"One time I went to the house of the painter Pello Azketa and he showed me this painting." "Two boys peer into the reservoir from the water's edge, where something has disappeared or is about to appear." "At that time, I had the idea of going back to the village of my birthplace to get a picture of its final inhabitants and to wrench some words from them." "Ten years later I wanted to have another look at the painting." "Due to an eyesight disability, the painter could now only work with difficulty." "And I embarked on a return which now begins." "This is old, very old..., the most ancient thing on earth... from before the Flood..." "God only knows the number of years that this has been here!" "When we were children we used to play in this lovely spot and we still knew nothing." "And now look what it was, a tomb for dinosaurs." "This part is the tail end." "Here is the belly, the feet... but then the neck comes here." "And a piece of the head." "After so many years they get broken because this was a pathway." "And that's the way it is!" "Here they left a mark." "And this is the tomb of the smallest dinosaur." "And we also have a fine footprint, one, two, three toes and the heel and then we have this other one." "Here and here, this one goes here and here." "These are the tracks of where the dinosaurs were treading." "They say that it's sixty million years ago since they disappeared, and that they had been around for 120 or 130 million years, just them, on their own." "There were no houses or anything around here, then." "When we were children we used to play in this spot and we didn't know a thing then." "Those words from the woman that I came across on my return, had shown me the way." "THE SKY TURNS" "Autumn." "Things emerge" "This, for me is the strangest landscape that exists." "This is what you see from the house where I was born, and so, the first thing I saw in the world." "Or to be more exact;" "during the first three years of my life, this spot was the whole world." "The rest takes place beyond that hill." "I have frozen the image because, according to those who stayed here, this place has remained unchanged since then." "And also because it is here that my father lies buried." "Although Ican't remember the way this place was the first time Isaw it." "So, the breadman will come tomorrow, at one o'clock, or whenever..." "Well, yesterday, who was there to pick up the bread?" "Yesterday?" "Nobody." "Cirilo..." "Cirilo gets it left in his house." "And Aurea, if she's here..." "But Ithink she's not here today." "And Jesús, and Román, perhaps are here..." "He appears every 3 or 4 days, when it suits him..." "He comes three days a week." "And you'll soon see the village without any breadman at all." "No way, no." "Well, well, with time..." "And the frozen food man also comes on Fridays, or Tuesdays?" "When does he come, Antonino?" "Ithink it's on Tuesdays." "On Tuesdays." "And that's it!" "And a fruitman... none." "That's all we need." "So you'll have to go without any fruit, my girl!" "The fishmonger comes by on Tuesdays, but, if he didn't come, it would be all the same, because there are three of us and not one of us comes out..." "Somebody would come out, someone would surely..." "Silvano has been saying it for a good while now:" ""Not even the breadman will call"." "The postman could be three days without calling..." "The postman has to call everyday, even if there is no post." "But he has to check the village letterbox." "What Isay is..." "Who is going to be writing letters nowadays?" "Three letters in the year..." "And, even though he has the letterbox he leaves them in some other house!" "There is no drying here." "With all the wet there is!" "The weather dictates." "You rot quicker in the wall vaults than in the earth." "But you smell more there than in the earth." "Because it takes longer to go rotten!" "When we buried my aunt Carmen, the head of my uncle came out and it still had hair on it." "You're joking!" "The whole skull, with hair all over it." "But as soon as you touch it the hair falls away." "It started to fall apart on its own with the sunlight." "And everyone said: "Don't touch it!" But why not touch it?" "As if he is going to complain!" "That's it." "Anyway Itook the head and I threw it there to the bone pit." "They said: "He's clutching a head!"." "As if it was going to eat me." "Eh, José?" "Long ago it was the custom to throw all the bones there that came out, but they shouldn't go there... lf you bury a father and then the son, they should both stay in the same grave." "Even if they are only a few bones." "Bones, no." "Ashes." "That's all there is." "With me, when we brought out my mother, they said:" ""Do you want to take her to the other cemetery?" No way!" "The thing is to make the graves bigger." "Then, when the second comes along..." "You can put a plastic cover over the coffin, and when another comes, it can go on top of that and another plastic on top." "To have that you need to make them deeper." "This one is missing some letters." "Look, "Rest ln..." "Peace"." ""ln... eace."" "There is a letter missing." "The "P" is missing." ""The Delgado... arcía family"." "The "A" is missing." "The "G" is missing." "The "G" of García." "This was screwed on here." "It might be screwed on." "But not on there." "It was eaten away!" "You have to admit that that plum tree should be sturdy." "It must suck up the substance." "Some roots would have come round this side." "Some roots would have come round." "One day there were plums on the ground." "Chari picked up a lot." "Maybe they had a taste of death." "Indeed!" "As if that would kill me!" "Well, well." "What a life, my goodness!" "Well, our life might be rough but all those back there have got it worse." "But that is where we will all end up." "That's for sure." "Back there or some other place just like it." "Once you're down, you'll never come up again." "Some day they'll find three or four bones, but that will be it." "There is no denying that it is sad that life should end like that." "And we thinking that we are going to live until "Secula Seculorum"!" "Up to the last minute you think you are going to live forever." "And the dreams we have..." "How to get more of this and that, to have more and more... and for what?" "ln the end, you leave it behind." "I had often heard tell from my parents the story about the day when my family left the village for ever, more than thirty years ago." "That foggy morning, all the neighbours came out to say goodbye to the truck that drove away down the road." "The removal truck that brought us off in search of a better fortune." "The woman I watched coming out every morning was Pepa." "She had helped my mother the day I was born." "Since then no other baby has been born in the village." "I wanted to get a picture of that woman from afar before I entered her house." "Easy, I'm not going to slap you." "The golden skittles were hidden in the palace and the ghost of a little girl who couldn't laugh." "But the two belonged to the same tale." "Like Pepa, the midwife and Cirilo the shepherd, like the living and the dead." "All the ghosts emerged from the tale on a foggy morning." "My father used to say that here they kept the prisoners." "And it was thought that this palace was built by the slaves, but that was not sure, because it was not in the legend..." "Come on, up here." "And here is where the mass was said." "And the slaves heard it from over there." "The room was covered in..." "What a mess the whole place is." "And to think how clean I used to keep it!" "It pains me to come back." "I can't get my bearings." "Now, I know." "Well, here..." "Look, Valentina, I think the entrance to that room was over there." "Not at all." "You entered over there because here was not open." "But Valentina, there used to be a bed there!" "No, that was closed off and that too, and that was open..." "Of course, you went in that way." "Look, I read once that there were lords living here." "But first it belonged to some brothers." "But when did you say the girl who couldn't cry was here?" "She couldn't laugh." "And they brought her in a coffee set of Chinese delph to see if she would break them and laugh..." "But not a bit of it." "They also say that there are some golden skittles here." "That's right." "The parents of that little girl bought them for her." "Their daughter was nuts." "Last night, I was tossing and turning." "And then, when I fell asleep I kept dreaming." "And I was dreaming about how nice it used to be in the palace." "Full of pears and cherries." "That was a fine stretch of garden, wasn't it?" "ln my dream I said: "How nice to be living again in the palace!"" "What you've always had." "I was 18 or 19 years living here alone without Amancio." "And sleeping all alone in this palace." "Mother of God!" "All alone in here!" "I wasn't scared." "Nobody knew exactly when the palace dated from." "It was known to have always been there, even before the village existed." "The last families that lived there could remember when the last lords went away, but not beyond that." "And look how well off they were." "Nearly the whole village was theirs." "Everything belonged to them." "Everything you could see was theirs." "My goodness!" "All the experiences we had here!" "And why is it that we are left with so many memories?" "Let's be off, farewell!" "This is the stable of my uncle Eliseo." "One day of that month of November the fourteen neighbours from the village had begun to visit the house to say their goodbyes." "That morning when the doctor had come once again," "I went outside by the back door." "There still was the chair where, up to a short time ago, he sat to have a smoke." "Because he often said to his wife that, before dying, if it was not very cold, he would go out one morning to the doorway." "I took a picture of this spot and during the following days I waited." "From the village you could see the Celtiberian settlements." "Those people lived with the fear that one day the sky would fall on top of them." "Castellares, for sure was the oldest township around here." "Sure, they were all just shacks!" "When the Romans came, these people had already been here 2ooo years or more." "When the Romans invaded, everyone went to Numancia." "But those people weren't from here, they'd come from down there." "All was united with Numancia." "ln the end, to go off to die in Numancia..." "They may as well have stayed around here." "Who knows if there were a lot or just a few people living here." "No, there had to be a good number here because this is a big area." "It went up as far as there." "All this that you can see down here was full of houses." "Full of houses." "And now the same thing is happening 2,ooo years later." "The whole area depopulated and now the same thing is going to happen." "Well, they went away and others will come." "ln the end, we will have to emigrate to Mars!" "They are already thinking of going to Mars when the earth is exhausted, everybody up to Mars." "Yes, but let's see who goes up there..." "They are already looking for the way." "When they get good spaceships they will soon be sending people there." "If they find water." "One thing is sure, we are not alone in the universe." "No, no..." "There are bound to be other planets with people on them, but who knows where they might be... ln other galaxies..." "wherever they are." "Days later I retraced the way taken by Antonino and Silvano, but I couldn't find the Celtiberian settlements." "I remembered an old painting from the painter Pello Azketa." "At sunrise, a holm oak is going to be erased from the light, when the sky falls to the earth." "It was then I thought that I knew one person who could walk with me to the origin of the story and at the end of the Autumn I returned with him." "On the right, a house, Antonino?" "Yes." "On the right, a house." "And on the ground?" "Leaves?" "On the ground, leaves." "From a poplar tree?" "A poplar and from a willow." "Do we still have a house to our right?" "No." "An old stable." "Here?" "So, this is a gap?" "There's a doorway there.." "Here?" "So the house is still standing?" "A derelict house." "And now we are going up, there is another house here, we are going to come to the pelota court again," "to the town hall..." "Here?" "We go right here, don't we?" "We get to the square, to the fountain." "Here is the fountain." "I go this way." "lt's working out fine." "Yes." "The church is just here, isn't it?" "That's it." "To the right, when you turn." "Turning here..." "I'll get to the door." "I'm right on line this way, right?" "Yes." "And now straight ahead." "The church door." "During those days that the painter spent in the village nobody asked why he was there." "Do you just see one colour on the landscape, Antonino?" "There are several..." "What colours do you see?" "Tell me..." "Well, look, you can see earth, you can see grass, you can see holm oaks, blackthorns..." "Can you see a holm oak as you go up the hill?" "But... where?" "On the little hill." "Do you mean where the sky meets the hill?" "ls there an outline against the sky?" "No, there is no outline." "Ah, that's why I don't see it easily." "It's too dark on the hill." "And as you go along by here, straight on by the hill, you see some holm oaks and a gully that goes to the left, get it?" "Well, there is a fountain that never dries up, the Hill Fountain." "And is it possible to get up there?" "ls there a path?" "It's possible but there is no path." "You have to cross the fields." "But you can go?" "Yes." "And there you can see some small trees that are holm oaks." "Yes, I'm moving up." "You can see another one up on the height." "A holm oak." "At the very top?" "Yes, right on the summit." "There." "Do you see it?" "Yes." "It's a bit gloomy, isn't it?" "The colours are a bit complicated today without the sun... everything is a bit overcast." "The clouds go by and everything is darker." "It doesn't give off the vigorous colour that it has." "No, it doesn't." "The glint of the colour is missing... and the light." "But sure, the morning light will come again." "God willing and if the weather allows it." "Three weeks had gone by since Eliseo had fallen ill." "Aurea, his wife, went out each morning to count the hens... because a fox had begun to prowl around the place at night." "It would be nice to go up in a spaceship and look at earth from the moon." "That would be nice." "Wouldn't you like to go up in one of those spaceships?" "Sure I would." "Go to the moon." "And go right round the whole world." "One day it will be possible to go to the moon." "But I'm thinking that we won't see that, Antonino." "Travelling to the stars will be for a few privileged ones." "It will take at least a hundred years for normal people to go to the stars." "Imagine, every civilization has been looking up to the sky since 1o,ooo or 2o,ooo years ago..." "Of course, if you are on the ground it's unavoidable to look up..." "People believe that we have come from the stars and it is necessary to go back to the stars." "Winter in the eyes" "After Eliseo's death, after the departure of the painter, things began to change." "As happens with the Winter, the first signs of change came from the north, from the far side of the hills." "There has been a primitive dolmen since the beginning... and a bit further up, a shepherd's hut." "If anyone walked from one place to the other on a misty day, they could pass through thousands of years without any problem." "Emiliano, José," "Eladio are all there, a lot of people are there, everyone playing a game of cards." "This picture." "Here's the tree." "It was still there then." "lt was unharmed..." "You could still see" "the elm tree." "ln all its splendor." "Everyone gathered under there." "We would come out after dinner in the summers, and we might be there 'till four in the morning." "At that time there were a lot of people in the village, weren't there?" "Maybe up to two hundred." "Here is when we uprooted it altogether." "Round about 1980, the disease of the elm tree." "It was going to be saved but, in the end, it wasn't saved." "It had all its roots dried up, it came out by itself." "It was... lt was in bits, all broken up." "When we pulled down the elm tree some human bones came out from underneath." "We dug out three or four skulls." "How many years would they have been under it!" "ln 5oo years that elm tree must have seen a lot of people pass by... lt lived for too long, Silvano." "ln another 4oo years nobody will know what had been here." "Nobody had lived in the palace for decades, but that winter, lights could again be seen inside on some nights." "The buried cities" "I was told about that carved stone that broke Eliseo's plough one day." "It once had been part of a roman villa." "The lettering said:" ""Fortune enters in the house of Marco Favio"." "Stones like that used to always appear after the winter." "The tractors dug up the ground." "And inside the ground lay the cities." "Close by there, perhaps when Marco Favio and his family put up the house, the city of Numancia was waiting to be buried." "ln fact, what we are looking at is no more than the front porch of the houses." "Access to the house is by those steps." "You can see them over there." "What we have in front of us is the patio." "It has a doorway." "I could get to the house..." "The house would have been up there and I would have gained access" "by this stairway to the kitchen and other rooms." "Numancia had resisted for 2o years." "And generals before Scipio would have passed by here to set up their camps over there on that hill." "ln Roman times, one of the most important roads passed through there, from the itinerary of Antonino, which was like one of the big "Michelin" maps of those days." "Road 27 on that map ran just along there." "Scipio arrived here to Numancia and tried to resolve a way to put an end to what the Romans couldn't comprehend." "How their army which had been victorious, couldn't overcome a small population of Hispania." "ln the Summer of 133 BC, Numancia, without supplies or water, capitulated." "Many Numancians decided to do away with themselves and burn the city down." "Because the peace conditions offered to them by Scipio were unacceptable, bearing in mind the Celtiberian ethic." "Those conditions were to be sold as slaves all over the Mediterranean, to lose their homes and families." "You can understand how, in those conditions, they committed suicide and burnt their homes." "You have to try to imagine the importance that war had for the Numancians." "And when they went to war, clanging their swords against their shields trying to intimidate the enemy with the noise." "As if to say:" ""Here we are, and we are out to get you all", because, logically, you have to go to war with your spirits high, and the Numancians tried to lift their spirits by having some ritual dances," "and with their drink, the "kaelia" which was a beer made from wheat." "And all that along with the chants and the clash of their swords, lifted their spirits, which they reinforced with the sound of their trumpets." "The world waits anxiously at the imminence of war as the ultimatum given by U.S. president George Bush to Iraqi leader Sadam Hussein draws to an end." "The deadline expires at 2:oo a.m. Spanish time." "Troop movements, last minute meetings, with all eyes on Irak, which could suffer heavy bombing raids at the start of the conflict." "Some sources talk of 3,ooo bombs in the first 48 hours." "They don't know until tomorrow." "They have to meet." "No, this very night the result will be decided." "They are already prepared for war." "That is what I heard last night on the radio." "Let's see what happens today." "Bush is the most resolute of all." "He wants to get Hussein." "But how can Bush not know what the other one has or has not, isn't he the one that has been selling to him?" "He sold him the weapons and now he wants to take them off him." "The French are the ones that have a lot of businesses over there," "with the oil..." "they are to blame too." "That English fellow has already said yes, that it was necessary to batter him, and the American one also." "And Spain is ready to do the same..." "They said that they wouldn't carry weapons nor anything like that." "And they will have to resort to the lot." "No, but I don't think Spain is going to get very involved." "involved?" "They haven't started yet." "The ones who are going to fight..." "The Americans." "...are the English and Bush." "We'll see..." "They are the ones that are there." "And that's more than enough." "If they were poor they wouldn't be over there." "If they had nothing, what would they be doing there?" "Damm it!" "They are not going there to feed them." "That's for sure." "They are only going to destroy..." "But as he is the one with the most oil." "There will come the day when nobody will be able to stop that fellow." "And wasn't it the same in the last war?" "The Russians against the Germans?" "Just the same." "If you let one man become the master of the world, you're fucked." "Well, if they let him, that fellow will become the master." "That's why they want to put a stop to him." "Before it is too late." "It's always the same." "I remember that, Christ Almighty." "Well... ln any case, as long as they leave us in peace..." "How well I remember that one, damn it all!" "When they shot the woodman from Magaña." "ln the hills." "How they left him there for dead." "Who was that?" "The woodman from Magaña." "They killed him there." "The villagers had to bring him down and bury him." "That was the same day that the Civil War broke out." "The 18th of July." "I remember that, Christ Almighty." "Three or four days after the start of the war they went to Magaña and he was fishing in the river." "They caught him." "They brought him up the mountain and killed him there." "The next day the Civil Guards came and said that..." "I don't remember that very well..." "When they were about to shoot him, they told him:" ""Shout, long live Franco!"" "And he shouted:" ""Long live the Republic!"" "And bang, bang..." "they left him for dead." "That happened a lot." "It happened everywhere." "They said to him:" ""Long live Franco!" And he replied," ""Long live the Republic!"." "They fired a few rounds and left him there." "The poor woodman!" "During the following days there were signs in the skies above." "They always appeared coming from the north, every six hours." "They left their tracks behind them and took the route to a far country whose cities were maybe even then waiting to be buried." "Forty satellite guided missiles were fired by the four destroyers." "At the same time several F-1 17, which are hidden from radar, dropped their bombs over Bagdad." "1oo planes took off from the two aircraft carriers," ""Abraham Lincoln" and "Constellation", in the Persian Gulf to bomb various installations." "A lady said to me:" ""How is the village?"" ""ln the same place as ever."" ""But a hotel!" And I said to her:" ""I used to know the palace but now I wouldn't recognize it!"" "You'll see." "I don't think..." "Later on, people from outside will have to come." "For what?" "For the bar, and to be cooks." "But the hotel will be for visitors." "Maybe we won't even be allowed in." "Why not?" "Admittance, admittance for all." "But it all depends on the wallets." "Breakfast, lunch, dinner and room" "couldn't come to less than 3oo euros." "Come on now!" "Some day..." "Not many people will come." "They'll come." "Well, we can't go at that rate." "What would you do in a 5-star hotel?" "How can it be 5-star?" "It's 5-star." "We'll have to make do with looking at the balconies and windows... lf it's 5-star, it'll have to have a bathroom." "That's going a bit too far." "It would be much better to build an old folk's home." "What do you want with that?" "No matter how soon they build it, you may not..." "Well, we'd be the first to go into the home." "Yes, before it's built." "We'd have first choice." "We'd have more right to live there, we're from the village." "You'll see next year." "Just Antonino, Silvano and me when I come." "And others would come in and say, "What's in this village?"" "Sure there aren't three left here..." "Don't be so sure." "Maybe we will be all still here." "And if not, Salva, make a bonfire of our bodies." "Time will tell..." "Are the doors up on the palace?" "No." "They have only cut them into shape." "How many rooms are they putting in?" "I think it is 42." "42 rooms." "Shit, 42!" "And they're putting in a restaurant." "But it'll be expensive." "For the rich." "For the locals, nothing." "Don't put on any more firewood!" "Look at the way it's burning." "When will it all be ready?" "For the Summer it will all be done." "At the end of March I again accompanied the painter." "They had told me how an elm tree dies and the painter spoke to me of his ever-growing darkness." "The central rings of the tree, the youngest ones, would be consumed first, opening a skylight to the sky." "And the light which entered to the interior perforated the wood." "I saw that what happened to the elm tree was not a death, rather a well-organized regression, with patient meticulous adjustments." "The yellow lichen did its work from the inside, the years exerted their pressure and regressed, and in this transition it opened eyes and ears to the exterior." "2o years earlier they had left the dried elm tree in front of the palace." "And there it would remain, in full sight of the new hotel with the same aggravating air as that of a necropolis." "A light heavy spring" "I'm going to participate, change the political scene." "I'm going to take all of you into account." "That is the power of your vote, which could mark a new outlook and a new government." "The Socialist Party is for everyone." "You vote." "VOTE FOR THE socialist PARTY" "Antonino!" "What?" "Didn't the socialists come and introduce themselves?" "But we haven't been introduced." "They spoke and spoke, but nothing..." "And did they say to you?" "Because we were in the church." "Nothing." "They wanted to put up some publicity and to put forward some new young candidates and I told them:" ""What presents have you brought us?"" "Because you promised us lots." "They said, "We've brought candy, balloons and condoms"." "I said, "You can take them back again"." "Look at what we missed!" "They have seen there weren't any people and they have gone." "It's like when the breadman comes along." "If he comes and sees nobody, he goes off... and leaves you without any bread." "And what did they say to you, Román?" "To me?" "Nothing." "To see if we would give them the vote." "You said yes and they went off?" "They are left without our votes, we were in the church." "Maybe if they'd stayed, when we came out..." "Yes, but you people are left without any candy." "I remembered the magnifying-glass Silvano used to examine the photos." "All the people gathered under the old elm tree." "When he went out to the street that night" "I realized that the magnifying-glass was also one of the lens from his telescope." "Later he was looking through it while the shadow of the earth covered the moon." "José!" "José!" "Were you calling?" "You must be a bit weak, I could hardly hear you." "How are the lettuce going?" "Well, already planted." "It's better for them to be together, isn't it?" "If they are not, they have no heart." "Well, they will close up with time." "When is this eclipse going to happen?" "Didn't you go out last night?" "Last night, was it?" "I don't like the one with the moon." "You prefer the one with the sun." "I came out to see the moon's." "You hardly notice the thing with the moon." "Of course you notice." "The whole thing went dark and you couldn't see the moon." "So what?" "There are many nights when you don't see the moon." "But you could see it last night." "At what time?" "Christ!" "When it all began!" "But what time was that?" "From 2:3o in the morning onwards." "And it lasted 'till five o'clock." "Surely you weren't up until five in the morning!" "No, I went to bed and then got up later to have another look." "Don't you remember that other eclipse of the sun?" "When was that?" "Many years ago!" "Uncle Luciano's hens ran like the wind." "They would have been thinking, "Let's get home, it's bedtime"." "You know how it is, they go in when the sun sets." "And come out when it rises." "It looked like rain yesterday, but it didn't fall." "And the same today." "And the same today." "If it rains, it rains." "It's cloudy." "Yes, it's cloudy this morning." "Mind yourself now, Antonino." "See you later." "Say hello to the missus." "I'll do that." "Tell her to feed you up!" "She'll appreciate that." "If she wants." "If she doesn't..." "Well, let's leave this wonderful throne." "Keep it, it's good for sitting on." "Hello there." "How are things?" "Fine, praise be to Allah!" "How many Moroccans are living here?" "I'm on my own here with just the wife and kids." "ls there no one else?" "No, no one else." "I also live here alone." "There are no other neighbours." "I'm the only one in the village." "And what's it like round here?" "Away from Soria?" "Fine." "Praise be to Allah." "This is quiet." "My mind is at peace." "And how did you end up here, looking after sheep?" "I was working as a civil servant for the Minister of the lnterior and..." "For the Moroccan Government?" "That's right... and..." "well, for reasons..." "Well, what part of Morocco are you from?" "From Casablanca." "Well, well, glad to hear it!" "I'm from Tangiers." "Fate has brought us here..." "Fate has brought us here so far from our homes." "There is an Arab proverb which goes:" ""Mountains never move, but men do"." "Men move about and although 2o years might pass they can meet up again." "That's very true." "Many years ago, the Arabs lived round here." "Yes." "They stayed a long time here." "Nearby, in the village there is an Arab castle." "It must be 8oo years old." "And now they are going to make a hotel of it." "Even those sheep that you are looking after are of Arab origin." "According to what they say, the black sheep are of Arab origin." "I bought a sheep the other day from a Christian shepherdess." "From the village, from the next village." "She sells them, does she?" "And did you sacrifice it yourself?" "Yes, and we had a fine afternoon." "To forget about the loneliness for a while." "There is no one in Carrascosa." "And what are you doing round here?" "I haven't asked you what you're doing here." "Sometimes I see you running about here..." "That's right." "And I have seen you and waved to you..." "I run about 16 kilometres around here, sometimes as far as the windmills." "Have you just come to Soria to train?" "Yes, just to train." "I ran the marathon in the last world championship." "With the Moroccan team?" "Yes, yes, we got a bronze medal." "A bronze, eh!" "Athletes get to see the whole world." "They travel all over." "They have the opportunity to visit a lot of countries." "I must be off." "I'm going to do some training." "Come to my village any day you like." "To have some tea." "My wife will be along with the lunch any time now." "I'll let you get on with your training." "The shepherd and the athlete said farewell and in an instant they were separated by 1,ooo years of distance." "While that instant stretched on," "I thought that the history of the village, with all its generations, fitted in between." "Now that those 1,ooo years were fading away," "I still hoped to drag a few words from them." "Where are you off to?" "ls there another?" "I don't know." "That's small." "Even if it is small, it still counts." "Today, they can't stop lambing." "What are you going to do with so many lambs?" "Today nearly all have had twins." "How long have you been a shepherd?" "Since you were 12?" "I guess so." "Fucking hell!" "I remember as a kid, when I came here to do shearing, you were here," "you were a shepherd." "I've always been with the sheep." "Ever since I was born." "Shit." "Don't they give you any holidays?" "Holidays?" "Never." "Damn it all!" "What can you do!" "You could come down some day to have a beer." "What would I go down for?" "To have a game of cards." "don't you get bored?" "Why would I be bored?" "I am all day on my own." "ln the old days, when there were other shepherds..." "You used to be with them." "And with those from the boundaries." "Now..." "There is nobody." "There are no shepherds anywhere." "I was brought up to be with the flock," "and it's with the flock that I will die." "VOTE FOR THE POPULAR PARTY" "The sky turns" "Summer had come in and my stay in the village was ending." "The air was still while the time went by for the last generation and the turbid water in the river turned clear." "Once back in the city I went back to the painter's house." "Pello Azketa waited for the moment when things appear." "I knew it would be one of his last works." "Perhaps the last of all." "Come on, José!" "When you were small you used to crawl under the chairs, under the bed." "The number of times I hid like that!" "ln the old days!" "And later, when you were twelve or fourteen and you used to hunt for pigeons' nests?" "I caught a few, but I didn't do it often." "Well, I liked it a lot." "How often have I come up this path, José!" "To head for the mountain." "And the years as a shepherd." "You were a shepherd too, were you?" "Two years here, one in Fuentecantos, three in Calderuela." "Some career!" "You did your leaving certificate." "A full degree!" "I soon learnt that life was an uphill climb." "An uphill climb." "Never an easy downhill one." "That's where the effort is, climbing uphill." "When you are small you can get to the top even if you have to crawl there!" "But now they have to drag you up." "Or you won't make it." "Such is life, my friend." "The years go by." "That's life." "When you're old, you can see the good things." "But also the failures." "You see the good and bad." "That's the way life is." "But now you see what's ahead of you, you've grown old and you see what the future holds." "You realize that you are moving... towards nothing." "And you think, "Why was it that way for me?"" ""Why did I do that?"" "Because that is the way we are and we would do it again." "That's very likely..." "They say "When you're old you'll get there... but no further"." "And what that priest used to say:" ""Make the most of this world, we don't know what's in the next"." "A priest wouldn't say a thing like that." "That's what he said." "What a world!" "The world changes." "We don't know who saw the beginning nor who will see the end." "You just have to accept that today you are alive and maybe in another four hours..." "You've gone." "That's something you never know." "Half the world never lived the years that we have lived." "Well, José, keep on going." "I keep on going..." "While I'm here, you keep going." "The day that you pass on, I'll do the same." "Exactly." "We both keep on." "You never know..." "I thought I'd never see 2000 and here we are in 2003!" "And still going." "We'll live right to the last day." "Until it all comes to an end..." "Now you realize that we are only passing through, that life is just a jiff." "And when it's over..." "But as long as you are well, you don't think about it." "In memory of my father"