Monday, January 21, 2013

Bean there, done that

As we waited in the queue to pay, there in the place normally reserved for those last minute temptations - the sweets that have children tugging on their parent's sleeves and the diet breaking choolate bars - was a big box full of habas, broad beans. Maggie, can we have some broad beans Maggie, can we? She said no of course but a touch of petulance and the beans were mine.

I always associate raw broad beans with one of the first times that we took the MG out for a run with the Orihuela Seat 600 club. It was a sunny but nippy Sunday morning and the MG was parked up in a school playground along with lots of other classic cars. It was referendum day for the European Constitution and the school was acting as a polling station so there were quite a lot of people about one way and another. The car folk were breathing smoke with the cold air as they chewed on the obligatory breakfast of silver paper wrapped baguettes and canned drinks. From the back of an old Merc I think, but it may have been a Renault, someone was doling out part of their crop of home harvested broad beans. We were offered some but Maggie has never been one to take her mother's advice about eating her greens and, without Maggie's support, I was too shy to take any.

At this time of year the beans are all over the place. The first time I actually dared to join in and eat a few pods worth was when we were in some quite trendy bar somewhere. On the bar, completely out of place, was a big glass bowl full of broad bean pods. People were helping themselves and I finally did the same. I often eat things like sprouts and cabbage raw but I think it was the first time ever for broad beans. They were good.

I know, I know. Eating raw beans is hardly noteworthy but, then again, if we were down the Dog and Duck or Spade and Beckett would there be raw broad beans for the delectation of the customers? I think not. Something Spanish then.

We eat lupin seeds too but I suppose you know that.


Sunday, January 06, 2013

Rhyme and reason

One advantage of the English language is that the word banker has an obvious rhyme. The Spaniards share the sentiment but not the rhyme.

To the best of my knowledge this is a vastly oversimplified but basically accurate description of the Spanish banking system. Essentially, in recent history, there have been three types of "bank".

The first is the standard commercial bank; the bank raises capital and then lends money to people and organisations in order to make a business profit. The second is the Caja de Ahorros, a Savings Bank where the money for loans came from the deposits of the savers. Many of the Savings Banks in Spain originally loaned money against pawned items. The profit from the operation is used to support loans to savers and a certain percentage is diverted to a charitable foundation to support "good causes." The third institution, the Rural Savings Bank, has syndicalist or co-operative roots and was originally developed to promote agriculture in rural areas.

At sometime in their history the Savings Banks were limited to operating within geographical boundaries so that the CajaMurcia, the "Murcia Savings Bank" operated in Murcia and the Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo or "Mediterranean Savings Bank" did business in Alicante and Murcia. As the legisltion was relaxed the Cajas began to operate further from home. Somewhere along the way regional politicians got involved in the running of the majority of the Savings Banks often because of the influence they wielded through the charitable foundation of the Caja.

So the history of the Cajas de Ahorro is a familiar story, similar to the UK Building Societies. Local Savings Banks merge to produce larger institutions which look, to anyone without specialist knowledge, almost exactly like banks though their names at least suggest some link to the locality.

There were tens of big and powerful Savings Banks when we first arrived here. Lots or maybe all of the Cajas ploughed money into what is now worthless land, overpriced houses and grandiose and redundant building projects. As the debt burden caught up with them and the regulatory authorities started to investigate the level of bungling, cronyism, mis-selling and straightforward theft started to emerge.

Recent legislation, the demands of Brussels and the European Bank have all helped to change the face of Spanish banking. Unfortunately the system we live in depends on the banks acting as the conduit between lenders and borrowers so we, the taxpayer we, have been forced to bail the bunglers and crooks out. I resent that and I would be very happy to see lots more of the fraudsters go to prison. Fat chance of that though - the old boy network is very alive and well in Spain. Only the other day one of the alleged culprits from one of the biggest failed bank mergers got himself a nice little number as an advisor to the old ex state monopoly telephone company.

Anyway. I understand that only two Savings Banks still exist in Spain. All the rest have become commercial banks. We went to Ontinyent today to have a look at one of them. It looks pretty modest doesn't it? In fact it was the 43rd biggest of the 45 Cajas in Spain but 43 of them have gone. Now the Caja de Ahorros de Ontinyent is the largest survivor. The other the Caja de Ahorros de Pollensa is in Mallorca on the Balearics.

Apparently it's in perfectly good financial shape, it's bosses and workers get reasonable salaries, politicians are not involved in its operations and there is not a whiff of scandal about the way it does or has done business.