Towns of Jaén, Spain: Albánchez de Mágina

Andalusia is another world and any of its communities, say for example Jaén, can be its prophet. In Jaén located the writer and researcher Juan Eslava Galán, the place where the Visigoths had hidden the enigmatic Solomon's Table, once his empire collapsed with the Muslim invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.

The other two places, whose tradition also gives them such privilege, would be the famous Hercules Cave, in Toledo and the brilliant Medinaceli - the Muslim Medinat al Salim, the City of Heaven or the City of Solomon - Soria pearl, where it is supposed that He was buried, in a secret place, still undiscovered, the caudillo Almanzor, whom in the Middle Ages they called with the overwhelming name of 'the scourge of God'.

But Jaén was also a 'hot' zone in terms of sanctuaries built in honor of the Great Mother and the presence of enigmatic Neolithic monuments, there is the testimony, collected in dusty bundles, of the dolmen on which its lavish cathedral was built. It is not surprising, with these data, that once this territory was reconquered, the military orders would go to the fray to see who was left with the best part. The best stops, of course, were Calatrava and Santiago.

Apart from the penetrating fragrances of orange blossom, of carnations or of thoughts or pelargoniums that give a note of colorful Byzantine to the balconies and windows of their immaculate villages, the aroma that is inevitably associated with Jaen, is none other than the penetrating odor to pendentive, that springs like a vaharada of its infinite fields of olive trees.

The olive tree is for Jaén, what the holm oak or holm oak for Extremadura. What comes to mean, that the wonderful liquid gold that is its oil has such an extraordinary quality, as to be considered the largest producer of the best pure virgin olive oil in Spain.

And if we add to this your quality certificate, we will not find a better designation of origin, than that of the Sierra de Mágina.

Like any other sacred place, the Sierra de Mágina has a well-deserved reputation as another Peninsular Olympus or forbidden kingdom, where the first Christian missionaries surrounded that legion of mythological creatures that lived around, like the legendary 'juancaballo'.

Curling the curl, it could be said that the 'juancaballo' was in this hemisphere, what the gentiles or jentillak were for the Basques, those belligerent children of Andra Mari who in the mountains of Valcarlos and Roncesvalles thwarted the cream of the army of Charlemagne; that is to say, a kind of giants that compensated or harmed the good Christian, according to the wind.

And you can believe that in this imposing Sierra de Mágina, the wind blows with the complicity of places that have something to hide. So, do not be surprised if I tell you that when he plays the herald and lets hear that plaintive moan that seems like the sad song of the pipe of the old god Pan, in the same way that it happens in other sacred mountains, like the Monsacro Asturian, the highest peaks sulk and suddenly covered with a natural scarf, which is nothing but a persistent haze.

Generally, it does not usually go beyond this point. But sometimes, as a matter of pious commiseration towards the good people of Albánchez, the fog extends to cover it almost completely, as if it had the hidden mission of confusing the 'juancaballo', making him roam the top without finding his way that goes down to the homes of men.
This village, which rises above itself like a Jacob's ladder or road of angels that pretended to connect heaven and earth, is Albánche de Mágina.

Like any other Andalusian town consecrated to the White Dove, the hurtful splendor that springs from the facades of their houses, would seem to be the result of a sortie of the Queen of the Snows. Metaphors aside, it's about lime. Lime and plaster are to the Andalusians, what the clay to Castile and the tile to Talavera de la Reina.

And the inhabitants of Albánchez, apart from the essence of scallop that slides down the furrows of their foreheads when they work the olive tree, carry the lime as enamel on their nails and the plaster of industriousness in the soles of their espadrilles.

Above Albánchez, in that place where even the eagles begin to feel dizzy, a castle that is polished overlooks a horizon alone, where the enemy banners no longer fly. His romantic loneliness, his unprecedented melancholy recall that young lieutenant protagonist of the excellent novel The Desert of the Tartars, by the Italian writer Dino Buzatti, eternally perched on the walls of the fort, scanning an empty horizon waiting for an enemy that never ends to arrive.

That, in a certain way, is Albánchez de Mágina: a white town, that dreams, that waits and that sees the life to happen with that sweet melancholy of a time - paraphrasing to Borges, but without copying to Borges - that is a past that is I presented; that it is a present that is both future and that it is a future, which in the end is once again past.

[Hospital de la Fuenfría, Cercedilla, Madrid, August 6, 2018]

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