Alfacar Autumn

A week or two back my neighbour, a Master Baker, came to my door with a gift. We'd chatted in the town square a few days before, he asking me as usual when I was going to give him some English lessons before the topic turned to torta de La Virgen, a sweet pastry that is traditional in these parts and especially at this time of year. In fact, I have lived in Spain for long enough that the association between torta and Autumn has become pretty well established.

What he presented me with was a vast oval pastry, apparently several yards across, topped with crunchy sugar and filled with a rich and sticky concoction made of walnuts, spices, raisins and the key ingredient, cabello de angel. This latter is a conserve made by boiling down the flesh of a particular variety of squash with sugar to make a substantially textured clear jam. When all of these components come together in the hands of a true maestro like Pepe the baker, the result is heavenly.

Given the altitude here, not to mention the fact that the year is hurtling towards its termination, one might be forgiven for wondering exactly where Autumn is hiding itself. Even the imminent Autumn fair in the centre of Granada, where torta de La Virgen by the hundreds go on sale (none, I'm sure, as good as the one I was recently gifted!) does not seem to be enticing Autumn to show its full colours.

I live at an altitude that falls just short of that of the highest mountain in England and from my home I have a fine view of the Sierra Nevada, the loftiest peaks in Spain if you don't include Teide in the Canary Islands. Forget the proximity of the Costa Tropical, Torremolinos and Marbella - this is real upland country. Granada boasts a ski centre (the most southerly in Europe) and a unique alpine fauna and flora with species of plant and butterfly that are found nowhere else in the world.

But try telling that to the thermometer. The nights are a little fresher and it is possible to use bedding again after a long summer of enforced nudity, but during the day the heat builds up to an uncomfortable something in the high 20s or low 30s. And it is a pernicious heat pervades ground, air, everything. Come the early hours of the evening it has created an oppressive mantle that wraps itself around you until the dark hours are well advanced. You are listless, yet restless. You can´t settle to much, you find yourself wondering from room to terrace and dreaming wistfully of frosty mornings and torrential downpours.

This is not the complete story, because in reality the season is getting on with its work regardless of the heat. I have never seen so many pomegranates on the tree just down the lane from home, and there is a bumper crop of huge, fragrant quinces (membrillos) while the persimmons (kakis in Spanish) are still green but likewise are set to break records when they turn that unique translucent golden orange and are briefly edible before turning to mush. Walnuts, too, and since I discovered just how good this super-food is for you I have been filling bags with them and spreading them out on the terrace to dry. Hopefully, they and all their wonderful oils, vitamins, minerals, proteins and antioxidants will see me through the winter.

The birds too are abiding by their age old imperative and finally it seems that the last of the swallows and house martins have departed. Parties of starlings feed in the valley below the terrace in the afternoon, flocks of dazzling bee eaters flash their colours briefly as they pass through, and now and then a pair of booted eagles revolves in casual, lazy circles overhead as the great raptors head south for a winter vacation in Africa. As for the smaller creatures, the influx of several species of mantis (welcome, fascinating guests to the living room!) is over and I am sure that the rather dozy gecko I saw attached to the wall just outside the patio doors a few nights back will soon be tucking itself away, deep in a crevice until next May is well advanced.

Soon, I have no doubt, the fogs will rise each morning from the Granada Vega, then the clouds will come down from the mountains to meet it and Alfacar will be trapped in the middle, the soggy and unappetising filling of some vast meteorological torta de La Virgen.

So perhaps I should try a little harder to enjoy this Verano de Membrillo (quince summer - the Andalucian verson of an Indian summer) while it lasts.