Nava signage old and new

Nava contests with Villaviciosa the status of "capital of the cider country". It´s a little further for me to travel, but the queues in the Post Office are much shorter there so I was there today. 

I was thinking of posting for today a monster graphic which, last time I was there, completely covered a house wall, and which greeted all who entered the town from the east; and it´s there, now in the extra. With memory or imagination you can see his legs, and the tilted glass held down near his thighs; and with a bit more of either you can maybe make out the bottle held above his head from which he is pouring. It was beautifully dramatic claim to fame, I´m sorry it´s gone. 

I´ll explain. The extra sign that I´ve just described was a silhouette of an escanciador. An escanciador is a man or woman who pours cider from a great height into a slightly tilted glass, so that the very flat cider is oxygenated and then swallowed while still fizzing. If you let it go flat again, it´s a bit like mild vinegar but it´s probably a capital offence to say so. You can see a photo of an escanciador in action here: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escanciar;  Sorry - that doesn´t work - if you´re interested cut and paste it into your browser. And you can see a better photo or a video below, in comments from Brianblip and hettykat- thanks, both of you. 

But the council has obviously so cleaned up the painted sign that you have to study hard to pick it out. So I´ve also photographed the new sign which is clearly intended to replace it. That´s now my main photo. The V in the thumbnail by the way represents a glass, tilted to receive the poured-from-high cider, with a swallow of cider in the bottom of the glass. 

If it´s done according to old-fashioned practice, the escanciador visits each table in turn, pouring a swallow into their glass, which gets passed between them. If it doesn´t all get drunk before it goes flat what´s left is thrown onto the floor, where the oldest bars had channels cut to allow it to drain away.

I only know of one bar that still has that arrangement, which as it happens is in Nava. As a sign of the tmes, now if you google escanciador you will be shown photos of table-top syphons that are encroaching on the role of the person who used to pour. Shame.