Homage to the Priorat

One Cata­lan jewel among the many, my home co­marca of the Pri­o­rat, is a prism of rain­bow light right now that arches through time and across the globe.

I have spent a quar­ter of my rea­son­ably long life within this small, peace­ful, won­drous moun­tain re­gion and have wit­nessed the gen­tle but steady ris­ing of its star, happy in part but anx­ious too that the at­ten­tion that will cer­tainly fol­low does not tar­nish the joys, shat­ter the rhythms or un­bal­ance the in­her­ent good­ness of spirit and com­mu­nity.

For a long time now the local coun­cil and res­i­dents have been ac­tively work­ing on a Eu­ro­pean Union plan for sus­tain­abil­ity, think­ing about the fu­ture and the pres­sures ahead as eyes turn in this di­rec­tion and ap­pre­ci­a­tion is re­fracted in var­i­ous ways. We are far down the road now too with the ap­pli­ca­tion for UN­ESCO World Her­itage sta­tus for the Pri­o­rat, which is a dou­ble-edged sword, I sup­pose, bring­ing pro­tec­tions but also shed­ding a beam upon the re­gion as its nat­ural and cul­tural sig­nif­i­cance dawns on the wider world.

Pock­ets of fame exist al­ready of course. Think Pri­o­rat and you may well think vines and world-class wine. That fame is long es­tab­lished among con­nois­seurs. And then there is the ex­tra­or­di­nary topog­ra­phy along which the ter­races snake, linked by a weave of old ways in­ter­sect­ing the peace­ful vil­lages, a rich pat­tern for walk­ers and cy­clists.

Now comes news of a trea­sure trove of pre­his­toric cave paint­ings, more than any­where in Cat­alo­nia, all, as it hap­pens, within walk­ing dis­tance of my fam­ily's farm. How much more an­cient art is out there? I have gone seek­ing, re­trac­ing old steps through the for­est but with fresh eyes this time, and I have found two fig­ures etched into the lime­stone. In the com­ing days I in­tend to renew my search in this time­less land­scape of the wild tor­toise, the Bonelli's eagle, the myr­iad fauna, the fath­om­less past.

And I itch with un­ease that, even now, writ­ing this, I am com­pound­ing the chal­lenge of change. I have writ­ten about the Pri­o­rat for nearly two decades, with pre­cious lit­tle im­pact it has to be said, but now there is my work in film too. Most re­cently I have been ex­ec­u­tive pro­ducer on a short film pro­ject set here, a drama writ­ten and di­rected by our daugh­ter Ella , and we fin­ished the shoot at the be­gin­ning of April.

The worldly crew – Cata­lan, Span­ish, Thai, Eng­lish, Venezue­lan, Dan­ish, Irish, Scot­tish, Sin­ga­porean, Bul­gar­ian and Ar­gen­tine – were col­lec­tively dumb-struck by the colours, char­ac­ter and beauty of the lo­ca­tion. And most sur­pris­ing of all was that none of those based in Barcelona had ever been here be­fore and did not know any­thing about the Pri­o­rat.

So how to pre­serve as well as share? That is the ques­tion, one for all of the coun­try and its many price­less won­ders as the light that is Cat­alo­nia burns all the brighter.