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Daily bread

The trip to the bakery for bread (pan) is still part of the daily ritual in Chelva, as it probably is in most of Spain. It provides at least three things simultaneously - cheap nutrition, employment (Chelva has 5 bakeries), and sociability, gregariousness. Life pulses in and out of the shops in the morning, none of it especially easy, but fluid and fluent, creating the beauty of ordinary daily life. A meal without bread is almost unthinkable, as in 'como, you don't have bread?'

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