¿Is that correct?

I've been doing a Spanish class recently. Not that I expect it to make me any more understood in the street. I just feel I have a responsibility to try to improve my Spanish somehow. I would have preferred an intercambio - the half an hour of Spanish for half an hour of English language exchange - but, despite a fair bit of effort, I couldn't find one. Well, actually, that's not true. Alvaró and I met a couple of times but then he went off to seek fame and fortune in Guildford.

So, unable to get  a bit of Spanish for free, I asked a local academy about paying for a weekly grammar class. It's not that exciting but it's structured practice, of a sort, with correction. My teacher is a pleasant and well organised young woman.

"Why not write something for me to correct?" she suggested. So I did. I've done something the last couple of weeks and I was working on this week's piece today. Writing the essay is pretty straightforward. With a biro I can write nearly as quickly in Spanish as in English but as I two finger type the clean copy I see tons of errors, wonder about lots of grammar and spend ages checking spelling and especially accent marks. Tidying up the text can take a long time. I did try writing direct to computer but the mechanics of my two fingered typing inhibit any spontaneity.

Today I was being a bit more playful with my writing than I have been the last couple of times. Well that is if you consider this sort of thing to be playful - The British Empire ran on tea, well tea and gin and tonic - oh, and quite a powerful navy. I included speech in the writing to liven it up a bit too. I started using inverted commas then I remembered, vaguely, that in Spanish the inverted commas are used to quote what someone notable said - Joan of Arc or Henry Kissinger sort of quotes. I asked Google and got a nice piece about how to deal with reporting speech in Spanish. In essence Spanish uses long hyphens, which join to the words and stick with them across line breaks and suchlike, to isolate the speech from normal narrative. There are different rules for how the hyphens are placed under different circumstances and also how to deal with other punctuation marks like full stops and question marks in and around the hyphens. I read it, it made sense and I instantly forgot it.

I was thinking about English punctuation. Do you know, I haven't a clue (probably if you read these blogs critically you do know.) I don't know about how to use parentheses - is the full stop correct and is it in the right place within that last set of brackets for instance? I don't know about single, as against double, inverted commas, I don't know where other marks go in amongst the brackets, quotes, hyphens and what not. My big ally is that I suspect that lots of other people don't know either. Whereas the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves may well have cheered up the sort of person who writes to the BBC about the pronunciation of envelope I'm certain that any ordinary person who slogged through it will no longer remember much, if any, of it.

So, I foresee a truly interesting conversation about how to correctly punctuate Spanish in one of the next classes. Life surely is a riot.

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And here is the text, in Spanish, from a blog called Tinta al sol, about how to do it for anyone interested.

Según el Diccionario panhispánico de dudas de la RAE, lo primero que hay que aclarar es que los diálogos en un texto narrativo no van precedidos de guiones, sino de una raya, que es ligeramente más larga que un guión.

Esta raya antecede a los diálogos, tras una sangría, y sin dejar espacio entre la raya y el comienzo del parlamento.

La raya también enmarca las acotaciones del narrador, y debe cerrarse sólo si el diálogo continúa tras el comentario del narrador.

—Hola, ¿cómo estás? —dijo ella tras verle entrar—. ¿Vas a salir?

—No, no saldré —dijo él sin mirarla.

Cuando se utiliza un verbo de habla para el comentario del narrador (decir, exclamar, afirmar, responder, etc.), éste va en minúscula, aunque el diálogo haya terminado con un signo de puntuación del mismo valor que un punto, como un signo de exclamación o de interrogación.

—¿Eso es todo? —preguntó ella.

Si el diálogo del personaje continúa tras la acotación, y la primera parte termina con coma, punto, punto y coma o dos puntos, este signo de puntuación se coloca tras la raya del cierre.

—Todo —respondió él—. Y tanto que es todo.

Cuando el comentario del narrador no lleva un verbo de habla, la primera parte del diálogo se cierra con un punto, y la acotación comienza con mayúscula. Si el diálogo continúa después, se escribe un punto tras la raya de cierre.

—Estupendo. —Ella se volvió para que no viera su sonrisa—. Me llevo la llave.

Casting a vote

I've described this process somewhere else, in the past, but as it doesn't happen very often even my most trusty reader may have forgotten - so.

There are two elections going on today. The first is for the majority of the Autonomous Communities, the Regions, which deal with the powers not held by Central Government in areas like health and education. Our region is the Comunitat Valenciana which is made up of three provinces, Valencia, Castellon and Alicante. We are in Alicante and that's where we should vote except that European legislation denies me a vote at this level. I cannot vote regionally either in the UK or in Spain. The second elections are for the local Town Halls. These people decide how much our water and car tax cost, what we pay for rubbish collection, how to organise the local fiestas and lots of the day to day decisions that affect our lives. I do, at least, get to vote at the Town Hall level.

My polling station is in one of the schools in the local town of Pinoso. There is no polling station in the village. There are basic procedural differences between Spain and the UK.

In Britain, provided the system hasn't changed whilst I've been away, you turn up and show that you have the right to vote because you are on the electoral register. That done you are given a ballot paper which you mark with your choice in secret. The marked ballot paper is then placed in the ballot box. You vote for a named person using a first past the post simple majority system.

In Spain you cast your vote by sealing a list of candidates inside an envelope and placing that envelope in the ballot box. The lists are available at the polling station but the lists and envelopes are also available beforehand. This means that lots of people turn up at polling stations with their sealed envelopes already prepared. If you don't have an envelope ready you will need to prepare one in the polling station before you approach your designated electoral table. You prove your identity, I used my passport, someone checks you are on the electoral roll and, provided you are, that's when you are able to place your sealed envelope in the box.

The list system means that you vote for a group of people rather than a single person. The order of the candidates on the lists is chosen by the parties. The number of people elected from each list depends on the number of votes cast and the mathematical formula applied to those votes using a system called the D'Hondt method. It's a proportional representation system based on highest averages. Like all voting systems it has pluses and minuses, supporters and detractors.

Polling stations are open from 9am till 8pm. There are only 5,584 people registered to vote in Pinoso and the vote is local so I presume we will get the local results very quickly. The national picture, reflected in the regional votes, will take longer to firm up just as in the UK.

A few things that crossed my mind when I was trying to think of a blog entry

It stopped being cold in our house a few weeks ago now. I forget quite when but suddenly we weren't using the gas heaters, I started to pad around the tiled floors in bare feet as I got up in the morning. Winter was gone and there were flowers in the garden. Last week, I think, it was warm - a few days in the 30ºC bracket. I folded up my pullovers. That turned out to be a bit premature. I've needed a woolly the last couple of days.

I was just about to go to work, Maggie was on her way home after work. We were together. We decided a quick snack was in order. We chose a roadside bar café that we haven't been in for years. It was a mistake. It was scruffy, barn like, dark and a bit dirty. Nonetheless we sat at the bar, ordered a drink and surveyed the tapas in the little glass display cases. Lots of them looked like food left on the plates piled up by the side of the sink after a good meal; perfectly nice when freshly prepared but well past their best now. We ordered a sandwich instead but as I ate and surveyed the sad looking tapas their aspect began to lose ground to their potential taste. I wondered about ordering something. I didn't, but I nearly did.

I work in Fortuna, It's a small forgotten town, or maybe a village, in Murcia. Litter blows around the streets of Fortuna. The traffic misbehaves. Dogs, or dog keepers, misbehave. Our local town is Pinoso. it's a small forgotten town, or maybe a village, in Alicante. I have always thought of Pinoso as just another no mark town, the one I happened to end up in. I now realise we fell lucky. It's a clean, inexpensive, well organised, little place.

The election campaign this time has been odd. Not that odd but not exactly to formula. There have been lots of leaked news stories that have affected big candidates as usual but there are new names all over the place touted as possible victors. The clever money is on the collapse of the two party hegemony. At least two of the "important" high profile politicians don't have a manifesto to speak of. They think it's not important. Policy isn't the thing this time it's who you trust.

In our own local elections I went to an election meeting where they had no manifesto either. It'll be out tomorrow I was told. It's well past tomorrow now but I haven't been able to find one. I have to confess that my search has been a bit half hearted. Working, as I do, till around 9pm I've found it difficult to get to any of the meetings but the publicity about when and where they are taking place has been a bit thin on the ground anyway.

Still on the elections I was surprised to hear a very partisan interview on the town radio yesterday where the interviewer fed one of the candidates the questions he wanted. "Words of wisdom" commented the interviewer after one response. The interviewer is one of the candidates for the same party as the interviewee. I stood up for him in the social media when his candidature was announced.

The elections are on the streets though. We were having a drink. When only one other table was occupied we could hear its occupants making their predictions for the vote. A second table was occupied later. They talked about the elctions too - they had clear views on some of the candidates. "I'm not telling you who I'm voting for," said the female to the male partner, "it's a secret vote."

Apparently it's the fiftieth anniversary of the European flag - the one with the yellow stars on the blue background. I was, as so often, listening to the radio and some chap was talking about the flag's anniversary. We fly the flag a lot in Spain he said, the same in Italy. In Britain they hardly ever fly the European Union flag because of their feelings towards Europe.

It was International Museum Day, IMD, this week. In Cartagena, where we used to live, the Night of the Museums was a huge and joyous family event with the museums open for free till 2am, on a Saturday evening nearest to IMD and all sorts of street events alongside. I wondered if there was anything happening close to Culebrón this year as Cartagena is a fair distance away. There were 138 events listed for Spain and another 295 for the rest of Europe though the nearest to us was some 40km away. Out of curiosity I wondered who was doing what in the UK. At first I couldn't find anyone but, with a bit of probing, I found that the Auckland Castle Museum and the Thackray Medical Museum were doing their bit.

I am reminded of the oft quoted headline, puportedly from the Daily Mirror in 1930. Fog in Channel Continent Cut Off.

Wrinkled skin

On the second day I lived here, that is the day after the MGB, Mary the cat and I arrived in Spain to join Maggie, I went to the Town Hall in Santa Pola to register on the padrón. The padrón is a local register of inhabitants. Town Hall's like to have people on their padrón because it increases their funding from national and regional sources. Without being on the padrón it's difficult to access some services.

There were some problems with the paperwork; some tiny little defects. The Town Hall needed the landlord's signature. She was in Switzerland. They needed Maggie's signature. She was at work. I went to the Estate Agent, who had rented us the flat, and asked for advice. She forged the absent landlady's signature. Back at the Town Hall I forged Maggie's signature. As I wrote it with a pen borrowed from the clerk it wasn't much of a forgery. "Ah, the landlady and your wife came back unexpectedly." said the clerk as he stamped our padrón and we became official residents.

Today I had to set off for work within the hour. Maggie had just finished her job for the day and was due to get her nails done. We decided a quick snack lunch in a bar would be just the job. It all went dreadfully wrong, The service was slow and Maggie left after a salad and some indifferent mushrooms. I waited for the double portions we'd ordered to eat together to come. There were some Britons sitting very close to our table. Abandoned by Maggie I started talking to them. They were pretty new to the area. In the few moments we talked I heard that the electricity supply wasn't in their name, that they did not have the deeds for the house, that their water pipes seemed to be leaking and that they weren't registered with anyone for anything.

I began to dole out my ten year old wisdom, most of which is certainly out of date. I mentioned local people to contact to sort this and that problem. More importantly I helped them with their pudding order. They wanted ice cream as well as the fruit salad.

As I drove away there were two thoughts uppermost in my mind. The first was just how confusing I had probably been. For someone who was having trouble with the translation of the word for hake, the fish, talk of various Spanish processes must have been first rate gobbledygook. Padrón this, escritura that  with Iberdrola and gestores up the ying yang. It had probably been confusing for me too all those years ago in Santa Pola. The second, much more rewarding, thought was that I'd had no trouble at all getting them ice cream and fruit salad.

Extrapolate as John D.W. Bottomley, my one time chemistry teacher, used to say.

Professionalism

It's probably some sort of jingoism on my part but I can't say I'm that impressed by the professionals that we have occasionally used here. By professionals I don't mean doctors or mechanics or plumbers or builders. They seem fine or at least just normally inept. No, I'm talking about the sort of people who work from offices and should wear suits - architects, lawyers, accountants, bank workers and the like.

A friend of ours was going through a divorce. The lawyer forgot to tell her that the divorce had been granted. Right on the ball then?

When we first got here we hired a lawyer to sort out our residence papers. We thought we could do it ourselves but to avoid hassle we paid a professional. Unfortunately the lawyer was completely unaware that the legislation was changing. He went through the tried and tested process but, by the time we went to collect the documentation, it no longer existed. We'd paid upfront. There was no talk of a refund. We did the correct paperwork ourselves.

As a part of some half hearted anti money laundering legislation everyone has to prove that they are who they say they are to their bank. This has to be done in person at a branch. The legislation was introduced in October 2010 leaving over four years for the banks to collect the information. In the last few weeks the banks have been in some sort of blue funk trying to get an extension on the implementation date at the end of April. They seemed to have forgotten to tell anyone. I read it in the press. This really is leaving your weekend homework to the school bus on Monday morning.

Last year the tax office caught up with some untaxed pension income of mine. I went to the Revenue to sort it out with my annual declaration. I wanted to correct any underpayment in previous years too but the Tax Office said that was a job for an accountant. I'd gone directly to the Tax Office because I reckoned that if they made a mistake at least it would be an "official" mistake. Anyway, following their advice I went to an accountant in the town where I was living. He told me there was no past tax liability - I was in the clear. The man did not fill me with confidence though. He used a calculator for the simplest of sums, He made lots of ooh and aah sounds as he stared at his computer screen. He kept reaching for his fags before remembering that it's no longer legal to smoke at work. He wasn't Cockburn's Port.

This year I have to have an accountant as I am self employed. The first thing my accountant did on my behalf was to register me as self employed. I knew it had happened because the Social Security confirmed it in a text message and took money from my bank account. They took 40% more than the accountant told me they would take. I heard nothing from the accountant though, not a dickie bird. When I went to see him a month or so ago I asked for the self employment registration certificate. "Oh, haven't we sent it you?," he said. 

The tax people don't seem to have forgotten that I get a UK pension. They sent me a letter offering an amnesty on any unpaid taxes on pension income to foreigners like me - no interest, no fines, just the normal payment of any unpaid back tax. My new accountant didn't seem to want to see the letter that the Tax People had sent even though I said that it talked about a new process, a special form. Unlike last year's accountant my new accountant is sure I owe the Revenue something.

Today, when I sent a WhatsApp to ask him when I might see the paperwork that they were going to submit on my behalf  he replied by phone. I've told him that I try to avoid technical phone calls in Spanish preferring emails or other written options. He told me there was a specific form that had to be completed in my case. The Tax Office need to send the form to me so that in turn I can send it on to the accountant. I presume this is the special form mentioned in the letter that he didn't want to read. Before he rang off he said he just wanted to be sure that he had my correct postal address. It was perfect except for the street, the PO box and the town.

He thinks we should leave the submission till the last possible day. That sounds like the perfect strategy to me.

It's a franchise

Murcia City has changed a lot over the years. It feels citylike now - it hustles and bustles. The first time I went there I thought it was a dusty hole. If I tell you I arrived in a friend's Lada Niva you'll realise just how long ago that was.

We were there yesterday and we wanted something to eat. The place is alive with tapas bars and trendy looking eateries. I quite fancied a place called Tiquismiquis (which means something like fusspot) or maybe Moshi Moshi (I don't speak Japanese so I don't know what that means) but by the time I'd found a bank machine we'd passed those places by and we were footsore so we went to a Lizarran instead.

Lizarran is a franchise. They have little tapas, generally bread mounted snacks, stored inside cooled display cases. each tapa has a toothpick driven through it. You bung a few tapa on your plate and when you're settled a server asks you about drinks. When the place is realtively busy they usually come around with additional hot tapas. Other things are available for order too but basically the fare is tapas on sticks. When you're done they count up the number and style of toothpicks on your plate and charge you accordingly. It's hardly cordon bleu but it's usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

We considered 100 Montaditos as well. Cien Montaditos is also a franchise. In there you choose a table and in the centre of the table is a pen and a list of the montaditos which are basically mini rolls or sandwiches. You mark how many of which you want on the list and hand it in at the bar. They fill the drinks order straight away and give you a shout when your montaditos are done. Cien Montaditos is also usually pretty acceptable and it's easy.

Searching, as ever, for a blog entry it struck me that both were franchises. I did a bit of Googling and I was amazed how many everyday Spanish businesses are, in fact, franchises. It's not just the opticians, dentists, fast food chains, parcel carriers and quick jobs on the car businesses. One of the big supermarkets, Día, is a franchise and there is apparently a bread shop with over sixty varieties of bread - never seen one of those but it sounds good. There's another one that sounds like an equivalent of Wetherspoons with dirt cheap beer; never seen that either or I would still be there. But my favourite on the currently booming franchise list has to be a language school. If I were to work there maybe I could have a uniform and a zero hours contract like those people who work in the burger bars.