Radio San Miguel

How Spain managed before the fridge by Pedro the Fisherman

In the high sierras of the Costa Blanca, above and behind Benidorm – such as the Sierra Altea and the Vall d’Alcala, you can still see restored snow wells or ‘neveras’. They were built in places where the snow tended to drift and could easily be trapped. A ‘nevera’ was a massive, solidly built stone-lined place dug deep into the ground, with a door to bring snow in and out and a conical roof to keep the sun out. Inside, the snow could be accessed by stone steps or iron rungs. The snow was trampled by foot until the time of the last snowfall, and then, in the summer, cut into blocks of ice at in the coolness of the night, and then transported by donkey and cart to sell to the villages and towns on the coast below. The work, of course, was very hard and done in
intensely cold conditions. Much of the ice was lost on the journey through melting, and in some years, inevitably, when there was very little snowfall, the traders, and their customers both suffered. But, it was a thriving industry. In the 19th century, snow was even exported to Ibiza and North Africa from Alicante. The trade lasted until the 1930’s. Today, ‘neveras’ can be seen at Alcoy, Jativa, Jijona and at Totana in the Sierra Espuna in Murcia.

Another ancient means of keeping cool in a hot country, before the arrival of the fridge, was the ‘aljibe’ – from an Arab word for a water cistern. Villages always had their communal wells,

In San Miguel there was one at the Plaza del Pozo en Medio, but remote houses in the countryside needed a store for drinking water. An ‘aljibe’ is built of bricks and mortar and lined with lime, sand, iron, red clay and resin mastic to stop leaks. It was either wholly or partially underground, and was used to store precious, life-giving rainwater, keeping it for various uses – delicious cool drinking water and watering plants and animals. The water that came off the roofs during heavy storms was directed to the Aljibes to store. Many Aljibes date back to the 13th century. There are many examples of aljibes in the San Miguel region, some of them restored, but all on private property.

There are two at the Gran Casa Lo Meca (on the Bigastro road), one at the Gran Casa Lo Balaguer, one at the Casa Alta towards Torremendo, one at the Casa de la Torrecilla de Abajo (this side of the AP7 near La Marquesa), one at Los Manchados, another at Las Zahurdas, on the canal road in San Miguel and one at the Casa del Carmen. They are all antiquities protected by the Valencian government.