Chapter 1 --- Arrival in Gaucin

If you were in Gaucin today, Aug. 5, 2001 and you stopped one of the six hundred or so foreigners, mostly English, and asked them how they discovered Gaucin, most of them would tell you that they found out about the village through advertisements in English newspapers or through the Internet or maybe from word of mouth. When I encountered Gaucin for the first time in October of 1976, there were only a half dozen foreigners, all from English speaking countries, and they had discovered the village by accident or word of mouth.

In the fall of 1976 I was living in Torrejon de Ardoz, a suburb of Madrid and teaching Sociology courses for the University of Maryland at the nearby American Air Base. I was introduced  to Gaucin in the following spring by George, who had left Cuba at the time of the Castro takeover and who later had become an American citizen. I met George a few months earlier in Madrid through a mutual friend, France O’Neill. At that time France and I were sharing an apartment. France, who was originally from Belfast, was a crazy Irishman and one of the funniest persons I have ever met in my life. (More on France later) George told us that he was in Madrid for only a few days and that he would be returning shortly to Estepona, not far from Malaga, where he had a villa on the sea. At that time I still had my Volkswagen camper and I told George that I usually went to Malaga and stayed in the camp site there when I had a term break from teaching. He gave me his phone number and told me that I should contact him the next time I came to Malaga.

So it was that I went to Malaga in March of 1977, called George and he invited me to spend a few days with him in Estepona. George is over six feet tall, has dark skin and has a distinguished look about him. George invited me to spend a few days in Gaucin a white village where he had been renting a house. When I took him up on his offer, I had no idea that Gaucin would become an integral part of my life for the next twenty five years.

After an hour’s drive from the coast, we arrived in Gaucin at sunset. The village nestled on the side of a ridge overlooking the Costa del Sol, is not visible from the road we took at that time until we were almost on top of it. You turn a corner of the road and there it is spread out in front of you. Bathed in the incandescent, almost surreal light of the fading sun, the white washed houses had a yellow tinge and the red tiled roofs glowed. George stopped for a moment and I took the first of a few thousand pictures that I would eventually take of Gaucin.

When we entered the village, we were plunged into a maze of narrow streets paved with cobblestones. The houses for each block were joined one to another. There was not a freestanding house in sight. The outer walls of most of the houses were at least two feet thick, being composed of large rocks and clay and covered with cement. All of the houses were white and each had acquired an outer skin, a few inches thick, from the yearly ritual of white washing that the women did every spring. Since all the houses in a block joined one another, it was hard to tell from the façade of a house what lurked within. The front wall of a house might be non-descript, but inside there could be a mansion. Thus it was with George’s rental house. Not much to see from the outside, but inside it had four bedrooms, a few terraces, large kitchen , dining area and living room. All tastefully decorated by the owner with antique furniture, paintings, tapestries and carpets. The owner, Josephena, was the richest woman in Gaucin. Not only did she own a number of properties in the village, but had extensive holdings along the coast. Her principle residence in Gaucin was described to me by some Spanish in the village as a small palace. I was told that she had a fine collection of paintings including two Goyas, although I never saw them.

That evening we went to eat at the only restaurant in Gaucin, The Hotel National. The Hotel National is a Gaucin institution. It has half dozen rooms for rent each with a washbasin and container of water. There is a shared toilet and shower for all the rooms. The furniture is antique.

The restaurant, on the first floor, has five tables. The first time visitor cannot help but take notice of the walls. They appear to be made of white fake marble now yellowed with the passage of time. There are a number of cracks scattered over the entire surface. The restaurant is presided over by Clementina who has very red hair, looks more French than Spanish and somehow does not seem to fit in the village. The cook, Carmen, presides over a kitchen in which the principle stove is heated with wood. There was no hot water in the kitchen then. Dishes were washed in a small kitchen sink.

We arrive after nine. There is no point in arriving earlier, since no one will serve you until nine. Clementina comes to the table greets you and then rattles off the menu in Andalucian Spanish, which means that whatever she says is almost totally incomprehensible except to another Andalucian. When she becomes aware that I do not speak fluent Spanish, she then reads off the menu is understandable Spanish, speaking every word slowly and distinctly. I choose sopa de fideo, chicken soup with small noodles, filete de cerdo con patatas fritas, pork cutlet with french fries and assorted vegetables. A small salad for two is then brought to our table, together with homemade bread. A bottle of wine is served together with tap water in an old glass carafe. The piece de résistance is the dessert. It is homemade flan, which is a custard like dessert very common in Spain. Michener, in his book "Iberia", spends twenty pages describing the perfect flan. That evening I feel as if I am for a short time living in a prior century experiencing the perfect flan.

George asked me if I would like to see the hotel register that goes back to the beginning of the 19^th century. Clementina brought it out and while we were waiting for our meal, I began to read comments that these hardy trekkers, mostly English from Gibraltar, wrote in the book. They wrote that they enjoyed the hospitality of the Hotel National, had a delicious meal and spent the night in one of the hotel’s clean habitations. Most of them wrote that they planned to continue their journey by walking or by donkey to Ronda, which is thirty kilometers east from Gaucin.

The meal is completed around eleven. We return to George’s house, sit around the fireplace for an hour or so, have a coffee and then retire. The guest room that I occupy has an old brass bed, nightstand in Spanish style and a dresser. Fortunately I brought a few books with me and and I read until falling asleep.

The next day I walk around the village, taking pictures, getting lost constantly as I try to negotiate the maze of streets and asking finally where is George’s house in order to find my way back. As the day progresses and evening comes on, I discover one of the most important things that any visitor to Gaucin finds out quickly. That is the village is beautiful, the views are breath taking, but once the photos have been taken, the quaint little streets traversed and the views marveled at, reality sets in and you realize that there is nothing to do there.

There are no monuments, no historical churches with dirty old pictures painted by a young Goya or Velasquez, no museums full of Roman artifacts or even stores stocked with charming hand painted tiles and ceramic cups and saucers done by the local contingent of future Goyas or Dalis. There is a castle in ruins on top of the ridge overlooking the village and the coast. It is a must visit for any new person to the village and will take all of two hours to see. The worst part is the climb to get up to it. However, after having seen the castle the traveler to Gaucin will then almost always ask: "What’s next to see?" The invariable answer is:"There is nothing left to see. You have seen it all. Well not quite all. We could walk down Calle Lorenzo Garcia and see the medieval laundromat." Since it is now only noon and there are at least another twelve hours of this day to fill, the desperate visitor will say:"Let’s go for it." The laundromat is found. It consists of a lean-to with about ten water basins each with a sloping washboard made of concrete and the women will be scrubbing the hell not to mention the color out of the clothes with grandma’s old lye soap. The traveler's camera is then pointed at the scrub ladies, a few snaps are taken, a few smiles are exchanged and as the visitor walks away the women have a puzzled look on their faces as they ask one another: "Why did that foreigner want to take our picture?"

 It is now only a quarter past twelve. "What do we do now?" "We could take a drive over to Ronda for shopping and lunch, but by the time we get there in forty five minutes the stores will be closing for lunch and siesta and won’t reopen until six." At this point the harried tourist will usually say: "Let’s go to Ronda tomorrow, but leave early enough to get some shopping in before lunch and then we can take our time returning to Gaucin" and says to himself: "At least that will give us something to do tomorrow."

It is now 12:30 P.M. and everything that the village has to offer to the enthusiastic visitor who wants to see it all, has been seen. "I know what we can do.", your guide will now say. "Let’s go to Clemente’s."

You arrive at Clemente’s a few minutes later. Clemente’s is a bar located near the center of town. As you walk through the bar area with its dirty red tiled floor there are a group of old men sitting at small tables playing cards. All of the building materials in this room reflect sound rather than absorbing it and so the cacophony of sounds the old men are emitting as they speak Andalusian Spanish are incomprehensible as they bounce off the tiled walls. In addition there is a cheap radio behind the bar emitting the shrill sounds of Flamenco music. You then reach an outdoor patio with a few tables and some small trees planted in old rusty, metal barrels that once contained motor oil. The view from the terrace is toward the hills on the other side of Gaucin from the coast. Nestled in these hills, at quite a distance, is the village of Cortes de la Frontera. The hot sun shining on the village creates a heat haze that hangs over the surrounding hills.

The terrace is shady and a cool breeze from the north gently touches you and you forget about the heat outside in the street. Clemente’s is the best place in Gaucin to have tapas. Clemente himself comes to your table and you order your drinks. You then ask about his tapas and he rattles off in incomprehensible Spanish his list of tapas available that day. Even when he attempts to slow down, you still cannot understand him. He then invites you to come to the bar where you can see the cold tapas for yourself and on the wall you can see a list of the hot tapas written in chalk on a small blackboard. Displayed in a small glass case on top of the bar are the cold tapas. The ensaladilla Rusa, which is similar to American potato salad, looks pretty good as does the picadillo made from chopped green peppers, onions and tomatoes and covered in a combination of vinegar and olive oil . From the hot menu we order the fried chicken wings as well as some calamares, which is squid, but many Americans upon first encountering them think that they are fried onion rings.

Clemente brings the tapas and drinks to the table. More drinks and tapas are ordered as the afternoon wears on and you feel pretty satisfied that you have found something to do for the time being at least. Conversation abounds, much of it about how quaint and cute both the village and villagers are and how cheap everything is here and wouldn’t it be grand to retire here.

This pastoral idyll is broken temporally when one of the old men with a full bladder comes out on the terrace, enters the small door to the side of the tables to take a piss. When he returns to his cards, the door remains open and within seconds there is an overwhelming odor of stale piss that permeates the entire terrace no matter how much the wind is blowing. Obviously if the wind is blowing from the direction of the pissoir, the odor is even sharper. At this point someone gets up, closes the door secures it with an outside latch. Thus the emergency has passed until the next old man has to take a piss. Actually as there are always a number of old men playing cards then this could happen up to five or six times an hour. It seems that it never occurred to any of the old men to close and latch the door after they have relieved themselves.

The first afternoon I spent on Clemente’s terrace, I realized that sooner or later I myself would need to enter that little room. After a few glasses of vino tinto and holding out as long as I dared, I decided to be brave and make for the little door with the latch on it. "Will I be able to breathe when I am in that little room not much larger than a telephone booth?", I asked myself worriedly. Before I entered the pissoir, I decided to take a deep breath of fresh air and hoped that I could hold it until I had finished, closed and latched the door and walked a few yards away. My first encounter with the toilet at Clemente’s turned out to be a disaster. Not only could I not hold my breath for the entire time I was in it, but in my hurry to finish I managed to get the last few drops down the front of my pants. As I stumbled out to the terrace, I was gasping for air and walking sideways to my table. I sat down quickly in the hope that no one would notice the wet pants. If my companions did notice, they were polite enough to say nothing. However, I must say that down through the years, with practice, I managed to get in and out of the Clemente disaster area while holding my breath and not experiencing any more inadvertent spillage.

Next morning George and I left Gaucin for Estepona and later I left for the Malaga campng site. A few days later I returned to Madrid. I had spent two days in Gaucin and a this point I was not sure that I would ever return.