When Ceci came to have her portrait taken with her daughter, there was no one else waiting to be photographed and this gave us the opportunity to talk to her for a long time.
In her 80s, and with a fresh memory, she told us what life used to be like in Villegas.
She told us that when she was a child, it was common for families to have 5, 6 or 7 children, and how they all helped to mow the fields in the early hours of the morning. She told us that from the 1st of May, they would go to the fields with a bundle of thistles to remove the thistles, so that they would not take the juices from the soil to the wheat. The usual crops were wheat, oats, barley and barley, the latter for the animals at home. Because, who more or less, had a few sheep at home, for cheese and to have a piglet from time to time.
He also told us that when it was cloudy, they used to say, “don’t let it bring stones”, because otherwise the hailstones would crush the wheat. And, according to what we have been told in the village, it was customary to ring the bells to dissuade these clouds.
She herself told us, very consciously, that everything has evolved for the better; life before was very hard, she said. They had to work a lot and go through a lot of cold and heat. But with enthusiasm. In her opinion, they were happier than now, the more we have, the more we want.
Ceci used expressions and words not very common for us, which we enjoyed listening to, while she described a distant world that no longer exists. Thank you Ceci for sharing with us what life was like back then.
