Tag: Cebolla

Figs of Steel: 24 Hours in La Mancha 21

7:15 Death and Dying

We hung out to dry the towel with care on a clothes line in the patio. With the extreme heat and the low humidity, most homes don’t bother with a machine dryer. The climate does it for you and for a lot less, as long as the government doesn’t concoct a way of coming up with a tax. While I tended to the clothes, I listened to the local radio blare out over the garden, giving tips on how to keep holiday beach homes sand-free. That kind of radio talk, I thought, most certainly would discourage birds from feasting on the fruit. So, relieved to know that the food was safe from flying vermin, we sat down at the table for an evening beer and a chance to plan the rest of the day. The craft beer fad that had taken the world with money to spare by storm had now established itself firmly in Spain. Just about everyone I knew with five gallons of water on hand, a boiler and a handful of hops lying about had suddenly become a master brewer.

          “Try my new beer! Try my new beer!” It was so annoying. I’m surprised I haven’t keeled over from alcohol poisoning by now. On really hot days, I still preferred the mass-produced Madrid brew, Mahou, served ice cold. Most people from outside of Spain have never heard of it, and yet ironically it is the most widely sold lager in the country. Mahou (pronounced as in Chairman “Mao”) comprises about a third of all the beer consumed. The national total is around 40 million hectoliters, or about 8.5 billion pints of beer. That’s a 177 pints for every man, woman, child and infant. We should probably throw in the dogs too. And this is a wine-producing country, mind you. Drinking is big business, needless to say.

          After that advertising spot for which I will receive no remuneration, let’s move on. As Victoria sprayed down the terrace floor with water and cooled the air, we looked at our options for next couple of hours. Basically two came to mind: stay home and continue to drink beer or walk around the town to see what’s up. The former was tempting, but the latter was what we wanted to do. Cebolla may not have the stunning beauty of places like Santillana del Mar, Medinaceli, Urueña, Pedraza, Vejer de la Frontera, Albarracín, Morella, Ribadeo, Alberca, Viana, Ronda, Besalú, or Cudillero, to name just a few, but nor did a lot of places in Spain. In Cebolla’s case, other than its curious name, there is very little that would lure a visitor in from a strictly touristic point-of-view. It doesn’t take a seasoned traveler to reach this conclusion; the locals themselves will tell you the same. “Pero no hay nada aquí!”

          But in the end, that is exactly why I am inextricably drawn to them. I have a soft spot for them. Their plainness, their ordinariness, their thrill-less, frill-less world. Their quiet desperation. Small town life. It is what most places in Spain tend to be like. It’s what most places in the world tend to be like. Everyday worlds. Everyday living. Towns like Cebolla have managed to survive every major period in Spain’s history since the days the Emperor Hadrian –who happened to be from Spain, I’ll have you know. Didn’t that fact in itself make them deserving of our greatest respect and admiration? Well, that depended mainly on the weather.

          “I don’t know.” I pondered for a second. “Naw. It’s too hot. I think we should hang out.”

          “Come on!” urged Laura. “It’ll be fun.”

          “Honey, your understanding of what defines entertainment never ceases to amaze me. I don’t get a kick out of heatstroke.”

          “And your ability to sit on your butt for extended periods of time never ceases to amaze science. I thought you loved the Deep Spain?”

          “I do, but not in the deep heat.”

          She took my beer away and poured it down the sink. “We’re going. It’s decided.” Well, that battle was lost.

          “I don’t want to cause a rift,” intervened Fernando. “You can take it out to the pillory, if you’d like.” The pillory, or picota, as it is known in Spanish, was a large stone column usually placed in the center of town to exhibit punished individuals and, in passing, give the locals a taste of just what the full force of the law is capable of doing when it put its mind to it. In other words, in addition to showing off dangling bodies and rotting limbs, it also served as a deterrent for future crimes. Saying you had a pillory in your town was a major status symbol statement. That also may explain its phallic shape. Nowadays your town can do the same by opening a high-profile museum or hosting a tennis tournament, but back then, owning a granite post for public sanctioning did the talking.

          As one of the few surviving historic monuments adorning the town, the elders have gone to great lengths to preserve it. They just can’t think of the ideal place to put it, so it gets moved around every now and again. Currently it’s located on the side of one of the roads that lead out of town, where no one will ever notice it again. Someone, I tell you, needs to get into the tourist board and shake things up a bit.

          Anyhow, despite Fernando’s suggestion, I figured the dispute could be settled peacefully at home, so I replied.

          “Not necessary. I guess we can go around and catch up on the latest.”

          “There’s no such thing as the latest here,” chuckled Victoria. “But you go ahead. I have to stop in my niece’s house; don’t worry, dinner is ready, so when you come back, we can eat.” True to the standards of most Spanish mothers, the meal had been prepared hours in advance and was on standby for consumption at the snap of a finger.

          We walked out the door and looked around. Life began to stir in the pretty main square. Young kids gathered, hung out, hovered over smartphones, joshed and giggled. The youngest ones booted around a soccer ball, using the low wall that formed the periphery of the square as the boundaries of the pitch. The older ones shared Instagram pictures and videos and remarked on whatever was going on in their world. An older couple melded into a bench and quietly observed. Three retired couples had picked up a game of petanca (bocce ball) on the other side. The town was emerging and gearing up for the night, the same way every town in Spain was doing at that very moment.

          “You see that?” Fernando pointed to the damaged street sign high up on the wall in front of us. “What do you think of that?”

          “Vandalism,” I replied.

          “Nope. That’s history in the making. And it happened today. On this very day.” He went on to tell us about the now infamous Battle of the Law of the Historic Memory and the fall of one of the last symbols of Francoism in a tiny, forgotten street of La Mancha. He provided some details about the skirmish that morning between David and the workers, though doubtfully with the same intensity as the events themselves transpired. When he finished recounting the tale, he summed up with a “Now, don’t tell me nothing happens here.”

          “But you’re the one who always says that!”

          “But now we know I’m wrong!”

          “You’ve got me there,” I conceded. “Maybe I’ll take a picture of it. I’ll probably just delete it in a few weeks, but what the hell.”

          “Let’s take a selfie,” suggested Laura, revealing one of her favorite hobbies.

          “You want to take a selfie of a broken street sign?” I asked.

          “Of course. It says we were here at a historic moment in this town.”

          “It says that we’re bored out of our minds, that’s what it says.”

          “She has a point,” said Fernando. “This doesn’t happen often.”

          “Well, damn,” I cried out. “Now that we’re at it, why don’t we do a boomerang, or whatever they call it.”

          “Honey, you don’t take boomerangs of things that aren’t moving.” She looked at Fernando then back at me with pity. I sensed that would be on the receiving end of that gaze as I get older. “He wants to be with the times but he gets confused about these things.”

          “I’m very much on top of what’s in!” I protested. “I have a Google Drive cloud account and everything.”

          “If you want, Laura, I can do a surfing pose in front of the sign and sway back and forth. Would that work?” suggested Fernando.

          “That would be hysterical!”

          “What are you talking about?” I cried. “What does that have to do with the Franco period?”

          “It’s conceptual art, my friend. It has nothing to do with it. You decide what it means.”

          “Listen,” I balked. “We’ve taken just two steps from the house and I’m ready to go home. There’s a six of beer in the fridge.”

          They weren’t listening. Instead they were scrutinizing the picture and laughing with approval. “I have to post it,” said Laura.

          “Sounds great!” I agreed impatiently. “Now, can we go? I don’t want to miss anymore historic moments in this town. Apparently, they are a dime a dozen.”

          “Lead the way, sir. Lead the way!” He bowed.

          “It’s your town. You lead the way.”

          We took a left at the corner and headed up the street towards where the church was. The road has earned a degree of fame locally for its steepness, and I can personally assure its veracity. As you climb, there is a sense that you are performing severe penitence before mass. “Fernando, you don’t happen to have a cross,” I asked as I panted. “Just so I can get the full Calvary effect.”

          “Nope. But if you want to carry me, I wouldn’t mind.”

          “I’ll pass.”

          Half way, I paused to catch my breath and take a look around. My chest heaved as I looked down the hill to admire the distance we had progressed. At least 150 feet.

          It was at that very point that my eyes fell upon a message scrawled on the wall of a house to our right.

          “Now, take a look at that.” I was very pleased by my discovery.

          I’m a sucker for graffiti. I really am. I get a real kick out of wandering through the streets, especially the towns and villages of this country, and checking out what is going down on the murals and shop shutters. And not just the work of some local Banksy, but rather the everyday Juan García, normal kid, scribbling thoughts with poor penmanship and shaky spelling. They tell us a lot. These used to be local social networks of yesteryear, the ones that shared information before the days of internet. They may not have the impact they used to, but their presence persists. They’re probably the work of mostly young males, posting their opinions on the walls and roll-up shutters on the storefronts. Some want to rebel, others decry injustice; some demand passion, others bemoan unrequited love; some call a neighbor out for screwing them over, others simply engage in primitive trolling; then there are the artists, the creative ones who just can’t seem to find a canvass big enough or a gallery spacious enough to harbor their visualized emotions. All of them live out a longing to be anonymous and visible at the same time.

          They can be poetic and creative, but also just plain base. Crude. Short and to the point. Lacking finesse. But it’s their brevity, their terseness, their stark honesty that enthuse me. They are urban haikus. Rural epithets.

          I remember one day walking at the edge of a town in the province of Madrid, along an ancient wall separating me and a stunningly beautiful field of wild flowers and shivering white poplar trees with the proud Carpetano Mountains in the background. My eyes suddenly zeroed in on a harsh metal lamppost and spotted a word painted on it. Dried streams of paint slid down the tips of the letters. The paint was not designed for that surface. But there it was in all its glory: “Puta”. A word as isolated as an atoll. Incredible. “Puta” has a whole array of meanings. From “Bitch”, and “Whore” to even an exuberant “Awesome!” or an exasperated “Fuck!” It’s such a versatile word that it’s hard to judge from the context just what the author meant. That’s what good poetry is all about.

          As I caught my breath I read this new piece of literature to add to my collection. It was a real jewel:

Mi mejor amiga Lucía

(My best friend, Lucía)

That was the original text, at least. But it wasn’t exactly how it was worded anymore. More recent corrections had been made.

Mi mejor amiga guarra Lucía

(My best slutty friend Lucía)

Clearly there had been developments in the relationship between the author and subject from the original draft to the revised one. The change of heart not only added depth to the text, it raised a number of questions. Just why, for example, “amiga” was kept in but “Lucía” crossed out is a mystery whose answer I don’t have. Intriguing. Who wouldn’t find this tiny bit of street poetry worthy of a few minutes of observation and analysis?

Figs of Steel: 24 Hours in La Mancha 19

So, if Cebolla’s name comes from Arabic, does that mean the town was founded by the Moors? It certainly would follow, but the fact is, life there goes back much further. Cebolla as a human settlement probably started during the Roman occupation of Spain, known as Hispania at the time. It seems there existed a fairly prosperous villa nearby known as Los Merillos, which was located along a major road between the urban centers of Toletum and Emerita Augusta, today Toledo to Merida respectively. Roman roads were, as Robert Graves put it without a hint of ambiguity, “the greatest monument ever raised to human liberty by a noble and generous people.” Yes, that is, they were both admired and certainly built to last. The current national highway that traverses the zone today is essentially the same thoroughfare.

          The newcomers constructed their home near the Tajo River and chose this spot because the land was ideal for farming. It was also during this period that the foundations for what would later become the Castillo de Villalba (Castle of Villalba) were laid. Standing on high ground with an enviable east-west view of their beloved highway below, the fortress made perfect sense from a strategic standpoint. It would be both useful and used for centuries to come.

          The Romans stuck around for several hundred years until they eventually relinquished their grip on the Iberian Peninsula. That doesn’t mean, however, that they fully departed; undoubtedly, some may have returned to what was left of their collapsing empire, but it wasn’t as if there was anything back home to look forward to. Indeed, by the end of the 5th Century most were Hispanic-Romans, that is, inhabitants whose roots went back to the Eternal City but who were born and raised in the province of Hispania. These people generally stayed on. The only difference now was that there was no army available to defend them if things turned sour. And, believe me, they would.

          The power vacuum that arose in Roman Spain was filled by wave after wave of Germanic tribes. The Alans, Vandals and Suebi were among the first to make themselves at home. It would appear no Barbarian was left behind when it came to invading. Basically, if you were Teutonic and had an itching to occupy a distant land, Hispania was the place for you. Eventually the Visigoths, after being evicted from France by the Franks, muscled out the competition and turned most of the peninsula into their permanent residence, making Toledo their capital.

          That meant the power hub of these people was but a stone’s throw from our town of interest, partly explaining why the former village of Aldehuela, now a part of Cebolla, is believed to be of Visigoth origin. It also accounts for the valuable archeological remains from that period unearthed in Los Merillos.

          The Visigoths failed to dominate Hispania the way the Romans had (in all fairness, it was a tough act to follow) mainly because their leaders were constantly bogged down with internal fighting and busy staving off assassination attempts, often unsuccessfully. Despite more or less running the show for nearly two hundred years, their historical footprint on this land has often been overlooked, which is odd because they did contribute a couple of extremely important concepts that would have a lasting effect on this country: Catholicism and a primitive attempt at national identity. 

          Aside from those minor details, Visigoth control was destined to come undone and it ended the day the Muslims invaded in 711 and took over most of what is now present-day Spain and Portugal in pretty much a jiffy. Predictably, the conquest was the result of a civil war between feuding factions among the Goths. Before anyone could do anything about it, the Moors were thrusting into southern France and threatening to swallow up the rest of Western Europe. A veritable blitzkrieg. The only exception to the otherwise utter and complete subjugation at the hands of the Moors was a few enclaves in Asturias and the Basque Country in the north. It was from these tiny pockets of resistance that a slow (and I mean very slow) but steady comeback by Christian forces would be mounted. 

          In the meantime, the Muslims went virtually unchallenged for what must have seemed like eons. Pleased by the new and fertile land they had conquered, they began to make themselves at home, often occupying existing towns. Just like the Romans and Visigoths before them, the invaders settled in and around the lands of Cebolla, presumably gracing the town with what would become its definitive name. But that wasn’t all: they also provided valuable technological and agricultural knowhow, like hydropower, irrigation, Arabic numerals, math, medicine, improved techniques on leather and steel manufacturing, to name just a few. The contributions were vast and profound.

          Unlike other parts of Spain, little physical evidence of their presence can be found in Cebolla, at least above ground. Down below, beneath some of the homes, the town hides tunnels and caverns and ancient wells. And it is generally believed the current church of San Cipriano stands on top of the crushed remains of original structure: a mosque. The Muslims are also said to have reinforced the fortifications the Romans had built centuries before and turned them into the full-fledged castle it is known by today. They too saw the obvious strategic pros of owning a military base from that vantage point.

          As the Christian forces licked their wounds up in the impenetrable mountains of Asturias after the crushing defeat by the Moors, they swore vengeance, but making that a reality proved a more daunting task than they could have imagined. Pushing back the Muslims would require several hundred years and a lot of patience to achieve. King Alfonso VI, for example, would not liberate nearby Talavera de la Reina and its surroundings, including Cebolla, until 1083, a whopping 372 years after the Islamic invasion. Toledo, the former capital of the Visigoths and symbolic hub of pre-Islam Spain, was retaken two years later. Clearly, generations of local residents hoping for a swift response from the Christian strike force must have gone to their graves sorely disappointed.

          As the Reconquista (Reconquest) progressed, soldiers and inhabitants from the northern kingdoms of Leon, Castile, Aragon and Navarre began to move into the lands further south and either installed themselves in the existing towns or started new ones up all together. The newly arrived became, in effect, the frontiersmen of their day and for several decades were still helplessly susceptible to attacks by their eternal enemies. Little by little, though, the northern kingdoms secured the territories.

          The land around Cebolla came under the jurisdiction of the king of Castile, Alfonso VIII, but it fell locally under the protection of the members of the religious military Order of Calatrava in 1205, who occupied the Castillo de Villalba. Excellent timing by anyone’s standard since. Just ten years before, the Christian forces had been taken to the cleaners by a huge army of fierce Almohad Muslims from Morocco in the Battle of Alarcos, in the present-day province of Ciudad Real. It was an embarrassing loss. King Alfonso VIII had sent his cavalry into the heart of the Muslim line of defense. They were following by the king himself, who led the infantry. They initially met success, but the going was slow and the enemy was gradually forming a ring around the Castilians. Soon enough, they were surrounded by the enemy and swarms of arrows rained down on them, forcing them to hack their way out for dear life. It also didn’t help the fact the battle took place in the middle of the day on July 18th, when the insufferable summer La Mancha heat wore them down to mere companies of wilting warriors. You’d think someone would have thought of that before fastening on the armor and slapping the helmet on their head.

          Alfonso VIII managed to escape to Toledo, but much of his army had been obliterated. The ragtag remains negotiated its way out of a nearby fortress through the mediation of Alfonso VIII’s enemy, Pedro Fernández de Castro, yes, a fellow Christian and Castilian, who mingled with the Moors to obtain a political advantage over his rival. Such were the complicated twists of the Reconquista period.

          With the Christians in the midst of major internal fighting, the orders of knights in tatters, and much of La Mancha exposed, the Moors once again threatened to expel the Castilians from of central Spain. Fortunately for the king, the Muslim leader, Abu Yusuf Ya’qub al-Mansur, failed to capitalize on the victory and returned to Andalusia to recover from his own losses. Nonetheless, many castles and major towns surrendered, including nearby Talavera (and presumably Cebolla), but the big prize, Toledo, held on. For how long, no one knew. The potential for a cataclysm loomed. Should the Muslims return soon, the results could spell disaster for Spain as a whole.

          Sixteen years later, which is not a very long time in medieval warfare terms, Mohammed al-Nasir crossed the Straits of Gibraltar to finish the job. He didn’t get very far. At the Battle of Navas de Toloso, in the Andalusian region of Jaen, a consortium of Christian kingdoms, which this time managed to put aside their differences for once and pool together a sizable force to face the invader. This time, Alfonso opted for slyness as a tactic rather than a full-frontal launch, a sensible decision given the fact the Muslims were reported to have three to four times more troops. To do this, he counted on the services of a local shepherd named Martin Alhaja to lead the warriors through the rugged Despeñaperros hills and thus take the enemy by surprise. It worked, and the Spanish forces emerged victorious. For his excellent skills as a local guide, Martin Alhaja, was awarded the title of nobility “Cabeza de Vaca” (Cow’s Head) and his own coat-of-arms. It was an honor and form of compensation which probably requires some historical context to really appreciate because if it had been me, I’d be like, “WTF!”

          The Muslims would never again be a serious menace to the La Mancha or most of Spain for that matter.

Figs of Steel: 24 Hours in La Mancha 18

6:15 p.m.

One of the first reactions you get from a Spaniard when you mention the town “Cebolla” is a look of incredulity, as if you have just confessed that your uncle, the same one who taught you how to play Texas Hold ‘em, is now a drag queen. Cebolla in Spanish means “onion” and to say that you are going to visit a town called “Onion” provokes laughter because most have never heard of it and don’t believe there is a town with a name that reminds them of green salad and bad breath. They chuckle and say, “¡Anda ya! (Yeah, right!)” figuring I’m American and did not hear the name correctly.

          I don’t see what all the suspicion was all about. After all, there are quirky names for towns all over the globe. In the United States, you can drive into and order coffee in places like Intercourse, Nimrod, Lick Fork, Ding Dong, Coupon, Embarrass, Experiment, Hell, New Erection, and even Chicken (Alaska) where predictably there is a sign on the outskirts touting “I got laid in Chicken”. And let’s not get started with the British towns, where a traveler can visit and even spend the night in communities like Scratchy Bottom, River Piddle, Cockplay, Brown Willy, Nob End, to name just a lewd few. And it’s not only how it’s called, it’s how the Brits say it. I mean, they have that academic accent of theirs that sounds so official (when not officious) as they announce in all seriousness, “I was born in Twatt, but my mom’s from Upper Twatt.” And they expect me not to laugh.

          Spain has its share of witty names too. Places like Guarromán, which sounds like a Spanglish blend for “Dirty Man”, Montamarta (Marta’s a goer), Berga (Cock) or Villapene (Prickville) come to mind. Still, few Spaniards are aware of these amusing toponyms, which is why they just can’t imagine anyone naming their hometown after a bulb.

          Knowing my country’s love for idiosyncrasy, I was sure there would be at least one equivalent in the United States, mainly because there is a name for practically everything there. If you have a Burnt Porcupine (Maine), why on Earth wouldn’t there be an Onion, Kansas, for instance? But to my surprise, there is hardly anything at all. And what little there is leaves a lot to be desired.

          Ironically, the first direct equivalent uses the Spanish name. You could stop in Cebolla, New Mexico, but only if you want to. It’s a community in the north of the state, which possibly got its name from its equal in Spain, but it has never been incorporated and exists thanks to its unassuming population of 91. It’s basically in the middle of nowhere. My guess is that it’s probably the second-to-last place on Earth you’d want to be when your car breaks down in the middle of the night.

          Then you have Oniontown, New York, which just might be the first. Oniontown is a village with a fairly unenviable reputation for being a humble district steeped in inbreeding, extreme white trash poverty, and longsuffering drug and alcohol abuse. A veritable trident of disgrace, I tell you. It is located all but 85 miles from one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, New York, which goes to show that the United States continues to be a land of stark contrasts.

          Just like its sister community in New Mexico, Oniontown is not an official township but rather a rundown neighborhood on literally a dead-end street known as Onion Road, located within the limits of a municipality called Dover Plains. About a dozen years ago its derelict and grungy appearance earned dubious international notoriety thanks to a video filmed by a group of moronic college students who ventured into the area to gawk at and make fun of its disheveled residents. They posted their adventures online and it went viral. Many people were equally shocked by both the callousness of the unwanted visitors and the bumpkin lifestyle of the people who lived there, but my guess is that most watched it just to gawk, too. Human nature and such.

          The students probably deserved to have their asses kicked in, but got away with it. Rather than expose the residents’ dire situation to the rest of the world and trigger a call to come to their aid, their offensive behavior mostly just prompted more young and inconsiderate pricks to try and do the same. That’s usually what happens in these cases. Human nature and such. But it seems that the locals wisened up and made sure future intruders left with fewer teeth and a bone or two no longer intact. So I guess some justice was done.

          The residents prefer to keep to themselves and the police department has done its part to warn outsiders to mind their own business and respect others’ privacy. As they should. Oniontown goes about its business without the slightest desire to improve its situation, and I guess that is their prerogative, though I question how fair it is to deprive the coming generations of a chance for a better way of life. In any event, it’s safe to say that the good people of Cebolla, Spain, will not be seeking town-twinning with this community in Dutchess County any time soon.

          Ah, yes, by the way, they also say that the name “Chicago” is the Miami tribe word for “stinky onion”. I’ll make sure my friends from the Windy City are aware of that.

          Paradoxically, the town of Cebolla has nothing to do with the pungent vegetable, nor is the produce particular to those parts. You can find onions just about anywhere in Spain, and I promise you no one travels to this community from afar to purchase a kilo thinking they are taking home with them some of the nation’s finest. The name is actually a deformation of an Arabic word, or at least that’s what the experts think. The most widely accepted theory posits that it comes from “Yavayla”, meaning “hill”, which certainly makes sense since the town was eventually settled on a not-so-shabby plateau that looks out over the low-lying land around the Tajo River. According to this version, the unpronounceable word evolved into something that sounded closer to Spanish, “Zeboila”, and from there “Cebolla”. It’s a fairly common occurrence in languages when it comes to loanwords.

          That Arabic was the source language shouldn’t come as such a shock. After all, the Muslims did control much of La Mancha for hundreds of years and that’s usually enough time to make an indelible mark on some of the place names. The region “La Mancha” itself most likely derives from the same tongue, probably from the word “manxa”, meaning “dry land”, which that pretty much sums up the climate here in a nutshell.

Figs of Steel: 24 Hours in La Mancha 13

          Figs are a different story all together, as you would expect, and certainly more familiar. They share the same order in their taxonomic rank as the quince, though come from different families. They both have roots, trunks, branches, leaves and fruit, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

          Figs have been around a long time. And I mean a real long time. As many know, the Bible mentions it for the first time in Genesis, when Adam and Eve, upon realizing the truth of their nakedness, sew together fig leaves to cover their loins. In fact, it’s the first plant to be referred to by name. In 2006, a report came out asserting they are probably the first domesticated plant in human history, cultivated for the first time in Jordan around 11,500 years ago, possibly a thousand years before even wheat was tamed; it’s a place of honor the modern fig sector simply does not exploit enough for commercial ends, if you ask me.     

          Their fruit is recognizable to many Americans in the form of a pasty jam square wrapped in a soft but crumbly cookie known as a Fig Newton. The cakey snack has been around since the 1890s and is remarkable, even today, for its use of real fruit, a particular source of pride for its makers. It also apparently contains enough sugar to run a car, but let’s not go there.

          Pot-smoking college students between bong hits will swear by it when they tell you the name of the product was thought up in honor of Sir Isaac Newton to highlight the greatness of the invention, but the theory has been thoroughly debunked as urban legendry. The name for the fig roll actually comes from the town Newton, Massachusetts, chosen for no other reason than that it sounded better than “Fig Cambridge”, where the factory was actually located. I can see their point.

          The original owners of the company have long since stepped aside and let the big names takeover. First came Nabisco, who bought it out, along with just about every other blessed biscuit from America; then Kraft came on the scene and gobbled up Nabisco. That’s the very same Kraft which spent much of the end of the 20th Century wooing the world’s largest tobacco companies, RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris. Together they combined to generate an arsenal of the most toxic habit-producing food and smoking brands civilization has ever known. Few enterprises in history have done so much to poison the human body, and made a killing in the process.

          Nabisco still uses its brand name, but the parent company is no longer known as such; it now goes by a humdrum moniker Snackworks. Kraft has also been rechristened, and now goes by an even quirkier “Mondelez International”, and earns on average around 26 billion dollars. It holds about $63 billion in total assets, placing it somewhere around 70th in the rankings of GNP by country. That means its economy is heartier than some 134 nations. It’s a colossal company, to say the least. And yes, Fig Newtons still adorn our supermarket shelves, though the “Fig” part has been officially dropped because they also market different flavors. Their continued popularity is backed by their consistently upbeat annual sales performance.

          While not considered a major world supplier of the fruit, Spain does a respectable job in fig production. It’s currently second in the European Union and ninth overall in the world, producing somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 tons a year, though crop yield will predictably rise and fall dramatically from season to season. Most of the produce comes from the region of Extremadura to the west, but Cebolla has proven itself an important enclave, generating a yearly output of some 800,000 kgs. This explains the presence of a fig tree on the town seal and the way locals sometimes dub their home “Capital del Higo”.

          Regardless, figs are curious plants. To begin with, they tend to have fecund production cycles; many trees can pump out two crops a year. The first is called the breba crop, and it turns ripe in early summer. In Spain, they are known as brevas. Brebas are generally inferior in quality to normal figs but I know for a fact you can find them in the markets and supermarkets, usually in June and July. They are sold fresh, but they can also be dried. Then, just a few months later, the main crop appears and is harvested.

          Perhaps one of the most unusual characteristics about figs is their reproduction system. Fig flowers are different in that they appear inside the fruit. In fact, technically-speaking, the fig is not a fruit at all, but a bulbous-shaped sack known as a syconium –a word so uncommon it doesn’t even come up in my spellcheck. The syconium contains hundreds of these flowers which are pollinated through a fascinating yet bizarre procedure. It requires the use of specific wasps specially and genetically designed to penetrate the “fruit”. This is no fluke. It’s the result of a complex evolution of mutual codependency which has developed over the last 60 to 90 million years. Yes, just about the time when modern mammals began to appear on this planet for the first time and the last time my baseball team won the World Series. You could say they’ve had a very long-term relationship.

          The life of a fig wasp can be described more or less in one word: miserable. Males bear two main responsibilities once they are born. First they mate and then they bore a hole through the fruit to the outside in order to allow the ladies to depart comfortably. Then they croak. The females make the most of the escape route prepared by their counterparts and enjoy a brief period of freedom flying around the sunny countryside until they come upon another piece of male fruit to invade. At this point they must force their way inside the syconium. This is an arduous task whose success comes at a hefty price. In order to wriggle their way into the center where the flowers are, the female must exert such an effort that her wings are literally ripped off, making the mission that of no return. Once the eggs are laid, she too will die.

          The process starts all over. We can all hum the “Circle of Life”.

          Does that mean every time we sink our teeth into a fig, we are mashing away at hundreds of baby wasps? Is that what those crunchy things are? Hardly. Those pieces of fruit are not consumed, because they generally come from a tree called a caprifig cultivar, which specializes in allowing the wasps to breed. The resulting figs are not edible. The pollen from the caprifig is used to fertilize other varieties, though. On occasion, a wasp will get very confused and enter the wrong kind of syconium and unsuccessfully try to lay eggs. It soon dies and the enzymes from the fruit break down the insect until it is no longer recognizable. Generally. Even if remnants do linger, we are able to digest them without the slightest worry of injury or health issues. They do us no harm. Regardless, it’s a little fact I’m sure the sector would not like to highlight.

          Much of the figs that are sold in the United States do not need this complex form of pollination. The common fig relies on pathenocarpy (another word that makes my spellcheck raise its eyebrows in surprise), a process through which the fruit develops without fertilization. Seedless watermelons, grapes and bananas are three more recognizable examples of this system.

           Unlike the quince, fresh figs can be and are consumed and enjoyed. Its unprocessed flesh is soft around the edges, and ruby-red, milky and granular at the heart. They are especially refreshing on summer evenings. The dried version is probably what captivates the market, catapulting it to international fame, as well as into our cookies. This process is fairly straightforward and entails laying the figs out in the sun and covering them with a cloth to prevent potential fruit-seekers from swarming. Large operations will actually gather the thousands of pieces of fruit and line them up in long rows between the trees for several dates before getting scooped up by a tractor, sorted from the rest of the debris and sent to place for processing and packaging.

          Figs generally boast near superhero powers when it comes to healthiness. Nutritionally-speaking they contain tons of fiber, vitamins (like A, B, C and K), and minerals such as potassium, copper, magnesium and calcium. And the effects? They reduce, lower, control, ease, boost, enhance, improve and prevent just about everything that needs reducing, lowering, controlling, easing, boosting, enhancing, improving and preventing. They are some of the finest food nature can provide.

Figs of Steel: 24 Hours in La Mancha 5

The Law of Historical Memory, once passed, was off to a solid start until the conservative Partido Popular returned to power in 2011. Then procedures stalled. The new ruling party acknowledged the existence of the law but removed all funding, citing Spain’s ailing economy as the main cause, and effectively bringing progress in this department to a screeching halt. It wouldn’t be until the left-wing parties combined to take over the regional government that there was a renewed effort to execute the law. Cebolla’s time had come, and the long and short of it can be found in the minutes of the town council meeting on the fateful April day in 2017. They met in the usual place, a simple room decorated with practicality in mind. There was a solid wood table aligned in a U-shape filling up much of the space, rose pink curtains flanking the windows, flags representing the region of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain and the European Union in each corner, and in the center a royal blue banner with the Cebolla coat-of-arms stitched on it. The symbols which comprise it are two wolves on the right, next to a fig tree above two crossed keys. Symbols which on the surface are so unrelated, you’d think we were looking at a rebus.

          The debate started with some remarks made by the opposition party, which I assume was the Partido Popular, the nation’s center-right party. The speaker, Sr. Doblado Sánchez-Horneros, “wanted to know more about the basis for the changing of the names and wanted to express his concern over the potential problems the proposed changes might cause some of the residents of the town, since some residents will be affected by having to have their home address changed and, in some cases, their business address as well. Sr. Doblado Sánchez-Horneros went on to add that while he understood the reason for three of the new names, as they were the names previously used, he did not see the reason for renaming Calle Jose Antonio to Calle Castillo de Villalba. Why not Calle Santa Ana. That was its original name.”

          The mayor, Silvia Díaz de Fresno, replied that “this subject had been discussed on numerous occasions and that they have to comply with the law, but that they were aware that this might be a problem for some residents and therefore they didn’t regard it as a priority (the fact that they had waited ten years made that clear to me). She added that she personally was not offended by the names but due to the fact there was a formal complaint made by the president of the Protection of Historical Memory, which denounced the existence of a street called José Antonio, it was their duty to obey the law because the law is there to be obeyed. As for the change in names, she agreed…that the choice of names of the three streets to substitute Calle Calvo Sotelo, Calle Gran Canaria and Calle Comandante Sánchez Rubio was obvious because they were the original names of those streets before they had been changed, as indicated in the report prepared by a town clerk, but regarding the change for José Antonio, this is simply a proposal and that if you  (referring to the opposition party) have an alternative which is better, she would be more than happy to discuss it, mainly because this matter was of no special interest to her. She had originally come up with Calle de la Igualdad (Equality Street), because it sounded light and easy, but after discussing it with the town clerk, he suggested using a name associated with the town of Cebolla, but notied that because there already existed a Calle Barriada Santa Ana, the creation of a Calle Santa Ana might be confusing. So they came up with the Castillo de Villalba because the old castle is located within the town limits though many people associate it with (nearby town) of Malpica. That’s why we have these proposals, but if the opposition party can come up with a better choice, they have no problem with looking at it and, if need be, accepting it, because they don’t want to politicize the matter.”

          The bill was passed and the names approved. The changes are as goes:

CURRENT NAME NEW NAME
Calle Calvo Sotelo Calle La Froga
Calle Gran Canaria Calle La Nueva
Calle Antonio Primo de Rivera Calle Castillo de Villalba
Calle Comandante Sánchez Rubio Calle Los Frailes

The opposition party abstained from voting, which is what these groups normally do when they don’t want to vote against progress but aren’t willing to support the other party either.

          The street sign had finally been taken down, but hardly a soul seemed to care, except for the neighbor whose sleep had been disturbed. In towns like Cebolla the whims of political parties don’t impact their world very much. They have other pressing matters to tend to, like annual crop yield, rampant unemployment and urban flight. These are communities which on the outside seem impervious to the fast-paced world of the major cities, and to an extent they are. Cebolla rarely grabs national attention because one gets the feeling that hardly anything ever changes here. And yet, if you look closely, the outside world has managed to touch this municipality more deeply than one can ever imagine. To such an extent, you’d think you were looking at all of Spain itself.

Six hours later, a pair of visitors was racing towards the heart of this town at blistering speed unaware of the events which had transpired that very morning. Their lives would never be the same again.