a little bar that looked interesting, but between me and the bar was a very wolfish-looking dog. I couldn't tell whether he was tied up or not. I walked out onto the road to stay a few metres away from him. As it happens, he didn't move or bark, but he followed me with his eyes. I tried to read the message in his eyes. Fortunately for me I think it said something like "Don't bother with this skinny foreigner. He probably tastes strange anyway!".

I  entered the bar and ordered a sherry. (Not my usual tipple, but when in the neighbourhood of Jerez...) I noticed the local men (yes, all men) were tasting something and commenting on it. I asked them what it was. The answer: jabalí. I asked, was it good? The answer: the barman hacked a piece of the boar's leg with a knife the size of a machete and stuck the knife (jovially) under my nose with the meat skewered on it. "¡Cata!" ("Taste!") he said, in a gravelly voice. I obeyed. It tasted, well..gamey. But OK.

"Muy rico""Muy rico", I said. ("Very tasty.") Nevertheless I thought a quick shot of disinfectant (jerez) in the mouth wouldn't go astray - plus I wanted to erase the flavour. I hesitated as I reached for the little sherry glass. Will they think I'm insulting their jabalí? Oh well, I'll take my chances. I skulled the sherry. A murmur of approval went around. I needn't have worried - it seems I had hit upon the local custom and had done the right thing.

That's all, nothing spectacular happened. Just another pleasant memory of a country that I fell very much in love with.

Gintis Kaminskas
Canberra, Australia