THE OLMA OF FUENTESOTO WAS TWO THOUSAND YEARS OLD

 

THE OLMA

   The elm tree in front of the church in my town was more than two thousand years old. It had been planted by the soldiers of Trajan (the story goes that the emperor was born in Pedraza), which was a bit of our compatriot and larger than that of Pedraza, a round tree with a trunk about fifteen meters long, which was not was covered by twenty compatriots. , whose roots came from the surrounding stream and extended throughout the city, from the Curato House to the Pobeda. Its flowering branches stretched to the sides like great protective candelabra. We village children climbed onto the hollow trunk, sat down, laughed and played net. Its branches grew until they touched the eaves of the houses.

The Quima formed a circle in which they sat and played the bagpipes and drums during the patron saint celebrations. It was certainly planted in Roman times.

And these are not guesses, but probabilities, because this village in a corner of the province of Segovia was on Antonino's travel route. Fuentesoto must have been a bivouac or manor house where the legions marching from Astorga to Uxama rested. When I remember this tree from my childhood, tears flow from my eyes because its trunk and roots kept the dust away from the Crepidae or military boots of the Acies of Rome and they saw the Moorish warriors passing by, the Visigoths and then the Visigoths the castle took over a third of Flanders.

Later to the guerrilla. This was the land of the stubborn. Recently it was said that our race descended from the Jews. Some must have lived in Sepúlveda and Sacramenia and Riaza, which were nearby. It was borderland.

   The races merged. This mysterious symbiosis of Jews, Moors and Christians that constitutes the national enigma of Spain. The Muslims trained there, after the conquest of the Duero Valley, worked the stones of the Romanesque churches and taught us how to irrigate the irrigation ditches of the plain.

I think that this exaggeration of Judaism, which now claims that all Spaniards are descended from the chosen people, is nothing more than a propaganda illusion. We are Goths, we come from the Vacceans.

We are Numantinos, untamed, difficult people, accustomed to suffering, guardians of the ancient Christian traditions and the saints of the calendar.

In 1953 it was shortened during the construction of the Peñafiel-Madrid line. A biological sacrilege that perhaps foreshadowed the horrors of the millennium, the empty villages, the depopulation of the land and the migration to the cities.

But we Iberians are so tough. Carpet-ovetonic Spain despises everything it ignores, but prefers to climb on the hay wagon of progress.

   I believe that this Ulmaceous was one of the oldest in Europe, a motherly deity who kept the secret of the ancient gods who protected people. My parents sent me one less mouth there every summer because there wasn't one at that time.

   I was a fragile, delicate and docile child and very handsome. The neighbors of the San Andrés Puerta del Socorro neighborhood, which borders the old Jewish quarter, kissed me when they saw me.

What a beautiful child you have, Mrs. Juanita! You see, my parents spoiled me too much because I was first and took care of my little sister Henar, who died of meningitis in 41 after three months.

I was a sad, refocused kid who liked books. One of the first photos I keep shows me holding a book.

   My fate was sealed, I have to say, what are the genes, my grandson Pelayin is also very handsome, I think prettier than me and less sad and friendlier. I attended a fee-paying school, the Jesuits, and it was there that the first signs of rebellion appeared that would follow me throughout my life. I wrote with my left hand and the nun, Sister Josefina, tied my hand to the chair so that I could write with my right.

Too gullible and innocent, a little dreamy, he believed that he had come to a beautiful and pleasant world where there was no trauma, pain or sin.

When they sent me to the city “to fight,” the contrast was clear.

The village boys laughed at this poor city boy. They did all kinds of tricks with him and I learned, without using it, a word that is now very fashionable: bullying.