The art of friendship

What can we do for Pere? Touch­ing el­bows just doesn’t cut it.

The 80-year-old black­smith, mop of grey curly hair, flat lip from pipe-smok­ing, easy smile and gen­tle na­ture, has gifted us more of his metal art. And that is not all we have re­ceived from him.

He is in many ways the face of our com­mu­nity – pa­tient, giv­ing, rooted and ac­cept­ing. He has taken us back in time.

The vil­lage nes­tles against a great cone of rock, the tree-coated lime­stone and red sand­stone dom­i­nat­ing the hori­zon to the west of our house, hence beau­ti­fully sil­hou­et­ted at sun­set. And it is at the heart of this tale, a union of art and his­tory.

For mil­len­nia La Mil­o­quera moun­tain, named after an owl, has been a home, a refuge – from pre­his­tory to now. It has been a per­fect place; safe, close to water and over­look­ing fer­tile, work­able lands. The com­mu­nity no longer perches on the high ground, but the marks re­main and the echoes abound. Until his death in 2006, the house that still sits just below the sum­mit was the last home and work­shop of the sculp­tor Marçà-Giné. Pere helps to keep all of these threads alive.

I needed to see him.

I made my way on foot down past La Mil­o­quera to­wards the gorge that sep­a­rates it from the im­pos­ing ridge ris­ing to greet the Serra de Llaberia. A golden ori­ole was singing in the trees, a war­bler in the reeds. We as a fam­ily call it The Shire, as in Hob­bit land. Pere is nei­ther diminu­tive nor has pointed ears, but that quiet space by the river is ver­dant and dec­o­rated with veg­etable gar­dens and tiny, at­trac­tive stone case­tas with some­thing of the pas­toral Shire about it all, as con­jured by Tolkien in Lord of The Rings. Pere’s ter­rain is much the same as the oth­ers, ex­cept for the met­al­work sculp­ture of Don Quixot be­side the tomato plants.

In re­tire­ment he keeps pa­tiently work­ing the ham­mer and the anvil. Now we have a gift of friend­ship to fit the times – two fig­ures touch­ing el­bows, wear­ing face­masks. Once, when we some­how lost one of the two vast keys to our an­cient farm­house door he gifted us a re­place­ment. I have two other pieces of his iron art. And then there are the two won­drous stones he wanted us to have, to hold, to ap­pre­ci­ate. We do.

When he was a boy Pere would visit Marçà-Giné, the start of a life-long friend­ship. There in a wooden box the boy saw a col­lec­tion of stone hand tools, the craft of val­ley dwellers from thou­sands of years ago. Marçà-Giné’s box was the be­gin­ning of a never-end­ing, pa­tient search for more, one that has taken Pere back and forth across La Mil­o­quera and up the river val­ley, to cav­erns and cliff edges. He has, over the years, found enough his­tory to fill a house. His ded­i­ca­tion tells a story, one that now has made its way into mu­se­ums in Reus.

And Pere knows ac­cess mat­ters. When not down in The Shire or in his forge he might be found on the week­end on a bench en­joy­ing a pipe, wait­ing out­side the vil­lage mu­seum to wel­come any­one who might be in­ter­ested.

Mu­seum is, for me, a mis­nomer. Set in Marçà-Giné’s ear­lier vil­lage home it is more an art ex­pe­ri­ence, a gallery, an ex­hi­bi­tion, a rare and vital col­lec­tion not only of Marçà-Giné’s cre­ations and the art of his wife Lula Pérez but of other work and the lives within a val­ley and upon a lit­tle moun­tain.

How can I pos­si­bly thank Pere? I can write about him.