Sunny days

Apparently Spain is the second largest producer of solar generated electricity in the World after Germany and the third largest producer of wind generated power after the US and Germany. It's hardly surprising that there is more solar power here than in the UK - 180 times as much per head of population but is there really 9 times as much wind in Spain as there is in the UK? And why Germany?

A couple of years ago we went to a local fiesta to celebrate the wine industry in Jumilla. One of the displays had an information board that read something like this - "the only way to succeed in today's cut-throat World market is to introduce new strains of grape to beat off the threat from new producers like Chile, South Africa and California or, even better, yank up all the vineyards and bung in solar panels instead!"

I hear that one of Spains growth exports is renewable energy technologies. There are not a lot of wind turbines around here, though there are stacks of them in nearby Castilla la Mancha but there is a lot of solar stuff in both Alicante and Murcia. Maggie really likes the solar panels, I prefer the turbines myself.

Sliced motorcyclists

The Spanish are doing really well at cutting the number of accidents on the roads. In the last 5 years road deaths have dropped about 46% though that still means 2181 people were torn apart on the roads. More people died in the UK in the same year, 2538, but as the population of Spain is some 44 million and the UK about 61 million then you have more chance of staying alive in Dagenham than in Mostoles.

A disproportionate number of motorcyclists die though. In fact until 2007 whilst motorist deaths were dropping steadily bike deaths were going through the roof. Last year, for the first time, the number of dead bikers dropped but it was still over 300.

The bikers of course blame a range of factors particularly car drivers for bumping into them. I must say that they always seem like a sober bunch of individuals to me and hardly any of them go too fast om monstrously powerful machines. And those young lads on the bikes in town, as well behaved as my Aunt Lizzie hoped I would be.

I was reminded of this because today, as I drove home, I noticed lots of shiny new lower rails on the "Armco" barriers on the road between Mahoya and Pinoso. Apparently when the bikers come off their bikes and slide across the road they get sliced into little pieces as they pass under the usual height barriers - hence the addition of the lower rail.

All Saint's Day

My usual November 1st post revolves around how lots of Spaniards make a day of visiting the family grave complete with scrubbing brushes and bunches of flowers.

This year we avoided any morbidity and headed for the fair at Cocetaina. Spain is quite good at themed market type fairs but there are certain staples for them all - crusty bread that costs 25€ per loaf, the people from Guijuelo with boxes of cooked and cured meats for just 40€, big yummy sweets made with real fruit juice that cost 5€ for four and mustard flower soap that costs 12€ for the smallest slab. See the theme?

This one seemed a bit different though. For a start it was huge. We didn't quite know what we were going to and as we approached the town there were cars parked all over the verges of the roundabout we used to come off the main road in that amazingly higgledy piggledy way that Spaniards have. No flower bed too small to park in. We presumed there must be something going on right there and tried to park up ourselves but being scaredy cat Brits we couldn't find anywhere. We did discover though that the mass parking went on and on and on. We eventually found some space in a field but by now we'd sort of gleaned that it was a big market type fair. There was another odd thing, by now it was about 2.30pm, well into eating time, the time when Spain slows to a crawl on any day and on Sunday, well like Wales in the 1950s, nothing opens. But this fair was definitely open.

The whole centre of the town was in use as the market place with different zones being used for different themes - the horse fair, rides and toys, local products, food, an Arab suq, an area selling agricultural machinery and biomass burning stoves plus, the tourism area, the environmental area and lots more. All the usual suspects were there but it was also very different and much, much bigger. I was really impressed with the food stalls and Maggie had to stop me buying a slurry spreader as we browsed the agricultural section. I took the name and address of the people who did the family sized olive presses though - pretty and useful I thought.

New for old

In June 2008 I mentioned this house as being an important HQ for the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.

Someone has been doing some work on it. With its new yellow finish it is quite difficult to tell that the house has any history at all - it looks nearly new.

I've just read that the last Republican Prime Minister, Negrin, fled Spain as the Republican forces admitted defeat in March 1939. Negrin left on 6 March and the last Republican cities, amongst them Cartagena, fell on 30 March. His departure airfield was the one next to this house.

The Shoe Museum

There's a shoe museum in Elda. It's not surprising; shoes were big business along the valley of the Vinalopó. They still are but, as you might imagine the industry has taken a battering from the Chinese.

There are often pieces in the local papers about Chinese firms based here importing shoes from China and then bunging them in boxes marked "Made in Spain" before shipping them all over Europe with names that sound Spanish or International. Stories about counterfeiting of branded shoes abound. Spanish workers regularly march around with banners or go in coachloads to Madrid and dump shoes in front of Government buildings.

Anyway, ther's a shoe museum in Elda. It's a big building, a modern and quite impressive building with interesting displays as I remembered and I hadn't been there for a while. So when I went to Elda to sign on yesterday I thought I'd have another look around.

I've been here in Spain a while now and lots of things that used to phase me no longer do. So, when I had to ring a bell to get into the museum I wasn't surprised. The bloke on the intercom said the door should be open, hang on he'd ring the woman on the information desk and get her to open the door. She came and opened the door.

"Yes, what do you want?"
"I'd like to have a look around the museum"
"Oh, right, come on in then"

I lounged on the counter looking through some leaflets whilst she shuffled some papers, looked around a bit and eventually picked up a walkie talkie.

"I need to find the caretaker to turn on the lights"
"Oh, if it's a bother I can go and get a coffee and come back in half an hour"
"That's not such a bad idea, why not do that?"

So I did and whilst I was having a coffee Maggie phoned me and set me a task that meant that I never got back to the shoe museum.

This is the night mail

One of the few poems I know is Auden's Night Mail - the one that has the clackety clack rhythm.

For we Brits mail and trains go together. Maybe it's no longer a reality (doesn't all the mail go by road or air nowadays?) but we old folk still talk about Mail Trains. I certainly expect a post box at a railway station.

So just now, when I went to collect Maggie from the train as she arrived in Petrer from Cartagena I took a couple of letters to post. A waste of time. Not a letter box in sight, not on the platform nor near the station nor even on the nearest main road. A whole culture to unlearn and relearn still.

Country living

I got back to Culebrón today and this bird was in our living room.

A quiet weekend

Really I have nothing to report. Well nothing in the way of an insight into Spain unless you want to read my stupendously insightful 500 words on street names in Spain as published in this month's TIM magazine. I think the article is on page 8, it's called 1066 and all that. Third article I've had printed in the magazine.

But I did want to make sure that you knew that Life in Culebrón was still alive. We were here for the weekend. It's been rather nice actually. Away from the hustle and bustle of Cartagena. Paradise for Edi the cat who has been able to get out of the house and slaughter all sorts of small lifeforms.

Last night we went, with some English pals, to take in one of the Moors and Christians parades in the nearby town of Crevillente. I wasn't looking forward to it all that much (seen one M&C seen 'em all) but we actually had quite a good evening. We even stopped for a beer on the way home in the town of Aspe. Sitting out at 11 in the evening with the temperature scraping the low 20s and with lots of life in the town square was rather nice. And, as Geoff pointed out, town on a Saturday night was open to every age from children through to pensioners.

It's raining, it's pouring

Get to Know Spain is a companion book for GCSE exams written by Rosemary Hunt and first published in 1980. In the section on climate it says - In most parts of Spain the climate is extremely harsh.

As I've said in another post we haven't seen much rain over the last two or three months but for the past couple of days the temperatures have dropped (27ºC daytime 15ºC overnight) and the sky has been threatening rain. And today it came. Buckets and buckets of the stuff.

As usual our interior patio started to fill with water and I had to wade out to unblock the drain, our next door neighbour is apparently, as I type, trying to stop the water flowing down our joint track from carving out a mini version of the Grand Cañon, our aljibe, the thing that collects run off water, is overflowing, we keep losing the electric for a few seconds after every lightning flash and we've unplugged all the computers from the mains just in case. The hail was bouncing off the cars and patio furniture whilst the thunder crashed and the lightning crackled. The cat doesn't seem too concerned by the celestial fireworks but he did come to join us - safety in numbers I suppose.

When it rains it's often like this and when the wind blows it destroys things. It hails a lot. And of course all summer long everyone goes around complaining about the heat. Extremely harsh seems a fair enough description Rosie!

I've always depended on the kindness of strangers

I was with a British pal yesterday as we went to the fruit and veg stalls in the town market. He had been charged, by his wife, to buy potatoes and tomatoes.

At the stall he pointed to the potatoes, showed five fingers and said kilos, he repeated the mime for the tomatoes (though with a different number of digits) and then held out a handful of small change from which the stall holder took the appropriate amount.

His wife mentioned that they have been living in Spain for six years.

A plague on both your houses

Back in Culebrón for the weekend and I noticed that there were a lot of small moths hanging on to the kitchen ceiling. Something similar happened a couple of years ago we had tens, if not hundreds, of moths inside the kitchen cupboard where we keep the dried goods.

Being murderous and ecologically unsound I set about them with the fly spray which worked to a degree in that the moths had soon gone. I forgot all about them but later Maggie noticed that there were grub like caterpillars undulating their way across our ceiling. Horrid.

Manual harvesting along with a thorough clean out of the flour and cereal cupboard seems to have done the trick for the moment.

Going, going, gone

We Brits have been running auctions at two spots around Pinoso for a while now - one at the Country Hotel, La Pinada and the other at Bonnie's Bar and Campsite.

We went along to Bonnie's as we were looking for things for the flat in Cartagena. My guess is that we will not be regular attenders.

Don't forget: with our weeks now split between Culebrón and Cartagena new posts will be on both sites.

Phew! What a Scorcher.... or not

Because I used to own an anorak I keep records of maximum and minimum temperatures.

I thought it would be reasonably interesting to log the summer temperatures bearing in mind that it was much cooler in Ciudad Rodrigo (where we were living in June) than it has been in Alicante for July and August.

Despite what our friends and neighbours say the temperature only reached 40ºC on one day, the 24 July, and our lowest overnight temperature here in Culebrón was 16ºC on 18 July.

Looking at the spread of temperatures I would say that a sunny and warm day with a minimum of 19ºC and a high of 32ºC would be the most typical whilst we've been here in Culebrón.

Turned out nice again then.

Rice with rabbit and snails

We went out for lunch with our old pals John and Trish today and we went to a reasonably decent restaurant in town. We had, probably, the most traditional meal in Pinoso and I was a bit surprised when it seemed to be something a bit out of the ordinary for them.

Then I checked the blog and found that I've only once made reference to it here on this blog. A wrong to be righted.

Rice, cooked in a paella pan is a standard meal all over Spain, all over the World come to that, but the famous paella, the one from Valencia usually has prawns, other seafood and chicken. The one in these here parts comes with rabbit and snails. The meal in and around Pinoso goes something like this.

First you choose an assortment of bits and bats to start that are put on the table for everyone to share. Toasted and oiled bread served with some alli olli and grated tomato, salad, olives and nuts come more or less as standard. The rest will be to your choice, whatever they have on today plus some staples, usually things like small fried squid, clams, dry cured ham and cheese or, one of Maggie's favourites, deep fried cheese with tomato jam.

The freshly cooked rice itself will be served with a flourish. The big paella pan will be placed in the centre of the table on a scorched mat or holder of some kind or if there are a lot of you it will be popped onto a small stand placed beside the main table. It is essential that you make appropriate cooing noises at this point. If the pan is on the table you will be asked if you want plates as it often makes sense to eat directly from the pan (more room for the wine glasses!) Throughout the meal each passing waiter will check that the food is good. The appropriate and only answer is smashing - "Muy rico!"

The main course despatched there is the regular range of puddings. Once upon a time the choice was flan (creme caramel), ice cream or seasonal fruit but nowadays it's just like going to a Harvester in that the pudding list is extensive and sickly sweet.

At coffee time though there are a couple of last minute flourishes. Normally they will plonk a bottle of smeet wine, Moscatel or Mistela on the table though today we got Fondillon - thick, syrupy sweet wines. Sometimes, often, you are offered an alternative like Orujo de Hierbas - a spirit distilled from the left over pulp of wine making grapes flavoured with herbs - even better when you get offered both. Along with the digestif come perusas. Maggie calls them dust cakes. A sort of individual sized sweet bready cake full of bubbles and dusted with caster sugar.

And that's it. A light snack that, along with the habitual after meal conversation will take you from the normal sit down time of 2pm to around 4 or 4.30pm. Only a couple of hours to go before you can get yourself a few tapas to hold off the inevitable hunger pangs before you chow down to your evening meal at around 10pm.

Round town

It would be hard to describe Pinoso as good looking. In fact if I were searching for everyday adjectives to describe our home town I'd go for words like scruffy, messy, boring and dusty. The one horse has most definitely left.

In truth Alicante province is a bit short of handsome towns - a few like Orihuela and Elche have a collection of monumental buildings but generally the townscape consists of anonymous and boring concrete boxes. What's more there is a mania for pulling down anything old but ordinary to use the space for something much more utilitarian.

Nonetheless there is a traditional style of Alicantino house. Originally the facades were of plain stone - something like dry stone walling but with mortar holding the irregular sized stones in place - though with time the facades were rendered and then painted in bright colours. It's usually two or three storeys high and the windows are tall and rectangular with grills or rejas and surrounding casements. The door is tall and wooden and there are metal fenced balconies on the first floor.

I went in search of a couple of these houses in Pinoso and I was surprised just how many there were sandwiched between the more modern buildings. Lots are in a bad way just waiting for the property speculators though the meltdown in the construction industry may have given them a stay of execution.

More pictures on the Some of my snaps link

Mileuristas

Mil means 1,000 in Spanish, euristas is derived from Euro, the currency, and, to finish the word off it is personalised with that ending istas. So Mileuristas are those people who earn around 1,000€ (£870) per month.

I aspire to be a mileurista, I've never been paid as much as 1,000€ per month either before or after tax whilst I've been in Spain. Fortunately Maggie breaks the barrier easily enough.

There was a report yesterday that said that 63% of the Spanish workforce earned less than 1,100€ per month - that's less than 13,200€ gross per year. The average wage here is 18,087€ gross (before tax etc.) If we were doing this in sterling we'd be talking £15,727 per year. In the UK it's around £24,000.

Now we all know that averages are rubbish, I'm almost certain for instance that you have more than the average number of feet! Nonetheless it feels true that Spanish people earn derisory amounts of cash by European standards. I heard one of those "dolebuster" features on the radio where a boss was obviously proud that he was offering a salary of 18,000€ for a trained and experienced chemical engineer. The woman in the dole office agreed with me that it wasn't too ridiculously greedy to ask for a salary of 1,500€ per month if I would have to move house to take up a new job.

Earnings of course mean nothing without being able to judge outgoings too. The 2 bed flat we've just rented in Cartagena seemed averagely priced at 550€ per month. A litre of milk costs around 70 cents and it's about 6€ to go to the pictures. We thought we were onto a good deal for a phone/broadband and basic TV package at around 65€ per month. A litre of ordinary diesel is 85 cents and 95 octane petrol 94 cents. A bread stick might be discounted but expect to pay around 50 cents and an English style loaf can cost as much as 2.50€. It's a long time since I've been in the UK but I suspect that some of those prices sound good and others sound high. Not drastically different though. And not enough to make that 63% of the population comfortable.

Razor sharp

When I was in Ciudad Rodrigo I read a book that described life in the villages of Salamanca province in the first thirty or forty of the last century. One of the stories was about the knife grinder cum bucket mender who turned up from season to season. Days long gone.

We were in Pinoso today. This chap was plying his trade

He loved Big Brother

I signed up for the Spanish eBay today and I had a bit of a struggle entering my NIE - the 9 character code that identifies we resident foreigners - it annoyed me a lot.

Everyone in Spain has to carry ID. The most usual way for Spanish nationals to do this is to carry their DNI, an identity card.

Youngsters don't have to hold a card until they are over 14 but it is usual to apply for a DNI for a child as soon as their birth is registered. If a family decides not to apply for a DNI for their child "at birth" then the details of the minor have to be entered in the "family book." Foreigners have to carry ID too, usually a passport.

Foreigners who are resident in Spain have to apply for an ID number as does anyone who wishes to carry out any financial transactions here whether they are resident or not.

The identity "number" for Spanish Nationals, the DNI, has 8 figures and just one control letter whilst the one for foreigners, the NIE, has a letter at both the beginning and the end with seven numbers in the middle. Spaniards are always surprised, nay shocked, to find that UK passport numbers change from issue to issue. Their Spanish ID numbers follow them through life appearing on passports, driving licences etc.

The Spanish ID card carries simple details like a photo, name, date of birth, place of birth, address, names of parents etc. Until recently it also carried a finger print but the newest cards carry the characteristics of that print in electronic form on a chip and also provide a digital signature for electronic transactions. So every Spaniard is fingerprinted - something currently reserved for criminals or suspected criminals (oh and motorists) in the UK.

Everyone, but everyone, thinks they have the right to see your ID. I needed it for eBay, I needed it to register my mobile phone, to sign on the dole, to rent a flat, to register in a hotel, to hire a car, to get a credit card, to pay by credit card, to open a bank account, to register for health care, to get gas bottles and even to join a classic car club.

You don't need to know you account number at the bank or your social security number at the tax office so long as you have your DNI/NIE. Everything, but everything, is connected to your ID number. Lots of official Spanish databases are linked and I suspect that it would be very easy for someone to access lots and lots of information about anyone living in Spain.

The Spanish ID card was introduced by Franco, a dictator. He got card number 1 and he left the numbers up to 100 for his family and for the Royals. Our King has number 10.

Horny!

The bloke in this video is a mobile mechanic, a Brit, who works around here. Someone told us that he'd had a bad time with the cows during the Pinoso Fiesta but I only got around to looking today. Nice eh?

He got away with bruises and what not. Nothing broken, no long term physical damage.

Was Barti wrong?

When we first moved to the countryside Maggie was still working at Newton College and she asked the gardener there, a bloke called Bartolomé, how to care for palm trees (we have one in the garden.) "Do nothing, just enjoy it," he said, "Palms, olives, pines and figs don't need any help, they belong here, they can cope."

We've been back in Culebrón from the beginning of July and, so far as I know, we've had two rain showers, one lasted a couple of hours and the other just a few minutes. It's been warm too, mid 30s for weeks and weeks. Splendid weather.

We just noticed that the small fig tree, the one that gives the green figs, was looking a bit sad. Maybe it's hosepipe time.

Miracles go hand in hand

So we were reconnected. We were back in touch but the speed was running at less than 1mb. Slow. Youtube videos stalling, 10 minutes to download the Archers podcast (I know, I know but some people can't let go of pork pies) and longer to upload snaps to Picassa.

The thing is we were on the Internet here before and we had 3mb. When the engineers put in the line they were optimistic about the speed we may be able to achieve. So I phoned Telefonica. The line to customer services was as crackly as that cowboy who wore a brown paper waistcoat, brown paper shirt and brown paper trousers - the one who was arrested for rustling. Nonetheless the South American customer services person didn't give up on me. "Can we have something faster?" I asked. "You can have 3mb" she finally answered after a very creditable 14 minutes on the phone. "It will take about 8 days" she said and we left each other as firm friends.

We have 3mb today. Incredible really. We asked for 6mb, we were offered 1mb which we took (no option) but all the time there was an option of 3mb. Splendid service.

A miracle

"Hello, this is Telefonica, we're down by the bar in Culebrón, can you come and fetch us?"

So finally, after nearly seven weeks of waiting we have the phone and Internet back.

We had all the cables and what not still in place so we'd expected nothing more than someone tapping something into a computer at the exchange but the engineers spent ages up and down ladders on some nearby properties and then had to restring a cable from the telegraph pole. But who cares? We're back in touch.

Border hopping

I find borders and border towns strange places. Between Portugal and Spain any physical barriers have gone but it's a diffrent time and a different language. Between Spain and Morocco there seemed to be a World of difference just like passing from the US to Mexico.

Not content with one border in one day we travelled back from Ceuta to the mainland and then drove to La Linea where we parked the car and walked across the frontier to the UK.

I suppose Gibraltar is keen to prove its Britishness. There seemed to be more pillar boxes on Main Street than in the whole of Huntingdon. Red phone boxes were still in use, fish and chips are on sale every ten yards (none of that funny metres stuff by Gad) whilst the Bobbies wear pointed hats and not a trace of that Bat Utility Belt/Flack Jacket type stuff. Aah, the good old days!

It was a pleasant interlude though. I thought Maggie might weep for joy as she raced around M&S grasping clothes that she knew would fit. We were able to marvel at the funny bank notes we got from a hole in the wall machine using a UK card, we bought burritos in a boozer where they sold bitter, I got a pack of Hamlet cigars and we bought some of those Celebration chocolates as a gift for someone back in Alicante. Oh, and we had absolutely no language difficulties anywhere we went - everyone we met spoke English.

But Gib's not much like the UK really. It's hot for one thing, the cars are left hand drive and petrol and fags were definitely cheap. I suspect there are quite a lot of much more profound differences for those who stay for longer than a couple of hours. I did ask what time it was, by the way, just in case it was different to Spain - it wasn't.

A glimpse of another place

The taxi driver wasn't keen to slow down, let alone stop. The district was called El Principe, The Prince, "Muy peligroso, very dangerous," he said. It looked dodgy. Long lines of Moroccans crossing over the border into Ceuta and Spain and milling around the buildings that made up the sorry looking industrial estate on the Spanish side. There were lots of blokes camping out on the flat rooves of the factories. It looked as though they lived there at least for the moment. Who knows why. Apparently they cross the border to sell things "clothes and shampoo," said the driver.

We had asked to be taken to the fence that separates Spain from Morocco. The rich from the poor. It's a high, double line of barbed wire topped fencing with open moats around it. From time to time groups of would be immigrants storm the fence with scaling ladders built of twigs.The Guardia Civil and Moroccan Army beat them back - "defending" the southern border of Europe. Sometimes people die in the attempt.

There was a Guardia Civil post and a no entry sign as we got to the fence. The taxi driver asked if he could turn around in the restricted zone explaining he had English tourists on board. I jumped out and took a couple of photos. The Guardia told me no photos and I said okey dokey and we were away again.

I don't really understand why people have to storm the fence if they can get through the frontier legally - couldn't they get by the fence without too much hassle and then set about the difficult task of getting onto the mainland? I suppose, though, that lots of people who get to that fence won't be Moroccans but will be Africans who have walked across lots of borders ill,egally, heading hopefully for the euro zone. It didn't look like a hopeful place.

Golden Days

There wasn't much choice of accommodation in Ceuta. One of the options was the Parador but they are usually quite expensive. Then we noticed their Días Dorados offer - a 30% discount for older people.

And I qualified. My first ever old age related benefit.

Murphy, stronger than gravity

I'm sitting in the Parador in Ceuta. I have views over the Strait of Gibraltar. We are about 650kms from home. We have been waiting for Telefonica to install a phone line since late June and the engineer rang about ten minutes ago to say he was on his way. I didn't tell him we weren't there. I rang our neighbour to see if he could let the engineer in. He wasn't keen, I could tell, but sterling chap that he is he said he would. Who knows we may have a phone line by the time we get back to Europe.

South of Granada

This young chap had hair like Weird Al Yankovic, baggy shorts and big trainers. His mate was playing music from a computer and we were buying mango tequilas and mojitos. It's like that in Tarifa, the last landfall in Europe. Views over to Africa.

We were on our way to Africa, to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the northermost coast. When Spanish people mention Gibraltar just whisper Ceuta (or Melilla) and they'll change the topic of conversation. The Moroccans aren't too keen on the Spanish presence on their soil - it's just like the Spaniards with the Brits on Gibraltar.

Tarifa was heaving with people but the noticeable ones were the young ones, the beach bums, all tans and conversations about hot sticks. Every corner had someone playing a wok (honest) or trying to sell harem pants. And the place smells of cannabis and incense. It was remarkably expensive too. Those two drinks cost 14€ but the young man did give us a cocktail glass of sweeties. Very nice.

Downbeat

The pregon has done his stuff, he opened the 10 days of fiestas in Pinoso on Saturday evening by cutting the ribbon and turning on the lights just after he'd finished his turgid little speech.

Talking of crisis, financial crisis, is old hat in Spain. Every radio show I've heard this weekend has said something like "We don't want to talk about the crisis on this show but...." Not having money, huge unemployment, people losing their homes, deflation, apalling economic figures, banks pulling up the drawbridges - that's crisis - and it is everywhere here.

For Pinoso, with income from the marble quarries slashed, the local Town hall has no idea how to balance its books. Increasing income through increased local taxes is on the cards but cutting services, making people redundant and axing posts is something the local councillors have never had to do before and they don't want to do it now. Presumably the people they would have to sack would all be family members anyway! - so I suppose most of them are a bit worried about getting it in the neck from Aunt Inmaculada or Cousin Paco if they end up sacking young Manuel.

So, no bull fight this year. Too expensive. The lights in the street are less gaudy and there are fewer of them. The programme features no big name acts and even the programme itself, the paper version, is slimmer and less lavish. There are fewer stalls too. Presumably some of them have gone to the wall since last year.

My guess is that traditional fiestas in Spain were having a hard time before the crisis. Where we live would have been very isolated not very long ago. When the time came for Fiestas it would be the opportunity to buy new pots and pans for the house, to try some tasty tid bits of food, to drink too much, to have a laugh on the stalls, to eat out, to buy and show off new clothes, to dance, to sing, to run with bulls - to take a bit of time for yourself and for your family to do all those fun things that were denied to you most of the year - things miles away from your everyday existence. But it's not like that now is it? Carrefour and Mercadona have pots and pans and more exotic food than ever came to town with the fair. It's easy to drive to any number of shopping centres or hypermarkets in your car and it's easy to do all of the other things too. How can a ghost train set out in a dusty car park compete with the multi million Euro equivalent just 60 minutes away in Terra Mitica Theme park?

Car Booting again

We seem to be soaking up the Britishness of inland Alicante at the moment. Maggie is keen; We've eaten curries and had several drinks in English run places and I'm sure that Maggie would have had me at the auction or the quiz if I hadn't screwed my face and made those funny little gasping noises.

Anyway I've mentioned the car boot sales before. I was snooty about them in the beginning but as I saw the way that all sorts of nationalities took to the idea I realised that they were a real cultural export and not just a way to shift dodgy goods.

The local car boot sale used to be about five minutes away from our house. The sale was run as a partnership between my old boss and a chap who runs a successful local English language magazine. That partnership hit some difficulties so the magazine publisher found himself another site and made sure that it was squeaky clean in relation to local byelaws and suchlike before he opened it up again.

The sale is running on a trial basis at the moment, just once a month, so this was our first chance to go and have a nose around. There were probably as many stalls as at the old place but, because the site has a different, layout it didn't feel so busy. The goods were different too, real car boot stuff, the things from lofts, garages and jumble drawers rather than stuff bought in for the occasion.

Moors and Christians

There are so many Moors and Christians parades in the province that we rather take them for granted. But, with having a houseguest last week we roused ourselves from in front of the telly and went to watch the entry of the Moors in the town of Novelda.

Novelda has around 25,000 inhabitants and with that number they mounted a parade that lasted over three hours. The events celebrate the defeat of the Moors, the Muslim invader, by the home grown Christiams but it always seems to us that the Moorish groups have more members and better costumes. Each year the comparsas, that's the names for each group, prepare for the festival from one event to the next. Each comparsa has several sub groups that wear the same or a similar costume; these subgroups traditionally walk shoulder to shoulder through the streets. The costumes are incredibly detailed and must cost a fortune to produce - in fact there must be a whole industry built on pointed shoes, scimitars and bejewelled turbans. Moorish men used to black up but that is no longer politically correct and the cigars that they used to smoke seem to have gone too. Nonetheless the beards, fake or grown for the occasion, and the pot bellies remain. Women used to be an embellishment, usually dancing girls, but nowadays they often walk shoulder to shoulder with the men dressed in similar costumes or they form separate lines carrying weaponary of one sort or another.

Each comparsa hires a band for the parades. The bands come from all over the province. The noteworthy feature is the percussion section with huge "kettle drums" mounted on trollies and the music has a similar quality whatever the tune.

As well as the bands and the lines there are any number of variations. Horses canter and gallop in the spaces between lines often rearing up or doing that strange stepping walk, fire eaters do their thing and there are lots of dance troupes. In Novelda we had a group of maybe thirty people going by with hawks on their hands with the hawks flying to lures from time to time. There are several floats too, Often just with tiered seating for the "Carnival Queens" and their courtiers but with an infinite variety from gigantic mechanical beasts through to fantastic constructions and mobile platforms for living statues and other performances.

It was hard work just watching them go by for so long, tough on the feet and legs and with the temperature at midnight still at 36ºC. We thought our vantage point in the doorway of a bar had important strategic advantages! If it was hard work watching imagine what it must have been like for the men and women walking in heavy costumes, dancing the whole route orfilling their mouths with kerosene to blow fire time after time after time.

Big John

The weather in Culebrón remains warm. It's been up and down a bit, temperature wise, but at the moment we're a tad over 37ºC. When I've done the gardening the temperature doesn't seem to be too much of a hindrance so long as there is a cooling drink to hand. The sweat that dribbles into my eye sockets and then splashes onto the inside of my sunglasses to dry into salty smears makes precision work more difficult but there is always the compensation of feeling a bit like Big John Wayne wiping his forehead way out West.

We've just taken our houseguest, John Leigh, to Novelda, a nearby town, where there is a very nice Art Nouveau house. when we arrived parking was dead easy because the town's fiesta is under way so all the shops and businesses were shut. Luckily the house was open. A bit of a bonus was that there was a bike race going on around the streets.

I've been on a bike once or twice in my life; they seem like hard work. The route is always uphill and every time there's a gale force headwind. Those cyclists must have been feeling the heat but, worse than that, for them no John wayne compensation - I mean can you imagine the Duke in Lycra?

Telefonica - episode 84

"But you don't have a proper address," "What?" "You don't have a proper address so we've cancelled your order!"

That was the drift of a conversation with the phone company when I checked again today why we are still without either phone or Internet. So I made another order.

Five minutes ago the local phone engineer rang my mobile - "About this phone to install in Calle Garcia," "We're not in Calle Garcia, we're in Culebrón, number 5, near the goats" "Then you can't have what you've ordered, you can't have 6Mgb in Culebrón, you can only have 1Mgb" "Fine, that'll do." A voice cut into the conversation, presumably from Telefonica Central, "OK, we can modify the order."OK, bye." And the line went dead.

Is there a Telefonica van headed our way, will we still get the special offer price.

Stamped and approved

I had my meeting at the Town Hall Technical Office this morning to finalise the paperwork for the roof repair. It turned out my appointment was with the Councillor responsible for housing which may explain the delay in getting to see him. Anyway we met and he got the paperwork stamped as completed.

"All done?" I asked, "All done" he said. Somehow I doubt it - too easy, too quick. But what joy if it is, if we're done and dusted. Just Telefonica now!

All things must pass

I slept through the Gran Chocolatada which, according to the programme, would help the children to gather their forces ready for the games afterwards and I slept through the men cooking Gachamigas (usually a sort of pancake but sometimes crumbs - poor people's food made mainly from flour and water) and I was eating lunch with Maggie, recently returned from Andalucia, when the table games began at 5pm.

But we saw the Solemn Procession with the images of Saint James and Saint Joseph carried through the streets accompanied by the Parish Priest of Pinoso, the Authorities, the Queens and Courtiers and the Terrós Pipe and Drum Band (whoever wrote the programme for the fiesta showed a fine turn of phrase.)

All done for another year then.

The Melody Duo

I've never cared much for dancing. It may have something to do with the humiliation of Miss Robert's enforced Highland Reels when I was seven or it may just be in my nature. I was watching something perfectly decent on the telly anyway but when it finished at around 12.30am and I went out for a smoke in the garden the sound of the old Andy Williams hit "I can't take my eyes off of you," sung in Spanish floated, in from the village. It seemed silly not to walk down and have a look. After all I hadn't bothered to go to the meal because of the possibility that someone may speak to me in Spanish - Maggie, who talks to me in English and deflects unwanted small talk, is away in Granada at the moment - but I was pretty sure that I could avoid most conversations, get a drink and lean, anonymously, against the wall whilst the Melody Duo did their stuff. Maybe I prefer to be out of it in a a crowd rather than out of it all together. On the other hand I'm relatively old; I've been there and I've done that, I knew how the evening would enfold and I couldn't really see the fun in it. Walking into the village, shelling out for some drinks, being bored and trying to avoid eye contact isn't a recipe for a diverting evening. But to miss the highlight of the fiesta seemed plain wrong. What to do?

I went. The Melody Duo, two blokes in white suits standing on the decorated farm trailer, were doing their thing. Inma saw me walking in, she shouted me over, I hovered, Paco then Eduardo shook my hand, I sidled away, I bought a whisky, I bought another, I skulked by the church, I smoked two cigars and I sloped off when they were all dancing the Macarena.

Written 19 July 2009

For the want of a nail

Spain has been hard hit by the present financial crisis. The motor for much of the economy was construction but most building work has ground to a halt. For every brickie not working there is a long chain of people affected from electricians and plumbers to lorry drivers, furniture sellers and restauranteers - unemployment is an epidemic. The main earner in the town of Pinoso is marble and with competition from the Chinese and the slump in the domestic market the town has seen its income halved. The Town Hall, with less money to spend, has cut its support for lots of cultural activities - the grant for the local brass band, for instance, dropped from 40,000€ to 19,500€.

This weekend Culebrón has its local fiesta in honour of San Jaime. Normally the Town Hall coughs up some cash to pay for fancy lights, to hire the local dance troupe etc. Not this year. So the programme is much less extensive and much less expensive.

We started last night, with a vermouth session. Vermut is a traditional drink in these here parts and our village bodega makes it. One of the other bodegas in town processes the local crops of olives, almonds, lupin seeds etc. A couple of phone calls to brothers, sisters, cousins or whatever and the village had the makings of a party - vermouth with nibbles. Only the soda water, pop for the children and ice had to be paid for.

We were due to start at 8pm; I turned up at around 8.20 and nothing much was happening. I helped to put out the tables and chairs but it wasn't till around 9.15 that Roberto turned up with the booze. The cohetero, the man who sets off the rockets to announce the start of the fiesta, set about his task. I loaned him my lighter. The party was under way.

Getting a coffee

I'd collected my new bank card, got the bath sealant, the potting compost and some pop so it was time for a coffee and a smoke. I popped into the local British run bar in the centre of town and "ordered up a cup of mud" (Tom Waits from the Red Sovine song Phantom 309.) The owner was looking serious.

Business is bad. The Britons who live on pensions paid in Sterling have seen their Euro income drastically cut. The younger, working age, Britons have lost their jobs because of the financial slump and have headed back to the UK. The self employed Brits were generally associated with construction, housing etc. and as that market has dried up so has their income. The early morning Spanish breakfast trade has also shrunk with the offices, shops and banks that the Spaniards worked in being closed or merged. The final nail in the coffin is that this particular bar has always been "working class" and a Spanish café just up the road has bought some classy new tables, chairs and umbrellas which seem to be attracting the Brits who see themselves as slightly more sophisticated.

The end could well be in sight.

Ranting

I have complained before about the banks in Spain. I'm going to do it again.

When I was in Ciudad Rodrigo I opened an account with a bank called Banesto. It didn't go smoothly. Despite several visits they never managed to transfer my direct debits successfully and they lied to me about commission charges. I asked about charges before opening the account and I was given a list. The list did not mention that every Internet transfer would cost 2€. "Ah, that's not a commission, that's a service charge."

As much as anything I chose Banesto because there is a branch in Pinoso. At least there was. It was closed down the week before we got back. There is, however, an agency with the Banesto sign and there is a note on the old bank office to say that business can be transacted in the agency. "Can I get money out of my account here?" I asked, "Of course:" But it wasn't true. If my account had been in Pinoso I could have got to my money but as it was in Ciudad Rodrigo my options were to go to the bank machine of another bank - where there is a charge - or to drive to Monóvar some 14kms away.

I got very cross and in shameful, grammatically inept, Spanish I complained loudly. "The sign says Banesto, my bank book says Banesto but I can't get my money. It's always the same, every time a little trick to siphon off a euro here and a euro there. You're a bunch of liars and thieves!

I could see the looks of complete disbelief between the two women on the other side of the desk. What was wrong with this Brit, who couldn't speak properly, making such a fuss over a commission charge of 1.43€? So far, this year, two accounts, both continuosly in credit have had attracted charges of 180€.

Contrasts

Each year the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association arranges a meal. We eat under the pine trees in front of the village hall. That's where we were on Saturday evening. As usual people were keen to greet us and Maggie explained time and time again that her contract time in Salamanca was now over and she had a new contract in Cartagena. Our travel and living arrangements were discussed over and over. But with that conversation ended we all looked at our feet a while, shuffled and then remembered an impotrtant appointment with someone else three or four metres away.

When it was time to grab a seat at the table we were, as usual, carefully but courteously edged from the centre towards the ends of the long table. Left to our own devices. But, the President of the Association was waiting for her family to turn up which they finally did something like an hour after the arranged kick off. They took the spare place settings at the end of the table so that, suddenly, we were no longer the outcasts but surrounded by Spaniards. We munched and chatted the evening away through a mixture of prawns, dried fish, savoury eggs, squid stew, pork stew, chicken with garlic and a few bottles of wine, beer and water. A pleasant evening.

Our pals, John and Trisha Moore asked us if we fancied Sunday Lunch with them at the campsite on the Jumilla Road. We said yes. Rachel our houseguest had been with us for the village meal and now she was to see a little part of the way that we Brits in Alicante transport our homeland with us. I had fried Camembert, roast beef with appropriate trimmings and the cherry and apple crumble to finish. We munched and chatted the afternoon away. A pleasant afternoon.

Some things

I spoke too soon about Telefonica. We've ordered a new phone line and Internet. The engineer phoned the day after the order and I wrote my defence of Telefonica over on Life In Ciudad Rodrigo. The engineer phoned again the day of our journey over here from Salamanca. I had to put him off of course and I rather lost the drift of the conversation but he seemed a bit concerned that we were in a village rather than, as he he had presumed, in the town. He hasn't phoned since we've been back and all we can get from Telefonica's customer services is that, in line with the contract, they will provide the line within 30 days. Cutting edge technology then?

Maggie needs a medical certificate for work. We bought the form from a tobacconist. All she needed was a doctor to fill it in. She rang for an appointment but, because she signed on to the Castilla y Leon health care system she had to go into Pinoso to sign back on to the Valencia system. Luckily it was Thursday. It's only possible to register with a doctor on Tuesday and Thursday between 12 and 2.

Our architect rang to say he had the certificate that we need to take to the Town hall to sign off the work on our roof. His stamp, guarantee of the such and such college of architects, proves that it's not a gash job done by Bob the Builder - he, he.

I popped into the Technical office at the Town Hall to hand over the form so their people could sign off the work. There's only one bloke I can deal with (Luckily I helped this man to buy a motorbike exhaust from the USA.) Unfortunately he wasn't there. In fact when I think about it he's never there. In turning up at the office around twenty times in the course of this roof repair he's been there maybe five times. To give him his due I do usually go at breakfast time - anytime between 9.45 and 12.15 - and he does have a notice by his desk to say he only deals with walk in punters on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The appointment I have with him is for the 20th July. Poor dear, obviously rushed off his feet.

Roberto wasn't in the Culebrón Bodega when Maggie dropped in for a wine transfusion. Antonio, the normally taciturn brother, was remarkably talkative. He showed us the new insulation in the olive oil storage shed and told us what he thought about climate change.

We have been slashing back the undergrowth in our "garden". A good Spanish garden is clean - i.e. bare earth between the plants. I am amazed at how much vegetation can be supported by 1000m² of soil. The piles of rakings have spiritual links with that butter mountain, wine lake etc. Superabundance. At least the scorching sun has turned most plants into brown crackly things. The picture is of one of the two piles so far.

It has been warm, around 36ºC maximum most days and a minimum around 22ºC, since we got back. It was cloudy yesterday and we had a thunderstorm and downpour to test our new guttering. It seemed to work.

Apologies

I have made a couple of entries from the Education office in Murcia City and it has all been a bit complicated. So, if the blog looks odd I apologise. I'll sort it when I can. In the meantime it's something rather than nothing.

El Pinet

Maggie has known her friend Jane since they were 9 and at school together. It would be ungentelmanly of me to say how long ago that was but it is a long, long time.

Jane and Rolf are renting a cave just 30 minutes down the road. We've been to theirs to drink their beer and they came here for the melon and to look askance at the traditional rice with rabbit and snails at the restaurant in Raspay. Yesterday we drove to the coast. For us the coast nearly always means Santa Pola because it's the town we first stayed in when we came to Spain.

The Med was sill there looking very nice. The sun was still shining. Santa Pola performed its role as Spanish seaside town admirably. We strolled we gawped, we ate, we strolled again.

After lunch, around 6pm, we went on to El Pinet. It's a funny little beach we said. The houses are built along the edge of the beach, there's a dusty road that runs behind the houses, a couple of old fashioned restaurants painted green and a whole heap of Dutch camper vans parked under the pines by the road. It's so different to Santa Pola or Guardamar or Benidorm.

The houses, the restaurants, the dusty road and the pines (but not the Dutch) were all there. But so were thousands of Spanish holidaymakers. Every house had been rented out to a family. Grans and Aunties and Dads and Mums sat on their terraces snoozing, watching the world go by, playing cards or listening to the football on the radio as they recovered from Sunday lunch. Some family members were doing those exact same things but on the beach. The small child sitting in a bucket to swill off the sand amused me and reminded me of sitting on the drainer to have a wash 50 years ago in Yorkshire.

Written 6 July 2009

The house

Home. As I drove onto our front patio Maggie was there to greet me. Eduardo was sitting on a chair cleaning himself after a satisfying meal. The house looked very yellow. That was my first impression; very yellow.

We went on an inspection tour. The garden is a parched and withered jungle but the house looks OK. The detail in places is dreadful and there are some things that are laughable but the overall effect is fine. It's the building work of an enthusiastic amateur but it is definitely fine. OK, OK, OK. After all those months away to come back to a house that looks finished, with a roof, with gutters, with the patios largely clear of debris and with the interior dry and organised is a great relief. The new paint, done by a pal, finishes the place off nicely. Yellow with maroony red paintwork.

Written 5 July 2009

Shades of colour

On July 1st we drove away from Ciudad Rodrigo. We had two cars. Maggie and Eduardo left before me as I had one last thing to do. It was around 20ºC as the day began in Castilla y Leon, it was green and brown and the river sparkled as I crossed the bridge to leave town for the last time. When I stopped for a fag break just outside Segovia it was around 32ºC, there were small ash like trees, little red flowers and the smell of cool vegetation in the lay by. Thundering around Madrid, surrounded by lorries and vans and cars on the M50 the temperature was up to 34ºc and the construction lorries and diggers kicked up clouds of yellow dust as they worked alongside the road. Across Castilla la Mancha the combines were out - their progress across the parched brown fields marked by plumes of orange dust that hung in the still, crackling air. When I stopped in Almansa I parked beneath some pines for shade, the chap in the van next to me had left the engine on to keep the aircon running. It was 36ºC dusty and dry. Into Murcia, passing the vines, the olives, the almonds growing in the almost red soil. And finally into Valencia; to Alicante, home turf with Mount Cabezo standing guard over Pinoso and our house. 729kms, 7hours and 35 minutes later the green and brown had become shades of orange, yellow and brown.

Originally written on 1 July 2009

Bad news from Culebrón

Casa Pepe, the new bar and restaurant in Culebrón, has closed. It looks as though Eduardo, the gout ridden owner of the emotionally draining restaurant next door has seen off the opposition yet again. It's just a pity that Eduardo is unwilling to sell drinks except as a part of a meal.