The snow lady of a confused settlement

 We are following the valley, wherein the high speed train travels. The N420a becomes the N420 just outside the village of Retamar.  Well, to be exact, the road does weird things. The N420a goes through the place and the N420 is the bypass. We are going through the village because it is a great example of a really narrow route which you can just bet was crammed with angry lorry drivers before some some thoughtful soul built a bypass. It is crammed with old, small, town houses, and probably should be preserved as such.

Our friend the GSH Dictionary has something to say about the place.  ‘It has 40 houses in poor condition and without order, and a church (Santa Maria de las Nieves), annexed to the parish of Almodóvar and served by a lieutenant: a quarter of a league to the south are the ruins of Retamal, which was another hamlet with the same dependencies; but having disappeared, the names of the two are generally confused, although these ruins are also called Casas de Gavillero: one of the paths, called Contrabandistas, crosses through this point in an east-west direction; its inhabitants are mostly day labourers.’

Retamar has one of those oblong churches with spare and tiny windows and a couple of bells stuck at one end.  The Iglesia de La Virgen de Las Nieves has nine reviews - which gives us 4.8 stars.  None of them say why so we will never know why our Lady of the Snows is so splendid.  Next door is the Plaza of the Virgin - a place to sit down and consider things.

On the way out of town is the block building of the centro social polivalente. Google reports ‘this place may be closed.’

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, somewhere bigger.