Life as a "pata negra"

Iberia

 After 14 days of touring the Iberian peninsula, it occurs to me that  I  might want one day to return  in another lifetime as the valued black pig,  the “pata  negra.”  Only I’d designate  it  “jubilada,”  for the Spanish word  “retired,”  hopefully making it safe from slaughter.

That idea may have only started off as a joke I made to my fellow travelers but I came to realize during my journey to the backroad inns of Portugal and southern Spain that the pig and the way it is treated is emblematic of what these Iberian folk value.  They take the small pleasures in life seriously, such as the nutty taste of a well satisfied pig that has been allowed to roam freely as it munches  itself into a fatty richness. 

An attitude replicated in the way I saw Iberians approach their days. Work, yes, but time also for morning coffee with friends and then afternoon siestas in a day that stretches well into the late night, try dinner at 10 p.m.  The entire day is used, not just focused on work.   

It also occurred to me that perhaps that laid back approach owes something to the area’s rich history.  The people are surrounded by remnants of a succession of cultures ranging all the way back to prehistoric to Roman, Visigoth and  Moorish,   to the kings and queens whose rule dominated Europe as they sent out Portuguese and Spanish explorers,  to 20^th century despots and finally present day governments.   All reminders that power can vanish and what turns out to be important  is how you can live today.

 The “pata negra,”  whose name reflects their black hooves, thrive in an area that stretches from eastern Portugal for thousands of acres of rolling pastureland dotted by oak trees into southwest Spain’s Extremadura and Andalucia regions.   Most of it is devoted to raising happy pigs and cattle.

 The area was surprisingly empty of humans, given the peninsula’s long history.  The pigs, believed to be a cross between a wild boar and animals first brought to the area by the Phoenicians,  are prized for their rich marbling, a function of  that seasonal diet of fat acorns. Some of them three times the size of any acorn I’d ever seen.

 Juan Pedro Alvarez Vacas,   the  energetic and enthusiastic Spanish guide on my Overseas Adventure Travel trip, said that food and freedom for the animals were the main reasons Spain had such good beef and pork.

In every restaurant, we found evidence of the pork harvest, the prized leg of the “Pata Negra,”  hanging above the bar from its black hoof as it air cured.   A tiny plastic cup was attached at the bottom to catch any dripping fat during the process which can take years.   The Iberian ham is thinly sliced on a special apparatus, resulting in wafer thin portions that highlight the reddish color and fat marbling.

Our group was first introduced to the famous specialty –  I saw legs of Iberian jamon costing over 500 dollars  -- at a midmorning breakfast.  Slices of bread were topped with olive oil, followed by pureed tomatoes and the ham.   I never ate anything so tasty in my life, the combination of the intensely nutty flavor reminiscent of acorns along with the melt in your mouth texture.

Further dipping was allowed in olive oil dribbled into saucers.   Juan Pedro said the Spanish require there always be a source for dipping.  At one point, he even led us to a restaurant that featured freshly deep-fried churros which we dipped into cups of warm thick chocolate.

          Bulls, too, enjoy pampered existences.   We visited the  ranch owned by matador  Rafael Tejada outside Ronda, where he breeds fighters for the ring.  Only the bulls he deems best suited get to lead the privileged life on his ranch,  allowed much like Ferdinand the bull to roam the oak tree studded acreage where black pigs also play.   Until the day they must show up in the bull ring.  A minute number of bulls win pardons, we learned, if they show noble courage during the fight.  One such bull already had a grandson who had also won a pardon.

We asked Tejeda, now 45, what were his thoughts when he stepped into the ring.  He joked, “What am I doing here?”  But, he said, he had no plans to retire soon.  None of the bulls raised on his ranch is  used in his own bull fights. 

The beef I enjoyed during the trip, presumably failed fighters,  was succulent, tender and juicy.  Unlike any I’d had before.  I had an aversion to U.S. beef but here I ate it all. 

Juan said in Spain you eat every three to four hours . ”It’s a sin to be hungry in Spain,” he said.   Yet, I saw few obese people on the trip.  Undoubtedly, they are aided by daily exercise,  a function of the steep walks up into old towns that were once fortresses in most cities. In Lisbon, built on seven hills, walkways all over the capital  were covered with small slithery tiles that only added to the precision required in retaining your foothold.

Not to shortchange the historic part of our tour.  In Lisbon, we visited monuments to the Portuguese explorers who ushered in the great Age of Discovery in the late 15^th century, including Vasco da Gama, who is buried in the Jeronimos Monastery.  He was the first to sail from Europe to India by way of Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, opening the connection between the West and Orient.

  Once we hit the road,  we stayed in the government-run  inns of  Portugal and Spain.  The “pousada”  where we stayed in the medieval Portuguese city of Evora was a former monastery, where we spent the nights in the old cells of the monks with all the modern conveniences.   Right next door was one of the best preserved Roman ruins, the temple of Diana.  Breath-taking in the early morning mist of a December morning.

 Not far way we visited another reminder of  the need to enjoy every day, the bone chapel in the Church of  St. Francis, where thousands of skeletons and skulls have been arranged along the chapel walls, ceilings and columns. The visitor is greeted by the message “we bones in here wait for yours to join us.”

In Spain, we stayed in similar state-run historic sites called paradores. The luxury hotels are located in castles, palaces, fortresses and other historic buildings in areas of outstanding beauty.  In  Carmona we stayed in a parador that had  been a fortress.  The thick walls looked from on high onto the river below.

 Notably our parador in Ubeda  was known for a poltergeist who was said to slam doors and play other tricks.  I said hello on entering my room, which was located next to an upstairs balustrade.   All night long I heard the wind grinding away in the outside corridor. One of my fellow travelers  was spooked enough to sleep with the lights on. For me just a hall light, but I did dream there were ghosts in that hallway, albeit in my dream state,  Disney-like conquistadores.

One of the most thrilling moments was our visit to the alcazar  in Segovia, the castle with foundations that date to Roman times, where Isabella and Ferdinand reigned in the 15^th century.  We stood in the very throne room where Christopher Columbus once knelt before her. The very same Christopher Columbus  who inadvertently discovered America.

In our journey to our final destination in Madrid, we made one troubling stop,  at the Casa Pepe, a roadside restaurant that has become a shrine to the former dictator Francisco Franco who died in 1975.   The owner has died,  Juan Pedro informed us, but his children continue the restaurant.  A surprising number of people were coming and going from the restaurant which sells endless trinkets honoring Franco.

Franco had the Valley of the Fallen built near Madrid before his death to honor the soldiers who fought with him in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s when he took over power.  Currently there is controversy over proposals to move his grave from there to Madrid.  Our guide said we made the stop at Casa Pepe for historic reasons  but that it made him very uncomfortable. He urged us not to leave any money there, noting that nearly every family in Spain still has  connections to lost fighters, including himself.

The country like much of Europe today faces immigrant flows and moves to the right.  Spain has also been holding corruption trials for years now.

The visit was too short.  Yes, I would like to come back to roam these rolling hills, the home of the “pata negra.”  My thanks to the pig.

But better than in another life, perhaps to come myself again as a human retiree, a “jubilada,”  to sit in a café, to spend long hours working on my Spanish, getting to know the place and its customs. My tour, a kind of snapshot of the back roads of Portugal and Spain, helped me understand a bit more of the character here.  One that I would like to know even better.