An international encounter in Goldfield

By Matt Hufman

Sunday, Sept. 22, 2013 | noon

Goldfield closed down on Tuesday morning after police spotted a car with dynamite parked near the Esmeralda County Courthouse. Metro’s bomb squad was called, much of the town was evacuated and traffic on U.S. 95 was re-routed down a dirt road.

Media was told to gather at the checkpoint along the southern end of town to meet a Nevada Highway Patrol sergeant, and for a while that was simple – it was me. But then two fashionable young women with big Ray Ban sunglasses walked up, taking pictures with their phones and chatting in English and Spanish.

Tourists passing through? Not at all.

Meet Alba Amoros and Miriam Nerecan.

Amoros, originally a television journalist who worked in Madrid, Spain, is a freelancer for the newspapers in Tonopah and Pahrump. Nerecan, who worked in advertising in Spain, calls herself Amoros’ “assistant.”

They both call Tonopah home. Amoros, 30, has lived there for two years, Nerecan, 28, for six months. Their husbands are engineers working on the Crescent Dunes solar power plant near Tonopah.

From Madrid to Tonopah? How did that happen?

“First, (our husbands) told us we’re going to America, and you think, ‘Great! New York. Los Angeles,’” Amoros said. “And you end up in Tonopah.”

Not that she’s complaining. She’s not. “The people are great,” she said.

Nerecan added, “I like it here.”

In many ways, they’re no different than early pioneers to Nevada who left everything to take a chance in this state. And they say they’ve enjoyed the people, the travel they’ve done and all that they’ve come across.

“There are the most interesting stories,” Nerecan said.

They tell about a time when Amoros had an assignment to go to Goldfield for the report of a body in a building. They arrived prepared for a crime scene. When they arrived, they were met by a woman who felt a ghost was trying to communicate that she (the ghost) had been buried there. Thus, the “body” in a building.

“These things don’t happen in Spain,” Amoros said.

They laugh.

Nerecan looks off the highway toward a ridgeline near the highway; a property owner had planted a bus nose first into the ground. And she sounds the now familiar refrain.

“You don’t have this in Spain,” she said.

But we do. Welcome to Nevada.