area is one of the biggest shitholes in Spain. People living on welfare galore, and if you go to Toledo country towns near Parla it becomes worse.
Chozas de Canales is one of the most disturbing places I know. Actually the entire region of La Sagra.
The number of blacks living there is astonishing, they have overrun the town square. There is one who puts his hand to his ear and pretends to have a mobile phone and talk to someone.
One time when I was in the town hall, a black man was requesting an appointment with the town mayor.They told him: What for?, and the black man kept saying it was very important, that he had to talk directly to the mayor, and kept insisting. The mayor comes out, checks the situation and asks the black man what the hell he wants. And the black man, very solemn, tells him that he is in charge of informing him that a minister from his country is going to visit the town. Everybody laughed, but the black man was very serious, insisting that a minister from his country was going to visit his countrymen and that he had to be received with honors. And the mayor trying to get rid of the black man, come on, come on, tell the minister to send me a letter and we'll see what we can do, maybe we will have to call one of our ministers too, come on, come on. Finally, it turned out that the minister was a son of an African tribal chief.
Let’s not forget the two huge housing developments on each side of town, filled with half-built houses, many with illegal electricity hookups and their so-called yards filled to the brim with filth. And everything in the midst of those infamous wastelands, a place suitable only for masturbating or committing suicide.
I am tired of saying that the area north of Toledo, Parla and its surroundings, is a strange area. It is a weird place that transmits weird sensations. Housing developments in the middle of nowhere, half empty, sidewalks without trees, abandoned detached houses with bricked up doors and windows next to well-kept ones. Strange people, black people loitering without any purpose, countrymen on their old uncovered tractors carrying sulphate vats for the vineyards, cheap whores that are no longer competitive in Madrid, arabs, arabs everywhere, arab women covered from head to toe. Infinite wastelands, immense skies that crush you and remind you that you are only a mere mortal.
There is something in that land that disturbs the soul, those of us who have been there know it, even if we do not know what it is.
The soul and the body; there is an enormous amount of cancer and schizophrenia, more than in any other part of Spain.
The environment disturbs the soul and the earth feeds on their bodies. The land is cursed.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera used to say that the Castilians conquered the world because they had no other option. Whoever has lived in north Toledo knows that this is a dogma of faith.
A land of misery. Bad misery ...
Whenever there is a kidnapping in Madrid, I don't know why, but if things go south, the corpse is always found half-buried in La Sagra, dug out by hunting dogs, or in some abandoned brick factory in that forsaken county.
That area is cursed. The dogs flee scared by the stench of death and yet the earth swallows misery. The earth demands misery.
Greyhounds, always, because there are only greyhounds there, neglected, in droves.
Hanged, dangling, eaten by fleas while shit still flows from their guts down the trunk that serves as their gallows. Evening falls; the sun is setting... The locals, reeking of sweat, put aside their farming tools and head to the tavern to spend their wages on red wine.
And when the wind blows, the solano wind, which is the only wind that runs through these plains and also dries their clothes; when the solano blows you can hear the laments of the souls of the natives that are agonising softly and permeate the environment with pain and fatigue. In summer the heat scorches you as if you were in Hell, and in winter your teeth chatter and snot leaks from your nose. There are no pretty women, only old and foreign. The birds do not sing, there are no tree shadows because there are no trees, nor birds that perch. Everything is restlessness and a strange sense of anguish.
In summer, nights are never cool and you hear the cicadas sing with their monotonous song until you go crazy. And you can hear birdsong but only partridges since there are no other birds, partridges exist in great abundance, and also many rabbits. Countless run-over rabbits can be seen in the roads.
And recycled Maersk containers for repurposed as houses next to concrete water tanks are a classic sight.
I always believed that I was one, indivisible. But La Sagra unfolded me: It was there where I realized that I was not one, but two. A body and a soul that formed a whole. I remember how as I stepped that cursed land, the earth wanted to pry my soul from me. And I swear to God that I noticed how my soul escaped my body and started to be swallowed up by that place. But I caught it and was able to keep it attached to my body. No wonder the locals have all lost their minds. That land empties you, steals the spiritual beings but maintains the organic bodies, which then roam their dwellings without any brightness in their eyes.
You lift yourself, throw the hoe to your side, and as you breathe and air burns your entrails with misery, and the stench is deeper than nausea itself.
Rabbits infected with myxomatosis, farm partridges that are released so they can escape and die in their flight. Starved greyhounds, ridden with ringworm, that can’t stop shaking due to cold or fear. These are the three animals that inhabit that land, a dry land that denies water. Dante's prelude to hell.
That is why their wine is so strong, because it is made from the suffering of those who till the land. A wine with a powdery aftertaste, bitter, harsh on the palate, which inebriates those who drink it, bad wine. It brings out the worst from everyone. The cursed blood of the place. Drinking that concoction is like tasting the blood of a vampire.
Denomination of origin Méntrida. If you see it out there, do not try it, well, do what you want, but know that it is made from the tears of those who live trapped in a parallel universe.
A bleak, barren land that howls in pain, blood spilling in the fields. It won't rain for months. It gets dark and the countryman walks among the cypresses ... Will there be any leftover bread crust from yesterday? The night burns, the return hurts.
And the olive trees? Always sick, always ailing. I used to ask the locals out of courtesy how the harvest was going. And always, always, something happened to the olive trees. If the botfly doesn't bite them, then it doesn't rain; when it rains, they get infected; either the frosts kills the fruit or the drought kills the oil yield. They are always sick or ailing, they are like a reflection of their owners. When there is a lot of production, the oil price goes down. If there is no harvest, the price goes up. If it is not hail, it is the tuberculosis of the olive tree. If one year the subsidy is paid early, that year the Romanians and Gypsies devastate the olive groves. Always, always there is something wrong. I have not seen any tree that has not endured more suffering than the olive trees in that area. And with what pride the farmers tell you about their diseases; they seem to be eager that you ask so they can start complaining bitterly about their existence.
I don't know if the reason are telluric forces or secret arcana, but in that area the number of retarded children is striking. When I went through it, if was rare that one day had not passed without someone confessing to me that they had a son in a special needs school, or a daughter living on disability benefits, or some “light being” in the family. I came to think that the men there are sterile and that it is Beelzebub himself who begets these abominable beings in his women. Breeding the region with Mongolism and backwardness.
The natives of La Sagra, the Sagreños, will never tell you what they think. For them, to say what they think is the greatest sin there is. Greater than incest or murder. If you grab a Sagra inhabitant, tie him to an armchair, pull out one of his teeth using some rusty pliers and ask him if if it hurts ... the Sagreño will tell you: “no”.
The Sagreño is jealous of his thoughts. If you see two Sagreños gathering randomly on the street, it is easy to guess what they are doing: They are lying to each other.
Because lying is their local sport. They manipulate others by lying to them so they can extract their thoughts. As the local saying goes: “To Get a lie for a truth”. They think they are very clever with the outsider and do not realize that they really look like cretins.
Their human relationships are unnatural, artificial, very strange. They do not know what spontaneity, sincerity, openness, closeness or frankness are. And they don't even want to know.
The houses of the many arabs you see there are not very flattering either. You see a small three-story block with one flat on each floor, and you see that there are three satellite dishes, and the lock on the entrance has been broken for years and nobody fixes it. The mailboxes of the arabs have a name scribbled with marker and nothing else. It's bleak.
People who empty their wine glasses in the afternoons before going to the whorehouse at Valmojado, or to the Lucio at Maqueda.
Elderly people who go to tend the vineyards in tractors that were manufactured when the dictator was still alive. Sullen gestures on their weathered faces.
Most of the farmlands are barren and full of weeds.
Trumpet mushrooms everywhere but don't ever pick up mushrooms. Mushrooms absorb a lot of toxins and who knows what you are eating. On one occasion, I picked up a bunch of mushrooms inside the roundabout leading to the highway in Santa Cruz de Retamar and the diarrhea I had was historic.
Sinister-looking elders who go to mass every Sunday. Dressed in black and with a face full of bitterness, pride and despair. They tightly grip the rosaries in their trembling fingers.
Don’t go to La Sagra, my children.
So close to Madrid, so far from God.
