Time-honoured traditions stretching to the Caribbean

Years ago, here, the ould fellas in this Canarian valley used to wear soft hats — like Irish farmers’ Sunday hat, but grey — and carry large knives at their belts, and have bloodstains on their shirts, or so they seemed.

The stains were actually left by bananas, uncannily similar to dried blood and impossible to wash out. When a visitor saw these desperadoes sitting under a tree in the evening, one or two with dark glasses, one or two sharpening their knives, they may well have had second thoughts about visiting the beautiful Valle Gran Rey.

Nowadays, the farmers wear blue boiler suits and baseball caps, and the working knives seem to be accommodated within the folds of the suit. They still heft 50kg pinas of bananas up the terraces on their shoulders, and still draw the irrigation water between the rows with heavy hoes. Ah, but where’s the romance gone, the lingering fashions of Cuba, Santo Domingo and Venezuela that many of these men, who had worked as — to all intents and purposes — indentured labour in the cane fields, brought home.