With the radio on

The fail-safe method to determine if the UK is in a state of emergency is the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme. If it fails to broadcast, as scheduled, three days in a row you'll need to fill the bath with water. At least that's what my brother told me.

I don't think Spanish radio is quite as potent a force in everyday life as it is in the UK but it still has plenty of listeners. I'm one of them. This week radio has been in the news because the state broadcaster, RNE, which first broadcast from Salamanca as a propaganda arm of the Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War, celebrated its 75th anniversary.

I tend to listen to Radio 5 which is the news channel of the state broadcaster but I also listen to both their speech channel, Radio Nacional and Radio 3 their music channel.  There are plenty of good talk radio stations though they aren't shy about having a political view. SER, Onda Cero and Punto Radio are some of the bigger national broadcasters. The Church didn't want to get left out and has a radio station called COPE. None of the talk radio stations has the breadth of the BBC and there seem to be almost no drama, soaps, comedy or quizz shows. Sport, and by sport in Spain I mean football, takes up huge chunks of the talk radio airtime.

Contemporary music is badly served by Spanish radio. Radio 3, mentioned earlier, could be absolutely splendid. They have some great music with the most eclectic range you could imagine but they also seem to love presenters who prattle on for hours in a monotone. It is about the only place to hear the up and coming Indie bands though whether they be Spanish or International. On the more standard pop channels the presenters seem to be pretty good but their problem is that they play the same music over and over again. The Top 40 charts stand still and there are very seldom anything but mainstream Spanish and International artists in them. I've copied this weeks chart at the bottom of this post. Look how long the songs have been around. The National music channels include 40 Principales, Kiss FM, Cadena 100 and Cadenadial which limits itself to Spanish songs. There are the Golden Oldie channels too.

The only Classical Music I've ever heard on the radio is from RNE. I haven't heard a lot because, so far as I can tell, Radio Clásica specializes in trying to bore their listeners to death. It's a personal opinion of course and maybe Music and Meaning or the World of the Phonograph have their audiences. There is absolutely nothing like Classic FM that I'm aware of.

Local Radio Stations are often very local. We have a generalist one in Pinoso, there's one in Aspe too and typical programming includes music, local news, local jobs, local ads and local ads - oh, and local ads. It's far more common though for local programming to be delivered by the local team of one of the national broadcasters. They take over a local frequency for their programming for a couple of hours each day. There are plenty of local music stations too including a few English language ones on the coast but none of the programming is very adventurous. There is a smattering of religious broadcasters as well.

In summary good quality radio in general but with a very limited scope. Oh, and it's not digital, no DAB here to speak of, so reception can be a problem out of the cities.

Cuarenta Principales chart as of Saturday 21 January 2012



1 Ai se eu te pego, Michel Teló
Last week Nº 2 Weeks on chart: 6, Highest position: 1
2 Someone like you, Adele
Last week Nº 1  Weeks on chart: 10, Highest position: 1
3 Titanium, David Guetta
Last week Nº 4  Weeks on chart: 15, Highest position: 1
4 Got 2 luv u, Sean Paul
Last week Nº 3  Weeks on chart: 19, Highest position: 3
5 Good feeling, Flo Rida
Last week Nº 6  Weeks on chart: 12, Highest position: 5
6 Cometas por el cielo, La Oreja de Van Gogh
Last week Nº 5  Weeks on chart: 9, Highest position: 5
7 We found love, Rihanna and Calvin Harris
Last week Nº 8  Weeks on chart: 13, Highest position: 1
8 No sigue modas, Juan Magán
Last week Nº 10  Weeks on chart: 5, Highest position: 8
9 Domino, Jessie J
Last week Nº 7  Weeks on chart: 9, Highest position: 7
10 Stereo hearts, Gym Class Heroes
Last week Nº 14  Weeks on chart: 7, Highest position: 10

Life in the fast lane

Until I moved to Spain I associated Calor Gas heaters with caravans. Caravans at Filey Brigg to be precise. Here, in the countryside at least, everyone has a gas heater to help combat the intense cold in our uninsulated houses. We own three.

The heaters push out around 3kw of heat and one 15€ bottle of gas lasts around 60 hours which makes them a cheaper form of heating than electric. We don't have our bottles delivered though so having to collect them is a bit of a pain.

The other day a friend was talking about having replaced a heater. He feared that it was on the point of blowing up his house. They have a bit of a reputation for doing that. Well either blowing you up or asphyxiating you. It acted as a reminder. I know that the bright orange rubber tubes that connect the gas bottle to the heater have a "sell by" date on them. I checked. Whoops! The oldest one we had said March 2010 and even the most moodern bit of piping (on the gas cooker) was six months out of date. They're now all good till June 2016.

I don't suppose it was much of a threat really. At least that's what I told Maggie.

17 million Spaniards or 63% of the population earn less than 1,000€ gross per month and 4,422,359 are out of work.

As we left Cartagena for Culebrón yesterday evening the Three Wise Men, the Three Magician Kings to Spaniards, were doing their rounds and delivering coal to bad boys and girls or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Zombie Dolls to the good ones. We'd seen them. Not the bad children and Zombie Dolls; the Kings. There had been a big procession through the streets in the evening and, all day, they'd been holding court in the old Town Hall in the middle of town.

The atmosphere in the town was amazing. The last minute shoppers were out in hordes buying their Christmas gifts, the hundreds of balloon sellers and other street vendors. The burble of noise coming from the street cafés. Very nice.

In Culebrón all was quiet. We settled down in front of the telly with a cup of tea. My ration of hearing spoken Spanish is quite limited. Maggie isn't a big fan of talk radio and generally we watch English language programmes even on Spanish TV when we're together. That's one of the reason I quite like adverts. I get to hear some Spanish but they are also a mirror to the society around me. Language wise they are good too because if I lose the thread of an advert then it doesn't matter much because there will be another along in 30 seconds. It's not like losing the thread of a feature film. And I get the chance, very soon, to hear them again and again and again.

The telly has been saturated with mobile phone, perfume and chocolate adverts in the run up to Christmas; to today, By last night it was too late to sell any more perfume or chocolate. Instead we had cleaning products. You can imagine can't you? When the last of the festive prawns and the roscón have been eaten people are going to look around their houses and decide that it's time for a big clean up. The exercise will help with the after Christmas diet too.

Els Enfarinats in Ibi

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town  by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks.

The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government gives way to the old.

The taxes levied go to local charities.

And some lemons for the prawns

Ventura popped by the flat in Cartagena. He left lots of oranges, grapefruit and what not from his pal's citrus grove. "You'll need the lemons for the prawns," he said.

I was at work today though I have next week off. Lots of my students wished me a merry Christmas before saying they'd see me next week. They will be working and whilst they weren't exactly surprised that I won't be they didn't take it for granted that I'd be off. Christmas is just another holiday here not the huge event that it is in the UK.

My boss suggested to me that I should theme this week's out of office lessons around Christmas. I tried but there was a cultural mis match. Talking about Slade and Wizard songs, office Christmas parties, the Christmas Day James Bond film or Christmas tree lights has been an uphill struggle.

Quite rightly Slade and Wizard are unknown here but so are the wine in paper cup and photocopier incident office Christmas parties. White Christmas didn't ring bells as a song title but most knew the tune when I played it. Fairy lights and Christmas trees exist, indeed they are widespread, but at least half of my students do not have a Christmas tree in their house. They're not actually that sure about the details of the Christmas story either - Jerusalem got easily as many votes as Bethlehem as the site for the birthplace of the baby Jesus.

Trying to have a discussion about what people have for Christmas dinner was a bit like asking for a favourite number. There are a lot of numbers. But there was one thing, almost a constant. Prawns. And, of course, for prawns you will need lemons.

I may have more to say before the day but, just in case I don't get the opportunity again, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas

Opaque

Movistar is a big phone company here - they have both fixed and mobile services. Their customer service number is 1004. Last week 1004 called me repeatedly but I missed or ignored every call.

Sunday: a Sunday as it should be where I didn't get around to putting my contact lenses in till late evening and where I avoided proper work all day. I was too lazy even to clean the bath or hoover the floor. On the telly I watched one of those films where the busy executive realises the error of their ways at Christmas. The World becomes a better place.

In between the Christmas stories I watched the ads. Something I rarely do. The Movistar people seemed to have a good offer on for those of us who have both their fixed and mobile phone packages. There were two offers and the website suggested we were eligible for both.

But the Software said no to one offer. Odd that. I could have sworn we were paying for a 3Mb package but apparently not. I didn't fret. Even the poorer of the two offers saves us 20€ per month. They emailed me the contract and everything. The next day though they changed their minds. The exchange in Pinoso just isn't up to it they said. They told me all about their constant efforts to bring the most up to date technology to even we country bumpkins but we'd have to wait just a little longer to get this particular offer.

There's another advert on the telly at the moment for Golden Lady tights. Panty tupido it says. I didn't know the word tupido but it had a nice ring to it so I looked it up. The ad is for opaque tights.

Lots of things here are still very opaque to me.

New wines and new names all around

When we were at the village meal the other day the wine that came around the tables was from the local Culebrón bodega. It was different though; new wine varieties, new labels and a different, more modern, bottle design. Just to show how modern the white wine came in a blue bottle.

I only tried the two reds, the Shiraz and the Merlot, but I enjoyed them both.

The thing that caught my eye most though was that on the label, most of which was in English, the wine maker of the family, Roberto, had been renamed. Wines by Robert Brotons it said.

Foolishly, at the time, I forgot to take a picture of the wine which meant I had to pop back to the bodega the next weekend to buy a bottle for the pack shot. So, in the original picture, from the event, on the left, you can just see one of the new blue coloured wine bottles in amongst the sparkling Galician ciders and Catalan wines. Fear not - the orange stuff is Fanta.

The picture on the right is from the weekend after the meal.

Rice with rabbit and snails or rabbit stew?

The Junta Directiva

I haven't commented on the Neighbourhood Association meal for a couple of years so I will this time around. To be honest I could simply repeat most of the text on the link above down to the menu except that there were no lupin seeds this year. It's not quite true, there were a couple of things that I noticed as different.

I had an interesting conversation with the President of the Association, not in its content but in the fact that it took place at all. The last time we spoke for more than 30 seconds she commented that, unlike my wife, I couldn't speak Spanish and that I should be ashamed of myself. This time she was at pains to compliment me on the way that I expressed myself and was able to string an argument together (we were talking politics.) I liked that. I like compliments about my Spanish.

Another thing was that I needed to open a bottle of beer and I went in search of a bottle opener. The abnormal thing there was that I felt perfectly comfortable just searching through the detritus of the serving area till I found one. It may have taken six years or so but I realised that I didn't feel out of place or uncomfortable in just helping myself. Nobody jumped up from their seat to help the helpless and hopeless foreigner as has happened so many times before either. Maybe it's because when someone else had explained to me, in mime, how to use the press tap on a box of vermouth to pour it out I had said that I was English not stupid. Was I being assertive or just plain rude?

The AGM after the meal was the normal riot. As usual when things got heated the language changed to Valenciano. A bit of bad feeling about who should supply wine for the village events and a bit of argy bargy about whether the summer meal should be self or outside catered. The discussion about the stall at Villazgo was more relaxed though there were some barbed comments from the President about who had to put the work in each year. The discussion about a charabanc trip also had two definite camps, one for a cultural type outing (we've had trips to a musical in Madrid and to a an area with limestone caves and touristy villages) or whether it should be a mad night out in Benidorm. The compromise was to find out the best deals on both and then to see who would sign up for what.

Good fun as always.

Repeating history and a traditional snack

The Santa Catalina district of Pinoso is probably the most "Spanish" part of the town. To we Brits she's Saint Catherine, the one that the spinning fireworks are named for. Not surprisingly the neighbourhood that bears her name celebrates her feast day and, over the years, the festival has become quite a big event in the town.

The feast day proper centres on hogueras or bonfires that are set up on nearly every street corner. I've mentioned Sana Catalina in not one, or two but three blog entries over the past five years. We missed the bonfires this time because we were out of town.

A new departure for the fiesta this year is that there is a Mediaeval Market. We've just been up there to have a nose. It was pretty quiet to be honest. The stallholders were blaming the football and the cold in equal measure. I'm with the ones who thought it was too cold to venture out. The temperature difference between Culebrón, 600m above sea level, and coastal Cartagena is very noticeable. I think it's perishing.

There was a stall that caught my eye though. A beer stall. Yakka beers. There was just a drop of deja vu here because the last time we went to one of these markets was for the Romans and Carthaginians festival in Cartagena. There I bumped into a micro brewery beer called Icue. So, in the perishing cold and speaking abominable Spanish to the bearded, alternative lifestyle looking, stall holder I found out that there's now a microbrewery just down the road from us here in Culebrón. I tried the wheat beer (bit fruity for my taste) and brought home a bottle of stout.

The stout went very nicely with some local cheese that Maggie bought whilst I was sampling the beer but even more so with some Stilton that we picked up in a Pinoso supermarket today. That's the first time I've ever seen Stilton in Spain, the first Stilton I've tasted for over seven years. Stilton and stout. It sounds so Dickensian.

It tasted yummy.

Pinoseros on the dole

Not my usual sort of post but the local on line newspaper - El Eco de Pinoso - reported that there are 860 people out of work in Pinoso at the moment.

How many people live in Pinoso is a moot point but the official statistical office says it's 7909. So 10.87% of the total population is out of work.

Take away the number of people below 16 (1397) and the number above 65 (1325) and the working age population  is 5187. That would bring the jobless percentage up to 16.58%

By way of explanation

I feel a bit of a fraud.

After Life in Culebrón was mentioned on the UCL Helpdesk blog I feel that I should try to add some new and vibrant entries. My problem is that I work. Working makes it more difficult to find the time to write. An even bigger problem though is that I work in Cartagena. So most of the things that happen to me and around me take place there on the simple principle of just two rest days to every five working days.

Of course what I write about Cartagena is equally witty, amusing, erudite and incisive - or so my mum says - but I would fall well below even my own lax standards to suggest that you clicked on the Life in Cartagena link.

Far too blatant a bit of self promotion even for me.

Poppies in Pinoso

I've mentioned being in the 6th Elland (St Pauls) cubs before. I didn't last long, Sergeant Bilko was on telly at the same time as the weekly meeting and Phil Silvers won out over Bagheera and Akela. Nonetheless, I was involved in a couple of events with the cubs and I well remember the Remembrance Day parade to the Cenotaph in Hullen Edge Park where my family were sure to point out the name of John Haig, my great uncle killed in the First World War.

Remembrance day was a big event in the 60s. As I got older it seemed to lose importance but now, looking in from the outside in as it were, there seems to have been a genuine resurgence of interest and support.

As we were driving back to Culebrón on Friday evening there was a report on the public radio about the poppy and the acts of remembrance in the UK. They said that the day was to commemorate the fallen of the Great War, the First World War.

In Pinoso this morning the local branch of the Royal British Legion had organised a parade and church service with a fund raising meal still to come. It was quite an impressive sight. Dark clothing, lots of medals, regimental berets and nearly everyone, Spanish onlookers and the town band included, sporting poppies.

I was chatting with Clive outside the church when Evaristo, El Abuelo, came over to say hello. He too thought that the event was to commemorate the end of the First World War but Clive put him right in a very gentle and informative way telling him about the act itself and the work of the Legion. I suspect it was not the first time that Clive had had a similar conversation.

In Flanders' Field the poppies blow

between the crosses, row on row

In Flanders' Field - John McCrae, 1915

Going to Eduardo's

There's not a lot in Culebrón apart from houses. We have a post box, a winery and Eduardo's. Eduardo's is the local restaurant.

Eduardo's restaurant is quite a strange place. Big. A huge barn of a building. There are seldom many diners. Often, as we pass by there's just Eduardo's van outside. No sign of customers.

I like Eduardo's. We can walk there. I can drink wine without fear of killing people on the way home. The food is traditional, not very special and cheap. Maggie doesn't like Eduardo's at all, she thinks the food is poor and she doesn't think it's cheap. It was she who suggested we went there today. Surprisingly there were nine other diners.

Getting food at Eduardo's is not straightforward. There is no advertised set meal and there's no written menu to choose from. We have to ask. Eduardo mumbles. Nowadays we have some idea of the range on offer but always, if there are other customers, Maggie looks across and asks why it is that we weren't offered whatever it is that they are eating.

We chose a bottle of red wine and a big bottle of water to drink. For food we started with toast, toasted over the open fire, served with white dripping and pink dripping. A cholesterol bomb. Sometimes there is ali oli for the toast but not today. Next a plate of crisps and almonds. Then a very basic salad of lettuce tomato and olives though we were offered a bit of tinned mackerel to go on top which we declined. We asked for fried cheese, and got it though the usual tomato jam accompaniment  had been substituted by bitter orange marmalade. Main course was the traditional, to these parts, rice, rabbit and snail paella. I'd fancied a rabbit stew but Maggie looked askance at the proffered choices of lamb or chicken and so I joined her in the paella. Nowhere will cook a paella for fewer than two people. We both had pudding and I had a coffee though Maggie didn't. We both had a shot of something to finish. I thought it was the local mistela though Maggie said it was something horrid that tasted only of sugar. Total price 24€ or 12€ each.

Footpaths

The markings used for
Spanish footpaths

Though it's not something we're likely to make a habit we went for a walk in the country today. Near Villena there are some old kilns that were used to turn gypsum into the raw material for plaster - the Hornos de Yeso - and they are near where the Villena Treasure was found.

It wasn't the most scenic spot in Alicante. There was a tip close by and lots of people seemed to have lost heart within sight of their goal and just dumped stuff by the side of the track. Nonetheless, the spot did have a certain charm and lots of lizards.

We followed a public footpath. There's a very simple system in Spain for marking paths. Red and white bands are used for long distance paths, yellow and white for shorter paths and green and white for the local stuff. The bands are usually painted on rocks, fenceposts, walls etc and they are normally well maintained. If the bands are crossed it means not to go there and a hinged symbol marks a turn.

The markings for the path we followed today were haphazard to say the best. Illusionist markers - now you see them, now you don't.

Well now - there's a thing

The Chair of The European Committe on Constitutional Affairs, Carlo Casini, sent a letter to Erminia Massoni the Chair of the EU Committee on Petitions about the two petitions sent by Estelle Gouerou (French Citizen) and Christopher Thompson (that's me) (British Citizen) on the right of EU Citizens to vote in another Member State.

Erminia kindly copied the letter to me.

Carlo told Erminia that the AFCO Coordinators had agreed, at their meeting on 10 October, that no EU treaty gives the right to citizens to vote in other member states. He did point out that Ms Gurmai has suggested, as paragraph 10 of her draft opinion to the PETI Committee on the  EU Citizenship Report 2010, that countries, like Spain and Germany, where Regional Assemblies are vested with legislative powers, could be invited by the EU Parliament to grant voting rights to EU Citizens in regional elections. Carlo also mentioned that a member of his committee, Mr Duff, has asked that the European Commission ensure that all Member States take action on the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees the right to vote.

It looks as though it will all be thoroughly aired at the Conference on Inclusive Democracy to be hosted by AFCO and LIBE on the 9 and 10 November at the European Parliament when EU Citizens' voting rights will be on the agenda even though the primary purpose of the conference is to disseminate the outcome of the research done by the European Union Democracy Observatory based, as I'm sure you're aware, at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute

So that's nice and clear then.

Beetles

Why so many? Why are there so many lying on their backs waving their legs in the air? We have tens, maybe hundreds, of biggish beetles circling the house and, ocassionally, popping in to say hello.

No need to worry

Driving licences are a regular bar conversation topic amongst expats in Spain.

One line runs something like "We're European citizens, we have a European driving licence, we're entitled to drive." At the other end of the spectrum there's the "We're resident here so we have to change our licences for Spanish ones." Actually it's somewhere in between. Once you're resident there's a time limit on using the UK licence unless you register it with the Spanish authorities. It's easier and a bit cheaper to simply exchange. No need for another test or anything and for the first licence at least you don't have to do the medical.

At the beginning of July I took my licence to the local driving school, filled in a bundle of forms and handed over 75€ so that the chap from the driving school would do all the legwork for me. I could have popped down to Alicante, stood in a couple of long queues and done it myself but I chose the lazier, and much more expensive, option.

I forgot all about it for a while. The chap had said he'd phone when I needed to hand over my UK licence. Nowadays I understand that nothing much official happens very quickly, especially over the summer, and I trusted the bloke to do his job. But eventually I remembered and my British sensibility kicked in. I went to ask. 

"Should be soon," he said, "I've been getting the June ones back recently." 

"My problem," I said, "is calling into your office as you're not open on Saturdays." 

"No problem, I can always open up for you on a Saturday if I need to."

No need to worry then.

A taste of Blighty

We're having a very British weekend in Culebrón. We've just had lunch at a new bar restaurante run by Britons on the outskirts of Pinoso. It's now called Rafael's and it's using the building that once traded as RústicOriginal. I used to work for Rustic three or four years ago. It was strange to be back in the building that was so familiar and yet so different.

The place looked good, the staff were very welcoming, the Spanish translation of the, all British, menu read pretty well and the food was tasty, well presented and reasonably priced. All in all it was a very acceptable if not outstanding meal.

In the UK, when I lived there, I used to often eat in those chain pubs. I'd read the menu and think that the "freshly caught North Sea cod covered with organic wheat batter and accompanied by rough cut, blanched and deep fried potatoes," sounded good. I was surprised when I got fish and chips. In Spain menus tend to be straight forward, at least in the inexpensive places. The listing is basic: pork chops, chicken breast, hake etc. and things don't generally get more complicated than descriptions like steak with pepper sauce.

Back at Rafael's I noticed that the young man who served us was keen to correct our sloppy descriptions of the food. I don't remember exactly but I do know that when we got to the puddings he stressed things like stem ginger and black cherries when confirming our order.

I was transported back to the Boathouse in Peterborough.

The Village Fete

Culebrón, the name of our village, probably derives from the word culebra meaning snake. Add the -on ending to a word in Spanish and it often gives the idea of big or oversized. Big snake then. Maybe the village achieved fame because of a big snake? Culebrón is also the Spanish word for a soap opera presumably because the story goes on and on. When we tell Spaniards, who don't know the village, that we we live in Culebrón they usually think we've mispronounced the word but, when we persist, they laugh. What a strange thing to call a village they say.

There is another village just up the road called Paredón. Like Culebrón it's part of the municipality of Pinoso. Paredón means the place where people are executed by firing squad. Spaniards from outside the area think it's an even stranger name for a village than Culebrón.

My mum lives in St Ives in Cambridgeshire. She posted this photo on Facebook of their August Bank Holiday fete at the vicarage.

Pinoso has an active branch of the Royal British Legion, the poppy charity. Today, in Paredón, in the grounds of a British run business there, the Legion held a Gala Day. I bought a coconut cake and home made chutney. Paredón  may be a long way from St Ives, the weather and scenery may be different but there is no doubt about the lineage of the two events.

Heart and soul

Spain has a proud record on organ donations. Although donations fell a little in 2010 (1502 donors and 3,770 transplants) from the all time record of 1605 donors in 2009 Spain still tops the Worldwide list of donors and donations. Based on the donations per million inhabitants it's Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, The United States, France, Austria and Italy. Their main methodology here seems to be to talk to families after someone has died rather than to rely on donor registers.

Nonetheless, there is a donor register and I signed up for it on the Internet last week. That's why I'm telling you this as my donor card arrived today. The card has no legal validity, it just indicates to my family that if there is any part of my poor and degraded body that may be useful to someone else I'd like them to have it. Just one thing: please get someone to check that I'm dead first!

So now you know

A change in the air

There was a haze of steam vapour. The drops of water coalesced into little rivulets and ran down the mirror. Something was different

I'd just finished my morning shower and I realised that, for the first time in a couple of months, the temperature difference between shower water and environment was enough for to produce condensation. A tangible change.

There was a storm last night; big fat raindrops then a torrential downpour that bounced and shouted for a while. That's not the difference; that's not the change. The difference is the calendar.

When Spaniards talk of the summer they seem to mean July and August. There appears to be an almost magical relationship here, at least in my mind, between the date and the weather. It will be September on Thursday - summer will be gone.

To put my money where my keyboard is I predict now that the next big change will be on 1 November. Mark it in your diary now and hold me to account. Expect me to complain how autumn has suddenly become chill winter

Ironmongers and gold diggers

There is a huge ironmongers shop in Villena, a town close to us in Alicante, and being the hosts with the mosts that we are, that is where we were taking our houseguests. What man could resist three, or it may be four, floors of tools, fastenings, machinery and gadgets? We thought we may even have a meal in their canteen afterwards. Our plan was foiled when the place was closed.

Never mind. We did get to see the town Archaeological Museum.

In 1963 a couple of workmen in Villena, found a bracelet in the gravel they were spreading. The foreman hung the bracelet up on the wall so that whoever had dropped it could reclaim it. A bit later one of the workers thought they might just pop it around to the local jeweller to see if it was worth anything. As it was made of half a kilo of 24 carat gold it did have a certain value but the jeweller thought there was something odd about it and suggested showing it to a local archaeologist. In turn this chap recognised it as being 3,000 years old or from the late Bronze Age. Fortunately for the Villena Treasure there were none of the "I Buy Gold" shops that there are now on every Spanish street corner. They'd have weighed it in and turned it into a nice charm bracelet without batting an eye lid.

The archaeologist, a regular Hercule Poirot, suggested they go and have a look where the gravel had come from just in case there was anything else there. They found a clay urn which contained seventy pieces of gold, 9 kilos in all, along with some silver vases and a few other smaller items thrown in for good measure. Not as romantic as Howard Carter breaking into King Tut's tomb but a pretty impressive haul nonetheless.

We got this story from a subtitled version of a No-Do, the Spanish equivalent of the Pathé News. I thought the No-Do piece told the story rather well even though the re-enactment of the discovery of the bracelet by the real life Spanish workmen, jeweller and archaeologist was of about the same quality as my portrayal of a penguin in the St Paul's Cub Scout Christmas Pantomime that same year.

The man from the museum opened the cupboard in which the treasure is kept so we could all have a look.

There is apparently no idea where the pieces come from, how they ended up in Villena or who made them but they really are very pretty.

I really need to get some clips to re-attach that glass shelf to the bathroom mirror and without a new saw how can I trim the palm tree? Maybe any old ironmonger's will do.

The future of the Valley of the Fallen

This isn't about Culebrón or our life here.  I wrote it for the TIM magazine and it was published earlier this month. I just thought I'd save it here too. It's long.

El Valle de los Caídos is a huge mausoleum and basilica church carved into solid granite and topped off with an enormous cross in the Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. It was built, on the orders of Franco, between 1940 and 1959 with money from the National Lottery. The work was done by as many as 200,000 Republican prisoners of war according to some sources and as few as 2,470 according to others. The prisoners were able to gain remission on their sentences by working on the construction. Some sources suggest the workers were reasonably paid whilst others charge slave labour. The supposed number who died during the building of the the complex varies from 14 to 27,000, depending on whether the source is pro Franco or pro Republican. The monument was consecrated by Pope John XXIII in 1960 with care being taken to build a curtain wall within the basilica to ensure that not all of the space was consecrated. By this device the church was kept smaller than Saint Peter's in Rome. Over the main entrance an inscription reads "Fallen for God and Spain!"

The altar of the basilica is directly beneath the tallest cross in the World, all 150 metres of it. On one side of the altar, under a one and a half ton granite slab, lies Franco, el Caudillo, whilst on the other side is José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, the Spanish fascist party. More than 33,832 other victims of the Spanish Civil War keep them company. At least 491 bodies were transferred there illegally, to fill up spare tomb space, from some of the more than 2,000 mass graves dotted the length and breadth of Spain. The monument is easily the largest mass grave in the country. Most of the others are much less grand - roadside ditches and shallow graves usually dug and filled in the dead of night.

When Franco finally died in 1975, after nearly 40 years in power, there was a tacit agreement amongst politicians and society in general to forget the past. No settling of old scores, no mass trials, no national blood-letting. Then in October 2007 the Zapatero Government introduced the Historical Memory Law which recognised and extended the rights of those who suffered persecution or violence because of the Civil War and the dictatorship that followed.

The law directly condemns the Francoist regime, recognises certain rights for victims on either side during and after the war, prohibits political events in the Valley of the Fallen, legislates for the removal of all Francoist symbols from public areas, provides state aid in tracing, identifying and possibly exhuming victims buried in mass graves, annuls laws and some trial court rulings carried out during the dictatorship, grants Spanish nationality to anyone who fought in the International Brigades and gives the right of return to exiles and their descendants.

This law is a bit of a problem for the Valley of the Fallen. How can this monument, built as a symbol of the victory of National Catholicism, be turned into something that doesn't glorify Franco's reign? It's a particularly thorny problem for the Benedictines who live in the Santa Cruz Abbey within the valley and who are technically responsible for the monument. Under the new law they are supposed to ensure that the monument restores the balance between victors and vanquished though they don't seem to have knuckled down to the job so far. Another difficult question is to decide what happens to Franco's body, the only person in the whole complex who isn't a casualty of war. Everyone else, down to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was executed by firing squad in Alicante during November 1936, died a victim.

The Government's answer has been to appoint a commission to work it all out. There were similar failed attempts under the Governments of Adolfo Suárez and Felipe González. The Commission's job is to decide how to tackle the problem of the status of the monument in relation to the new law. They have already had to disappoint Republican family members, who wanted to exhume and re-bury their forebears in places far away from their executioner. Government forensic scientists found that it was impossible to determine who was who in the jumbled and deteriorated piles of bodies.

Views vary as to what the commission will finally decide but the clever money seems to be on Franco's remains being removed from the Valley maybe to rest alongside his wife. Other options include moving Primo de Rivera as well, turning the place into a non religious museum or even converting it into a monument to the victims. There was even talk of dynamiting the giant cross which some have compared to an enormous swastika.

In true Spanish style the monument was suddenly closed in November 2009 for "urgent safety work." A pragmatic if short term solution. The commission is due to report late in 2011 and it looks likely that the safety work will be completed shortly afterwards.

Kiss me, Hardy

We had some Spanish pals here yesterday. Thinking about it this may be only the second time that we've had Spanish guests in the house. It doesn't say much for our integration. Maggie pointed out we don't have many people around at all. That doesn't say much for our friendliness.

The food didn't go down too well. The conversation was a bit forced at times and our Spanish may well have been quite comical but it was still a nice day.

One of our topics of conversation was about families. That led to kissing. Not the physical act, a conversation about it.

When I left the UK people never ended their conversations with family or close friends with "I love you" indeed for the most part I was able to avoid any of that false and ritualised sentimentality. I very seldom hugged the people I met. For colleagues and new acquaintances a firm handshake served very well. For old and dear friends words of greeting sufficed. I approve of handshaking, an ancient and appropriate gesture. I approve of old friends and the shared experiences. When some sophist was determined to give me a hug there was always the possibility of bloodshed, or at least a good nutting, as my forehead crashed into one part or another of the other person's head.

In Spain the greeting has rules too. Between men a handshake, possibly with a hand on shoulder to add warmth. Fine. Between women or between a man and a woman a kiss on each cheek, first  right to right then left to left. Brushing cheek to cheek for first timers or acquaintances, more cheek or even lips to cheek for close friends. I understand the rules. I like the gesture. Bloodshed has been minimal.

My Spanish pal was explaining that close male family members and those solid, friend for life male friends also do the two kisses thing. I can't imagine that would go down too well in the UK even now.

Just a note: After Marilo's comments on Facebook I have changed the English slightly so as not to give the impression that Spanish people go around snogging each other in greeting.

Crikey, he salido en la radio

In summer, with all the politicians on holiday, the magazine type radio programmes fill their time with anything they can.

I was just listening to Radio Nacional, the equivalent of BBC Radio 4, to a programme called On Days Like Today, and they were talking about collecting cigarette, tea, bubble gum and similar cards.

I had a story so I logged on to Facebook and posted my story on their wall. I did it in English first, for speed, because it had taken me a while to sort out how to send them a message and they'd been running the item for several minutes. Then I did it again in my form of Spanish. They read it out as I was re-reading my post to check the grammar - and they basically used my Spanish.

The story, by the way, was that I collected the Beatles Yellow Submarine cards when I was a lad. When we came here in 2004 they were one of the things to be cleared out. We had a go at selling them on eBay. I remember I put a reserve on them of £5 and they sold for several hundred in one of those last minute bidding frenzies. I told Radio Nacional £500 but I can't actually remember exactly how much they went for.

That was exciting.

Books, bookshops and libraries

Once upon a time we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo in the province of Salamanca more or less on the border with Portugal. It was a lovely spot but it was a long way from home and, to be honest, it was a long way from anywhere. Our nearest hypermarket was about 120kms away in Salamanca City and the nearest Mini dealer was in Portugal.

At the time I commented on the difficulty of buying a book in a bookshop in Spain. Since then I have bought and read quite a few books in Spanish and I usually have a list of books that I want to read; I am catching up on a culture after all. The routine now, when I go into a bookshop, is to have a quick look where I think the book may be, and then, when it isn't, summon up my courage and ask.

I wanted to take a couple of books on holiday. I'd heard a programme on the radio about an author called Carmen Laforet and one of hers sounded good. We were going to an area in Spain called the Alcarria and there was another book, written in the 1940s by Camilo José Cela, about a chap wandering that area. It sounded good too. 

Both Cela and Laforet are famous, if a little old fashioned, in the Aldous Huxley, George Orwell or Virginia Woolf sort of way. I didn't have sufficient time for an Internet order and the p+p makes that an expensive option anyway. I tried our local newsagent cum bookshops and, predictably, they didn't have the books though both were willing to order them. Instead I diverted a little from one of our trips down to the coast and went to Alicante. I tried Fnac, Casa del Libro and el Corte Inglés - all three big booksellers - and manged to get one of the two. I tried again in Segovia and Aranjuez and nearer to home in Monóvar. In each case asking for the book caused either shelf rummaging or several minutes of computer tapping. In Segovia I had three people working for me for a few moments. They were only slightly less in the dark about where the book may be on the shelves than I was. No book.

Holiday over I checked the online library database and found that Pinoso library had the Cela book so, when they re-opened after fiestas, I popped in. The book was on the shelves, in fact it's been there since 1958 and it was a little worse for wear. Nonetheless, it still had legible printed words on a page and did the trick nicely.

Not too long ago, on the telly, there was a campaign to promote reading amongst the young. The slogan was something like "If you read, they'll read." Those parents are going to need a lot of staying power to get hold of the books they want if my experience is anything to go by.

Pope time

The telly has been full of pictures of hordes of young Catholics arriving from all over the World. Stories full of good intention, human interest, willing volunteers and the huge organisational effort but equally about the contoversy surrounding the cost to the taxpayer.

It's World Youth day or JMJ in Madrid. Odd sort of day as the inaugral mass is this evening and the closing mass is on Sunday. I should have a day's holiday that long. The Pope is due to fly in on Thursday.

When we were up in Teruel the other day there were groups of Scouts in the local supermarket sporting World Youth Day T shirts. In Murcia about a month ago I bought a lottery ticket to win a ham from some young person raising money to get themselves to JMJ Madrid. Today we were picking someone up from Alicante airport and the arrivals area was more crowded than usual because of a group of happy, singing, banner waving Christians. They were waiting to welcome people. Taking my information from the back of someone's T shirt , which read, Camino Neocatecumenal Alicante Albacete or, in English The Neocatcechumenal Way, and applying a bit of  "elementary my dear Watson" I deduced that this grouping, which is dedicated to deepening the Catholic experience of people already committed to that Church, was welcoming other groups of The Way from all around the World and then they'd be off to Madrid to see the Pope.

You may get the idea or you may already think that Spain is a pretty Catholic country, especially with all this toing and froing of pilgrims, but a survey a couple of days ago found that whilst nearly 73% of Spaniards still consider themselves Catholic only 13% get along to mass on the majority of Sundays. Only 7% of young people under 35 take communion regularly. And, for the first time this year there were more civil than Church weddings in Spain.

Multiservicios Rurales

Peach and Horne were a couple of geologists who made geological maps of the Scottish North West Highlands around the end of the 19th and turn of the 20th Centuries. In the area they worked I was impressed that some bright spark from the Royal Mail had thought to use minibuses to deliver the mail to local Post Offices and so provide a regular and reliable rural bus service at a stroke. As a holidaymaking teenager in the English Lake District I was amused when I realised that the drivers of the Borrowdale Buses provided a grocery delivery service for many people along their route. At Comberton Village College in Cambridgeshire I thought it was clever of the school to offer space for a Building Society branch and even in the Archers, in Ambridge, there is a volunteer run community shop.

Ever since agriculture stopped being the key employer in Western Europe and rural areas began to depopulate people have been coming up with clever ideas to maintain rural communities and lifestyles.

We were in Teruel province in Aragon the last couple of days to visit our pal Pepa who has opened a sort of country cottage for rent, a Casa Rural. Teruel has a problem of rural depopulation. Beautiful villages set amidst impressive scenery but with ageing populations, no jobs and very few services.

Pepa mentioned "Multiservicios" to us and described the one in her adopted village of Fuentes de Rubielos. It doesn't take much translation - Multiservices - and the idea is dead simple too. The key element is a shop to sell the staples but most offer a bar and some sort of community space as well. In Olba we had a meal in the Multiservicio restaurant and the sign outside said that they offered banking services, Internet, post office, lodging and tourist info.

I tried to find out from Pepa just how these worked. Who subsidised what, how did anyone ensure that the level of service offered was appropriate? How did the people who ran them avoid going bankrupt, how were they guaranteed a wage? Basically she didn't know. She just saw the positive results of them in the villages and she knew that it was the Town Halls and the equivalent of the English Chambers of Trade and the County Council that put the funding in.

Checking through the official website it seems that the main contribution of the Town Hall is usually the building. The building is done up, presumably with grants, and then offered at a peppercorn rent to the Multiservicio operator. There wasn't a lot of the nitty gritty detail about how they actually worked though. After all the reason that there aren't shops in villages is that there aren't enough customers to make them profitable.

Nonetheless we did go in a couple of the Multiservicios and there was no doubt that, in summer at least, with tourists and summer residents in the villages, they were doing their job. In Fuentes, as we leaned on the bar long enough to have a drink, a steady stream of kids came in to buy crisps and sweets, the bar had at least five customers for take-away drinks and, over in the corner, the game of snakes and ladders was pretty lively. The Multiservicio restaurant in Olba had about five tables occupied as we sat down to eat.

I was just talking to Maggie about writing this post and she asked if I fancied getting involved in one of them. It gets a bit parky in Teruel in winter but who knows? - romantic sort of idea - at least from a distance.

Driving around in my automobile

A normal looking car park.?
I suppose it depends what you expect
a car park to look like

On a clear night we can watch the aeroplanes spiralling down towards Alicante airport some 55kms from Culebrón. Last night there were four or five, their lights twinkling, waiting their turn to land. It was a warm night, still close to 30ºC at around 10pm and I was sure that the new arrivals would be well pleased as they headed for their hotels or apartments on the coast. Beaches and sun, that's what they'd paid for and that's what they were going to get.

We've just been on a bit of a jaunt ourselves. We had a shopping list of things to do. A couple of Royal Palaces, a provincial capital that I'd never visited before and a deep river valley that had won the "Best view in Spain" on a TV programme. Most of our destinations were vaguely within the circle of towns that circle Madrid though we also went a bit further North and East into the province of Soria. We were a long way from the sun and sangria beaches or, indeed, from the high green mountainous areas of the North and South, but there were still plenty of tourists. Voices and languages from around the World. We cruised kilometre after kilometre of gently undulating countryside, shimmering in the heat, covered in cereal crops and sunflowers with the occasional high mountain pass. There were a surprising number of rivers too. We don't have a lot of flowing rivers in Alicante or Murcia.

We didn't hurry and we didn't try to cram too much in but we still did about 1600kms in four days because Spain is quite a big country - two spots that look like close neighbours on a map can be a surprising distance apart.

I enjoyed every step of the way. I still enjoy travelling around Spain. There is always something new to see, something new to do and something new to eat. An odd thing though is that whilst it is always new and always different it is also re-assuringly familiar. I commented on that to Maggie at one point as we negotiated a distinctly Spanish road junction and she replied that of course it was because Spain is our home.

Just on the food, if you ever find yourself in El Burgo de Osma and a waiter recommends careta to you avoid it like the plague. It's pigs snout and it tastes horrid.

I took a lot of snaps. The majority of them are on this link if you want to look.

Snuggly and warm

Would I lie? The knife stall.

The fair and fiesta in Pinoso runs from the 1st of August for nine or ten days. When I suggested that the event was getting quieter each year and perhaps, not so important in the lives of Pinoseros as it once was a young woman, born in the UK but bred in Spain, was quick to reprimand me for my disloyalty in a "Go Home Limey!" sort of way.

Officially the fair and fiesta aren't yet underway. The official opening, the pregon, a sort of opening speech, will happen on Monday evening. But, weekends are weekends, and last night the stalls and fairground rides were in full swing.

The town's equivalent of running with the bulls, a sort of chase and be chased by a small terrified bullock around some waste ground, took place for the first time this year, or at least I understand it did, fortunately for both my boredom and cruel stupidity tolerance thresholds I wasn't there. Later the new Carnival Queens and their entourages were crowned in a ceremony that seemed to last for an eternity. As we strolled around the stalls and fairground rides the crowds seemed pretty sparse to me. We could have chosen to sit at almost any of the food and drink establishments from the 5€ bargain specials to the upmarket shining crystal and linen napkin places.

So it wasn't the heart racing, non stop fun event we may have hoped for. There was an odd thing though. We started by the Town Hall. "Nice lights," said Maggie - "not as good as the lanterns but better than last year." We said hello to someone we knew. Later, as we bumped into the first of the stalls and the commentary started - aah, I see the pots and pans man is here, and the knife stall. We avoid the free samples at the "Mr Galicia" ham and cheese stall and consider, for at least the sixth year, whether we should buy a grilled corn cob, the white chocolate crepe was my first. We have comments about so many of the stalls and bars - not there, they overcharge at fiesta time, that bloke with the waffles always plays heavy metal - what a character, crikey that Peruvian man's hair is even longer than last year but he looks so much older, look the jewellery stall isn't here - I wonder if she died, she was knocking on a bit, no way! - the chips are always cold and expensive there.

We've strolled those stalls a lot over the past seven years; we're old hands. Gently re-assuring in a small town sort of way.