Free-D

Chances are, if you’re on a flying visit here, you’ll be popping into one of the tourist shops along the Rua Mayor. The options for frittering away your euros there are endless. You could, for example, buy a flamenco related item, having absolutely no relation to this region at all, or perhaps a Salamanca university hoodie. Or if you’re really stuck for ideas you could buy a locally produced plate with typical regional decoration. Such plates are pushed out by the dozen by local potters struggling to survive. It’s not easy to make a living in this field; I talked to “Tomas” – a local ceramicist and, as far as I can judge, one of the best working in this area. I have to admit to a bias here because I have a piece of his in my “collection”; a magnificent botijo, which shows the most wonderful sense of rhythm and structure. What started as a simple water container is now of course functionally obsolete; so potters attempting to survive both refined and elaborated their work until they became “art pieces”.

Back in the good old days of the 1950’s there were more than fifty potters working in Alba de Tormes alone; now there are three, which shows just how hard things have been for local artisans. You can see Tomas’s work at an exhibition in the Sala Caja Duero in the plaza los Bandos between 7th and 24th of August; and at a “feria” between the 12th -16th of August. The craft has been with this family, in all likelihood, more than a couple of centuries; so if your interest in the region goes beyond scoffing the local embutidos, I suggest you go and take a look. You might even buy something; after all these are wonderful objects in themselves, with or without their functional quality. And besides which, local artisans working in this field receive absolutely no assistance whatsoever from the local council. This really surprised me, as I believe in the UK, we would be falling over ourselves to preserve such a wonderful example of local heritage. It’s an odd and rather sad situation local potters find themselves in: many of them are the last in their family to keep the art alive.

Which leads me to believe that while you can still find examples of this work in local tourist bazaars – it probably won’t be more than a decade or two until the only choice for a souvenir of Salamanca will be a “Too much sex blurs your vision” tee shirt. And so, one form of culture passes the baton to another. I wonder if in 200 years time some crusty old timer will be saying “my father made “too much sex” tee shirts, and so did his father, and his father before him.”? Only time will tell.