Where the Ebro makes the sea forget | Paradores territory

There is a Tortosa postcard that should be seen in person. Instead of going to accommodation as soon as he arrives to leave things, everything changes if a stop is first made in the Ferrerías neighborhood, on the right bank of the Ebro. The photograph is as follows: the river rests lying down and the old torose, already on the shore, unfolds in five or six heights, no more, and shows its face in five or six variations of the ocher. Above all, in harmony with the rest of the buildings, the Castle of the Zuda stands out, on which the hostel built in 1976.

From this dominant hotel – the views presage everything that is going to be seen later – you can go down to the real schools, Renaissance, where it was re -educating the Moors based on bacon and wine in the 16th century. The unfinished cathedral, baroque facade decorated with marble, and modernist houses, such as the Grego, proof of a resurgence at the end of the 19th century of a bourgeoisie linked to oil trade. Visited the monuments, if the downstream is followed along 30 kilometers, the Ebro Delta, a wetland upholstered by rice fields and 350 species of birds that fly over them is reached. Another story. You forget that there is the sea.

Inside the hostel

Visual domain

The Ebro, as it passes through Tortosa, and the Parador, in the highest part, built in the new plant in 1976 on the remains of the Suda Castle. The cathedral, the royal schools and modernist houses of the early twentieth, main attractions of the city, are five minutes walk.

Sleeping

The tribute tower and the old town helmet at its feet, with the Ebro as a landscape dominator. The hotel has a pool, renewed this year and open since June 20. The hostel, says Álvaro Ramos, its director, is a place of destination for those who want to sleep in a castle, a Templar fortress in this case.

To open grave

A client stops in front of an Arab cemetery outdoors of the 10th century, next to the hostel. The arch, which is accessed by the cafeteria, is one of the remains of the castle raised in the time of Abderramán III. It is called De la Zuda (Pozo in Arabic), a reference to the deep hole that was built by turning it into Alcazaba. Inside, a tombstone of Governor Abd al-Salamb, who died in 961.

Recollection and expansion

One of the common areas of the hotel, which has 72 rooms and uses 50 people. There are rooms to host private celebrations and company events. Two out of three clients are national. Some foreigners use it on their way to their tour of the Spanish Levante. It is one of the 26 hostels adapted to cycotourism.

He is also rich out of Valencia

The dining room in which breakfast is served has mountain views. The restaurant, in a wide and versatile space to adapt to celebrations, serves regional cuisine. The rice of the Ebro Delta stand out: the broths triumph in winter and the melosos in summer, such as the all peeled (all peeled).

Anterior

Following

The Tortosa Parador is a place of destination and incidentally. It is explained by its director, Álvaro Ramos: “There are those who come for the pleasure of sleeping in a castle and there are foreign clients who use it to make a cultural stop on their trip to other parts of Spain.” All those who choose it visit the city and the Ebro delta. “Culture, nature and gastronomy”, three words are enough to Ramos to summarize the attractions at the restaurant of the Parador, in front of a rice all peeled, All peeled, not to entertain yourself with the shells.

Some clients, when you talk to them about rice, wonder are surprised if they are in Valencia, says the director. And no, the rice is rich throughout the lift. “We do one in the oven, it carries Iberian bacon, it is different,” he relates. “In winter many broths are requested,” he says. All are made with rice of the Ebro Delta, which was introduced by Valencian farmers, true, but that is 165 years ago. Chorizo ​​paella is an English dish; As in Chicago on pizza they began to put Pepperoni when it was not customary in Italy. Everything travels. Everything mixes.

If the first impression of Tortosa should capture it on the shores of the Ebro, the tour By the city you must start in the hostel. Oriol Segarra, tourism director of the City of Tortosa, bets on the wall that surrounds the castle to begin its speech. “This city will never be able to recover the economic, cultural and political splendor that it had,” he says without regrets, but to remember all the dominant periods since ancient times. From where the hostel is already located, an Iberian town was displayed 2,500 years ago. In the immediate vicinity there are Roman columns and an Arab cemetery, the only one exposed in Catalonia. Tortosa was always a border in dispute, a strategic point, also in the civil war, when 80 bombings razed a third of the city. An antiaereo shelter converted into a museum recreates those moments. It causes impression, anguish to travel the galleries and listen to the sirens, it has to be so.

“The rivers were the big highways before the arrival of the railroad. We wanted to have control of the Ebro,” says Segarra at the foot of this greenish hue and with great vegetation of Ribera. Tortosa is between two meanders. Just navigate a few hundred meters aboard a boat that offers an hour excursions to leave any building behind and find in the midst of nature. The last era of Tronío was at the end of the 19th century, when families dedicated to oil trade proliferated. It is still a region in which olive trees and also citrus. From those years there are the modernist houses of these merchants who exported to America, such as the Grego house, the most representative of the municipal architect Pau Monguió; Or the also modernist municipal market, which Segarra insists on recommending for the life it has since 8 in the morning. “Sometimes we talk about Tortosa as of the fifth province of Catalonia,” says the director of Tourism. Its inhabitants mention the land of l’Ebre as group of four regions more than Tarragona.

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Rice and bird fields and fields

To the wetlands such as the Ebro Delta you have to give them time, it is not the instantaneous overwhelming of the mountain or the mockery of the sea, it seems that nothing happens in them, as in the desert, but they are grandeur, the view comes far, the look can be inner. The Cristina Pérez nature guide is excited to see Martín Pescador from the Riet Vell Observatory: “Of the most photographed and preferred by ornithologists,” he says. “It is always in the same branch,” he announces to guarantee the prize. Pérez asks silence upon entering – the binoculars in one hand, the bird guide in the other – but in the wooden booth that day of June there was already jaleo, perhaps someone could not contain their excitement when seeing the gregarious and stable flamenco, who establish loyal friendships for life and maintain long -standing mating relationships. The fact is that Martín Pescador, the fiance of 16 centimeters blue and green bird and fast and penetrating song, was not in the branch that had to be.

To the Delta you have to return because it mutates with radicality in each station. Now that summer enters is green. The rice floor appears in the water. Already in August the landscape by the spike becomes golden, the grain is mature, prepared for the collection in September. The harvesters move the mud and the worms appear, food for birds. The bicycles served to move around the fields quickly, “they called her the machine, it was like having a good car,” Pérez recalls, who spent the summers in a house in the Delta. This means of transport makes visits today more fun, there are kids from the area pedaling with a yellow vest so as not to get lost, families. Routes from one observatory to another are drawn, the roads are dirt, you reach the beach of the trabucador to try to take pictures to the sun when it is orange. Everything makes more sense.

The rice point

The variety of grain and its color (more brown or whitest) influence cooking time, broth absorption. Also the altitude. Water boils at 100 degrees at sea level. As it is ascending, it enters boiling at a lower temperature: in Ávila it requires three more minutes to the fire than on the coast. In El Molino Nostre Arròs, inside the Delta, they count the entire rice process from planting, make guided tours and teach to cook it. “We receive 3,000 people a year,” says Jordi Margarell, the owner, fifth generation in this art. “Moreno rice consumes more broth,” he warns. Small mills tend to leave it a little darker, they don’t bleach it so much, they submit less grain pressure, it is more natural. The Nostre Arròs Move four varieties: Bomb (Paella), Marisma (Caldoso), Carnaroli (Risotto) and Hoshi (Sushi). With two kilos of peel rice as it is collected, a kilo of grain is obtained to market.

There are recipes in this area that carry the birds that are observed and hunted (in autumn) in the Delta, such as ducks, fochas or water cock. They give you a lot of flavor, fat too, they are unctuous rice, it is not easy for there to be socarrat.

“What is your favorite?”

“Seafood, with mussels, sepia.” Made with fish broth. But don’t carry so many things. I don’t want to be separating them all the time to eat rice.