Calle de las Almortas

The grass pea is a humble legume, with an angular seed shaped like a molar, grown on the peninsula since the Neolithic. The plant withstands drought and heat like few others, which for centuries made it a last-resort food when the rest of the fields failed. From its flour came gachas, a dish of shepherds and day laborers that sustained whole families during the Civil War and the years after. But the grass pea held a slow poison: eaten day after day, its toxin attacks the nervous system and paralyzes the legs, an ailment called lathyrism that left many La Mancha laborers lame. Spain banned it for human consumption in 1967. The name fits the botanical logic of Valdeacederas, a district whose place name evokes a valley of sorrel. Built up by immigrants who worked the irrigated land nearby, its street map filled with plants, and among them slipped this two-faced legume, savior and danger at once.