Ode and elegy to Purchena in 1927

Photo: Anna Miller

My dear friends, Happy New Year 2023!

I hope that you have had the time to spend Christmas with the most important and dearest people in your lives and that together, we will make 2023 a prosperous and healthy year.

I’m sure many of you or your loved ones have returned to Purchena this festive season, and is there anything more purchenero and ours than that imposing image of our town at the entrance over the bridge? Of course, it is an iconic postcard of Purchena and its construction facilitated the access and communications of our town in a remarkable way. But there is one important thing to know, and that is that our bridge over the river Almanzora, the bridge of Fas, was not always there. Before its construction, floods and torrential rains flooded the vega and left us cut off from communication for several days.

Today I bring you the writings of a purchenera in a magazine entitled Almería Nueva in 1927. I have appreciated nostalgia and melancholy, but also hope in her words, hope for a more prosperous future for Purchena.

Her name was Carmen Tapia Pérez, and I would ask you, if anyone can have an idea of who this woman who had to leave Purchena as a child was, please feel free to leave a comment and, between us all, let’s see if we are able to trace the origins of this purchenera who, in my words, wrote this Ode and elegy to Purchena in 1927.

Clarita

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Purchena! My small homeland

Sanctuary of my memories and dreams… Adored land where the love of my soul was born, corner of the joyful Andalusia, where my spirit was born, grew and widened, creating the first illusion of my fantasy, in that cheerful and smiling little house, like the humble «House of Nazareth, in imitation of Jesus when he said to the apostles». «Let the little children come to me» … Under that hospitable roof, several generations have been educated with wisdom, with affection, with love, as only that Saint knew how to teach, whom a whole town remembers with adoration, in spite of the years that have passed since her early death.

How quickly the years, the months, the days, the hours, the minutes go by… that I see parading before my little wristwatch, dragging along with dizzying speed, first the only happy time of life, which is… sweet childhood; without hatred, without regrets, without sorrow or remorse of conscience.

Somewhat later, but always with the hectic march of time, youth, health and life fade away, with the loss of the most cherished illusions, showing us in their snowy garb the cold old age, loneliness and abandonment.

And so you, Purchena of my soul, will fade away!… A city that in better times, appeared to the eyes of the curious traveller as a town built by the fairies of the fairy tale «Sleeping Beauty». Who knows you when only remnants of your greatness are left?

Most of your houses have crumbled under the furious impetus of the gale, the green foliage has been annihilated by horrible storms of water, which have destroyed streets and roads; even the almenas, the site of my predilection, have disappeared almost entirely.

Men also disappear, because the poor, in fear of misery and hunger, with sorrow twisted in their hearts, abandon you looking for work in distant countries, the work that you, lacking resources, deny them.

I too, on the death of my father (with tears in my eyes) had to abandon you; but I do not forget you, nor will I ever forget you. I was born under your blessed sky, I was very happy in the caresses of your sun, and very unhappy that snowy day… that you took the life of my good and holy mother. Everything lives perennially in me and your memories, make my heart beat with great haste. For whom do I sigh? Thinking of her, of you, of your poverty, of your decadence, of the ruin you are in… And believe me, my Purchena, that I would give a thousand lives that I had, to be a heroine, to preserve and save you; to be something noble and great in the life of my people; but I do not faint. Hezekiah, close to death, saved his life by faith inspired by the God of his elders. To the prophet Isaiah, God announced 15 years of life, when he only expected to live for a moment. Why should we not have faith and hope? All that is fateful and sorrowful emanates from men; but as God is the source of the good that vivifies, I trust with great hope that the prayers that the Virgin of the Almenas transmits to her son on our behalf will be heard, and with Primo de Rivera illuminated by him, soon, very soon the order will be received for the construction of the bridge of Fás (so many years dreamed of) so that the poor do not have to emigrate, and Purchena will return to being the city of the beautiful and great moon that the Arabs bequeathed us around the year 1492 approximately.

Carmen Tapia Pérez

Almería Nueva – Weekly Magazine

1 November 1927