The town ofdethe Morede than reason visit Els pobles la Vall d’Albaida | Més 100100 motius perto visitar
ATZENETA D’ALBAIDA An open-air museum Near the Umbria of the Benicadell Mountain range, Atzeneta d’Albaida owes its name to the Berber tribe of the Zenatas, az-Zanata. Known among the towns of the region as an open-air museum, Atzeneta joins two landscape elements of great beauty and uniqueness: the limestone mountain range and the village with its people. Narrow and long, Atzeneta d’Albaida stands out for its esparto craftsmanship, its feast of San Antonio and the heritage that the water has left behind. Here are just three reasons to visit Atzeneta, if you haven’t already.
Craftsmanship: working esparto You have to go back to medieval times to find the first witnesses of the artisanal work of esparto in Atzeneta d’Albaida. An economic activity that had a great prominence in this municipality of the region, being an important source of income. The craftsman ‘d’esparter, espardenyer, albarder’ was carried out by much of the population, because it was a raw material with very diverse applications: from household objects and footwear, to agricultural tools or other tools from traditional industries. The trade was
mostly feminine, since men performed it in spare time that left agricultural tasks and in times of bad weather. If you walk through Atzeneta and see at the door of a house sheaves of esparto or bundles of this material you are in luck. This symbol means that in this house are artisans of the esparto, activity to which today only two family-owned companies are dedicated. The current artisans have survived in part thanks to their ingenuity to adapt some of the artisanal products to the current needs: carrycots, targets, curtains, bottle-tellers, mats...
