We are a digital archive of popular memory of Alfara del Patriarca. In other words, a digital space where you can find very different information and documents, but which always have as a common point being related to our town. All kinds of documents, both academic and popular, can be found in this space: collections of old photos with comments, interviews with neighbors, interviews with groups, information on local customs, etc.
This Archive, promoted and financed by the city council, we want to create a space open to neighborhood contributions that serves to recognize the value that our popular culture deserves.
This popular culture includes history, traditions, etc.; that is to say, Alfara del Patriarca's material and immaterial heritage.
This recovery is done with the collaboration of everyone, because we want to identify and collectively build those elements that are particularly important for our community, for our collective identity, for the quality of life and for dignity as a People.
The structure of Alfarapédia is dynamic and open to all types of contributions.
As a start we propose three axes:
The Museum of Oral Memory, archive of life stories of the people of the town. We start from the first person to recover the collective history;
La Pèdia, archive of various documents, from collections of old photographs to official documents or books related to the town;
The Collaborative Ethnological Museum (MEC), which is built collectively with school students and their families.
We ask for everyone's cooperation in gathering all the documents (texts, photos, etc.) and the testimonies you send us according to criteria of rigor and quality. We want it to be a contribution to the culture and identity of the Town.
With this archive, promoted and financed by the City Council, we want to create a space open to neighborhood contributions that serves to recognize the value that our popular culture deserves.
This popular culture includes history, traditions, etc.; that is to say, Alfara del Patriarca's material and immaterial heritage. This recovery is done with the collaboration of everyone, because we want to identify and collectively build those elements that are particularly important for our community, for our collective identity, for the quality of life and for dignity as a People.
"Document dated 1781", on the birth of Siamese women in Alfara
Enric Cunyat has shared with Alfarapèdia a curious text that we think should be included in our collection. It is a text by José María Torres Pérez published in Revista General de Información y Documentación number 18, of 2008, pages 147-159, entitled "Pliego suelto fechado en 1781".
It analyzes a print with text and illustration that records the birth of Siamese girls (the texts of the time speak of "Monster") in Alfara del Patriarca, on Tuesday, August 28, 1781. The title of the print is: True portrait and anatomical relation of the girl with two heads and four arms, born in the place of Alfara, distant one league from the city of Valencia, on August 28 of this present year, 1781.
Recovered documents
A comedy and poems by Ricardo Valero
We have recovered a small part of the literary production of Ricardo Valero Muñoz, popular poet and playwright from Alfara, about whom we published About the poet Ricardo Valero Muñoz, as a biographical resemblance with some surprises. This is the sainet in verse from 1921 Two traveling photographers and seven false poems published in the magazine Thought and done between 1920 and 1936. The common denominator among all this material is poetry and humor.
Two traveling photographers is a "Valensian comedy in one act and in verse", published in the collection "Our Theater» no. 24, from the editor Vicent Miguel Carceller. Carceller was a journalist and also editor of The Trachea, republican and anti-clerical Valencianist with whom Valero collaborated for two decades before the war. As it says on the first page of the work: "It premiered successfully on the night of [Friday] 1 de Choliol, 1921, in the "Salón Novedades", in Valencia." The collection Our Theater it was started in Valencia in May 1921 and had a weekly character, so the date of publication, which does not appear in the volume, could be approximately May 1923.
When at Salon Novedades, was a movie theater (it was the first stable cinema in Valencia) and shows, located on Calle de les Barques in Valencia, in front of the Teatre Principal.
The plot shows the adventures of two itinerant photographers who go through all kinds of hardships due to the insecurity of their job. It is a good example of what was once called "tragic laughter" (H. Bergson and S. Freud), which is so present in the Valencian sainet.
The booklet, with only 16 pages of content, is preserved in the Castelló Archive, which is the one that provided us with the digital copy. At some point we have fantasized about the possibility of the work being represented in Alfara.
Recovery of poems
Revised magazine issues thought and done, we found seven false poems published between 1920 and 1936 (specifically, editions of 1920, 1921, 1922, 1928, 1929, 1931 and 1936). Here we reproduce them all in full. We have found them in the facsimile edition in DVD version that was made in 2011 for the Fallers Studies Association and the Valencian Language Academy.
Flaming
Thought and done, March 1920
The irony is getting closer,
the festive day which with its artifice includes the symbolism of all vice at the same time that the audacious jocarería.
The mind is scorched by fantasy, nothing is delivered from the fire at the sacrifice; the smallest gism, the brief hint of failure is also turned into poetry.
Oh city of my heart, oh beloved homeland; cradle of genius and nested art: admire your symbolic bonfires;
But the spirit will be more enthusiastic, if many of the types you show us now will not be burned at the stake, no; really.
Patriotic prayer
Thought and done, March 1921
Secular bonfire that symbolizes the sacrifices of our life, purifies the cursed race with the conjuration of flames and laughter.
Consume the human perversion that calls us to the vision through our breezes, and make virtue re-emerge in love, without embalming or tapestries.
Make the sacred fire of the Vestals rise to infinity in an atmosphere of Peace and Charity.
It provides warmth to the aterite,
but if it's someone shameless, in that case... you leave it to me.
Cansons and Purnas
Thought and Done, March 1922
What in the night of failures
he's not going to see the plantain,
he is not Valencian, nor is he an artist,
he doesn't even know how to sing an alb.
*
In two broken chairs
a mat and an old sack,
you have converted this land,
in the yard of the brothel.
*
Donut maker, donut maker;
just because you groped me
I would become a donut,
even if you help me!
*
Says Neleta (que may calla)
that Pepeta, the Sorolla,
in a fault crema,
they raised a doll for him.
*
A carpenter and a barber died,
a shoemaker who knits,
and still, in the other world,
they are The Failure Commission.
*
A pound of donuts
and two pints of brandy,
they take the clouds off their heads
and elevate thinking.
Anacreontic
Thought and Done, March 1928
Afányat, little girl,
that you are very calm,
and the musicians are here
hitting the target
clean the glasses,
set the table
and send to Sento
that carries a cassava.
The oil burns;
have the pasta ready;
think that the falleros
Today they have lunch at home.
Don't forget
the torta,
and send message
that of the donçaína.
If the one from the list comes
and I'm not at home
you tell him that there are dawns
Dona Tomasa's bread;
missing flags
pa doña Torcuata,
and we don't want to pay
the Municipality
But, let's move on:
what are you doing standing still?
Revived, resolved,
somoute, ready,
boot, hurry, run,
do something, uncover…
******************
Cheer up, little girl,
you are very calm!
*****
Types of now:
The fallero of the street
Thought and Done, March 1929
The guy to draw
I intend on this occasion,
is worthy of admiration
for his exemplary constancy.
Peculiar context
I offer this being,
that already modest and haughty,
be green, or be black,
find us a happy day: the fallero of the street.
Like a great exit
inspiration springs to him,
showing in proportion
that art is within reach. Asovint, the rough hands of a mortician or a cobbler, demonstrate to the world sancer
that there are great artists here; but of course he works, the fallero of the street.
But I want him in his ignorance, far from admiring the scumbag, he thinks that he has a lot of substance left in him.
P'al malicícios, great profit he gets from going to such a deler, collecting the money he will get in the subscription, and they say that he is a fartó, the fallero of the street.
*****
Bosque G
Popular poetry
Thought and Done, March 1931
Our party is approaching, the Valencian party,
that astonishes, because of its beauty, the one that our character wonderfully portrays and has more importance, more splendor every year.
I do not know for sure the origin of the fallas, if it was the Romans, the Gothic or the pagans who established it and started in it; I only know that it is preferred by all Valencians.
It is a sovereign festival for art and initiatives; merit and color flow in a burst; symbolic and fraternal, you have the sympathetic virtue
to unite, for a few hours, the pariah and the gentleman.
When Spring comes (the time of the emergence of grains and blossoms and other eruptions), this fertile land gives us more artists than you can harvest in the vegetable garden, potatoes and melons.
As a detail that affirms our boisterous, ironic and festive town psychology,
you will see that there are more faults and more classic celebrations the poorer the neighborhood and humbler the street.
He exposes the vices and defects to shame by showing the vain passions of clumsy humanity;
and if you don't discover me, I'd say it's the only one
in which the proclamation of equality is manifested.
The musicians of the band blow that it's a prodigy, and so that the instrument doesn't rust or stain, they take great care to administer coke and brandy vapors to each player.
*
Our party is coming, the Valencian party
that astonishes, because of its beauty, the own and the stranger; the one that our character portrays wonderfully and has more importance, more splendor every year.
*****
Deprecation
Thought and Done, March 1936
Mighty saint, what a miraculous rod,
symbolic, enjoyment of flowering with honest and sublime announcement
a very pure day, with a beautiful and clear aura.
Repair the country, pious repair and you will see the clumsiness and confusion of a trembling hydra of destruction, which does not respect Art, Science or Now.
I know that it would be impossible to ask you to stop being so good and sensitive;
But when the feast of the fallas comes,
be throwing má podies from the gayat, and in an apocalyptic rapture end up in the rascals and scoundrels.
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