Valencia and Sagunto
When we first arrived to Zaragoza in the mid 1960s, my father purchased a German black 2 door Trabant 601 (it was referred to as “a spark plug with a roof”). I remember that it was a two door and that the front seats would move forward so that we could cram my sister and myself in the back, along with our relatives and baggage for the trip. It looked like a mini tank to me, although I suspect that it was made of thin metal.
I remember that the radiator would over heat all the time and we would have to constantly stop to fill the radiator up with water. Must have been a common thing back in the 60s because I remember seeing jugs of water on the side of the road, especially on mountain roads for those of us that needed to add water while driving up mountains.
On a trip to Valencia, and after putting up with the radiator problems, we stayed at a very nice hotel in the downtown area. That became our home base for touring and exploring the city and outskirts.
One of the interesting things that we saw were the Roman ruins of Sagunto which were built during the early 200 BC. There were the remains of a Roman theater, that at the time was little more than a pile of rocks.
It was partly restored in late 20th century and the site was considered important enough to be named the first official National Monument declared in Spain (1896).
At the time, it was little more than just a pile of rocks collected on the hill side and there was a small mobile office where a guard stayed in between making his rounds of the compound.
My sister and I thought that it was really cool that the guard let us run around and explore the area on our own. This is well before it became a national monument, and as we rummaged through the stone work and we found a number of pottery fragments that we brought back to my parents and the guard. He was very friendly and upon hearing us speak English he told my father that we could keep the fragments and take them home to the United States as a memory of our trip to Sagunto.
Today, this would never happen. Especially at a national monument. They would have confiscated the pottery and given the fragments to one of the researchers to catalogue and save. We probably would have been fined as well!
To this day, we still have those fragments. A few of them have some markings and paint on them!
One day, when we return to Valencia, we will ensure that those pottery shards and fragments are given back to the National Monument with our deepest thanks for allowing us to be the temporary keepers of the history.
