BRUJA

Michele is a Spanish speaking Scot who lives in our local market town of La Carlota with her partner Rob, himself Spanish born and half Scottish with a degree in Spanish and Linguistics from Edinburgh University, who in his middle years has abandoned the bookish life of a successful interpreter and translator to sell second hand John Deere tractors from an inhospitable stretch of hard-standing just off the main Seville to Cordoba motorway. To provide income meanwhile, Michele gives Yoga classes and does Ayurvedic massage – the latter being particularly good for ricked backs, as I can testify, and even better as a non-specific cure for the generalised pressures of modern life.. Over a period of seven years she had built up a thriving business in Algeciras and she is now hoping to repeat the success in La Carlota.

As a promotional gesture Michele recently offered a free massage to a number of La Carlota’s leading ladies. They took the free offer, were duly appreciative, but failed to come back for further paid treatments. In course of time Michele discovered that they were all of them regular clients of the local white witch – the Bruja – who gives her healing services free. It turns out, she is Michele’s principal commercial competitor. Furthermore she operates from a small shop in the very next street, barely 25 metres away from Michele’s apartment.

There, hanging out over the pavement, is a discreet but unmistakeable shop-sign bearing the single word 'EMBRUJA' in colourful cursive script. For an appropriate sum of money the Bruja will bless a bottle of water for a cure, cast a spell to change the course of love, read a palm or turn over the cards or cast up a horoscope to foretell the future, and so forth. Her waiting room is the street outside her shop. Most evenings there is a small crowd at the door - young people mainly. By that time of day the leading ladies have taken their aches and pains home and are in the kitchen scolding their husbands and children and stirring the cazuela in the time-honoured way.

In short, the Bruja, offering pagan services shrewdly tailored to the needs of her mainly Christian clients, has established herself as a formidable competitor to a newcomer like Michele, operating in the related marketplace of holistic healing, based on the ancient wisdom of a distant Far East. There may however be light at the end of Michele’s tunnel. Her two latest paying clients were two of the sisters of the Bruja herself.

08/04/2008