To 2008 by the narrow way

 We are going into 2008.  Streetview has not been through much of Escatron since then.  The road we are going to shuffle into the town seems to switch from bright sun to dark gloom - which seems to mark this transition.  There is a reason for this, Escatron is one of those places with a Medieval street plan, tiny snickles unfitted for cars.  I wonder what it looks like today.  In 2008 it had houses that had the look of recent or soon desertion. It always struck me when I first visited Bremida in the 90s how you could have modernised villas next to slowly dissolving homes.







Escatron exists as it is on a hill by the Enro.  Pottery remains goes back to the 3rd century BC and so it was through Romans, Visigoths and Moors.  Under Islamic rule irrigation was established.  The monks over the river pushed their authority and it took King Juan I to warn off the abbott in 1389 that he should facilitate of access to the river.

Escatrón was taken by the French army in March 1809, leaving the monastery until 1814. During the Carlist Wars , the town was occupied by Carlist troops in December 1835. The force of 800 infantry and 250 horse, demanded 6,000 reales from the population.

The 1845 Geographical-Statistical-Historical Dictionary of Spain noted a town hall, prison, school. Hospital, "it is of average quality, with some very good pieces of orchard that are fertilized with the waters of the Martín River." The town produced mainly oil, but also silk, figs, wine, legumes and vegetables. There were then several flour mills and a hammer mill.’  The railway finally arrived in the 1890s.









Population wise the town grew from 1842 [1700] to 1857 [2750] then slid a little to 2100 before the arrival of the power station in the 1950s.  Slowly the town has been bypassed and the peak of 3668 saw a sharp decline to 1366 in 1981.  In 2020 the populace is 1067.  The power station remains the chief economic asset.  Less than 10% of the land is irrigated.  The main crop are olive trees.  Currently the mayor is Juan Abad Bascuas.  He is of the PSOE.  It is a Socialist town, with seven PSOE councillors, compared to two from the PP.

We enter the town under the gaze of the Ermita de Santa Aguedica and into the Plaza de Espana.  The town has a website https://escatron.es/  We won’t go through the artfully photoed grander buildings, but the smaller back ways. We can pop into the Bar Espanol.  The last worded review was a year ago.  Luis said ‘Warm and comfortable atmosphere, a gastronomic experience in pickles, always cold beer, a pleasure’









A newer town is developing to the south, away from the river.  We come out beyond it and head along the A-221   The road is one of those landscape slicing renewed roads.  We will pass a sharply turned out new cemetery.  And so we pass by and pass on.

















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