How Cueva del Hierro Came Into My Life
I remember that even as a little girl I had two quite vivid intuitions. One was that I wanted to be a diplomat and the other was that I wanted to put down roots in the Sierra de Cuenca. Neither of these was obvious, because no one in my family was a diplomat, nor had anyone ever visited Cuenca. They are two strange intuitions that I always had and which I never managed to understand rationally.
As I’ve already mentioned on this website, in 1995 I prepared for the competitive examination to join the diplomatic service, passed it in 1996, and began my professional career as a Spanish diplomat.
The Cuenca thing was a different kettle of fish. In 1986, I wanted to see the Serranía de Cuenca for myself, so I organised the end-of-year school trip to the San Blas hostel in Tragacete together with all my alternative classmates from secondary school. Our biology teacher, Juan, came along with us. And it was a lovely week of hiking trips to the source of the Segura, the source of the Tagus and many beautiful, nameless places. And it was there that I accepted as true and valid that childhood intuition of putting down roots in the Sierra de Cuenca.
However, my hectic diplomatic life and the repeated changes of home, country and continent gradually distanced me from that idea, until in 2009 it regained strength within me and I decided to explore it. So, I took a few days’ holiday from the Spanish Embassy in London; I caught a flight to Madrid-Barajas; I hired a car at the airport; and I set off on my own to explore the Serranía Alta de Cuenca.
And I went from place to place, with a little red notebook, jotting down all the properties that were for sale, the names of their owners, and so on.
Back in London, I started by phoning some people in Las Majadas, which is where I’d seen my dream house, but there were three heirs and only two were willing to sell. Impossible, then.
[I’m inserting a photo below of the stunning views from the top of Los Callejones de Las Majadas, a photo taken of me on that trip]
And my second choice was a house I’d seen in Cueva del Hierro. The owner quoted me a price (30,000 euros) and I told him straight away that I’d buy it. He was surprised and asked me if I was going to buy it without seeing the inside, and I said yes – that if the structure was sound, I’d keep it as it was, and if not, I’d rebuild it. I flew from London to Valencia; I took a train to Aldaia; I signed the purchase agreement before a solicitor; and that was it. We already had the house.
Carrying out the building work was more complicated. I couldn’t find a builder until the local mayor, in 2011, offered to do it with his Ecuadorian workers. My interpretation has always been that in 2011 we were in the thick of the financial crisis in our beloved Spain and grants from public bodies were drying up; in that context, my house seemed like a good option. In the summer of 2011 they carried out the plumbing work, and in the winter and spring of 2012 the interior, so that in August 2012 I moved from London to Cueva del Hierro.
This little house came with a surprise gift. One of the Ecuadorian builders who was working on the site (“albañil” is a lovely word, derived from the Arabic “albani”, meaning ‘builder’) ended up becoming my partner. My intuition had begun some thirty years earlier to lay the groundwork for guiding me towards a beautiful love… a lovely story, isn’t it?
And so ends the micro-story of how Cueva del Hierro came into my life.
To round things off, I’m reproducing here a poem I wrote for that wonderful man in the early days of our romance:
IMMENSE GENTLENESS
You came into my life
with immense gentleness.
As I watched you glisten and drip with sweat,
I was left spellbound, transfixed,
hesitant, speechless, and little by little
your beautiful, chiselled body,
glistening with the sweat on your brow,
became a magnet;
a magnet that at first I failed to see
and which, by the time I did, it was already too late;
too late because by then
your immense gentleness
had already taken root within me.
I cannot quite understand
how it entered through the pores of my skin,
through the ear canals of my ears,
through my optic nerves or my windpipe,
but it entered, and swift as an arrow
of the sort your indigenous ancestors
used to make in the jungles of what is now Ecuador,
like one of those arrows, your immense
gentleness entered and took up residence within me.
And if you dwell within me, how can I rid myself of you? How
can I put a stop or an end to this madness of love
that has me in its grip? Is there any remedy
against this state of being inhabited by your gentleness?
My mind tells me I mustn’t carry on; that what we have
makes no sense at all; that it has no present,
nor future… And my Self smiles, smiles at the mind
and says: ‘Sharpen your wits and find a way to extract
this gentleness, for until you do, you won’t be able
to put a stop to it or bring it to an end’. My mind despairs and my Self…
my Self… smiles.
And I’ve included a photo above of the viewing point at the Hotel Los Tilos in Beteta, where I stayed whilst exploring that part of the Serranía Alta de Cuenca. A photo taken of me by the hotel’s receptionist at the time. A hotel that went bankrupt shortly afterwards and which reopened a few years ago, renovated, impressive, absolutely stunning…