Imagine a 10 or 15 metre diameter stone-paved area half a days walk from the nearest modern day dwelling, but usually within sight of a ruin to which it belongs. It is situated on the shoulder of a mountain slope which now supports nothing but scrub. It is not very steep land but steep enough for the constructor to have  needed to construct a one or two metre high supporting embankment  under the lower lip and an equally deep excavation at the upper, in  order to achieve a level result. In a different location, say a Cotswold village or Watford town park, one would say it was destined to have a maypole centred on it, or a playground roundabout. The term threshing floor is really a misnomer, a quirk of dictionary translation. The Spanish era is a winnowing platform. No Spaniard in his right mind, and the noble peasant almost invariably is in his right mind, would site a threshing floor in an inconvenient  spot, a mule trip away from fields and farm. No, these are winnowing areas and so had to be sited in the place on the owners land that most often caught the summer winds.

Smaller eras exist, no more than a patio-like drying area at the side of a tiny, countryside living-room-cum-tool-shed, casa de campo. These areas often lack the conformity of shape that the builders of the true eras were able to create. The casa de campo would be a siesta spot if near to the village, an over night or over summer, temporary dwelling for the worker and possibly his family while they had tasks to perform on the land. The drying area would receive crops of maize, beans or whatever had to be dried to rock like consistency for keeping through the winter as animal fodder or raw material for potajes or cazuelas.

As a musing rambler, or rambling muser, as on paper so too in boots, I do not resist the magnetism of the era and hope to meet the ghost of the  builder, complement him and give him the tiny bit of encouragement I know he barely needs, to tell me all about it.

Working from a central point, obvious from the pattern of the stones, the builder was able to form a perfect circle from flat slabs, the largest of which form a  circumference of inclined slabs, making a raised lip to aid retention of the crop on the surface. The embankment and excavation are formed and supported by dry stone walling, the stones and rocks bedded into each other with earth. The surface itself radiates from a central point making patterns dependent on the builder's whim and the rock available. Where large flat slabs are available so much the better to make a smooth working surface. Heavy slabs looking like '4 man stones' would be more stable and require less maintenance. Some builders finding themselves in a limestone area with fragmented roundish rock to deal with had a longer job. Time not being a great issue they seem to have made a virtue of the circumstance by making more intricate patterns, the pride in the creation of these monochrome mosaics being visible, tangible and much appreciated by this particular passer by.

In some areas there are both round and oblong eras, the reason for which I have yet to confirm. I suspect two different methods of threshing and perhaps this is also associated with different ranges of crops; since both types are seen alongside each other it is still rather intriguing. The structure is as sound as it ever was; unmoved in the time it has taken for its owners house to crumble completely. Some shapes and structures it seems were just meant to be right: the eras are such a part and parcel of the landscape they might have grown; having the appearance, and charm of a product of nature. They stem from a period, I suppose, when man was more a part of nature and his structures and life style conformed with it; the era seems to embody an empathy between man and environment.

The era from which I now muse is typical. Its siting, like nearly all its brothers incidentally provides a splendid view which combines with  emotions exuding from the polished rocks into an experience and not simply a view. It is on the shoulder of a  hill looking left and right into two valleys which join below. The valley continues down and down through woods of Chestnut and Oak, widening, twisting out of sight between sierras, but shortly to reach the sea. Turning to face uphill, the southern slopes of the Sierra Nevada, which comprise The Alpujarra, reach up, a day's walk more, to the snowy ridge and the bluest of skies. All this set to the music of cow bells and the tumbling water in one of the barrancos. Winds or breezes passing up and down the valleys in the diurnal rhythm of the mountains would offer a good chance of winnowing time be it day, night, light  or dark. Competition for wind time in the relatively short period of time available would have been intense. One can almost sense the frenzy of activity from the huge numbers of eras and their close proximity, at least one per owner;  in matters of water and harvest, neighbourliness probably did not overflow.

This era, like the majority found in The Alpujarra, is of a type of micacious rock which has a natural shine, but added to this is a polished smoothness created by centuries of use. It is a black rock and easily absorbs heat from the sun, providing a warm resting place. Where previously the sweat ran freely during daytime threshing and the fingers chilled from midnight winnowing, now the black stones provide a comfortably warm picnic spot for winter walkers. For much of the year there is the feel of snow in the air dropping from these mountains, although they are within sight of the mediterranean. In selecting my lunch spot, I have usually to walk around the circumference of the era; compulsive behaviour or magic force? I don't know. I am looking for the best stone on which to sit around the edge but first I am inevitably drawn like a dying planet to its sun, to the centre of the universe from where our builder started, and there I rest, eat, drink and dribble, slightly madly.

Eras can do funny things to you, as you may have already noticed; despite their agricultural function they have had other uses which have embedded themselves in mythology. However you define a witch, one supposes that they existed, needed somewhere to meet, dance and launch from. The era has attributes lending itself to all this: the isolation, shape, and wind have obviously suited the occult through the ages and here up to the present generation of grandparents, they know who the witch is even if they have never actually seen her fly from the era. It is strange how one occasionally sees ladies who are physically identical to the caricatures of witches in children's book illustrations, so ideal are they for the role that I have barely been able to resist the temptation to stop one of them to engage in some pretext of a conversation to see what transpires. It would probably produce nothing; on the one occasion I determined to stop the car on passing one of my witches, and engage in conversation; too late, on looking for her in the mirror she had disappeared.
 

This article by Jeremy Rabjohns is reproduced with the permission of www.crownsys.co.uk/capil2002 where it first appeared, associated with many images of The Alpujarra.