To look at the Campos de Montiel is to look at the Mancha, close your eyes to see my feelings reflected in each ray of agonising light, when the day ends. Land of lands, colours from all the life, from green to grey, seasonal gold and gloomy November… Sounds from afar and so near… sounds of my village on the horizon: the bell tower, the trumpets, drums from the Holy Week, the fair, fireworks… and then quietness until the pass of time begins again. It all bursts inside me. My land… you were and will be my song, my silence for an answer, my memories, those that were and those that were told to me, the destiny of my body, the reflection of my soul or my soul that reflects me.
Mother and stepmother, the place I wanted to escape from and to where I always return, I don’t know why.
The whistling of the wind between the vine leaves whilst the siesta calms my tiredness. Dry and aching land, hurt by the furrows from the hoe and plough. The stronger the wound, the more the bleeding, the bigger the fruit from your buried seed. Why don’t you believe me and I don’t believe you? Life in your shelter slides between hope and fear, between proudness and nothing. And that doesn’t change, as you don’t change, yesterday, today, tomorrow… a past of misfortunes, a future of machines… oh countryside, always there… in my mind, in the mystery, waiting for my arrival. To look at you is more than that, it is to gaze at you, “to know how to look”, to know how to love… we neither want nor can change anything. Sea of land. Far from the sea. The sea within me.
