Outwardly we were forced to agree with them, but inwardly we recognized--perhaps with a sense of regret--that to enjoy these fiestas as they ought to be enjoyed, that is, as a Spaniard enjoys them, requires a sense of values and perhaps a nervous organism which we do not possess.
Jijona lived on almond paste. All around us the grey, pallid or zebra striped mountains were terraced, and wherever enough earth could be gathered together for an almond tree to grow, there it was planted. The turron of Jijona, which is made in perfection nowhere else, is a very popular sweet meat all over Spain and even is widely appreciated in South America. In Barcelona I have been greeted by turron-selling youths who addressed me as La Valiente. On the French frontier in a little village we found a turron-stall kept by a man in Jijona costume of black blouse and pointed hat; but he was a fraud: he had never been near Jijona, nor could he speak the Jijona dialect. But the whole life of Jijona was dominated by turron marzipan, and the varieties of sweet meats made from almonds. We arrived as the almonds were beginning to ripen. Out on the mountains one heard the thrashing of the canes amongst the branches as the peasants beat the nuts off the almond trees. From the village rose up a sound like that of a gigantic typewriter as the women of the village sat in the streets in circles and cracked the almond shells. In our entrada old Père Chicot crouched most of the day on his haunches, peeling, drying and cracking the almonds from El Señor's garden.
In consequence of the turron work we found it very difficult to get a woman to work for us. Life became difficult. The conditions in Jijona were not the same as those in Verdolay. In the latter place we could buy excellent charcoal, but to our surprise we found charcoal difficult to get in Jijona. When we did get it, from the proprietor of the local cinematograph theatre, it was so hard that it would not burn. Père Chicot said gruffly, "What are almond shells for?" We then tried burning almond shells; but they made a poor fire, and an accumulation of shells soon put itself out. We wasted one and a half hours trying to fry potatoes on an almond-shell fire. So as long as we could not get a woman, we had to live on cold stuff that we could buy from the shops: Dutch cheese, and sardines, principally.