Our last day in Escuela

On our last day of school, the teachers threw us a party. They cooked Spanish dishes like Empanadas and Spanish Omlettes, and invited our families to come join the celebration. It was a sad but fabulous way to spend our last day in Spain.

A shot of the spread before students and families arrive.

Enjoying the feast!
Charlie and Carlos (Liz's little brother).

American and Spanish students.

Students, teachers, and families. Adios, Espana!

Medellin

Senora Fiegl invited us to visit the city of Medellin for a day on our second weekend in Spain. We toured the city, which is the birthplace of Hernan Cortes (one of the conquerors of Mexico), and later spend a relaxing afternoon with her family outside of town. Thanks to Charlie for these photos.
The main square in Medellin. The city itself isn't very large, but it has a rich history. Here you can see a statue erected in honor of Cortes. You can see the castle overlooking the city in the background. The city was named after the Roman general
Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius who founded it as a military base for his operations in western Iberia. It was originally called Metellinum. In addition to being the birthplace of Cortes, Medellin was also the scene for one of the great battles of the Pennisular War in 1809, as well as a major UFO sighting in 1974.

A shot of the castle outside the city.

When we got up to the castle, there were archaeologists working a the base of it. They were in the middle of excavating what seemed to be part of the old city at the foot of the hill. To the right of Senora, you can see an old church that they excavated and restored. The castle and the grounds were closed that day, but the workers allowed us to go up and take a look around the outside of the castle.

A doorway excavated out of the side of the hill.

A shot of the renovated church and archaeologists from the castle.

On the castle.

The main church in the city.

On the way home. :)

Pedro's Coins

The Principal of our host school, Pedro, is an avid coin collector. Specifically, he collects Spanish coins, some of which are over 2000 years old! He was nice enough to bring them in to show us and give us a little history to go along with it.
An example of some of the thousands of coins Pedro owns. He says that he's been collecting them since he was a child and tends to find a lot of them on eBay.

A page out of Pedro's massive book of coins. These are some of the oldest, dating back to almost 100 B.C.

A coin from the time of Agripa, dated around 4o B.C.

Below is a coin from the rule of Tiberius, dated around the time Jesus of Nazareth was a teenager.

Animal Sanctuary

One of our day trips was to an animal hospital and and sanctuary, about an hour outside of Caceres. This sanctuary mostly looks after raptors and birds of prey that have been harmed in the wild, usually at the hands of humans (poisoning, target practice, etc.). Here they treat, rehabilitate and release the birds (and other animals) back into the wild. There were many animals there that day and it was a fantastic opportunity to get a close-up look at some of Spain's indigenous wildlife.

At the beginning of our visit, waiting for our guide to arrive.

In the back of the sanctuary, where the animals are housed (mostly outside). In the bottom left corner, there is a small fawn running loose. The fawn was found after it's mother had been killed.

Walking through the sanctuary. This is a shot of a mongoose home.

Our guide telling us about one of the sanctuary's inhabitants.

This guy was found flopping on the side of the road. When he was brought in, it was discovered that he was born with no eyes. Animals like this generally stay on as permanent residents.

Room where all the food is kept for the animal residents. Most of it was live. :)

View from our trip back down the mountain, where the animal sanctuary is located. It was a long walk up and down!

Fruit growers strike

On one of the last days we were in Caceres, the Spanish Fruit Growers staged a strike in the main plaza. Their complaint was that they were recieving too little money from the government for their fruits and vegetables. And the large companies that were buying the food from the goverment were selling it at a profit that was way more than the growers were getting in the first place. From what I understood, their claims were very legitimate.

The way they staged their strike, however, was really interesting. For one day, The Growers brought all the fruit and vegetables they could down to the plaza and created a mosaic that spanned the plaza, as well as the courtyard in the Old City. They kept them on display for one day. The next day, they sold everything from the mosaics at the prices that they receive from the Spanish government. This way, the growers got the word out on just how badly the government was stiffing them. They still got paid the same amount, but they generated awareness and proved to the government that they could get just as much, if not more money from the average citizen for their food.

I've never seen anything like this. See the pictures below for a better idea:





This is a tent The Growers set up on the far side of the plaza. Here, people could sign petitions stating that they support the strike and protest the menial pay The Growers were receiving.


Here is a ground shot of the largest mosaic. The tent is behind me.

Below: A close-up of a corner. Delicious!

Beside the St. Mary's Cathedral in the Old City. If you look closely, you can see this is a map of Europe. Clever, eh?

A shot of the plaza from the Old City. Truly spectacular!

The city of Caceres

Caceres, the city itself, has an extraordinary history that is almost perfectly preserved within the ancient walls of the Old City, or Ciudad Monumental. On two different occasions, Gemma took us on a tour of this incredible part of the city. It was great to have Gemma as a tour guide because her knowledge and enthusiasm is almost bottomless. She spoke mostly in Spanish and so my comprehension was probably not as good as everyone else’s, but here is a brief history, with a little supplemental help:

From http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/:
“The origins of Caceres can be traced back over 25,000 years to the times of cavemen from the Paleolithic age.”

There are caves nearby called the Maltravieso and El Conejar Caves, which contain pictures dating back to the late Paleolithic period.

From http://www.spanish-fiestas.com/:
“The rich, historical diversity of Caceres involves such diverse cultures as Celts, Romans, Visigoths, and Arabs.”

From http://www.spain.info/:
“Originally called Norba Caesarina, the city of Cáceres was founded by the Romans in 34 BC. However,it was not until the arrival of the Moors and renamed Quazri (from which Caceres‘ modern name is derived) in 12th century that the city enjoyed its era of greatest splendour.”

According to Gemma, the Romans settled here and lived for many hundreds of years. However, Caceres was abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire and fell into ruin with the occupation of the Visigoths. The Moors traveled up from Africa in 711 and claimed it as theirs, tearing down much of the old city and rebuilding it to their own design. War between the Christians and the Moors continued for the next 700 years.

“In 1227, the city would pass into Christian hands upon its reconquest by Alfonso IX of León.”

Over the next few hundred years, Caceres stayed in the hands of the Christians, but feuding broke out between different royal factions. Both sides claimed rightful rule and local nobles took sides. By the 15th Century, Isabella I won her claim to the throne and punished opposing nobles by “cutting off the tops of the towers of their respective house-fortresses” (a symbol of nobility and wealth, of which there were 30 at the time), effectively humiliating them in the most public way. At the time, this was considered the most degrading insult and was a very vicious and unusual move on the part of Isabella I.

It was also about this time (1492) when the Spanish were discovering America that the Jewish population was expelled from Caceres, effectively eliminating almost one-third of the population of the city. However the Jewish population had a major influence over the city and it can still be seen in buildings in the old Jewish quarter, built in the 15th and 16th Centuries.

From http://www.bookrags.com/:
“Caceres flourished during the Reconquista and the Discovery of America, as influential Spanish families and nobles built homes and small palaces there, and many members of families from Extremadura participated in voyages to America where they made their fortunes.”

From http://www.spain.info/:
“The gate known as the el Arco de la Estrella affords access to the area of the city enclosed by its wall. This entrance, the work of Manuel de Lara Churriguera, was built in the 18th century to replace the previous Puerta Nueva, which dated from the medieval period.

Once inside the medieval quarter, there are palaces and ancestral houses to be seen at every turn, which can be easily identified by the presence of family coats of arms. The Plaza de Santa María is surrounded by several palaces. One of these is the Carvajal palace, which was built between the 15th and 16th centuries, later to be refurbished in the middle of the 20th century. At the centre of its picturesque, Renaissance courtyard there stands a thousand-year-old fig tree.”

We got to take a good look at this tree, which still bears fruit. It was incredible!

“Beside the house stands a 12th century round tower built by the Moors.”

Interestingly, at the highest part of the tower grows yet another fig tree (presumably an offspring of the original in the courtyard) right out the side of it. The picture I took isn’t the best, but you can sort of see it.

“The square is completed by the Mayoralgo Palace (16th century), the biggest in the city, with its interior stone, pointed-arched courtyard and the Episcopal Palace. The latter has two façades, one dating from the 13th century, with a foiled arch at its entrance, while the other Renaissance façade is adorned with bossage arching.”

Even on two official visits (and a few unofficial visits), we barely scratched the surface of history in this incredible town!

A trip to the Caceres countryside

One of the field trips that Gemma dreamed up for us (and quite by accident, I understand), was a trip to the outskirts of Caceres. Our tour guide Manuelo (I think this is what his name was, but if it wasn’t this is the name we’ll use today) was part of an organization centered around peace and the preservation of the Caceres countryside and took us on a tour of all the things that don’t get seen by a regular tourist.

After walking in the heat and stopping to play a get-to-know-you game under the shade of some trees (to wait out the heat a bit), we were lead to a gravel road where we climbed down the embankment (through many trees and brambles) to be shown the oldest bridge in the city. It’s so old, in fact, that nobody really knows how old it is. And it’s so well-built that it’s still in use.

We were then led back along the dirt road up to an abandoned olive oil plant. The roof was gone but most of the walls were still there. It is here that local teenage artists come to graffiti the walls with their works of art. There is also a lot of graffiti within the city of Caceres, but it’s not gang-related like it is at home; it’s just kids making their mark on the city. In the abandoned plant, they do it more thoroughly.

After looking around the plant, we were led behind it and up the road we’re shown orchards that were planted by the Moors during their occupation of Caceres. The orchards have been abandoned by the city, but the land is still standing as it was and the trees in the orchard still bear fruit. Manuelo and his organization are trying to petition the city to see this orchard (and other surrounding land) and resources to be used and not ignored, abandoned, or developed unnecessarily.

Further up the road, Manuelo led us off to the side and down through brambles and bracken to show us the main river of Caceres. It was more of a small stream than a river, but he brought us down there to emphasize that the city has many natural resources that should be cultivated and cared for that are largely ignored, including the Caceres River. The river itself in that particular spot was overgrown and almost impossible to see.

After climbing back up through the thorns and bramble, we headed back up the road where we made a water stop at the house of some of Maneulo’s friends. Their existence in that particular place is very interesting because they are staging a protest of sorts just by living on the land they occupy.

At the moment, they are renting the land and trying to prove a point to the city of Caceres. That being, it’s possible to cultivate natural resources surrounding the city without exploiting them. They are staging this because the city wants to build a highway through the land and also build and oil refinery (you can see the sign on their house that says “No Refineries” in Spanish). They firmly believe that the world’s dependence on oil is antiquated and that trying to build communities based on out-dated processes is counter-intuitive and potentially disastrous for the community in the long run. To prove their point, they live entirely off the land they inhabit and eat only what the land produces. They have many lovely fruit and flowering trees, a garden, and a small chicken coop. My favorite was the huge grape vine growing up the front side of the house, providing the roof for their front porch with hanging grapes as decorations. If these people can’t convince the local government that their ideas are good ones, the land they live on will be bulldozed in two years to make way for the refinery and new highway.After our visit, Manuelo took us a little ways down the road from the house to a stone wall surrounding a pasture. We climbed over the wall (which was tricky for those of us with creakier limbs than others) to be led to the middle of the pasture and shown and ancient roman watering well, used for irrigating the pasture and watering the animals. It was a cool contraption because it dated back more than a thousand years and illustrated the engineering ingenuity of the early Romans. The part we saw was the reservoir, and the rest of it was located at the top of a nearby hill. I didn’t see it, but was told that the rest of the contraption was powered by donkeys. As they walked around in circles, the water was pumped down to the reservoir, which in turn was pumped into the field. Very cool.

After all that, we climbed back over the wall and started heading home. On the way there, we saw a marker in the road dating from around the 3rd Century proclaiming who the emperor was at the time, and Manuelo also showed us the community garden that was put together on the outside of the city limits to get the local community involved with cultivating their land. All together, it was a fascinating trip!