Anita from As Poceiras says that she was lucky in life because during the Civil War she was neither cold nor hungry. And that, the heat and a full plate are for Ana Flórez Oliveros the first thing you have to have in life to be happy. And the heat doesn’t just come from the plate, it also comes from the affection of the people. A few days ago, Anita from As Poceiras received, at 92 years old, the first Servanda award that her town, Santalla de Oscos, granted to a rural woman deserving of recognition.
To be first, Anita received many votes and knows that behind each of them were the hundreds of people for whom she relieved hunger and cold in her inn. Casa Rodil, in the town of As Poceiras that only closed one day in its entire history, the day the key passed forever. This woman from Santalla, one of the smallest councils in Asturias, was voted from Benidorm, León, Murcia, Madrid and probably even from Japan.
Anita feels no rush to say that the recognition makes her excited, for her and for those like her: who cared for, fed, raised, worked in the garden or in the livestock, sewed, cooked, scrubbed and even protested, and to the ones that “no one ever looked at either,” he adds. And so Anita says it, while she knits socks in front of the wood stove, the same one on which for years she cooked her signature dish “tortilla with rum.”
Everyone passed by Casa Rodil, because in addition to being an inn and a bar, “we had a store and we would sell you a tip as well as an Aspirin. Now for anything you have to go to Vegadeo or Fonsagrada,” she explains while passing the agile yarn through the needles and calculating out loud, “no one can take half an hour by car from you.”
But of course, when Anita married her husband (who died in 1993) she came from the next village, Pumares, where she grew up in a house where they never experienced misery because being the daughter of a “ferreiro” in Those times, it was the best way to barter. “My father made everything, from cauldrons to spoons or scissors, he worked with iron and often traded with neighbors. He would give them a saucepan and the other would give him a chicken, eggs or meat,” he remembers fondly.
I came from a village that had water next to the house and here there was no bathroom in the inn, we had to put a tub in people’s rooms so they could wash.
Now nothing is made of iron anymore, those things were eternal, but it is also true that they had to be scrubbed with sand,” he remembers while looking at the faucet, because the day that running water arrived at Casa Rodil was one of the happiest in the world. Anita’s life, who although she was never cold, did burst carrying cauldrons of water from the fountain to the inn every day of the year.
“I came from a village that had water next to the house, in the forge, and here there was none, notice that when that was there there was no bathroom in the inn and you had to give people a tub in the room so that they could wash”, and then Anita took her cauldron, filled it and with it on her head she traveled from the inn to the fountain and from the fountain to the inn. As many times as necessary. He never dropped the cauldron. No one was ever left without being able to wash their feet.
Anita always liked people and misses the times when there were no roads, because then everyone stopped there, at her inn. Now, depopulation is hitting hard in Santalla and the roads bring the same things they take away. “Young people don’t want to stay here, they have their lives outside and come on weekends or in the summer.
In Santalla there used to be two stores where they sold suits and even had a tailor and there was the Café Moderno which was a luxury. Now one begins to tell what there is and it is a shame,” he points out. The endemic disease of the emptying of the Asturian rural environment and with difficult treatment, I wish Anita could cure it with one of her Aspirins because the remedy would already be done.
“Since not a single car passed through here until 1955 or 1960, since our inn was the crash site, they came from all the surrounding towns, some to eat, others to buy, others to play cards and others to eat the omelette with rum. The recipe came from Cuba, brought by my husband’s grandfather who emigrated. You make a French omelet, you add a good handful of sugar, rum and flambe it. It looks great,” says Anita.
This woman has something that is all light, light in the kitchen, light on the counter of her bar, light at the doors of her inn. Anita carries with her the wisdom of a woman who learned in the town and made those who passed through her learn. “I went to school until I was 14, with more or less enthusiasm, and then I learned to sew and I married Pepe. We had two girls, Carmen and Lola. I always got along well with Pepe, I think he was better than me,” she says, dying of laughter, because Anita also always knew how to protest, but with impeccable elegance and education, as upright and correct as the posture of the bucket of water on top. of his head.
He keeps in touch with many clients who are now friends, including a Japanese man: Nawaki. “I came with a family from Madrid, they were going to take a route and get lost. The parents had stayed here and since they did not return all night they were desperate. The father said that he was never going to return to Santalla again, what a wonderful memory. The kids’ mother thought they were dead, she went crazy!
There were no cell phones, what could there be? The people rallied to them. I had bonito in sauce for dinner. People went into the mountains to look for them, and what seemed like a tragedy was resolved well. “They said they were not going to come back and they did for twenty years,” explains Anita. Nawaki also voted for her to receive the award in her village.
Anita Das Poceiras made the first trip outside of Santalla to the Virgen del Camino, but the most important journey was her life in Casa Rodil. They didn’t close any day. Now she makes puzzles, baskets with corn husks, she likes to go to Fonsagrada to eat a cooked ham sandwich, have a wine to eat, and sometimes she even continues cooking for her daughters. “I also like half a vermouth from time to time,” he says at the doors of his inn. And the sun rises again, perhaps because for the first time someone looked at the “Anitas of the world.” Congratulations.
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