What people said while they worked

“Copper to spare”, in Checa

In 1813 the smaller bell of San Juan Bautista church was cast in Checa. According to village memories recorded in Aguaspeña, while the metal melted the neighbours shouted to the craftsman: “Calderero, echa cobre para que sobre” — “Metalworker, add copper until there’s some to spare”. This may have given rise to Checa’s saying “Cobre que sobre”. The magazine does not claim certainty.

The founder, the tradition continues, engraved his answer: “Bárbara is my name, a hundred arrobas my weight; anyone who doubts me can put me on the scales.” The bell bears Saint Barbara’s name, but everyone in Checa calls it El Campanillo. Its history and other bell signals are told in When the village could be heard.

The miller’s bad name

Millers were not paid in money. They kept a share of the grain brought to them: the maquila, or multura. Diego Sanz, who studied the watermills and windmills of Alustante for Hontanar, recalls that in areas governed by the charter of Cuenca the usual share was 5%, and a little more between Saint John’s and Saint Michael’s days. Often only a quarter of that went to the miller; the rest went to the mill’s owner.

Amid these calculations, millers acquired a reputation for taking too much and tampering with measures. Hence the proverb: “You may change millers, but you will never escape a thief.” Sanz quotes it as a popular saying, without claiming it belongs specifically to Alustante. He adds the other side: these were men with considerable mechanical skill, sometimes well read, and the mill was a meeting place for the whole village. Women millers, dealing daily with men, acquired another reputation in songs, not always deserved. The mill and its men and women were, he says, as necessary as they were disliked. Milling is described in The water that drove the wheels.

“At your age I was already in service”

Antonio López Gaona, from Zaorejas, told every grandchild the same thing on their ninth birthday: “At your age I was already working as a servant in Escalera.” His grandson David Trenchs recounted it in Abarca in 2024. At nine, the age of a child in the fourth year of primary school today, his father took him to work in another household, and he did not want to go. The wheat he earned for a whole year’s work fed his parents and five siblings. His brothers and sisters met the same fate. He went, worked and returned to Zaorejas, year after year.

Other phrases stayed with him from that childhood. “Nothing should be thrown away”, he has told them all. And to explain why the family never throws away leftover food: “If hunger were music, I’d still be dancing.” Another family story concerns a son asking his grandmother Juana to make migas, fried breadcrumbs. “But I have no bread, son,” she replied. “Well, Mother, I’ll eat them without bread or anything.”

His grandson says that generation did not make long speeches: it worked through familiar sayings. Then came emigration. People from Zaorejas mostly went to Madrid and Barcelona, with brothers, cousins and friends following the first arrival. Men became labourers, delivery workers or waiters; women entered domestic service. His grandmother, Vicenta Herráiz, was surprised on arriving in Barcelona to find grocery shops selling chickpeas already cooked.

The lavender song

In Peralveche, around Saint John’s Day, girls and young women rose at three in the morning to walk to the road workers’ cottage on the way to Arbeteta and gather cantueso, a kind of lavender. Valentina Romero tells the story in Abarca. Afterwards they waited for the scheduled bus, skipping rope on the road. When the coach from Zaorejas to Madrid arrived full of passengers, they greeted it with a song:

We young women go to gather lavender, while the lazy ones stay in bed.

The lavender was used to carpet the streets. Other lavender, cut for distilling essential oil in the village’s stills, and everyday plants appear in Plants for daily life. The names of tools and tasks are in the materials of mountain life.