The Corner of Enchantment

Mojácar has always been known as the Corner of Enchantment. One, for the sheer beauty of the place and secondly for the strange events that have taken place here.

On the side of beauty, the beautiful white village on top of a hill overlooking the sea, mountains and desert. It was a village with small, narrow, winding, cobble-stone streets with white washed houses and flower pots, full of geraniums, hanging on all the walls. The original buildings were supposedly built on the back side of the hill so that when pirates went by at night they could not see the lights shining from the windows. It was a place to fall in love and a place to fall in love with. Mojácar has incredible geological and archaeological sites everywhere. It is built on top of Phoenician, Arabic and Roman ruins. The old fountain was so romantic and just walking the streets at night you felt as if you were in a magical land.

Strange things and mystical powers seemed to be commonplace here. This area falls on one of the ley lines used by the Templars, one of the seven places in the world where if you take the points of energy and join them together they make a star. The points are supposed to be special places where you should be when the world comes to an end.

This is a picture that really has nothing to do with the story but adds to it. I wasn’t sure about the Templar’s and their ley lines so I spelt it LAY lines. Lenox then explained to me that a lay line was where you went to get laid. We found an amusing government sign on the side of the road that you could only find here in Spain so Lenox had me take his picture next to it. I think you can get the double meaning and where I went wrong. Well, enchantment takes all sorts!

There was a hill where if you stopped your car and put it in neutral or put a ball in the road it would roll up backwards. We all used to stop there on our way to Almería. My father, being a physicist, knew there had to be a reasonable explanation, but even he spent many an hour watching a ball roll up the hill.

Witch-craft, both black and white, has been practiced here, and old remedies have been used for curing various diseases for centuries. There are a lot of different types of curanderos here, faith healers. Curanderos on the whole, being ‘white magicians’, can’t charge for their help or accept any payment in hand but some would leave a conspicuous table at the door, out of their sight, where you could leave a chicken or some money. Some curanderos used the hands-on approach and others could heal you without touching you. One famous Mojacar curandero was the Tío Frasquito Santo from Aguas Enmedio, a hamlet on the way to Sopalmo (Mojácar – Carboneras). You would never pay him, but perhaps some cigars, or some firewood…?

There were always the frauds who would charge a fortune but it was hard to believe in them. Palm reading was particularly popular in the bars and actually quite efficient. As a young teenager, I remember being in The Saloon, when Toni, the witch, came in and offered to read the palm of an Englishwoman on holiday here. The lady was sceptical but decided it might be fun. Without knowing anything about this woman, Toni was right on the mark all the way from her childhood to the recent death of her husband and an affair she had had. But, said Toni, I have to take a coin for my magic, since it comes from the ‘black’ side.

Old women would paint snakes and other monsters on your body to get rid of things like shingles and it worked. They had separate drawings and places on the body to paint even for things like ringworm. Before antibiotics were discovered they would burn Zotal (a creosote-based product) in the sick person’s room to kill any sort of bacteria or things like Scarlet Fever and Smallpox. One old lady in Mojácar, known as La Cachocha, was famous for her love philtres – known as ‘alambiques’.

Most of the older houses have some sort of ‘duende’ or ghost attached to it. Ours has two that have resided here since way before we moved in. Our old Moroccan maid used to put milk and bread out to keep them happy. The strangest thing that ever happened here and there have been many, was one rainy/misty night all the electricity in the town was out including our house. There is a lamp post at the beginning of our drive that has never worked, ever, but that night the only light on in town was that lamp. We even switched off our entire trip switches just in case. A few hours later when the electricity was restored the light went out never to be on again. There have been many stories here of sheets being ripped off the beds at night or footsteps upstairs but the light was the strangest one because no electricity goes to it. Lenox has named our duendes Itch, he lives in our bedroom, and Chomp, who lives in the kitchen. They have never bothered us much so we live in peace with them. One night I made a roast beef and put it on my cooker, which is huge and industrial. A few minutes later, after calling the family to dinner, the roast was gone. No footprints or grease on the cooker or floor so it wasn’t the dog. It weighed more than the cat and it would have still been eating it. It was a complete mystery, like something out of ‘The Gremlins’. It was then that Lenox said if the duendes had become carnivorous it was time to move to the Parador hotel.

Even in a sober state, here in Mojácar, most of us have seen UFOs. We used to think that it was just because of the large consumption of booze and drugs but later your average person started seeing them, much to their disbelief. I remember when a respectable English couple were in Garrucha having dinner when they spotted what look like a UFO, they were sure it wasn’t so they watched for a long time until they decided there was no other explanation. When they returned to Mojácar to tell everyone about the amazing experience, they had just had, no one seemed impressed and kept saying things like well did you see this one or that thing? Disillusioned the couple announced that Mojácar really did live in a different reality because if they had told anyone in England they would have been hauled off by the little men in white coats and here it was common place.

The light in Mojácar also has a special magic to it that brings artists from all over the world just to paint here. A friend has just made a half-hour film about one of our best-known artists, the American Fritz Mooney. Find it here.