La Vida Alcalaína

The Alcornocales Natural Park is one of the last places in Europe where mules still work for a living.  During the cork harvest, which takes place in the summer months, they are used to carry the strips of cork down steep narrow tracks through dense woodland to a clearing where it can be loaded onto lorries.  The rest of the year they graze peacefully on patches of open space in and around the town.  They are cared for year-round by a dedicated team of arrieros (the dictionary translation of that word is muleteer, but as you will see, the are more than just drovers).  Last weekend during the feria, the arrieros of Alcalá were honoured at a special event in the caseta la Gloria .  Here are some extracts from the tribute speech, written and presented by local anthropologist Agustin Coca. "Today ... we acknowledge the professionalism and wisdom of a handful of people who weave their lives in with those of their animals, through good times and bad,...

The source of material for this article is a paper by Ismael Almagro Montes de Oca, "El Movimiento Obrero en Alcalá de los Gazules en el Último Tercio del Siglo XIX", published in Apuntes Históricos y de Nuestro Patrimonio 2019 , and online at  historiadealcaladelosgazules.blogspot.com . Alcalá de los Gazules is known as the “ cradle of Andalusian socialism ” mainly because of the work of those who rebuilt the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in the dying days of the Franco dictatorship.  But its socialist history dates back to the 19th century, with the Agrupación Socialista   founded by Diego Valle Regife and his comrades in 1886.  It was only the second such group in the whole of Andalucía , and the first in a rural context. The first signs of workers’ organisation in Spain came with the foundation of the Asociación Internacional de Trabajadores (First International) in 1864, and the Glorious Revolution of 1868 which led to the rapid spread of anarc...