Anita from As Poceiras says she was lucky in life because during the civil war she was neither cold nor hungry. And that, warmth and a full plate are for Ana Flórez Oliveros the first thing you need in life to be happy. And the warmth doesn’t just come from the plate, it also comes from the affection of the people. A few days ago, Anita de As Poceiras received, at 92 years old, the first Servanda Prize that her town, Santalla de Oscos, awarded to a rural woman deserving of recognition.
For being the first, Anita received many votes and knows that behind each of them were hundreds of people for whom she relieved hunger and cold in her hostel. Casa Rodil, in the town of As Poceiras, which only closed for one day in its entire history, the day the key passed forever. This woman from Santalla, one of the smallest municipalities in Asturias, has been elected in Benidorm, León, Murcia, Madrid and probably even in Japan.
Anita does not feel rushed to say that this recognition excites her, for her and for those like her: who have cared for, fed, raised, worked in the garden or with livestock, sewn, cooked, washed and even protested, and those that “no one has ever looked at either,” he adds. And that’s what Anita says, while she knits socks in front of the wood stove, the same one on which she cooked her signature dish “rum tortilla” for years.
Everyone passed by Casa Rodil, because in addition to being an inn and a bar, “we had a store and we sold you a tip and an aspirin. Now for everything you have to go to Vegadeo or Fonsagrada,” she explains, passing the agile thread through the needles and calculating out loud, “no one can take you half an hour by car.”
But of course, when Anita married her husband (who died in 1993), she came from the neighboring village, Pumares, where she grew up in a house where they never knew poverty because being the daughter of a “ferreiro” At that time, it was the best way to barter. “My father made everything from pots to spoons to scissors, he worked with iron and often traded with the neighbors. He would give them one pan and the other would give him chicken, eggs or meat,” he remembers fondly.
I came from a village that had water next to the house and here there were no toilets in the hostel, you had to put a bathtub in people’s rooms so they could wash.
Now, nothing is made of iron, these things were eternal, but it is also true that they had to be cleaned with sand”, he remembers looking at the tap, because the day when running water arrived at Casa Rodil was one of the happiest people in the world, Anita who, although she was never cold, had a blast 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 it was there, there were no toilets in the inn and we had to give people a bathtub in the room so that they could wash themselves”, 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 has always loved people and she misses the times when there were no roads, because then everyone would stop there, at her hostel. Today, depopulation is hitting Santalla hard and the roads bring the same things they take away. “Young people don’t want to stay here, they live outside and come on weekends or in the summer.
In Santalla there were two stores where they sold suits and there was even a tailor and there was the Café Moderno which was a luxury. Now we are starting to say what is there and it is a shame”, he emphasizes. Endemic disease of the desertification of rural Asturias and with difficult treatment, I would like Anita to be able to cure it with one of his aspirins because the remedy would already be done.
“As not a single car passed through here until 1955 or 1960, since our inn was the scene of the accident, they came from all the surrounding towns, some to eat, others to buy, others to play cards and others to eat the rum omelette. The recipe comes from Cuba, brought by my husband’s grandfather who emigrated. You make a French omelette, you add a good handful of sugar. rum and you flambé it looks great,” says Anita.
This woman has something very light, the light in the kitchen, the light on the counter of her bar, the light at the doors of her inn. Anita carries within her the wisdom of a woman who learned in the city and who taught those who passed through her. “I went to school until I was 14, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, then I learned to sew and married Pepe. We had two daughters, 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 straight and correct as the posture of the bucket of water on his head.
He keeps in touch with many clients who have become friends, including a Japanese: Nawaki. “I came with a family from Madrid, they were going to take a path and get lost. The parents had stayed here and since they did not return all night, they were desperate. The father said he would never return to Santalla again, what a wonderful memory. The children’s mother thought they were dead, she went crazy!
There were no cell phones, what could be? The people rallied behind them. I had bonito in sauce for dinner. People went looking for them in the mountains and what seemed like a tragedy was well resolved. “They said they weren’t going to come back and they did that for twenty years,” says Anita. Nawaki also voted for her to receive the award in her village.
Anita Das Poceiras made the first journey outside of Santalla to the Virgen del Camino, but the most important journey was her life at Casa Rodil. They didn’t close any day. Now she makes puzzles, baskets with corn cobs, she likes to go to Fonsagrada to eat a cooked ham sandwich, have a wine to eat, and sometimes she even continues to cook for her daughters. “I also like half a vermouth from time to time,” he says at the gates of his inn. And the sun rises again, perhaps because for the first time someone has looked at the “Anitas of the world”. Congratulations.
