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.