Fabled Shore

by Rose Macaulay

  My garage friend came out with me, and we drove along the rugged coast track to Las Rotas, a pretty little cove and jut of rocks at the other end of Denia bay, where green water lapped among rocks, and where the hill-sides above the sea were dotted with white villas and chalets; many of these had belonged to English raisin merchants, I was told, until the civil war had spoilt the raisin trade. Now there were no English, only a few Germans and French. We drank iced coffee on a little terrace above the rocks. My companion had fought against Franco, and had spent some time in prison. He said that most Spaniards wanted Franco to go; he himself (polite man) would prefer a democracy on the English plan. He was a great reader of English books and admired English films - Shaw, Daphne du Maurier, Laurence Olivier, etc. He took me to the English cemetery, a white-walled cypress garden above the sea, a century old, where raisin merchants and English sailors lie; the merchants have monuments and inscriptions, the sailors sleep nameless, beneath piles of stones. We were admitted to the cemetery by a hospitable Anglo-Spanish brother and sister who owned a delightful finca in the hills and grew vines; their father, now in the cemetery, had been English, but a silent man, so that they had, they said, picked up little of their paternal tongue from him, and they spoke always Spanish, their mother having been more loquacious. They were charming people, like every one else in or near Denia.

  We returned to Denia, my companion to his garage and I to drive about dusty lanes till I regained the main Alicante road at Ondara. It is a wonderful road, winding round the great Cabo de la Nao, four or five miles from the sea, through strange ash-pale country, very dry, with little vines and olives, and huge, odd-shaped rocks and mountains, through which the road sometimes tunnels; the rock tunnels made beautiful frames for the very blue glimpses of sea at their further end. Cape after cape jutted out, bay after bay curved in, round this great prow-shaped promontory. Then the road neared the sea, and on the left was the ancient town of Calpe, and that startling thousand-foot tower of sheer rock, the Point of Ifach, that stands out to sea like a huge pillar of Hercules, with the tiled brown town clustered under it. Calpe is on the site of a Roman town, and perhaps a Greek settlement. Mosaics and other Roman things have been found there. The present town looks mediæval, but must be largely later, for it was destroyed in some later century and rebuilt. It is a closely built, narrow-streeted, russet-coloured town, like many Alicante towns in its general look; it lies above the deep bay and beach, and close to a little river, and, shutting the bay on the east, stands the huge rock watch-tower that may have marked Hemeroskopeion, the first Greek settlement in Spain.

  On its slopes [says Professor Rhys Carpenter in The Greeks in Spain] there are traces of Cyclopean walls and great quantities of broken potsherds lying from two to six feet below the surface of the soil and belonging to Hellenistic, Iberian and late red-figure Attic ware (second to fifth centuries B.C.). Until the site has been excavated, this is all that can be said of Hemeroskopeion.

  But he says some more of it, comparing the lie of the land below the rock with Avienus’s description, finding the languidum stagnum, the stagnant marsh, in the heart of the site of the ancient town, as Avienus, writing long after the town’s destruction, described it - ‘a town once populated; now the soil, emptied of inhabitants, is covered with the sleeping waters of a marsh.’ Above all, the shape and size of the rock fit it for the watch-tower, Strabo’s ‘stronghold for pirates, visible from far to those who sail towards it,’ as no other rock down this coast is fitted. A German archæological expedition in 1927 confirmed Rhys Carpenter’s opinion that there had been a temple there, Greek or Roman.

  It would be fascinating to stay at Ifach and pursue the matter further, with Rhys Carpenter’s careful plans in hand. There is a delightful bathing bay; there is also alpinismo, for one can climb about the rock, and from its summit view the sea as far as the Balearics and Alicante. The rock-guarded water is smooth and sheltered, and has some good reefs. You may search the bay for the remains of ancient monuments, but probably in vain; still abounding in the late eighteenth century, they had mostly disappeared by the middle of the nineteenth. Ifach, like Denia, is a place to which I shall return.

  This is a haunted shore: ghosts crowd each bay, each little town, each castled rock, whispering in the lap of waves and in the low rumour of the sea wind in the palms. I drove round Calpe bay; then, after driving through a mountain in a most surprising manner, I emerged at the turning off of the road that runs up the mountains to Alcoy. I should have liked to take it; but I lacked the time. I ran on instead down the coast, closely hugging the bay of Altea, where Scipio’s fleet, having beaten Carthage in the Ebro’s mouth and sailed south, landed and sacked the ancient Greek colony of Honosca, where now (perhaps) stands La Nucia on the Guadalest. Offshore, lying like a moored ship, is the Isla de Altea; the sea was so still that it scarcely foamed as it lapped the island’s base. The little port of Altea, raised above the sea in an inlet, at the mouth of the clear stream of the Algar, is delightful and strange.

  The Moorish air increases as we drive south towards Alicante. Palms fringe the beaches and white towns. Benidorm (the sixth-century B.C. Massiliot colony of Alonæ?), whose sandy bay is like a crescent moon, stands crowded very beautifully round its domed and tiled church on a rocky peninsula. The mountains, the Sierra Helada, come down close behind it, and have, it seems, in some past hour of excitement thrown off an island into the bay, the Islote de Benidorm. The land round Benidorm is barren and poor; in recompense, the sea is rich in fish. Benidorm is said to be an open door for smugglers. A few miles further is Villajoyosa, on the sea and on the river Sella, with Puigcampana towering behind it. It was probably a Greek colony; it contains a Roman sepulchral tower called the Torre de San José. It is a long town, built along the walled road above the sea; when I was there it was having its annual fiesta for the defeat of the Moors seven centuries ago. Painted scaffolding, with tiers of seats, adorned both sides of the main street, and Moors and Christians, turbaned or armoured, rode caparisoned horses or donkeys, wearing on their trappings the crescent or the cross. Both sects were very gay; it was interesting to see the handsome brown Moors of Villajoyosa making so merry over the defeat of their relations long ago. I was told that the same fiesta was celebrated at this time in Seville. Presently there would be a tournament, which the Christians would win; early next morning there would be a naval battle in the harbour, and the Christians would win that too. I should like to have stayed to see this, but wanted to get to Alicante, ten miles on, so I left Christians and infidels to fight it out, and drove on along the hot and shadeless road, where no tree offered (at noon) a patch of shadow in which to stop and cool my car and eat my lunch. Or rather, there was one patch, beneath a group of carob trees, but it was already occupied by a donkey cart, its driver stretched in siesta beside it.

  The fertile vega, with its red-brown earth, green tasselled rice, canes, vines, orange groves, tomato vines, irrigation trenches intersecting them, became a narrow strip, surrounded by dry, torridly African country. The strip of luxuriant vegetation cut across the Cabo de las Huertas; it was sprinkled with white farms, country houses and fruitful gardens, with vineyards bearing the famous Alicante grapes. The road passed through picturesque towns - Muchamel, with Campello by the sea on the left, San Juan. A small road turned off seaward; according to my map, it led to Lucentum, or Tossal de Manises, the site of the supposed ancient town, destroyed or abandoned before Alicante was built. It was no road for a car; I went down it on foot, and came to the small acropolis over the sea where stand fragments of Iberian-Carthaginian and Iberian-Roman walls, Roman cisterns, and remains of buildings. They were excavated here last century, together with coins, mosaic fragments, washing vessels, fragments of columns, a broken Roman statue, an inscription indicating a temple. Many of these things were taken to the Alicante museum. Here, it has been thought, was the original Greek Massiliot Leuke Akra (one of Strabo’s ‘three small Massiliot cities’ between the Sucro river and New Ca
rthage), or, if there was no Greek city, anyhow the Iberian town, then the Carthaginian, then the Roman Lucentum, destroyed and abandoned before the Moors built Al-Lekant three kilometres west down the bay. But other archæologists have believed the Tossal ruins to have been but an outlying stronghold of Alicante, which stood always where it now stands, Iberian, Greek, Carthaginian, Roman, Visigothic, Moorish, and now Iberian again. The temple, the baths, the statue, they say, would naturally accompany such an outpost fort. More time, more digging, more research, may one day throw more light on Lucentum’s history; or it may remain one of the many unsolved Spanish Mediterranean riddles.

  I left it, and went on to the present Alicante, now in sight beneath its hill (once, it seems, shining white, now more pale dun colour) that towers, castle-crowned, above the wide bay. Curved whitely round its great ship-crowded harbour and beach, with the luxuriant fringe of palms along its waterfront, and its tiers of white, flat-roofed eastern houses climbing behind, Alicante is a handsome, luminous, oriental city and port. Under the palms winds a fine modern alameda, set all along with cafes and hotels. Behind the smart modern frontage is the older town, a maze of steep narrow streets climbing up towards the mediæval Castillo of Santa Barbara, said to be practically untakable. The French failed before it when they took most of the other Spanish Mediterranean ports (though they did blow it up, English garrison and all, in 1707). I did not even try to take it, it was so hot a day, and I believe a permit is needed. Nor did I attempt the assault of San Fernando, the other and later castle, on the hill to the north. Instead, I looked at the Colegiata of San Nicolas, a fine Herrera church with a good cloister, and Santa Maria, the fourteenth-century parroquial, built on a mosque, standing in a white plaza near the sea, with a most beautiful Churriguerresque portal, very richly carved, with twisted columns; the church has a charming balustrade and a deep blue dome, and an interior only open during services, so I did not see it; this excessive cageyness of Spanish churches is discouraging. I found the baroque Casa Consistorial in a plaza newly named 18 de Julio, after the Glorious Revolution. You will also find in Alicante, to atone for its having backed the wrong side, plazas, avenidas and streets named for José Antonio, Calvo Sotelo, General Mola, and other revolutionary leaders. The house where Jose Antonio, the Founder of the Falange, used to reside has been consecrated into a chapel, which I did not visit, though it is listed as a lugar historico.

  In the evening I went on down the coast to Santa Pola. This ancient little Roman port, lying under the arm of the cape of its name, is, in the summer season, a lively bathing place. On the harbour quay is a fish market, where a noisy fish auction proceeds. There are hotels, and the restaurant Miramar built out on stakes over the harbour water, so that while you eat, and drink Alicante wine, you can watch the ships at close quarters and smell the port mud. But for this drainy smell it would be a perfect eating place, jutting out over the smooth and shining sea full of fishing boats. The beach is not very good; you have to wade out some way before you can swim.

  The people sitting in the loggia outside my inn told me next morning that Elche, which lies ten miles inland, was extremely hot; whenever they mentioned it they fanned themselves and puffed; I began to feel such apprehensions as must have disturbed Shadrach, Meshech and Abednego when they approached the seven times heated furnace. Like them, however, I did not flinch. It was a straight, flat road to Elche, at first through salt marshes (no doubt useful, but smelly), but presently palms appeared, thickening as I approached Elche. A miracle must have been wrought for me, as for the three Children of Israel in the furnace, for I did not find Elche, lying breathless in its baked plains, so much hotter than Santa Pola by the sea.

  Where the ancient Roman and Iberian Ilici precisely stood no one seems to be certain; whether close to the present Elche or down by the sea near Santa Pola; Iberian and Greco-Iberian and Roman pottery and sculpture have been dug up at both places; in fact, they abound all round Elche. It was on the site called Ilici, just outside Elche, that they found the famous Greek-Iberian bust of the fifth century B.C., the Lady of Elche. I saw it later in the Prado, that richly caparisoned head, that calm Greek face of half ironic, sensuous, intellectual beauty, only slightly marred by one eye being smaller than the other. It is for its bust, its Assumption mystery play, its Iberian pottery, its palm forest, its African aspect, and its frying-pan heat, that Elche is celebrated. The mystery play would not occur for a day or two, the bust was in Madrid, the heat, the African air and the palm forest were all about me. The ancient Iberian pottery was in museums; Iberian pots of to-day were sold in the streets. Elche is a fascinating town; low, white, flat-roofed Arab houses crowd together like a box of bricks, topped by blue-tiled domes, cleft by deep shadowed trenches of streets; palms wave about them; the palm forest stretches round, with its undergrowth of red pomegranates, beneath a glare of hot sky. The town stands on both sides of the dry, cactus-grown rambla of the Vinalapó; from the further side one looks across at the strange, dusty, ash-coloured African town, with its terraced roofs, a domed and palm-surrounded town in a desert. I drove back into it across the old bridge, and saw the seventeenth-century church of Santa Maria, with its fine façade and portal, dome and tower, and the attractive San Juan. Energetic visitors climb the tower and get a remarkable view of the palm forest, which must be very delightful, but hard work. Instead, I strolled about the charming town, and sat in the tree-shaded Plaza Merced, which has a raised terrace set round with tiled benches and palm-tubs, and a fountain in the middle. A young gentleman wanted to conduct me on a tour of the palm forest, but I have seen plenty of palms in my life and declined, much as I love palms, and in spite of the famous and peculiar shapes, habits and sex lives of those in the Elche forest, where Augustus Hare wandered enchanted for three days in February, 1872, where countless tourists have nearly swooned in the ecstasy caused by beholding such a great number of date palms all together. I dare say I should have swooned too, had I entered the forest. But I wanted instead to see the Visigothic basilica foundations discovered on the small hill of Alcadia in 1905. When I got into my car to look at the map, I was mobbed by an interested crowd of all ages; pleasant, friendly people, who had not, it seemed, seen a woman driving a car before; and anyhow, as one of them amiably explained, ‘We always stare at strangers; it is not to be discourteous, but because we are interested.’ The puzzling thing is that all the inhabitants of Spanish towns seem to have so much time on their hands. They kindly told me how I should go to Ilici, and to the hill Alcadia, and showed the most animated and sympathetic interest in my journey and aims, though a little disappointed that I did not intend a date-palm tour.

  There is not much of the basilica; only an oblong nave with an apse, paved by mosaic, and some nearly illegible inscriptions in Greek lettering. Both mosaic and building are thought to be fifth or sixth century A.D., and part of a Visigothic basilica of Byzantine type; it is one of the few examples of Visigothic architecture in Spain, though too fragmentary to throw much light on that obscure subject.

  I had then to choose between returning to Santa Pola and taking the coast road to Cartagena, by the Albufera de Elche, Torrevieja and the Mar Menor, and going inland by Orihuela and Murcia. I chose the cities, and set out on the mountain surrounded road to Orihuela. To the west the Sierra de Crevillente, bare and gaunt, hazily indigo in its shadowed clefts, coppery on its high slopes, sawed the hot sky. By the road there were cactuses and vineyards and maize fields and pomegranates and figs; round the reed-thatched farms and villages palms grew. Each village had its little domed and minareted church. The landscape, the buildings, the climate, seemed of Africa: so did the dark, turbaned people riding their asses along the dusty road. Dust lay thickly on the vines and olives and cactuses by the wayside; it formed a grey film on my car, drifting in through windows and doors. To follow in the wake of another vehicle - usually an ox or donkey cart, for motor traffic was rare - was to move in a pillar of dust. After some fifteen miles the little African town of Callosa de
Segura lay at the foot of castle-crowned mountains, in a kind of gorge; it had houses built into the rocks, and a Charles V church, with cupola and belfry. The gorge opened out into a fertile valley, a great garden of corn, fig-trees, oranges and pomegranates, mulberries and vines; palms waved above them, and prickly pears and aloes scrambled over the rocks by the roadside and grew in tall thickets about the steep-roofed, reed-thatched cottages. Tall palms bordered the roads, lovely against the clear mountains. This was the Orihuela huerta, watered by the Segura; out of this luxuriant garden rises, backed by mountains, the ancient city of Orihuela, the Roman Aurariola, the Moorish Auriwelah, the Gothic Orcelis. Through the town runs the Segura, feeding the rich huerta for miles round. It is a charming town, long and rather narrow, full of church towers and palms, dominated by the usual ruined castle; the houses have tiled roofs, and orange trees crowd behind the white garden walls. The cathedral is Gothic, but was damaged by earthquake in 1829 and ill restored. The Episcopal Palace (1733) stands on the left bank of the river that bisects the town and washes its foundations dangerously. Its façade and portal are lordly; its cloister has good galleries; its stairway of rose-coloured jasper is beautiful. There are a number of fine aristocratic houses, though the flood of 1834 destroyed many. The Colegio of Santo Domingo is a fine baroque building, inside which I failed to penetrate, so did not see its double cloisters, its refectory, or Velasquez’s Temptation of St. Thomas Aquinas. (I am ashamed to confess that I do not even know what this temptation was, or whether Aquinas fell.) The church of Santiago has a fine Renaissance sculptured portal; I got no further into this handsome church than that.