La Timba

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The locals have planted different species of plants, like this Palm tree. The grass grows naturally on the clay soil.
The locals have planted different species of plants, like this Palm tree. The grass grows naturally on the clay soil.
This article is about La Timba of Sabadell. For the Cuban musical style, see Timba.

La Timba is a strip of land located at the border of a cliff, between the neighbourhoods of Covadonga and Nostra Llar at the upper side, and the bottom of a precipice that gives place to the canyon at the bottom of which lie the river Ripoll and the neighbourhood of Torre Romeu at the lower side. It is located in Sabadell, in the shire of Vallès Occidental, Catalonia, Spain.

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[edit] The term "La Timba": meaning, origin and usage

In some stretches, La Timba is just a half-meter width.
In some stretches, La Timba is just a half-meter width.

[edit] Meaning

The word Timba is a female short form of the male Catalan word Estimbat (despeñado in Spanish), the participle of the verb Estimbar-se[1] (despeñarse in Spanish), meaning to fall over a cliff or a precipice. And this applies when someone has fell over an Estimball, meaning cliff or precipice. And since La Timba is located on a cliff, hence the name of the place.

[edit] Origin

Due to the extremely local usage of the word, it is hard to find stated evidences of the term. However, it is very likely that the term was originated at the mid 20th century, when the adjacent lands to the precipice began to be inhabited by both local peoples and immigrants from the southern Spain because the city centre of Sabadell began to be small for the newcomers.

[edit] Usage

The usage of the term is extremely scarce and the word is only known by the very few people whose lives have been linked with the neighbourhood of Covadonga and Nostra Llar all their lives, and even the people living few blocks away the Timba do not know what the word means. When these very few people die, or the speculation reaches this small and tranquil piece of land, located on a precipice between the neighbourhoods of Covadonga and Nostra Llar, and the outskirts adjacent to the Ripoll, the term will probably disappear. It is a clear example of moribund term.

[edit] Geography

In the picture, the fence that sepparates the precipice from the upper side of La Timba, next to the Ronda d'Orient street, can be seen.
In the picture, the fence that sepparates the precipice from the upper side of La Timba, next to the Ronda d'Orient street, can be seen.

La Timba has a distance of about 2 km, starting next to the UAB Computer Science and Business faculty, where the Tres Creus road bifurcates into the Santiga street and then goes down the canyon while the Santiga street (which is then followed by the Ronda d'Orient street, and the Egara Avenue in the neighbourhood of Nostra Llar) follows it from the upper side of the precipice, and the Sant Oleguer neighbourhood. The strip of land that remains between the road that goes down the canyon (the Tres Creus road) and the street that follows that road from the upper side of the precipice (the Santiga street and then the Ronda d'Orient street in the Covadonga neighbourhood, and then the Egara Avenue in the Nostra Llar neighbourhood) is what is called La Timba by the locals.[2]

[edit] History

In the mid 1990s, the local police of Sabadell locked the fence so the locals could no longer cultivate their orchards on the cliffs of La Timba.
In the mid 1990s, the local police of Sabadell locked the fence so the locals could no longer cultivate their orchards on the cliffs of La Timba.

The adjacent lands to La Timba (the upper side of the precipice that gives place to the canyon at the bottom of which lies the Ripoll river), began to be inhabited by both local peoples and immigrants from the Southern Spain in the beginnings of the 20th century. By those times, the city centre of Sabadell could not host more newcomers so the city radius started an unstoppable expansion that, few tens later, would reach the Ripoll river at the bottom of the canyon, with the creation of the Torre Romeu neighbourhood. In some cases, the immigrants from the Southern Spain lived in caves in the Timba, as they had nowhere else to stay.

With the time, the local peoples began to cultivate Orchards and breed small farm animals (such as chickens, ducks and rabbits) on the strip between the Covadonga neighbourhood and the precipice. Because there are just few metres between the houses and the precipice, the orchards began to descend the precipice to the point that, nowadays, the cliff is filled with them.

At the mid 1990s, the local police of Sabadell closed the fence that sepparates the upper side of the precipice and the slope, and the activity in La Timba stopped. During this happening, some acts of plundering were committed by locals in the abandoned orchards.

Nowadays, the orchards of the slope of the cliff are abandoned, and the upper side of the precipice is a green corridor which width varies from a half-metre to not more than 20 m.

[edit] Gallery

Image:Timba Sabadell Localització.PNG
Map of La Timba.

The Riu Ripoll seen from La Timba.

Again, the Riu Ripoll.

Another view of the Riu Ripoll from La Timba.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Due to the rarity of the word it probably will be found only in advanced Catalan-English dictionaries.
  2. ^ Probably there is not any proof of the usage of this term on the net and neither could be found in any physical source offline, due to the colloquial nature of the term, which has been transmitted orally generation after generation by the locals of the neighbourhood.

[edit] External links