Being there

With the long summer break over it's likely that Life in Cartagena will be busier than this blog for a while.

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A surprising view

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Sitting around nattering, putting the world to rights, as one does, on a Saturday morning with friends. We were talking about how people make a living in Pinoso. The most obvious source of employment is in agriculture, particularly in producing wine grapes and almonds, though there are lots of other crops. Unfortunately, it's also true that there are hectares of good agricultural land lying fallow because of the problem of the "generational replacement". The farmers and winemakers are getting on in years, and their sons and daughters want to be teachers and scientists and influencers and local government officers and not farmers and winemakers. We'd talked about the salt that is pumped out of the salt dome, El Cabeço, and sent as a brine solution down a pipeline to Torrevieja where it is added to the salt lagoons there to increase the yield. Actually, the technical term for a salt dome, diapiro, also gives its name to a couple of wines produced by the local bodega or ...
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2024 Population in Pinoso

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This was such an obvious blog, but one that had been published on the various Pinoso Town Hall websites, that I decided not to do it. Then, in casual conversation to Maggie I mentioned that it was easy to remember that there are now 345 Dutch and Belgian people in Pinoso (it's a topic of conversation amongst the Brits here, the obvious increase in the numbers of these two nationalities). She replied that she'd seen the article but not really taken it in. So, I decided to take the easy blog. Pinoso had, at the close of 2024 a population, according to the statistical department of Pinoso Town Hall, of 8,836 people or maybe 8,846 (as the various figures in their article don't quite add up) but we're only talking about 10 people so I've used the higher figure to work out the figures in the next two sentences. Of that population 6,758 are Spanish (76%) and 2,078 people are foreigners (24%). There are 3426 Spanish men, 1039 foreign men, 3342 Spanish women and 1039 foreign...
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Submarines in the harbour

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Done it then. The prescribed treatment for my throat cancer and inflamed lymph nodes was three sessions of chemotherapy in Elda and thirty three sessions of radiotherapy in Alicante. Today I had the last session - everything finished. The medics tell me that I'll still feel sick, not be able to eat through my mouth, continue to have skin peeling off my neck, and whatnot, for a month or two yet. My next appointment with the oncologist isn't until 11 November (not at 11am) and the next time to speak to the ear nose and throat people who did the original biopsy isn't until mid December. But, for the moment I won't have to get up at 5.30 am to be ready for the ambulance to take me to Alicante every weekday and nobody is going to poison me with vile chemicals or bombard me with particles for a while. Of course nobody has suggested what will happen if it hasn't worked. I don't know whether they wade in with more of the same or if they give it up as a lost game and jus...
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