No Soap, Mafia

On today’s mid-day news there was a story of a Marseille mafia chief who was arrested here in Catalunya.  He led a big drug ring that brought cocaine from Central American to Europe.  He wasn't passing through.  He lives here, in Castelló d’Empúries, a village just twenty minutes away and where I’ve visited a couple of times.  Not only does he live and own a bar there, his wife owns the soaps and scents shop where I bought the sabon de Marseille that is sitting in the soap dish at the sink in my bathroom at this very moment.  I wonder if the soap will reveal any surprise as it wears down.  Crime aside, Castelló d’Empúries is a very pretty village and I will certainly visit there again, although I’m not sure I’ll be buying any soap.

Carrer Jueus

Sephardic Jews and the Nissan

 Carrer Jueus,
Castelló d’Empúries

It was my own stupid fault.  I knew better and had thought of it many times.  Lazy, that’s me.  Ever since I first came up here to look for an apartment, I have parked the car more or less in the same place, somewhere near a supermarket, just at the entrance to town and about a ten minute walk from where I now live.  It’s a good place to park:  there is no posted time limit (although my mason/handyman Josep assures me that they do tow cars away from time to time, when the spirit moves them, posted limit or no), I can easily check on it two or three times a week when I go to that way to buy groceries, and this last spot I found was so near the major road that I had less worry about theft or vandalism than when it’s parked way in back.  So I didn’t want to start it up and drive it and lose that premium spot.  Unfortunately, after sitting in that premium spot for two months, the battery died.

Back in mid-July I had driven to nearby Peralada to see what the village and the famous castle looked like.  That was the last time I drove the car.  Since then I’ve gone on two outings, but both were to France and by train.  It’s rare that I need the car for my errands which is one of the great joys of living in a European city and one of the things I disliked the most about where I used to live, where you need a car to do anything.

I went to use the car on a recent Sunday, thinking I would go to Castelló d’Empúries, a very pretty village that I visited soon after I moved here.  This time I would go to attend their 22^nd annual Festival of Troubadours, dedicated this year to Temps de Sefarad.  Maybe there would be some bagels. 

Some Catalans seem to take an active interest in the Jewish community that once lived here before it was thrown out in 1492.  Those Jews were a colorful blend of Middle East and Europe, a blend that can be heard in their lovely music.  There is really very little that remains in Catalunya of that community.  But many towns take pride (or an interest) in at least identifying the former Jewish neighborhoods and some of the streets where Jews once lived.  Perhaps a case of absence making the heart grow fonder.  Or a way to attract tourists.

Plaque in  Castelló d’Empúries
where the medieval synagogue used to be

Tortosa has identified their former Ghetto (called a call in Catalan), as has Barcelona and Girona and Castelló d’Empúries, among others.  In Barcelona, you can visit a small museum on the ground floor of an old building on the site where the main synagogue was once located.  In Castelló d’Empúries, as in most other towns, there are only plaques.  Girona was home to one of the most important centers of Jewish mysticism, the study of Cabbala, with Rabbi Moises ben Nahman, also known as Nahmanides as its leader.  This intellectual center made Girona possibly the most important Jewish community on the Iberian Peninsula at that time.  Girona’s Jewish museum, more substantial than the one in Barcelona, is located in the former call. 

Outside the museum but within the former call, you can find, in some of the surrounding buildings, a small indentation in the portal of some of the houses where a mezuzah once hung.  It gave me goose bumps being there when I visited a few years ago, and seeing those indentations, still there in the same doorways to the same buildings that had been hurriedly vacated more than 500 years ago.

The Catalans have an odd relationship with the people of the Middle East.  They dislike Arabs but are great supporters of the Palestinians; they pretend to like Jews (easy enough since there are essentially no Jews living here) but despise Israel.  Like most of the world, they feel compelled to choose sides but don’t really care enough about those they support to offer ideas that would help arrive at a resolution to that long-standing conflict. 

I walked down to the car the next morning and called for road service.  Damn.  I should have brought a book.  Who knows how long you have to wait on a Monday morning for road assistance.  I sat myself on a nearby bench under the shade of a tree and watched and waited.  The truck came in twenty minutes, connected cables from a portable battery, and the engine started up immediately.  I signed a paper and that was it.  The service comes free with my car insurance. 

Not wanting to take the chance of getting stuck somewhere, I drove straight to a garage near my house to have the battery charged.  The good part is that I now have a neighborhood mechanic.  The bad part is that I had to pay for something I could probably have achieved for free (well, the cost of gas) just by driving for twenty minutes. But hopefully I have learned my lesson and will start the car up a little more often.  Maybe even today.  Or tomorrow.