ABOUT VEJER
WHERE IS IT?
In the south-west of Spain, about 10 km
off the Spanish Atlantic coast (the Costa de la Luz, or Coast of Light),
about 100km north of Gibraltar, 50km south of Cadiz and 140km south-west of
Seville. This is one of the least developed parts of Spain, largely because this
part of the coast has traditionally been a military zone (proximity to Africa and
historic wariness of North Africans/Maghrebis). It's also because the beach is
ocean and a bit wild, thus not the soupy Mediterranean that Northern European families
inexplicably seem to like.
A big plus is that its about 200km from the cheap and cheerful Costa de
Sol (ref: tacky Florida, Gold Coast) and thus doesn't get too crowded in
summer. Ours is the coast where the Spanish take their beach holidays because
there's few foreigners (though the cheap flights from the UK has added a few more
in recent years.) The
utterly charming hilltop village of cobbled streets, white-washed courtyards and plazas
is well-preserved, straddling two small peaks and
the connecting spur, about 500m above the surrounding countryside. The views are
magnificent, of the surrounding countryside and extending along the coast even to the lights of Tangier in
Morocco. The views are particularly stunning during springtime mornings, before the
sun burns off the cloud lying lower than the town.
THE
VILLAGE OF VEJER
Vejer is a service town for the local agricultural (vegetables and
bull-raising) industry and has a population of about 10,000. The
surrounding area is known as La Janda.
Vejer is pronounced "Beh" (as if to say bed but without the d) and "hair" - "Beh-hair," a nod to the old Arabic pronunciation of 'Bekher." Practice it and get it right because locals will not understand you if you pronounce the V and J in English style. Generally in Spanish, V's and J's are pronounced as soft B's and guttural H's. The "de la Frontera" means "of the frontier" and derives from the 13th Century when the village was a mountain fortress changing hands during the wars between Islam (Moors from Morocco, just across the Straits of Gibraltar 70km to the south) and Christianity, suggesting a frontier between two religions/cultures. There are a number of "de la Frontera" villages around the region; Jimena, Cortes, Conil, Zahara, Arcos et al.
The town is divided into three sections, the casco historico, or old town, that we occupy, the newer section of San Miguel on the adjacent mountain-top where most of the population live, and the connecting spur once supposedly called Las Malvinas, named in apparent Argentine solidarity by an early 1980's local council (the name didn't catch on). A gypsy, or gitano, community gather in the lower southern reaches of the old town in what look like semi-cave dwellings.
Despite the population, Vejer feels like a sleepy small town and is rarely rushed, except at fiesta time. It has something of the atmosphere of the village in the charming Italian film, Cinema Paradiso, largely because most people live in the newer San Miguel where casual visitors rarely venture.
Commerce tends to be in the old part and Vejer has most services, Spanish villages being largely self-contained. It has plenty of bars, cafes, an open market and banks. VISA/Plus/Cirrus/Mastercard cardholders with a PIN can pull euros from at least three ATM outlets in town. Alternatively, travellers' cheques and foreign cash can be exchanged into euros at most banks. Banking hours are from 9am until 4pm, for memory.
Vejer looks tranquillo - and by and large is - though appearances can be deceptive. Part of its magic is the way it comes alive, particularly on Fridays and Saturdays during the near-monthly fiestas when bars will start filling at about 11pm and most people of non-pensionable age will hang out until at least 2-3am and many until dawn. Loutish behaviour is very rare. Our street, Calle San Juan, however is mostly quiet save for the occasional - and very annoying - teen motorbiker, but only five minutes walk away from "la marcha," the action.
The big fiesta is the Feria de Agosto, or Velada de la Oliva, for two weeks in August, when the main Plaza de Espana nightly hosts flamenco, concerts and partying Vejeriegos, as locals are collectively known. Around mid-June, there is a spectacular fiesta, Candelas de San Juan, which involves the making of life-size puppets, muņeca, often in the image of local or national politicians or controversial figures. They are triumphantly paraded around village streets before being ceremonially set ablaze in the main plaza. It spectacularly ends in a mechanical bull spouting fireworks borne on the back of a brave Vejeriego running around the main square. Good Friday has a solemn village procession of the Catholic penitentes followed by a rather less solemn Easter Sunday running of the bulls through the streets, the Toro Embolao. February has a colourful Carnival but nearby Cadiz hosts one near as wild as Rio.
Town politics? Depending on how you talk to, Vejer was both a Francoist and a Republican town during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 and was apparently the scene of particular ugliness involving the hurling of soldiers over the cliffs to their deaths. The town was batted between duelling armies - Franco having raised his army in Morocco and then testing it around the region. Today, Vejeriegos will tell you they were anti-fascist resisters though one suspects the story may have been somewhat different not so long back. More recently, it has seemed a stronghold of the PSOE, the national centre-left party with the name - Spanish Socialist Worker's Party - that suggests its more left-wing than it actually is. In 1998-99 it elected a centre-left ayuntamiento, or local council. Such are the vagaries of local government that the previous council was ousted largely because of a very unpopular, and extraordinarily stupid, decision to pull up and sell the ancient palm trees in the main plaza to nearby Chiclana, replacing them with poor excuses for palms, all done on the dubious grounds that the roots were pulling up the road. Graffiti around the town suggested the alcalde, or mayor, lacked parents and worse - was a cabron (you won't find that in the Berlitz) and was kicked upstairs to the provincial seat in Cadiz. His actions won him a fiesta muņeca that year.