Mercat Central - the horn of plenty.

Moraira to Betera, 89 miles, Valencia Camper Park, €15 euros per night with ECU., 2 nights. 

An old ceramic sign above the side door to Valencia's Mercat Central features a motif of a lemon branch below the text, and an image of the horn of plenty above. I am not particularly a fan of flag waving or heraldry, but if you wanted to design a national emblem that actually meant something, rather than arcane stuff involving unicorns, golden lions or angry looking eagles, then maybe the these motifs would make a good emblem for some ideal republic committed to the happiness and welfare of its people. The lemon branch has connotations of freshness and zest, the horn of plenty infers that the fruits of the earth should be shared so there is plenty for everyone. Of course, history tells us that in practice this is merely a utopian dream, but what is an impossible aspiration on a national scale sometimes is possible achievable locally. Valencia's Mercat Central is a miniature epicurean utopia. 

So what is so great about it?  Undoubtedly a key part of its appeal is its anti-corporate nature. The place is co-owned and run as a co-operative by the stall-holders; what you get is a healthy diversity, The goods on offer are not repackaged and resold to consumers based on fatuous research derived from focus groups and the analysis of Facebook likes. The 'proposition' as our friends in the marketing department might call it, is more straightforward than that. Based on knowledge of the foodstuffs that the people of Valencia habitually buy the stall-holders provide it at a fair price, so customers habitually turn up and shop. The place is an amenity not a brand; the market is refreshingly free from marketing. 

The culture which developed and sustains a market like this places food and cooking as a 'pillar of society'. By and large there are only ingredients sold here, so the people who use it, and the customers seem a cross-section of Valencians, must all cook. This is possible, firstly, because the way things are organised allows people time to cook - the two shift day with a three hour break in the early afternoon must help in this respect. The other thing that helps the market thrive is that Valencia city centre has a large resident population, not everyone has moved to the suburbs, and even those who have are well served by efficient, affordable public transport. To browse and buy ingredients here is an utter delight, and as far away away as you can get to trundling a trolley around Tesco Extra and paying an automaton at the end for the pleasure. 

Of course Valencia is not the only city to retain its market, and we have been to smaller, peripatetic weekly markets, particularly in France, that provide rural communities with a similar service - I am thinking here of the outstanding market we came across in Meze, in Languedoc last May. What makes Valencia special is that it does this on an epic scale. The phrase that it is a cathedral built in praise of plenty may seem a little droll, until you raise your eyes heavenwards, then it becomes fact. At the centre of the building is an airy dome; the cantalevered vault of the main hall rises up like a wrought iron Modernista pastiche of a High Gothic cathedral. Completed in 1928, Mercat Central is a glorious example of the the Modernista style at its most vivacious and captivating. Bread and wine is on offer here, but the sacrament also involves courgettes, chorizo and red mullet - Faith Hope and chorizo, but the greatest of these is chorizo! 

So if we are going to get carried away with religious analogies, then a shrine must have its inner sanctum. This has to be Bar Central. Standing at the counter with glass of Rueda in one hand and a deconstructed carrot cake in front of me which is pleading to be savoured slowly, I posted the following on Facebook:

 "For us, the Central Bar in Valencia Market is simply one of the most civilised places we have ever been. It is managed by a locally renowned chef, Richard Camarena who espouses a nil kilometres philosophy, sourcing all his ingredients from the market on a daily basis. The market itself is run as a cooperative by the stall holders. Who says the corporate must always prevail?" 

Does this stuff matter? I think so, because we need to rediscover the importance of actual stuff, the delights of the palpable. Gill mentioned this morning that the BBC had featured a piece on a new book, 'Dethroning Mammon' by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The dear old Bish's warnings on the dangers of materialism may seem timely, but the antidote - a reassertion of the spiritual - seems to me to be a cure which worse than the disease. Rather than embrace the ineffable, what I think we need is to pursue a more thoughtful form of materialism one that celebrates the earthly and distrusts the unworldly. Personally, I cannot really see the essential difference between Baudrillard's simulacra and a medieval theologian's musings about the Holy Spirit. The virtual and the immanent may not be the same thing, but how they function within a culture seems similar. Both undermine our sense of the real and palpable by suggesting what we take to be authentic is merely a reflection of something more profound. 

This seems to me to be  deeply unhelpful. We no longer believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden and most of us probably are a bit sceptical about the Virgin Mary being able to put a good word in with the Almighty on our behalf, but somehow we fail to notice that we are still influenced, controlled even, by unreal forces from beyond, the fairies have become pixels and they work their invisible magic on us, like by like, tweet by tweet from remote faceless data storage facilities. 

People are beginning to wake up to this. An email promoting this week's TLS popped into my inbox a few minutes ago with the title, 'The web of 'lies'. How algorithms manipulated social media output to help the Leave campaign and Trump to victory is gradually being better understood. A debate is developing about the impact of the virtual on the real. This is a good thing. 

The best way to celebrate actuality is to 'get real' and indulge in some simple earthly pleasures, perhaps walk along a sea shore, or take a moment to stare at the yellowing autumn leaves, or, alternatively, buy the ingredients for a really good paella at Valencia's Mercat Central. None of those things require you to be connected to anything, and you will feel refreshed and invigorated in a way that only doing real stuff can do. Furthermore, for as long as you are disconnected you will have popped the virtual world back into the toybox where it belongs, or to misquote Mr Leary, "Turn off, wake up, tune in."

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