Maria and La Rosa del Saffron
En 1962, cuando tenía 18 años, María Jiménez trabajaba de asistenta (“de moza”) en una casa de Munera, un pequeño pueblo castellanomanchego de la provincia de Albacete. Por allí empezó a pasar, haciéndose el encontradizo, José Martínez, de 20. A saludar, decía, “pero poco a poco”. Cuando empezaron a salir, él tenía una bicicleta que hacía muchísimo ruido y, en lugar de la calle Mayor, la principal del pueblo, prefería circular por la calle Santana para no montar escándalo. Pero la calle Santana era más solitaria y estaba peor iluminada, y a María le aterrorizaba que, al llevarla por allí, José le quisiera dar un beso. “Y cómo sería el ruido de la bicicleta infernal que al final me convencía de cambiar de calle. Eso sí, se portaba muy bien conmigo”.
They married at age six, there was no honeymoon (there was no money or time) and after three days they bought this house “foreleven.000 hard ”, Maria (77 years old) remembers sitting in the living room of that home, a low house on San José de Munera Street (about 3.500 inhabitants) with inner garden in a space that, over the years, has been growing until it is a property of 600 square meters, including a small land.With her is José (79 years old), retired mason, active farmer.
On TV, as in thousands of houses in Castilla-La Mancha, Ramón García's program is placed, in company, of regional television."A program," says the summary of its website, "which aims to help end the loneliness of the Castellanomonchego.A problem that, today, affects thousands of people and that is a great concern in the society of the 21st century ”.Every afternoon the space approaches the households of the community "so that people who are alone manage to end their loneliness".In company it is a religion for many people who, especially in winter, when the cold begins and dusk at six, has no more accompaniment than that of radio or television.And in this house populated with portraits and photos of the two children and the four grandchildren of the couple (in the fridge and also at the table, between the transparent glass and the wood), Ramón García is presented every day to make lifeLess rough."I'm going to that program tomorrow," says Maria suddenly.
The two, José and María, have received on the street the journalists of El País with the most beautiful phrase with which they have ever received them, almost the beginning of a novel: “You are those who want to know everything about the rose".Especially since it is a real phrase: the two journalists want to know everything about the saffron rose, the plant that Maria cultivates at home.On November 5, at eight o'clock in the afternoon, his grandson Pedro Varea hung a tweet with a photo in which Maria is seen by the saffron rose and became an instant success."My grandmother was monding pink to get saffron and told a woman" Pass them to my grandson, who is a journalist and put them in a newspaper "."And I'm sad because I don't have that power, and I look for a newspaper that wants to cover my grandmother for free to make her happy," Varea, collaborator of Digital El Salto.eleven.000 retweets and 60.000 I like it later, it can be said that Varea not only has the power to get her grandmother in the newspaper, but to take her to one of her favorite television programs."He has called this house everyone.Even outside Spain.I do not know what is that of Twitter or anything, but I have often taken away: how many people have written on the Internet!The family, the neighbors, the journalists, ”says María.
"When we got married, my father gave us a sazafranal.Two celemines, which are almost medium bushel, ”says the woman using old castellana agricultural unity measures.Now she does it alone because the garden is small, but at that time 20 kilos of saffron could get to get.“My father sold it, of course: it was azafranero.Some lords of Albacete came to buy it and they also bought the Moors to make clothes dyes ”.
The ‘Red Gold’
Once the rose is mondon and extracted the saffron, it is taken.Maria crushes him with the mortar and uses it usually in her paellas, cooked and stews.José, in the private garden, takes out the rose out of the earth, cavando next to her.From that plant, of six large purple petals, the bulb of which is born - abolla of saffron will be used, of which the marriage has tens stored in a shed - and María will move to remove the stigmas from the flower, the so -called red gold dueto the beauty of its birth, its particular use and, above all, the price of this spice: between 8 and 10 euros the gram, between 8.000 and 10.000 euros a kilo in retail sale.
It dusk in munera and a mill, along with two sculptures of Quijote and Sancho Panza, cuts the orange sky.This year, the lawyer Francisco José Valera and the cartographer Álvaro Anguix published an essay in which they defend that Munera is the place of La Mancha whose name did not want to remember Miguel de Cervantes in the first lines of the most famous and influential novel of thehistory.The alleged revelation caused a debate that leaves a conclusion: the most famous place of universal literature continues to be unknown.It can be munera, it may not be.Today Munera is one more town that supports the unstoppable stampede of empty Spain.Not Maria and José, who saw their brothers, their children and grandchildren leave, all to look for "another life," they say.They were born, live and die here.In a house for which they have walked during confinement, saved by the inner courtyard, telephone and television;In a place where a cherry tree, a rose bush, a grenade, a loquat and a laurel flourish, and where a few roses of saffron are planted, because most red gold, which gives off a hypnotic smell, has it in a fewjars that open for great family meals.
In those meetings, such as the Christmas ones that are coming, José uses an oven built by him in which to make bread, lamb or sweets.Maria, before saying goodbye, teaches a little coal, one of the last coals collected by her Azafranero father, who later was a coal, and that she keeps as she keeps many words, a memory and a world in slow extinction.José, meanwhile, opens a huge garage in which he keeps all kinds of machines, tools, cachivaches, old motorcycles...Also the bicycle that for 60 years forced both of them to deviate through a darker and less busy street?Man laughs.
