Life in Culebrón

With the radio on

2012-01-21T20:06:00.000+01:00

The fail-safe method to determine if the UK is in a state of emergency is the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme. If it fails to broadcast, as scheduled, three days in a row you'll need to fill the bath with water. At least that's what my brother told me.

I don't think Spanish radio is quite as potent a force in everyday life as it is in the UK but it still has plenty of listeners. I'm one of them. This week radio has been in the news because the state broadcaster, RNE, which first broadcast from Salamanca as a propaganda arm of the Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War, celebrated its 75th anniversary.

I tend to listen to Radio 5 which is the news channel of the state broadcaster but I also listen to both their speech channel, Radio Nacional and Radio 3 their music channel. There are plenty of good talk radio stations though they aren't shy about having a political view. SER, Onda Cero and Punto Radio are some of the bigger national broadcasters. The Church didn't want to get left out and has a radio station called COPE. None of the talk radio stations has the breadth of the BBC and there seem to be almost no drama, soaps, comedy or quizz shows. Sport, and by sport in Spain I mean football, takes up huge chunks of the talk radio airtime.

Contemporary music is badly served by Spanish radio. Radio 3, mentioned earlier, could be absolutely splendid. They have some great music with the most eclectic range you could imagine but they also seem to love presenters who prattle on for hours in a monotone. It is about the only place to hear the up and coming Indie bands though whether they be Spanish or International. On the more standard pop channels the presenters seem to be pretty good but their problem is that they play the same music over and over again. The Top 40 charts stand still and there are very seldom anything but mainstream Spanish and International artists in them. I've copied this weeks chart at the bottom of this post. Look how long the songs have been around. The National music channels include 40 Principales, Kiss FM, Cadena 100 and Cadenadial which limits itself to Spanish songs. There are the Golden Oldie channels too.

The only Classical Music I've ever heard on the radio is from RNE. I haven't heard a lot because, so far as I can tell, Radio Clásica specializes in trying to bore their listeners to death. It's a personal opinion of course and maybe Music and Meaning or the World of the Phonograph have their audiences. There is absolutely nothing like Classic FM that I'm aware of.

Local Radio Stations are often very local. We have a generalist one in Pinoso, there's one in Aspe too and typical programming includes music, local news, local jobs, local ads and local ads - oh, and local ads. It's far more common though for local programming to be delivered by the local team of one of the national broadcasters. They take over a local frequency for their programming for a couple of hours each day. There are plenty of local music stations too including a few English language ones on the coast but none of the programming is very adventurous. There is a smattering of religious broadcasters as well.

In summary good quality radio in general but with a very limited scope. Oh, and it's not digital, no DAB here to speak of, so reception can be a problem out of the cities.

Cuarenta Principales chart as of Saturday 21 January 2012

1 Ai se eu te pego, Michel Teló
Last week Nº 2 Weeks on chart: 6, Highest position: 1
2 Someone like you, Adele
Last week Nº 1 Weeks on chart: 10, Highest position: 1
3 Titanium, David Guetta
Last week Nº 4 Weeks on chart: 15, Highest position: 1
4 Got 2 luv u, Sean Paul
Last week Nº 3 Weeks on chart: 19, Highest position: 3
5 Good feeling, Flo Rida
Last week Nº 6 Weeks on chart: 12, Highest position: 5
6 Cometas por el cielo, La Oreja de Van Gogh
Last week Nº 5 Weeks on chart: 9, Highest position: 5
7 We found love, Rihanna and Calvin Harris
Last week Nº 8 Weeks on chart: 13, Highest position: 1
8 No sigue modas, Juan Magán
Last week Nº 10 Weeks on chart: 5, Highest position: 8
9 Domino, Jessie J
Last week Nº 7 Weeks on chart: 9, Highest position: 7
10 Stereo hearts, Gym Class Heroes
Last week Nº 14 Weeks on chart: 7, Highest position: 10

Life in the fast lane

2012-01-08T12:15:00.000+01:00

Until I moved to Spain I associated Calor Gas heaters with caravans. Caravans at Filey Brigg to be precise. Here, in the countryside at least, everyone has a gas heater to help combat the intense cold in our uninsulated houses. We own three.

The heaters push out around 3kw of heat and one 15€ bottle of gas lasts around 60 hours which makes them a cheaper form of heating than electric. We don't have our bottles delivered though so having to collect them is a bit of a pain.

The other day a friend was talking about having replaced a heater. He feared that it was on the point of blowing up his house. They have a bit of a reputation for doing that. Well either blowing you up or asphyxiating you. It acted as a reminder. I know that the bright orange rubber tubes that connect the gas bottle to the heater have a "sell by" date on them. I checked. Whoops! The oldest one we had said March 2010 and even the most moodern bit of piping (on the gas cooker) was six months out of date. They're now all good till June 2016.

I don't suppose it was much of a threat really. At least that's what I told Maggie.

17 million Spaniards or 63% of the population earn less than 1,000€ gross per month and 4,422,359 are out of work.

2012-01-06T11:06:00.001+01:00

As we left Cartagena for Culebrón yesterday evening the Three Wise Men, the Three Magician Kings to Spaniards, were doing their rounds and delivering coal to bad boys and girls or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Zombie Dolls to the good ones. We'd seen them. Not the bad children and Zombie Dolls; the Kings. There had been a big procession through the streets in the evening and, all day, they'd been holding court in the old Town Hall in the middle of town.

The atmosphere in the town was amazing. The last minute shoppers were out in hordes buying their Christmas gifts, the hundreds of balloon sellers and other street vendors. The burble of noise coming from the street cafés. Very nice.

In Culebrón all was quiet. We settled down in front of the telly with a cup of tea. My ration of hearing spoken Spanish is quite limited. Maggie isn't a big fan of talk radio and generally we watch English language programmes even on Spanish TV when we're together. That's one of the reason I quite like adverts. I get to hear some Spanish but they are also a mirror to the society around me. Language wise they are good too because if I lose the thread of an advert then it doesn't matter much because there will be another along in 30 seconds. It's not like losing the thread of a feature film. And I get the chance, very soon, to hear them again and again and again.

The telly has been saturated with mobile phone, perfume and chocolate adverts in the run up to Christmas; to today, By last night it was too late to sell any more perfume or chocolate. Instead we had cleaning products. You can imagine can't you? When the last of the festive prawns and the roscón have been eaten people are going to look around their houses and decide that it's time for a big clean up. The exercise will help with the after Christmas diet too.

Els Enfarinats in Ibi

2011-12-28T16:48:00.000+01:00

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks.

The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government gives way to the old.

The taxes levied go to local charities.

And some lemons for the prawns

2011-12-24T00:18:00.000+01:00

Ventura popped by the flat in Cartagena. He left lots of oranges, grapefruit and what not from his pal's citrus grove. "You'll need the lemons for the prawns," he said.

I was at work today though I have next week off. Lots of my students wished me a merry Christmas before saying they'd see me next week. They will be working and whilst they weren't exactly surprised that I won't be they didn't take it for granted that I'd be off. Christmas is just another holiday here not the huge event that it is in the UK.

My boss suggested to me that I should theme this week's out of office lessons around Christmas. I tried but there was a cultural mis match. Talking about Slade and Wizard songs, office Christmas parties, the Christmas Day James Bond film or Christmas tree lights has been an uphill struggle.

Quite rightly Slade and Wizard are unknown here but so are the wine in paper cup and photocopier incident office Christmas parties. White Christmas didn't ring bells as a song title but most knew the tune when I played it. Fairy lights and Christmas trees exist, indeed they are widespread, but at least half of my students do not have a Christmas tree in their house. They're not actually that sure about the details of the Christmas story either - Jerusalem got easily as many votes as Bethlehem as the site for the birthplace of the baby Jesus.

Trying to have a discussion about what people have for Christmas dinner was a bit like asking for a favourite number. There are a lot of numbers. But there was one thing, almost a constant. Prawns. And, of course, for prawns you will need lemons.

I may have more to say before the day but, just in case I don't get the opportunity again, I hope you have a very Merry Christmas

Opaque

2011-12-05T00:26:00.001+01:00

Movistar is a big phone company here - they have both fixed and mobile services. Their customer service number is 1004. Last week 1004 called me repeatedly but I missed or ignored every call.

Sunday: a Sunday as it should be where I didn't get around to putting my contact lenses in till late evening and where I avoided proper work all day. I was too lazy even to clean the bath or hoover the floor. On the telly I watched one of those films where the busy executive realises the error of their ways at Christmas. The World becomes a better place.

In between the Christmas stories I watched the ads. Something I rarely do. The Movistar people seemed to have a good offer on for those of us who have both their fixed and mobile phone packages. There were two offers and the website suggested we were eligible for both.

But the Software said no to one offer. Odd that. I could have sworn we were paying for a 3Mb package but apparently not. I didn't fret. Even the poorer of the two offers saves us 20€ per month. They emailed me the contract and everything. The next day though they changed their minds. The exchange in Pinoso just isn't up to it they said. They told me all about their constant efforts to bring the most up to date technology to even we country bumpkins but we'd have to wait just a little longer to get this particular offer.

There's another advert on the telly at the moment for Golden Lady tights. Panty tupido it says. I didn't know the word tupido but it had a nice ring to it so I looked it up. The ad is for opaque tights.

Lots of things here are still very opaque to me.

New wines and new names all around

2011-11-28T23:53:00.001+01:00

When we were at the village meal the other day the wine that came around the tables was from the local Culebrón bodega. It was different though; new wine varieties, new labels and a different, more modern, bottle design. Just to show how modern the white wine came in a blue bottle.

I only tried the two reds, the Shiraz and the Merlot, but I enjoyed them both.

The thing that caught my eye most though was that on the label, most of which was in English, the wine maker of the family, Roberto, had been renamed. Wines by Robert Brotons it said.

Foolishly, at the time, I forgot to take a picture of the wine which meant I had to pop back to the bodega the next weekend to buy a bottle for the pack shot. So, in the original picture, from the event, on the left, you can just see one of the new blue coloured wine bottles in amongst the sparkling Galician ciders and Catalan wines. Fear not - the orange stuff is Fanta.

The picture on the right is from the weekend after the meal.

Rice with rabbit and snails or rabbit stew?

2011-11-27T19:58:00.001+01:00

The Junta Directiva

I haven't commented on the Neighbourhood Association meal for a couple of years so I will this time around. To be honest I could simply repeat most of the text on the link above down to the menu except that there were no lupin seeds this year. It's not quite true, there were a couple of things that I noticed as different.

I had an interesting conversation with the President of the Association, not in its content but in the fact that it took place at all. The last time we spoke for more than 30 seconds she commented that, unlike my wife, I couldn't speak Spanish and that I should be ashamed of myself. This time she was at pains to compliment me on the way that I expressed myself and was able to string an argument together (we were talking politics.) I liked that. I like compliments about my Spanish.

Another thing was that I needed to open a bottle of beer and I went in search of a bottle opener. The abnormal thing there was that I felt perfectly comfortable just searching through the detritus of the serving area till I found one. It may have taken six years or so but I realised that I didn't feel out of place or uncomfortable in just helping myself. Nobody jumped up from their seat to help the helpless and hopeless foreigner as has happened so many times before either. Maybe it's because when someone else had explained to me, in mime, how to use the press tap on a box of vermouth to pour it out I had said that I was English not stupid. Was I being assertive or just plain rude?

The AGM after the meal was the normal riot. As usual when things got heated the language changed to Valenciano. A bit of bad feeling about who should supply wine for the village events and a bit of argy bargy about whether the summer meal should be self or outside catered. The discussion about the stall at Villazgo was more relaxed though there were some barbed comments from the President about who had to put the work in each year. The discussion about a charabanc trip also had two definite camps, one for a cultural type outing (we've had trips to a musical in Madrid and to a an area with limestone caves and touristy villages) or whether it should be a mad night out in Benidorm. The compromise was to find out the best deals on both and then to see who would sign up for what.

Good fun as always.

Repeating history and a traditional snack

2011-11-26T22:29:00.001+01:00

The Santa Catalina district of Pinoso is probably the most "Spanish" part of the town. To we Brits she's Saint Catherine, the one that the spinning fireworks are named for. Not surprisingly the neighbourhood that bears her name celebrates her feast day and, over the years, the festival has become quite a big event in the town.

The feast day proper centres on hogueras or bonfires that are set up on nearly every street corner. I've mentioned Sana Catalina in not one, or two but three blog entries over the past five years. We missed the bonfires this time because we were out of town.

A new departure for the fiesta this year is that there is a Mediaeval Market. We've just been up there to have a nose. It was pretty quiet to be honest. The stallholders were blaming the football and the cold in equal measure. I'm with the ones who thought it was too cold to venture out. The temperature difference between Culebrón, 600m above sea level, and coastal Cartagena is very noticeable. I think it's perishing.

There was a stall that caught my eye though. A beer stall. Yakka beers. There was just a drop of deja vu here because the last time we went to one of these markets was for the Romans and Carthaginians festival in Cartagena. There I bumped into a micro brewery beer called Icue. So, in the perishing cold and speaking abominable Spanish to the bearded, alternative lifestyle looking, stall holder I found out that there's now a microbrewery just down the road from us here in Culebrón. I tried the wheat beer (bit fruity for my taste) and brought home a bottle of stout.

The stout went very nicely with some local cheese that Maggie bought whilst I was sampling the beer but even more so with some Stilton that we picked up in a Pinoso supermarket today. That's the first time I've ever seen Stilton in Spain, the first Stilton I've tasted for over seven years. Stilton and stout. It sounds so Dickensian.

It tasted yummy.

Pinoseros on the dole

2011-11-19T10:37:00.001+01:00

Not my usual sort of post but the local on line newspaper - El Eco de Pinoso - reported that there are 860 people out of work in Pinoso at the moment.

How many people live in Pinoso is a moot point but the official statistical office says it's 7909. So 10.87% of the total population is out of work.

Take away the number of people below 16 (1397) and the number above 65 (1325) and the working age population is 5187. That would bring the jobless percentage up to 16.58%

By way of explanation

2011-11-15T17:20:00.001+01:00

I feel a bit of a fraud.

After Life in Culebrón was mentioned on the UCL Helpdesk blog I feel that I should try to add some new and vibrant entries. My problem is that I work. Working makes it more difficult to find the time to write. An even bigger problem though is that I work in Cartagena. So most of the things that happen to me and around me take place there on the simple principle of just two rest days to every five working days.

Of course what I write about Cartagena is equally witty, amusing, erudite and incisive - or so my mum says - but I would fall well below even my own lax standards to suggest that you clicked on the Life in Cartagena link.

Far too blatant a bit of self promotion even for me.

Poppies in Pinoso

2011-11-13T11:13:00.001+01:00

I've mentioned being in the 6th Elland (St Pauls) cubs before. I didn't last long, Sergeant Bilko was on telly at the same time as the weekly meeting and Phil Silvers won out over Bagheera and Akela. Nonetheless, I was involved in a couple of events with the cubs and I well remember the Remembrance Day parade to the Cenotaph in Hullen Edge Park where my family were sure to point out the name of John Haig, my great uncle killed in the First World War.

Remembrance day was a big event in the 60s. As I got older it seemed to lose importance but now, looking in from the outside in as it were, there seems to have been a genuine resurgence of interest and support.

As we were driving back to Culebrón on Friday evening there was a report on the public radio about the poppy and the acts of remembrance in the UK. They said that the day was to commemorate the fallen of the Great War, the First World War.

In Pinoso this morning the local branch of the Royal British Legion had organised a parade and church service with a fund raising meal still to come. It was quite an impressive sight. Dark clothing, lots of medals, regimental berets and nearly everyone, Spanish onlookers and the town band included, sporting poppies.

I was chatting with Clive outside the church when Evaristo, El Abuelo, came over to say hello. He too thought that the event was to commemorate the end of the First World War but Clive put him right in a very gentle and informative way telling him about the act itself and the work of the Legion. I suspect it was not the first time that Clive had had a similar conversation.

In Flanders' Field the poppies blow

between the crosses, row on row

In Flanders' Field - John McCrae, 1915

Going to Eduardo's

2011-11-12T16:00:00.001+01:00

There's not a lot in Culebrón apart from houses. We have a post box, a winery and Eduardo's. Eduardo's is the local restaurant.

Eduardo's restaurant is quite a strange place. Big. A huge barn of a building. There are seldom many diners. Often, as we pass by there's just Eduardo's van outside. No sign of customers.

I like Eduardo's. We can walk there. I can drink wine without fear of killing people on the way home. The food is traditional, not very special and cheap. Maggie doesn't like Eduardo's at all, she thinks the food is poor and she doesn't think it's cheap. It was she who suggested we went there today. Surprisingly there were nine other diners.

Getting food at Eduardo's is not straightforward. There is no advertised set meal and there's no written menu to choose from. We have to ask. Eduardo mumbles. Nowadays we have some idea of the range on offer but always, if there are other customers, Maggie looks across and asks why it is that we weren't offered whatever it is that they are eating.

We chose a bottle of red wine and a big bottle of water to drink. For food we started with toast, toasted over the open fire, served with white dripping and pink dripping. A cholesterol bomb. Sometimes there is ali oli for the toast but not today. Next a plate of crisps and almonds. Then a very basic salad of lettuce tomato and olives though we were offered a bit of tinned mackerel to go on top which we declined. We asked for fried cheese, and got it though the usual tomato jam accompaniment had been substituted by bitter orange marmalade. Main course was the traditional, to these parts, rice, rabbit and snail paella. I'd fancied a rabbit stew but Maggie looked askance at the proffered choices of lamb or chicken and so I joined her in the paella. Nowhere will cook a paella for fewer than two people. We both had pudding and I had a coffee though Maggie didn't. We both had a shot of something to finish. I thought it was the local mistela though Maggie said it was something horrid that tasted only of sugar. Total price 24€ or 12€ each.

Footpaths

2011-10-16T20:10:00.000+02:00

The markings used for
Spanish footpaths

Though it's not something we're likely to make a habit we went for a walk in the country today. Near Villena there are some old kilns that were used to turn gypsum into the raw material for plaster - the Hornos de Yeso - and they are near where the Villena Treasure was found.

It wasn't the most scenic spot in Alicante. There was a tip close by and lots of people seemed to have lost heart within sight of their goal and just dumped stuff by the side of the track. Nonetheless, the spot did have a certain charm and lots of lizards.

We followed a public footpath. There's a very simple system in Spain for marking paths. Red and white bands are used for long distance paths, yellow and white for shorter paths and green and white for the local stuff. The bands are usually painted on rocks, fenceposts, walls etc and they are normally well maintained. If the bands are crossed it means not to go there and a hinged symbol marks a turn.

The markings for the path we followed today were haphazard to say the best. Illusionist markers - now you see them, now you don't.

Well now - there's a thing

2011-10-15T02:04:00.000+02:00

The Chair of The European Committe on Constitutional Affairs, Carlo Casini, sent a letter to Erminia Massoni the Chair of the EU Committee on Petitions about the two petitions sent by Estelle Gouerou (French Citizen) and Christopher Thompson (that's me) (British Citizen) on the right of EU Citizens to vote in another Member State.

Erminia kindly copied the letter to me.

Carlo told Erminia that the AFCO Coordinators had agreed, at their meeting on 10 October, that no EU treaty gives the right to citizens to vote in other member states. He did point out that Ms Gurmai has suggested, as paragraph 10 of her draft opinion to the PETI Committee on the EU Citizenship Report 2010, that countries, like Spain and Germany, where Regional Assemblies are vested with legislative powers, could be invited by the EU Parliament to grant voting rights to EU Citizens in regional elections. Carlo also mentioned that a member of his committee, Mr Duff, has asked that the European Commission ensure that all Member States take action on the European Convention on Human Rights which guarantees the right to vote.

It looks as though it will all be thoroughly aired at the Conference on Inclusive Democracy to be hosted by AFCO and LIBE on the 9 and 10 November at the European Parliament when EU Citizens' voting rights will be on the agenda even though the primary purpose of the conference is to disseminate the outcome of the research done by the European Union Democracy Observatory based, as I'm sure you're aware, at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute

So that's nice and clear then.

Beetles

2011-10-02T16:50:00.000+02:00

Why so many? Why are there so many lying on their backs waving their legs in the air? We have tens, maybe hundreds, of biggish beetles circling the house and, ocassionally, popping in to say hello.

No need to worry

2011-09-30T20:55:00.000+02:00

Driving licences are a regular bar conversation topic amongst expats in Spain.

One line runs something like "We're European citizens, we have a European driving licence, we're entitled to drive." At the other end of the spectrum there's the "We're resident here so we have to change our licences for Spanish ones." Actually it's somewhere in between. Once you're resident there's a time limit on using the UK licence unless you register it with the Spanish authorities. It's easier and a bit cheaper to simply exchange. No need for another test or anything and for the first licence at least you don't have to do the medical.

At the beginning of July I took my licence to the local driving school, filled in a bundle of forms and handed over 75€ so that the chap from the driving school would do all the legwork for me. I could have popped down to Alicante, stood in a couple of long queues and done it myself but I chose the lazier, and much more expensive, option.

I forgot all about it for a while. The chap had said he'd phone when I needed to hand over my UK licence. Nowadays I understand that nothing much official happens very quickly, especially over the summer, and I trusted the bloke to do his job. But eventually I remembered and my British sensibility kicked in. I went to ask.

"Should be soon," he said, "I've been getting the June ones back recently."

"My problem," I said, "is calling into your office as you're not open on Saturdays."

"No problem, I can always open up for you on a Saturday if I need to."

No need to worry then.

A taste of Blighty

2011-09-18T16:32:00.000+02:00

We're having a very British weekend in Culebrón. We've just had lunch at a new bar restaurante run by Britons on the outskirts of Pinoso. It's now called Rafael's and it's using the building that once traded as RústicOriginal. I used to work for Rustic three or four years ago. It was strange to be back in the building that was so familiar and yet so different.

The place looked good, the staff were very welcoming, the Spanish translation of the, all British, menu read pretty well and the food was tasty, well presented and reasonably priced. All in all it was a very acceptable if not outstanding meal.

In the UK, when I lived there, I used to often eat in those chain pubs. I'd read the menu and think that the "freshly caught North Sea cod covered with organic wheat batter and accompanied by rough cut, blanched and deep fried potatoes," sounded good. I was surprised when I got fish and chips. In Spain menus tend to be straight forward, at least in the inexpensive places. The listing is basic: pork chops, chicken breast, hake etc. and things don't generally get more complicated than descriptions like steak with pepper sauce.

Back at Rafael's I noticed that the young man who served us was keen to correct our sloppy descriptions of the food. I don't remember exactly but I do know that when we got to the puddings he stressed things like stem ginger and black cherries when confirming our order.

I was transported back to the Boathouse in Peterborough.

The Village Fete

2011-09-17T20:52:00.000+02:00

Culebrón, the name of our village, probably derives from the word culebra meaning snake. Add the -on ending to a word in Spanish and it often gives the idea of big or oversized. Big snake then. Maybe the village achieved fame because of a big snake? Culebrón is also the Spanish word for a soap opera presumably because the story goes on and on. When we tell Spaniards, who don't know the village, that we we live in Culebrón they usually think we've mispronounced the word but, when we persist, they laugh. What a strange thing to call a village they say.

There is another village just up the road called Paredón. Like Culebrón it's part of the municipality of Pinoso. Paredón means the place where people are executed by firing squad. Spaniards from outside the area think it's an even stranger name for a village than Culebrón.

My mum lives in St Ives in Cambridgeshire. She posted this photo on Facebook of their August Bank Holiday fete at the vicarage.

Pinoso has an active branch of the Royal British Legion, the poppy charity. Today, in Paredón, in the grounds of a British run business there, the Legion held a Gala Day. I bought a coconut cake and home made chutney. Paredón may be a long way from St Ives, the weather and scenery may be different but there is no doubt about the lineage of the two events.

Heart and soul

2011-09-03T15:07:00.000+02:00

Spain has a proud record on organ donations. Although donations fell a little in 2010 (1502 donors and 3,770 transplants) from the all time record of 1605 donors in 2009 Spain still tops the Worldwide list of donors and donations. Based on the donations per million inhabitants it's Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, The United States, France, Austria and Italy. Their main methodology here seems to be to talk to families after someone has died rather than to rely on donor registers.

Nonetheless, there is a donor register and I signed up for it on the Internet last week. That's why I'm telling you this as my donor card arrived today. The card has no legal validity, it just indicates to my family that if there is any part of my poor and degraded body that may be useful to someone else I'd like them to have it. Just one thing: please get someone to check that I'm dead first!

So now you know

A change in the air

2011-08-30T10:27:00.001+02:00

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

2011-08-23T18:20:00.000+02:00

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

2011-08-22T16:42:00.001+02:00

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

2011-08-21T12:54:00.000+02:00

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

2011-08-18T11:45:00.001+02:00

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

2011-08-17T20:29:00.002+02:00

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

2011-08-16T19:26:00.002+02:00

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

2011-08-13T21:26:00.000+02:00

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

2011-08-08T16:34:00.001+02:00

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.

Snuggly and warm

2011-07-31T19:37:00.001+02:00

Would I lie? The knife stall.

The fair and fiesta in Pinoso runs from the 1st of August for nine or ten days. When I suggested that the event was getting quieter each year and perhaps, not so important in the lives of Pinoseros as it once was a young woman, born in the UK but bred in Spain, was quick to reprimand me for my disloyalty in a "Go Home Limey!" sort of way.

Officially the fair and fiesta aren't yet underway. The official opening, the pregon, a sort of opening speech, will happen on Monday evening. But, weekends are weekends, and last night the stalls and fairground rides were in full swing.

The town's equivalent of running with the bulls, a sort of chase and be chased by a small terrified bullock around some waste ground, took place for the first time this year, or at least I understand it did, fortunately for both my boredom and cruel stupidity tolerance thresholds I wasn't there. Later the new Carnival Queens and their entourages were crowned in a ceremony that seemed to last for an eternity. As we strolled around the stalls and fairground rides the crowds seemed pretty sparse to me. We could have chosen to sit at almost any of the food and drink establishments from the 5€ bargain specials to the upmarket shining crystal and linen napkin places.

So it wasn't the heart racing, non stop fun event we may have hoped for. There was an odd thing though. We started by the Town Hall. "Nice lights," said Maggie - "not as good as the lanterns but better than last year." We said hello to someone we knew. Later, as we bumped into the first of the stalls and the commentary started - aah, I see the pots and pans man is here, and the knife stall. We avoid the free samples at the "Mr Galicia" ham and cheese stall and consider, for at least the sixth year, whether we should buy a grilled corn cob, the white chocolate crepe was my first. We have comments about so many of the stalls and bars - not there, they overcharge at fiesta time, that bloke with the waffles always plays heavy metal - what a character, crikey that Peruvian man's hair is even longer than last year but he looks so much older, look the jewellery stall isn't here - I wonder if she died, she was knocking on a bit, no way! - the chips are always cold and expensive there.

We've strolled those stalls a lot over the past seven years; we're old hands. Gently re-assuring in a small town sort of way.

More elections

2011-07-29T15:34:00.002+02:00

Regular readers (as if!) will remember that the Socialists, who currently control the National Government, got a drubbing in the recent local elections - well with the exception of Pinoso where the Socialists wrested control of the Pinoso Town Council from a right of centre coalition.

Today the current President, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced that his Government will not complete its full term and that there will be General Elections on the 20th of November of this year. Zapatero won't be standing. The Socialist candidate is a bloke called Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The chap likely to head up the next government is a Conservative called Mariano Rajoy.

One of my original plans when I first came to Spain was to get involved in local politics. I reckoned I'd join a party, do my bit of pamphleteering, meet a few people in the process and, with my perfect Spanish, soon get myself elected as a councillor. Something went wrong somewhere. I baulked at paying the membership subs because I was too poor, the Spanish didn't seem to be moving towards that level of perfection I'd anticipated and, when I finally plucked up the courage to go to a branch meeting, I was more or less turned away at the door.

Yesterday I filled in the forms online and finally joined the party. We'll see how it goes at the second attempt.

I don't think Zapatero was influenced at all by my joining. We EU Citizens are disenfranchised in Spain for the National Elections.

The bin men cometh

2011-07-29T14:43:00.004+02:00

On the track that runs besides our house there is a big green dustbin. As in all Spain there is no door to door rubbish collection in Culebrón. We take our rubbish to the nearest container and the bin lorries come and empty them.

In towns there is a daily collection often in the dead of night but in sunny Culebrón the lorry comes around two in the afternoon twice a week. Today was the one of those days - the other is Monday. Effective little service.

Plucking defeat from the jaws of victory

2011-07-27T14:09:00.002+02:00

Since we've been back in Culebrón I've been pestering the planning department at the Town Hall for the licence - the final bit of paper - related to our roof collapsing all those years ago.

I called again this morning, still no licence but the chap promised to ring when the paperwork was finally signed off.

He did. I was surprised, nobody ever rings back. Fifteen minutes later, I was in his office to collect it.

"Excellent," I said, "What about all the other paperwork?" "What paperwork?" said he. "I've no idea but we left a bundle of the stuff when we started this process all those years ago. I have no idea what papers we left with you and what I should get back but there was a file full of the stuff stamped and sealed and I suppose we should have at least some of it."

He had no idea what I wanted, I had no idea what I was asking for and none of the other town hall people who have been involved in this tortuous process were anywhere to be seen. My Spanish was also in a state of collapse.

I'd intended to go and buy a coffee to celebrate but, instead, I drove home feeling dejected.

I suppose it's all over though. The house hasn't really changed from the original deeds so there shouldn't be any problem if we want to sell the house and the Town Hall won't be hounding us for anything because they have files with a big closed sticker on them and we do have a "Habitation Certificate" that we didn't have before. Maybe I should get the coffee after all, perhaps, with a drop of something harder to go with it!

I was going to link some of the phrases above to the history of the roof but there are so many that I'm going to put a list here. If you're interested you can see the whole story. Every date is an update on the tale. 08 May 2008 29 June 2009 01 July 2008 25 July 2008 04 August 2008 04 August 2008 07 August 2008 21 August 2008 19 September 2008 04 November 2008 24 December 2008 09 March 2009 06 July 2009 10 July 2009 (paragraphs 3 and 4) 20 July 2009 03 April 2010 21 May 2010 08 July 2011 20 July 2011

Fiestas again

2011-07-25T01:43:00.003+02:00

Friday evening. With this solemn act I now declare the 2011 Culebrón Fiesta open. Thus saying Inma popped a couple of ice cubes into a plastic glass ready for the vermouth. Inma is our "mayoress" and it was fiesta weekend. Blow the ceremony - on with the party. Drinking vermouth, a traditional local drink, was the kick off. The event was a bit of a damp squib because it rained. Rain in July in Spain. Mind you María Luisa kept us entertained.

Next we had the big race. Saturday morning. Five and a half kilometres of either walking or running. Two separate starts half an hour apart but the first runner home was only seconds behind the first walker. There was a little lad walking home swinging his hips, like someone from a "Carry On" film, apparently in second place but as soon as he crossed the line the judges disqualified him; they said he'd run. It was odd, hundreds of people there but hardly any of the usual suspects from the village.

Gachamigas are poor people's food. Flour, water, garlic and oil traditionally cooked in a big deep frying pan and tossed like pancakes. There was a gachamigas competition as part of the do so we expected to find a few people cooking around open fires but instead we encountered a picnic. We'd eaten at home and we hadn't taken any food or drink. We were invited to almost every table for a drink and a bite to eat. We felt like spongers. Maggie spent some time talking to and eating with people up from Alicante to visit relatives but we really sat with Enrique and Victoria's family. Good choice as Enrique's gachamigas carried off the first prize.

Missed the football competition but we were back for the evening meal. No main dish this time just lots of little snacklets - maybe not the best food we've ever had in the village but good company and a good event. Luisa made us feel particularly welcome. The Mayor and a few other politicians from Pinoso are always invited to the meal at each of the village fiestas and it was good to see new faces there after the PSOE victory back in May. Eli, who I once worked with and who is now a councillor, introduced me to Lázaro the new Mayor. I like that sort of thing.

We were too lazy to turn out for the hot chocolate and sweet bread on Sunday morning but being so devoutly religious we were back for the Sunday mass. The fiestas are for our patron saint, St. James, so I suppose the mass and procession were, technically, the main event of the weekend but my reason for turning out was that I'd been asked to take a few snaps. The photos weren't good - always a stray tractor in the background or a telegraph pole out of someone's head. It was a chilly evening. Eli, processing with the other politicians, commented on the coolness. "Well, it is July," I said. The look on her face suggested that she misinterpreted my English humour for a linguistic failing.

So that's it then. All over. The village can get back to normality. Definitely the village fiesta at which I have felt most welcome since we first arrived here. People were uniformly kind and friendly. Smashing.

Not fit for habitation

2011-07-20T17:57:00.002+02:00

The chap from the council came, as arranged, to check that our house is fit to live in as a result of the roof repair. We have been waiting for someone to "sign off" on the repairs for quite a while now. He looked around and then told us "no."

We have a gas hob in the kitchen and there is no air vent in the room apart from the rather large gap under the door and the cooker hood. "Drill some holes through your door, pop a plate over it and come and see me again," he said.

I went to borrow a drill from our neighbour but, like a true pal, he came and did the job for us. Back to the planning office tomorrow morning then.

Our tax euros at work

2011-07-20T11:28:00.003+02:00

We live a couple of hundred of metres off a tarmac road. It's a dirt track running to our front gate. Every time there is a torrential downpour, and they are not infrequent in sunny Culebrón, the water digs canyons into the track. Potentially suspension breaking gullies.

Today there was some rumbling down the track and there was a corporation digger regrading the track.

The lad on the corner said that they're doing it because it's fiesta time in the village this weekend and they're sprucing the place up a bit.

A small scale environmental disaster

2011-07-20T10:50:00.001+02:00

In the olden days fields in Alicante were irrigated by flooding them with water. Tanks, depositos, were dotted all over the countryside to collect rainwater and some were filled by pumping water from wells. We have a deposito in our garden but, long before we got here, the former owners had painted the inside with that turquoise blue paint and turned it into a splash pool. Bigger than a paddling pool but much less grand than a swimming pool. Some 5575 gallons or 22.3 cubic metres of water.

Most summers we've filled it up but, being basically a big bucket, it soon started to fill with leaves and dust. Maggie wanted something better and when the legislation changed to say that people should not pour gallons of water into depositos which could not be recycled we no longer had the choice.

This summer Maggie finally did something. We had someone install a pump and filter. As luck would have it one of the inlet or outlet junctions at the very bottom of the pool isn't watertight and water is dribbling out. We decided the leak wasn't significant and went ahead with the filling. Last night the deposito was finally full. This morning the water level had dropped 30cms. Inspecting the tank now there are damp patches around a lot of the base. My guess is that, as well as the leak from the new pipework the drilling, to fit the various inlets and outlets, has weakened the structure of the tank and it is no longer watertight.

Literally money down the drain.

Down the village on a warm summer's evening

2011-07-17T10:14:00.000+02:00

20€ a year to join the Village Association. A bargain. Subsidised meals, sometimes a trip and the always enjoyable AGM where nothing gets done and nothing is resolved.

This is the best though. The meal the weekend before the Fiesta. The food is sometimes good and sometimes ordinary. Sometimes I feel to be a part of what's going on and sometimes I feel like an outsider. But whatever happens, for me, it is the quintessential image of summer in the village. Much more intimate than the Fiestas, so much more Spanish than the November meal

The neighbours are there. It's warm. The lights are strung up from the village hall. There is hubbub as everyone talks and laughs and drinks and eats and comes and goes. A little oasis of people enveloped by the dark summer evening.

Even when I don't enjoy it I appreciate it and last night I did both.

Gainfully employed

2011-07-15T19:09:00.003+02:00

According to three people I've spoken to this week Murcia is now the seventh largest city in Spain. That's not what it says on Wikipedia or almost any other Internet source I can find (9th or 10th) but it's nice to know that Murcianos are proud enough of their city to want to bump it up the league a couple of spots.

Culebrón is 58.6kms from Murcia yet I don't really know the city that well. I've seen the Cathedral scores of times, visited a few museums etc. but I still let the Tom Tom guide me in and I pay to park. So, when I decided to book up a weeks worth of residential Spanish course Murcia seemed like a good choice. Near enough to be cheap travelling and yet still largely undiscovered, by me at least.

The plan was a school with five lessons a day of Spanish tuition and also to stay with a Spanish host family for a week. I had this vague notion of me sitting, Homer like, on the couch, bottle of beer in hand as the host family and I guffawed along with something on the telly after a hard day of internalising compound conditionals. It didn't work quite like that but it was surprisingly close.

For a start María Ángles doesn't watch much TV. She seems to get her news form the radio and the normal sound as I crossed the threshold was Classical music. The rest of it hasn't been that Homerish either - Mediterranean cuisine and hardly any alcohol at all. The best bit was that I did get to speak and trying to explain about Lingula, the brachiopod, or my views on some Spanish authors, in Spanish, has been exactly the sort of thing I wanted to try to do.

The school, Instituto Hispánico de Murcia, has been good too. It would be easy to start a list of things I would have preferred to be slightly different but the truth is I got the package as described, the teachers were pleasant and skillful and I've probably spoken about half of the Spanish I've spoken all year in their classrooms or with Mª Ángeles over the past week. The cultural programme hasn't been that good so I haven't picked up as much about Murcia as I might have hoped but I don't want to nit pick and I did drive out of town without Tom's help so I must have learned something.

Spanishness

2011-07-14T00:22:00.000+02:00

I fancied a museum this afternoon so I checked the opening times of a couple of places on the Internet and set off to have a look. My official city map was a few hundred metres out in its placement of the first gallery on my list but I finally sweated and cursed my way there.

It was closed.

There was an opening hours notice on the right of the main doors. Opening time was 6pm, not the same as the 5pm on the Internet. It was only 6.15pm so I waited a while. Then I saw a notice on the left hand side of the door, not for the gallery, but for the archive, which said that it was closed after mid June in the afternoons. I put two and two together and headed off for another gallery which I'd come across whilst wandering lost. It wasn't on the map but it was open. It was an awful exhibition.

Off to the second gallery on my Internet list. The location was as marked on the map. I could see the security guard talking to someone as I approached the big glass doors. I went inside. "The Museum's closed in the afternoons," said the guard.

I went to the pictures instead and saw a Cameron Diaz film.

Starting and finishing

2011-07-12T19:49:00.000+02:00

Many years ago, as tourists in Havana, we were shown the Cuban "kilometre zero" - the point from which all distances to and from Havana are measured. I remember being treated as an idiot when I asked how you would know where the other end of the line would be. Maggie added her scorn to that of the guide.

True enough you can measure to a point form any other point but where do you measure from? The roadsigns say, for instance, 70 miles to London but to where in London? - Westminster Abbey maybe - and if so the door or the altar - or it could be Buckingham Palace or, perhaps, The House of Commons. Apparently, in London, it's to the statue of King Charles I on the South side of Trafalgar Square.

In Madrid it's very obvious. Tourists queue to have their pictures taken standing on or near the Km0 point in the Puerta del Sol. And, yesterday, in Murcia I was shown the point to which all distances to and from Murcia are measured.

So, Cuban tourist guide, I can work out how far it is from London, Murcia or Madrid to Havana but can you tell me how far it is to Culebrón from Havana if you're so smart?

I'm shocked

2011-07-08T11:50:00.001+02:00

I think it was in 2008 when the roof of our house collapsed. It was an expensive faff getting it fixed but, eventually, it was all done. The architect signed off the work and the planning office stamped it. But there was one last step to go.

We asked a pal to keep pestering the planning office to do that last final inspection but around 15 months later still no result. Being back in Culebrón for the summer and able to go to the office when it's open I popped in yesterday and talked to them.

I'll be down at 10.30 said the man. It's closing in on noon now. I am surprised.

Desestimado

2011-07-06T14:06:00.000+02:00

I quite approve of taxes. We all pay in, we all get more out. I know it's not a popular view.

Our local taxes in Spain are based on services, at least some of them are, so much for water, so much for rubbish collection etc. So the system isn't for the general good it's a specific charge. Back in December we got a bill for drainage but we don't have drainage so I appealed the charge. I didn't get a reply so, being away from work and having time we drove the 25kms to the tax collection office to ask what was happening about the appeal. Whilst we were there I also wanted to get a digital certificate to allow me to access the Virtual Offices of several quasi governmental organisations.

No chance with the certificate said the woman, no Internet today. Go to the Town Hall to get one. And the drains, we still haven't got a reply? She dug around in her computer, ah, yes, appeal denied. I was a bit cross not because of the charge so much but because of the woman's blasé attitude in an office where the customer service is usually good. I think I was caustic, the Spanish certainly seemed to flow, if not my body language made the message clear anyway.

We went to the Town Hall. The digital certificate woman was friendly, informative and efficient, ten minutes from start to finish. Now I wonder if it will work?

Así es

2011-07-05T14:17:00.002+02:00

Someone recommended a book to me but, as it had been written at the turn of the 19th Century, and as it wasn't one book but a whole series I decided that the library was the best option.

My library card had expired so I expected to have to re-enrol. I took a new photo and all the documentation I thought may be necessary, sheaves of the stuff. Well, actually, I forgot the library card on the kitchen table at home!

"You may think your card has expired but it's not quite true we just keep renewing them," said the librarian. I asked if I could borrow a book as I didn't have the card - "No problem" she said. We dug out the book I wanted. The binding and typeface were very 19th Century. The librarian was sure she had a more modern version but the only one she found was a reference book - not for loan. "Don't worry" she said "We can jump that little rule." She wrote the return date on a Post It, in pencil, and stuck it over the reference only sticker. The return date is during the town's fiestas so I asked about returning the book. "Don't worry," she said, "a few days over won't hurt:"

Large library book under my arm I went to the local driving school to ask them to exchange my UK driving licence for a Spanish one. It's about time. The process was fast, efficient and reasonably expensive (75€.) "How long do you think it will take?" I asked "Well, it's summer, don't expect too much to happen before September," said the man.

And the sun's shining, and I'm on holiday - what more could one soul ask for?

Dichotomy

2011-07-03T21:50:00.000+02:00

Sometimes it crosses my mind that I live a strange life here.

Being British I behave like a Brit. I turn up to places on time, I like written information, I don't queue jump and I eat food from every corner of the globe.

I try my best to live an ordinary immigrant life. I keep up with the news, I pay taxes and I vote. I don't speak Spanish much though as I'm paid to speak English and, obviously enough, Maggie and I speak to each other in English. You don't get to practise a lot of Spanish at the supermarket or buying a newspaper and the truth is I'm a bit unsociable anyway trying to avoid small talk in any language.

When I'm with Brits I'm often accused of having gone native. Being only vaguely interested in the news from "back home" or what's just happened on the X Factor is regarded as a venal sin. What do I care about David Cameron's posturings or whether it's a bank holiday? Those things affect me no more and no less than Berlusconi's pronouncements or Bastille day. Not always wanting to go to the quiz or for a roast on Sunday at one of the several expat bars is tantamount to treason.

When I'm with Spaniards they think of me as being as British as pea soupers in London. Lots of Spaniards are remarkably ill informed and firmly believe that fog and high tea are British realities. When I ask about culture, politics or social customs I'm never quite sure whether the simplistic answers I get are because they class me along with the inquisitive five year olds or because simplistic is what they have. I can't recount the number of times I've being asked if I've ever eaten paella. Being spoken to as though I were stupid is a far too common an occurrence.

When I'm in mixed Spanish and British company the Spaniards will corral we Brits into the same corner so that we can talk about dear old Blighty. It never crosses their mind that for many of us Spain is now our one and only home. Spain is where I go to the doctor, get my hair cut, buy bread and tax my car. It's also a place I chose to live and a culture I like and enjoy.

The truth is that I am adrift - no that isn't right - it's more that I'm not quite anchored. Caught between two existences and a bit at a loss in either. My links with the UK are pretty tenuous nowadays and my links with Spain are pretty shaky too. It's the language of course. Brits think I speak good Spanish whilst the Spanish think I'm a gibbering, incomprehensible fool. The quizzical look on the shopkeeper's face as I ask for a juicer. The sheer terror of making a phone call.

Yes, definitely strange

Shopping therapy

2011-07-01T21:33:00.000+02:00

IKEA isn't really my idea of fun but every now and again Maggie feels the urge to make changes to the house and we go. We nearly always argue when we're there. I am persuaded of the need for shelves or cupboards or whatever but I don't understand browsing the sofas and desks and wardrobes and breadboards and glasses and clocks and picture frames. I always surrender though and succumb to scissors or shower curtains as well as what I went to buy. Maggie usually goes for blankets and candles.

We went today. As we wandered the aisles we bumped into one of my English students out shopping with her husband. They'd travelled to Murcia from Cartagena to buy capsules for their Nespresso machine and popped into IKEA to compound the fun. Then it was one of Maggie's work colleagues and her husband. They'd driven the 50kms to buy a picture frame.

We were there for bookshelves. We made an error. We took a car with 1.5 metres of carrying space to buy 2 metre shelves. IKEA compounded the fiasco by having a power problem which knocked out their tills. We abandoned our compensatory purchases of scissors, blankets, toilet brush, shower curtain and candle lantern near the unmoving till queue and left empty handed.

Modern times in Western Europe eh?

Coals to Newcastle

2011-07-01T21:16:00.001+02:00

The school is in a prime
city centre location handy
for the sweet shop,
bars and restaurants

You're going where? In high summer? You must be bonkers - it'll be like an oven! That's been the general drift of the conversation when I've explain to any Spanish chums that I'm intending to spend a week in Murcia city doing a 25 hour Spanish course and living with a host family for a week.

They also find it difficult to understand. You do live in Spain, don't you? Nearly all Spaniards firmly believe that a few months in an English speaking country will turn them into polished and fluent English speakers. If that's the case why hasn't it worked for me the other way around?

The reason is twofold, the first and most important is that I am so terrified to speak that I avoid doing so if at all possible. The other reason is that I hardly ever get the opportunity to speak Spanish. They pay me at work to speak English, Maggie and I speak in English and you don't get a lot of language practice buying a beer or getting the supermarket shopping done.

So, in a few days the Instituto Hispánico de Murcia and Maria Angeles (my host) will get the pleasure of my company. We were in Murcia today signing paper so we went to see where it was.

Who knows, maybe I'll have to speak a bit of Spanish?

¡Save our Cabezo de la Sal!

2011-06-19T13:08:00.001+02:00

Escombreras in Cartagena

Salt in Torrevieja

When we got back to Culebrón on Friday there was a flyer in our letterbox; it started: "Our Cabezo de la Sal it is wanted to be filled with Brent Crude!!! it is intended to be transported from Cartagena harbour through a more-than 110km-km-long pipe to store it in the salt wells!!!"

Cabezo de la Sal is one of the local hills, well if 893 metres or 2,902 feet high is a hill it is - that's some 624 feet shorter than Snowdon.

I read, and wrote, about this last February but the whole project has come up again as a result of the recent election campaigns. Cabezo de la Sal is a mountain loaded with 500 million tons of salt of which about 120 million tons can be extracted with current technology.

The salt is mined by digging a borehole and then forcing high pressure water down the hole to dissolve the rock salt. The resultant brine is sent, by pipeline, to the salt lagoons at Torrevieja where it is mixed with the sea water so that when the water is evaporated off the yield of salt is much higher.

The wells go down between 600 and 1200 metres before the process is stopped, the borehole is sealed and the miners move on to drill another hole about 150 metres away. The end result is a mountain peppered with subterranean caverns.

Apparently EU legislation requires that each country should have a strategic reserve of crude oil which will last for 92 days "To cover any eventuality in the international market." Spain's current Strategic Reserve is in a lot of oil tanks in the Escombreras Valley in Cartagena. The plan is to bring the crude ashore at the tanker terminal there, build a 110km pipeline and pump up to two million cubic metres of the black gold into the disused caverns in our mountain.

The opponents say that there is a high risk of oil spills, that inhaling the vapour from crude causes cancer, that Pinoso is in an area of high seismic activity for Europe, that Pinoso could become a terrorist target, that land will have to be compulsorily purchased, that there is the chance that Pinoso might have to be evacuated if there were a disaster and that the mountain could become a restricted area.

The proponents say that there is no risk of fire with oil stored more than 500 metres underground because there is no oxygen, that there is no chance of pollution of aquifers or of escape of the crude because the remaining salt is plastic at that depth so naturally self sealing, that only in Hollywood films are mountains split apart by earthquakes, that they love the natural environment as much as any environmentalist, that and will use the best technology to build the pipeline, that the visual effect of the installations will be minimal and that Spain needs safe, cost efficient, effective storage and that this is it.

Personally I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole thing. The corporate response is glib and the Platform for el Cabezo Free From Petroleum's objections range from the reasonable to the bizarre.

The Black Hand Gang

2011-06-18T09:35:00.000+02:00

I don't know about you but black is not a shade I associate with clean.

Years of "Omo washes whiter than white" brainwashing I suppose.

I bought the bar of soap in the photo last weekend and I was a little surprised when I opened the box this morning. It has a strange scent too, not really unpleasant but somehow not quite soap like.

Swearing like troopers

2011-06-11T17:09:00.000+02:00

Following the elections of 22 May today was the day for the new council to start its term of office in Pinoso. I went to the Town Hall to watch the noontime ceremony.

The thirteen councillors were all there. First of all they swore an oath to be nice councillors. Some chose to place their hand on a thick gold and green book as they said their piece while others chose a thinner black book. I asked two people in the crowd what the books were but they didn't know. I presume one was a bible and the other a non religious legal text but I'm probably wrong.

The five candidates for mayor, those are the people who headed up the electoral lists for their respective parties, where then asked whether they wished to maintain their nominations to be mayor. Two backed down (the ones who have done a deal with the victorious PSOE party) so there were just three nominees in the vote amongst the thirteen councillors. It all went to plan, three votes for the chap who was mayor until today, two for the man who was deputy mayor until today and eight votes from the PSOE, PSD, BLOC alliance for Lázaro Azorín who is now our new mayor.

Bit more swearing, the handing over of the symbolic staff of office and then a speech from Lázaro.

That was enough fun for me for one day and I came home. Fair sized crowd though.

Catholic tastes

2011-06-05T17:22:00.001+02:00

Yesterday it was rock bands (do they still call them that?) and today it was a brass quartet in the wine cellars of one local wineries; Bodegas Carchelo over in Jumilla.

Bit of a tour of the bodega, then a never-ending glass of wine whilst we listened to the quartet - who were seated amongst the wine barrels - doing their stuff. To be honest the verb listen probably isn't the right one as the audience was noticeably quieter during the breaks between tunes than they were whilst the quartet were playing. Concert over it was upstairs for a buffet of local delicacies with two more wines to try and then a gentle drive home.

PS I hardly touched enough wine to taste it. Ni una gotita al volante.

No staying power

2011-06-05T16:41:00.000+02:00

There has been lots of press speculation about the King recently. A while ago he had some surgery. The doctors said they had removed a benign tumour but the cancer rumours persisted. The Palace said he was fine except that his hip and knee were a bit dodgy. Not unusual for a 73 year old, otherwise it was just the ailments of old age - "los achaques." I thought that was an excellent word. It was a word I understood exactly.

Working on the principle that you're never too old to rock we went to see four bands last night. The event was called Ciclo Pop. One of Maggie's ex colleagues is the lead singer for a band called Aardvark Asteroid and the rest of the line up included Fuzzy White Casters, Arizona Baby and Sexy Sadie. Obviously we were keen to support James and his band but I'd wanted to see Arizona Baby for quite a while as well. Two birds with one stone. Even better the venue was only an hour or so from home.

It was a good venue, right in the middle of San Vicente del Raspeig, and the 11€ price tag was excellent for four bands. Nonetheless the crowd was pretty thin - two or three hundred people maybe. The gig was late starting but we were perfectly fit as we watched James and the other Aardvarks and we were still well in the game for Arizona Baby. By then though the achaques were catching up. We older people have to empty our bladders reasonably frequently. We don't like those little cabin toilets. After 12 hours or so our contact lens had become unbearable. In my case too my mouth is a bit sore and I've had a mild if persistent stomach ache for the last three or four weeks too. The numbness that I get in my hands and feet was exacerbated by the chilly evening. Basically by 1.30am I was knackered and we still had to get home. So we bailed out and came home around 2am. We never saw Sexy Sadie.

Don Juan Carlos had his knee operation a couple of days ago. I'm sure if he'd been at Ciclo Pop he would have stayed the course.

A fiesty little chap

2011-06-03T22:47:00.001+02:00

I've mentioned before that Eduardo the cat likes to present us with little gifts. Sometimes they are still alive - that's why we had a blackbird in the living room a couple of weeks ago and sometimes all that remains are a few organs - kidneys and livers seem not to be his taste.

This evening I popped outside for a smoke and there was Eddie doing a dance around this little chap. Tiny little snake; no idea what brand but, apparently unharmed. I shooed Edu inside, took a few snaps then scooped the snake up on a fly swat and released him in a bit of undergrowth.

By the way, Culebrón, means big snake in Spanish as well as a soap opera so the village wasn't named for this tiny example.

Everybody knows

2011-05-29T10:01:00.001+02:00

José Pozo Madrid, a poet from the town of Tomelloso in Castilla la Mancha, won this year's "Maxi Banegas" poetry competition organised by Pinoso Town Hall. We were at the local theatre last night to see him get his prize.

The format of the evening was a recital of some arias from various operas and zarzuelas (a sort of Spanish light opera) performed by a tenor and soprano with piano accompaniment. The programme was six or seven songs, the prizegiving and then a few more songs. I'm pretty sure that at least one, if not both, of the performers were the same people we saw at an event called Lírica a couple of years ago. It was an enjoyable evening.

I wondered who Maxi Banegas was. I know that the local library is named in his or her honour (Maxi isn't a name I know so it doesn't necessarily suggest either male or female to me) but I had this vague notion that she was a teacher at the local school who gained some local fame as a poet. So I went in search of the information on Google. I found the rules for the competition and lots of references to the event but, about the person, hardly a word. The best I got was that the event began in 1997 to honour one of the most loved and important poets of Pinoso, Doña Maxi Banegas (proof that she was a woman at least.) Neither Fnac nor Casa del Libro have any of her work for sale. Absolutely zilch.

Just another example of something that "everybody knows." Just to check that I wasn't being a bit jingoistic about this I Googled a couple of British poets I know the names of and there was plenty of info. But maybe that's unfair (I only know famous names) so I tried William Cowper an 18th Century poet who lived in Huntingdon, you know, the bloke who wrote the hymn "There is a fountain, filled with blood." Plenty of info.

The event finished in time for us to see the Barça - Man. U game.

El Certamen Nacional de poesía de “Maxi Banegas” se creó en el año 1997 para homenajear a una de las poetisas más querida e importante de Pinoso, Dña. Maxi Banegas.

Spontaneous combustion

2011-05-27T21:30:00.000+02:00

During the week our mate Geoff sent me a message asking if I knew why our grey plastic compost bin was melted and smouldering. He was in Culebrón and we were in Cartagena. I didn't.

All I could presume was that the rotting vegetable matter had heated up inside the composter and produced some flamable gas. Hey bingo!, spontaneous combustion.

There wasn't much left to look at when we got back. It must have produced a good deal of heat though as there is damage to the nearby fig, apple and plum trees.

Well there's a surprise

2011-05-23T09:05:00.001+02:00

Not the usual sort of entry. All over Spain the PSOE, the Labour Party equivalent, has been badly mauled. The political map of Spain has turned blue, the colour of the conservative PP.

But not in Pinoso, well not at the most local level anyway. The PSOE seems to have gone from 2 to 5 seats and the local UCL seems to have had a bad day. I say seems to because the national news media that I've checked for the results has some mistakes that I'm aware of and so I've had to do a bit of interpretation.

There were 5,299 potential voters in Pinoso of which 212 were not Spanish (a lot of those being Brits.) Turnout was just over 80% with 4.4% spoiled papers and 1.4% said that they were unhappy to vote for any of the candidates offered by handing in a blank vote.

Party	Councillors 2011	Votes 2011	Councillors 2007	Votes 2007
PSOE	5	1291	2	779
PP	3	1030	5	1355
PSD	2	691	1	507
UCL	2	689	4	1045
BLOC	1	477	1	354

Polling Stations

2011-05-22T18:07:00.001+02:00

I'm not sure and I can't find the details on the Internet but I'm more or less certain that every polling station notice I've ever seen in the UK has had the same print style - a heavy sans serif font. When we went to vote in Pinoso this morning I don't think there was any sort of notice ouside the polling station.

We were only allowed to vote in the local, town hall, elections. We EU residents are disenfranchised at provincial level.

Voting day is Sunday, not Thursday as in the UK. Ahh, yes, that's why we voted today!

Spanish polling stations open from 9am to 8pm. In the UK I think normal hours are 7am to 10pm.

In Spanish elections it is necessary to produce photographic proof of identity. In our case that meant our passport.

In Spain the candidates stroll back and forth between the various polling stations saying hello to people. At the table where your eligibility to vote is checked and where you deposit your ballot there are three polling station staff. There are lots of other people sitting at adjoining tables. I understand they are party sympathisers scrutinizing a fair vote. I thought that this was different to the UK where I have never seen any party sympathisers inside the station. Apparently though UK candidates and agents can visit polling stations too so long as they don't try to canvass.

In the UK the vote is for a named individual by making a mark on a voting slip. In Spain, where there is a proportional representation system, each party puts forward sufficient candidates to cover all of the seats available within the given constituency. Depending on the percentage of the vote the party captures a corresponding number of their candidates are elected. The top of the list first, the second next and so on. Voters do not mark the paper in any way they simply select the list for their chosen party, pop it inside an envelope and then put the envelope in the ballot box.

I'm not sure they would have let me take the picture in a UK polling station either. Then again I've never thought to ask.

Ho ho ho

2011-05-20T22:15:00.000+02:00

I mentioned that one of the local political parties "employs" a chap to help the Brit community. Today he sent around information about legislation that says we need to fit a limiting device to the electric supply. Apparently this limiting device was supposed to be installed by January 2010 with the power companies having an obligation to send a letter informing us of that responsibility. Obviously we haven't received the letter but I suppose it will be on its way soon.

I was vaguely aware of the legislation from some mumblings on the letters pages of the newspapers and from a conversation in a Spanish class but until the information today I hadn't checked the detail.

Lots of Spanish houses have really miserable power supplies by UK standards. Our house, for instance has a contracted supply of about 2.2kw which means that the circuit breakers should pop when we plug in the 3kw electric kettle. They don't because when we moved into the place we had it rewired and the sparks put in a board that would deal with about 5.5kw.

The main problem that we have is that the wire that brings power to the house is thin - it simply can't carry more power. The combination of the thin cable and bigger board means that we can run more than we are supposed to but that lights dim, kettles run slowly etc when we try draw more power than the cable can provide.

When we first moved in I tried to get the power company to upgrade the supply but the maximum we could have was 3.3kw. I talked to a Spanish electrician and his advice was to leave well alone. If we wanted a decent supply we would have to get the power company to beef up the supply and we were talking thousands of euros.

What's happening now is that the new device will limit us to the power we're contracted for. Try to draw more and the circuits breaker will pop. If we don't get the device fitted the bill will start to carry a penalty of around 15€ per month. We also probably need to get a certificate to say that our power supply is safe as the original certificate (which I've never seen) is obviously out of date because we had the wiring installation changed.

This could all get a bit sticky. Do as we should and we end up with stone age electricity. Do nothing and the fines will start to add up. Try to sort it out properly and it will certainly costs hundreds and maybe thousands.

Ho, hum.

Pieces of Eight

2011-05-15T22:27:00.002+02:00

No political meetings this afternoon. Instead we went treasure hunting.

If you've never done a car treasure hunt the idea is pretty simple. You are given some sort of route to follow - sometimes the route is explained in words, sometimes it's a map and sometimes it's written in crossword puzzle cryptic style. Along the route the "competitors" have to collect specific pieces of information and sometimes physical items - beermats used to be a favourite in bygone, pre drink drive legislation, days in the UK. Obviously running into a boozer and swiping a beermat was unthinkable but if you bought a glass of something the mat came as a free gift.

The local branch of the Royal British Legion, working with one of the local Brit run bars, El Cortijo, organised the treasure hunt around the Pinoso area. Splendid idea I thought, something a bit different to do on a Sunday afternoon, a fund raiser for the Legion and a meal afterwards back at el Cortijo.

When we'd finished the route and polished off the food I began to fret about getting home to do a bit of prep work for the coming week. I never feel comfortable about breaking out the brandy in front of the telly till I have my classes ready. Nevertheless, it would have been churlish not to hang on for the prize giving, so we did.

I'm glad we did. Amazingly we won the prize for the best two person crew and we carried away chocolates and cava as a prize. So it looks as though I'll have some chocs to eat with the brandy in front of the telly then!

Out and about yet again

2011-05-15T13:23:00.000+02:00

The Socialist meeting today was held in the little park alongside the social centre in the Santa Catalina district of the town. The event started with elevenses followed by speeches from three of the candidates including their man for mayor who rejoices in the name of Lázaro. They were unlucky. The splendid weather of yesterday had gone and the day was grey, miserable and cold.

The audience was relatively small, bigger than the UCL yesterday evening but much smaller than the PP on Friday. The crowd was an enthusiastic bunch though - much more spontaneous applause than at either of the other two meetings. The message was quite different too and I heard some things that rang true to me but of which I had been unaware. The difference being, I suppose, that the Socialists have been in opposition for the last four years and are able to aportion blame for what they consider to be the errors of the last administration. Their proposals, like the proposals of the other two, sounded reasonable but I suppose they would.

No free gifts to speak of but at least they had their manifesto available.

Out and about again

2011-05-14T23:17:00.001+02:00

Tonight on my personal election trail it was the UCL - Unión Centro Liberal - a party local to Pinoso with no national affiliation. This group have been courting the British vote for the last few years by offering an English Language Helpdesk

They must have been very disappointed with the turnout. Perhaps everyone was at home to see if Lucía Peréz would win Eurovision for Spain, but the local cultural centre conference room looked distinctly underpopulated. I don't think there were any Britons there apart from the chap who runs the helpdesk and the British candidate in their lists. Then again I know very few people so I could well be wrong.

I thought the political message was clear though and there was almost no sniping at the opposition which I rather approve of. On top of that they gave me free gifts - a notebook and a pen - not up to the standard of the gifts of four years ago but more useful than the plastic flags from last night. I've already seen an English translation of the main areas of their manifesto but it would have been nice if there had been a full copy available at the meeting.

Campaigning - Spanish style

2011-05-14T15:45:00.000+02:00

The PSD website said that they would be in the social centre in Santa Catalina all day.

I wanted a copy of their electoral programme so we popped along, after lunch, to pick one up. There were a lot of people with the remains of lunch on the tables underneath the trees. As we wandered around the hall looking for a leaflet the man on the bar called over to ask if we wanted a beer. No leaflets though.

Free food, free beer. Nothing political. Campaigning, Spanish style.

Out and about

2011-05-14T13:13:00.003+02:00

I've always enjoyed election time - getting out to hear the candidates, even the ones I wouldn't expect to vote for. I still remember being poked in the chest by Maggie Thatcher and fearing for my life as Willie Whitelaw's bodyguards reached inside their jackets perhaps thinking my long camera lens was something more sinister.

Yesterday evening I went to hear what the local PP, the Conservative Party equivalent, had to say for themselves. Fortunately I was neither poked nor menaced.

The routine was pretty straightforward. Several of the prospective councillors stood up and explained what the PP intended to do in each of their areas be that education, health or employment. There was also a representative of the provincial PP to show central support for the candidates and to emphasise the broader reach of the PP campaign.

One of the candidates is an English woman. She's a long way down the list and, to be honest, has no chance of being elected but she has a symbolic significance to the expat British community. The UCL and BLOC, two of the other parties, also have someone in their list with the same function and the PSD seems to have a meeting aimed at English speakers but no candidate.

The person who introduced her failed to mention that she would be speaking in English for the benefit of the non Spanish speakers. There was a general murmuring from the Spanish audience as she started but she did well; she ploughed on and explained the whole PP programme quickly and succinctly.

UCL tonight with a bit of luck and then the PSOE tomorrow morning.

I pinched the photos from Facebook. Can you see me in the one of the audience?

Fiestas and paper hankies in Abanilla

2011-05-09T01:19:00.004+02:00

The tissues were not needed for an annoying sniffle. They were not needed to dab away a breakaway tear at an emotional moment. They were needed to block up our ears; torn in half and twisted into a cone they produced makeshift, but perfectly serviceable, ear plugs. The clue was that the majority of people cradling an arquebus were also sporting ear defenders.

The One True Cross was doing a tour of the town of Abanilla supported by the Captains, Pages, Queens, the Faithful and the Holy Brotherhood of the Vera Cruz. The Town Band, the Santa Cruz, were out too and when that Cross appeared at the church door the arquebuses made an awful din and covered us in smoke and soot. "It's a salute to the Cross," said a man, "no bullets in them today."

We caught up with the shooters a little further down the route, salvo after salvo, then one of the girls in the funny frocks bowed to the armed guard escorting the Cross and they let go a volley as well. Distinctly odd but good fun.

Election Fever

2011-05-07T19:16:00.000+02:00

It's election time in Spain. On 22 May we have the local and regional elections. The campaign period proper started as Thursday became Friday this week. At a national level the current government is in the hands of the Socialists but their popularity is at rock bottom because of the present economic situation and the scandalously high unemployment figures.

The local councils are enormously important in Spain. In Pinoso there are 13 councillors elected through a proportional representation system. You vote not for a candidate but for a party. The party puts forward a list of candidates with the names at the top of the list being the first elected and so on. At a national level this means there are never surprise defeats for the big names. There is never the need for by elections either as if anyone drops away during their period of office there are always "spare" candidates waiting in the wings.

There are lots of quite small but influential political parties at a national level based on geography or historic nationality so the Catalans, the Navarrese, the Basques, Galicians and the Canarians all play an important role when either of the two largest parties, the Socialist Workers Party (more New Labour than the name suggests) or the Popular Party (read Conservatives) do not have a clear majority. In some areas the big parties campaign under a regional name. There are a couple of other national paries though they currently have fewer "MPs" than the regional parties.

In Pinoso the two big national parties are represented but the Socialists have just two councillors and the real race is between the national PP and a local group called UCL. The UCL recognised the possible importance of the British vote after the last elections and has had an Spanish speaking English chap working on its behalf as a sort of go between since that time. The PP also recruited a British woman to do something similar as the elections approached.

The PP, the Conservatives, won a narrow majority at the last elections over the local party UCL (Unión Centro Liberal) and after the elections those two parties formed a coalition. Apart from the Socialists mentioned above we also have present councillors and candidates from a breakaway socialist party (PSD or Social Democrats) and what I think is a part of a one time left leaning Valencian Nationalist party (BLOC)

I always enjoy election campaigns but it looks unlikely that I'll be able to get along to many of the rallies and meetings for one reason or another. Actually I'm a bit miffed that I won't be able to vote at the regional level. For some reason the EU legislation gives me local, national and European votes in Spain or in the UK but nothing at the regional level in either.

In our region, Valencia, the PP, the Conservative Partido Popular, has a clear majority but the current Valencian President and lots of his chums are embroiled in a political corruption scandal. So far the politicians have managed to keep out of court but the circumstantial evidence seems very strong. It would have been nice to be able to express my view through the ballot box. Interestingly in the two conversations that I've had today with other Britons about the elections their main concern has been about corruption too.

Hamming it up

2011-05-02T15:40:00.000+02:00

My Spanish students have a lot of trouble with the English words jam and ham. Which is the one that comes from pigs and which is the fruit preserve? Just in case you're not sure ham is the pig product.

Britons and Spaniards also have a different idea of a ham. Mention ham and Spanish people immediately think of a cured ham, similar to Parma ham, for which the catch all term is jamon serrano or mountain ham. Back in Huntingdonshire my mum would be thinking of boiled ham. Oddly the stuff we Britons are used to is called York Ham - Jamon York - in Spain.

When some English pals asked me yesterday how the jamon serrano ham was produced I realised I didn't know. Now I do.

To paraphrase Mrs. Beaton first slaughter your pig and cut off its back legs. Next clean them up and then store the hams in big piles covered with salt for a couple of weeks. The salt both serves to preserve the meat and to draw off water. Next the salt is washed off and the hams are hung for about six months. Finally the hams are hung in a cool dry hanging sheds for between six and eighteen months. These drying sheds are typically high in the mountains which is why the stuff is called mountain ham. The last phase is to eat it. So maybe a couple of years from gentle snuffling to plate.

The same can be done with the forelegs of the little piggies, in that case it is called paleta.

The main factors that determine the quality and price of the ham are the type of pig and the food it eats.

There are basically two types of pig, the native black skinned Iberian beast, which produces the best quality ham, but only represents about 5% of the total production, and the more intensively reared white pigs like the Large White, Landrace, or Duroc strains and crosses.

The best hams come from Iberian pigs wandering around in the open air feeding and fattened on acorns in the oak groves along the southern half of the border between Spain and Portugal. But the best is also the slowest and most expensive way to produce the ham so the majority of ham you will come across is from the white pigs.

Just like the French and their Appellation contrôlée the Spanish have an organisation that acts as a quality control mechanism for lots of quality agricultural products. The Instituto Nacional de Denominaciones de Origin or INDO (which is normally abbreviated to D.O on the bottles and packets) certifies the origin, production methods and the general quality of things like wine, honey, olive oil and, of course, ham.

There are four recognised D.O. areas for ham.

The first is in the Province of Extremadura very close to Portugal where the ham comes from pure bred Iberian pigs, or Duroc crosses which are at least 75% Iberian bloodstock. There are several quality levels which depend on what the pigs eat and how good their bloodline is.

The second is in Salamanca province around Guijuelo. Again the pigs have to have at least 75% pure Iberian blood. There are two quality classes: the best is Jamón Ibérico de bellota - from free range pigs that spend their lives eating acorns. The hams hung for sale are marked with a red band. Not quite so good (but still yummy in my opinion) is the Jamón Ibérico - free range pigs that are fattened up with concentrated feeds. Yellow band for these.

The third D.O. are is in the Province of Huelva in Andalucia also bordering on Portugal. The bloodstock requirements and quality differences are much as before.

The fourth and last area includes all of Teruel province though the air curing must take place at more than 800 metres to gain the D.O mark. There aren't any Iberian pigs in Teruel so all the hams are from white pigs and there are no cork-oak woods either so the little piggies eat commercial feed. It's the climate that makes things "just right" for producing high quality ham.

Traditionally the wafer thin slices (though there is a modern trend to serve it in smaller chunkier pieces) of meat are cut directly from the ham which is stored at room temperature. You see the hams clamped into stands in the majority of Spanish bars. At home it usually comes in packets from the supermarket but even then the ham should be stored and served at room temperature. The ham tends to be served alone or maybe alternated with sliced cheese and, of course, some tasty bread.

My sources tell me it's available in Tesco and Sainsbury.
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The Battle of Almansa

2011-04-23T23:10:00.001+02:00

The Battle of Almansa was an important battle during the War of the Spanish Succession. It was fought on 25th April 1707. Almansa is about 50 minutes from Culebrón.

The commentator was really positive. "Just look at that rainbow, how beautiful, one of the best I've ever seen!" True enough. Mind you he was in a nice cosy and dry caravan whilst we were suddenly in fear of drowning to death sitting in the stands. We found the beauty of the rainbow hard to appreciate.

When the Spanish Habsburg King Carlos II died in 1700 he left no direct heir. There were two rival claims to the throne - the Hapsburgs, through the Archduke of Austria and the Bourbons, through the French King. We British backed the Austrian claim but several European powers weighed in behind one side or the other. Between 1701 and 1714 battles raged all over Europe and in North America and there were even some skirmishes in the Caribbean.

At the Battle of Almansa, just outside Almansa in Castilla la Mancha, the Duke of Berwick, the illegitimate son of James II of England serving in the French Army, beat the French Henri de Massue, leading British troops. Odd eh?

In the end the British were on the losing side but the Treaty of Utrecht signed near the end of the war handed Gibraltar over to the British. We're still there.

According to that same commentator the participants in this re-enactment, still something relatively unusual in Spain, had come from several European countries just as in the real battle. The Russians and Ukranians had apparently driven all the way. The Irish had brought their horses. Shame it rained quite so much.
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Easter

2011-04-23T21:37:00.000+02:00

Usha mentioned in the Archers the other day that Alan, the Ambridge vicar, was very busy at Easter. If it's hectic in Borsetshire then it's positively frenetic in Spain with religious processions and events everywhere at Easter time.

We have good Easter processions in Pinoso. There are, I think, eight different groupings five of them with the tall conical hats (the ones the Klu Klux Klan thought scary enough to copy) a Roman Legion and a group of women dressed in black and wearing mantillas. I went out to see a couple of the processions but this year I missed the one that I think is most impressive on Maunday Thursday/Good Friday

The reason I missed it was that I was in Cartagena to see the equivalent procession there. I have to say that the Cartagena processions were incredible. Thousands and thousands of penitents, as many different costumes as anyone could imagine with attention to detail in every facet from perfectly straight marching lines and co-ordinated movements down to matching shoe buckles. Something of the military nature of the town was obvious from the escorts of serving soldiers and sailors marching goose step style in front of and behind the members of the various brotherhoods and their extravagant floats carried on the backs of hundreds of perfectly co-ordinated portapasos (float carriers).

It's not just the event itself either. Last night we had to move from our chosen position because of a mix up over chair reservations. By then it was impossible to get back to the front of the crowd so we wandered the streets. The bars and the streets were full of costumes and small elements of the procession being readied. Tuning instruments, polishing shoes, having that last fag, marshalling the people and sorting out those final details at every glance.

Splendid.
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The Long. arm of the law

2011-04-15T11:16:00.000+02:00

The message said "Took police to your house to check GPS" It was from our pal who does a bit of gardening for us.

I hadn't realised that GPS co-ordinates and latitude and longtitude were different. The numbers have the same format but they are not quite the same for the same location.

Living in the country it's difficult to give an accurate address. Our address is simply Number X Culebrón. For those who live in the middle of nowhere up some track it's even more difficult.

If you house goes on fire or if you're lying on the floor suffering the effects of a heart attack the phone call to the 112 emergency services number will have people scurrying to your aid. Often though they waste precious time trying to find the place.

Someone had the bright idea of making a register, kept by the local police, to identify the house using GPS co-ordinates. It also asked questions like whether you had a brute of a guard dog.I was sent the form by email and I was offered the same form at the Village Association meeting. Being a bit of a belt and braces man I put both GPS and lat. and long co-ordinates on the form but it didn't seem to help. The police couldn't find the house in a dry run and ended up having to ring our keyholder for help.

Excellent idea though. I just hope we never need to test its efficacy.
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On Encebras

2011-04-10T19:58:00.000+02:00

Before lunch we went to Encebras, a small village a few kilometres from us on the other side of the hill to home. From Culebrón. We didn't go into the village proper with its church, post box, restaurant, fountain and convent cum hostel but drove a little way up the hill to have a look at a sculpture and ceramics workshop run by a British woman.

It was very still, very peaceful. The only sounds were those we made and the sounds of the countryside - a cuckoo, the flies buzzing, water gurgling. It was warm too, around 30ºC, with a deep clear blue sky and intense sunlight. I wandered off, camera in hand, whilst Maggie chatted about glazes and potter's wheels. I ambled up the middle of the road past vineyards, I took photos of almond trees and terracing.

Soon the weather will be like this all the time. Things will crack and sound with the heat, the cigarras will start their singing and Spain will be like it should be. Excellent.

I love the light

2011-04-02T21:48:00.000+02:00

One of my favourite places in Spain is Trujillo, no I mean Santiago, no, no, the Peña de Francia, ooh, or maybe that ride down to Granada over whatjamacallit pass?

Spain is chockablock with eyepopping landscapes and lively, interesting cities but Alicante and Murcia don't feature too highly on my list. Nice enough, some interesting spots but, overall, a bit ordinary.

Tonight we went to an art exhibition mounted by a couple of local British artists at one of the exhibition spaces in Pinoso. Nice show, good space, good little event.

I know one of the artists from when she was a customer in the furniture shop where I worked. In her welcome speech, in Spanish (good job Linda!) she said how the local landscapes and the light inspired her. Later I was talking to her husband, Richard, and he was full of praise for the area too - about the landscapes he rides on his bike and about the general lifestyle though, like me, he's waiting for the flag cracking heat.

Maybe I'm being a bit hard on the place.

Benjamin Franklin again

2011-03-26T22:10:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago the local weekly newspaper - El Canfali - disappeared from the newsagents. One of the first victims of the hard financial times I suppose. El Cabeço, the erstwhile monthly magazine produced by Pinoso Town Hall went missing after February 2010 and only two editions have been printed since then so my news and information resources rather dried up. It's true that there are Internet sources but I don't find them as accessible. Grey hair related I suppose.

Culebrón is a part of Pinoso and Pinoso was a very rich town. The huge local marble quarry provided 85% of the Town Hall's total income. Stone extraction and the secondary industries associated with it were also a major source of employment. The local politicians found themselves in the perfect position. They had money rolling in and no need to upset the voters by raising money through taxation. No wonder we had some splendid facilities.

The marble quarry has been hit hard by the collapse of the building boom Worldwide. The money tap was turned off and lots of people lost their jobs.

By all accounts it took the local politicians a long time to come to terms with the idea of making cuts in local services or increasing their income through increased taxation. The debt piled up. It was about that time that my information sources went South too. Reliable information was replaced by gossipy stories passed around the expat network.

I knew there were going to be local tax increases but I wasn't sure at what sort of percentages. I still don't but I did get my first round of local tax bills today. The car tax was still a very reasonable 50€ but the rubbish collection charge has shot up by about 70% and our water was nearly five times more costly than the same bill last year. Mind you the water is on a metered supply so it could be estimated bills catching up with us or that we've been thirstier and cleaner over the last few months.

Nonetheless the annual car tax, annual rubbish collection and six month water bill still all came in below 250€. The same bill back in the UK would have had me whooping for joy.

Well that was useful then

2011-03-26T00:05:00.000+01:00

There was a notice on the rubbish bin to say there was a meeting of the Neighbourhood Association in the Village Hall tonight to receive last year's accounts and plan this year's fiesta.

I toyed with the idea of going to a talk on olives and almonds in Pinoso; I have an unusual idea of interesting but, finally, a sense of duty to the village prevailed and I went to the meeting. I go every year and every year I understand next to nothing. Obviously the main reason is because my Spanish is crap but the echo in the room, the multiplicity of conversations (Spaniards, in my experience, don't take well to the discipline of someone else controlling when they can talk) and the occasional lapse into Valenciano all contribute.

I came home and Maggie was watching something on the BBC so in a vain effort to pretend I live in Spain I went into the kitchen to read the paper.

I understood next to nothing. No problem with the headlines, no problem with the gist but the detail escapes me. I read and re-read parts of the piece about Marta de Castillo (a 17 year old girl who was killed probably by her ex boyfriend) because I thought I should try to understand the story. I know more than I did but I still haven't got the facts straight.

It's an odd life here sometimes.

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La Colonia de la Sierra de Salinas

2011-03-20T18:33:00.001+01:00

In Cambridgeshire Henry Morris invented the Village College to try and help to stem the flow of country folk to the towns. In Spain the 1907 Law of Interior Colonization and Repopulation had a similar aim.

Today we drove up the Sierra de Salinas mountain chain on the recommendation of one of our pals who had been up there on his bike. It was a lovely spot on a splendid blue sky day. Along the route we passed through an area that was signed as La Colonia de la Sierra de Salinas where, according to the information boards, 49 "poor but suitable" families were given their share of 1400 hectares of public land to farm in 1914. Each tenant received a house, land, a cart, a horse and farming tackle with which to try and cultivate the typical Mediterranean crops of grapes, olives and cereals.

As well as the 49 houses the Colony also had some public buildings namely a storehouse, a police post, an administration block, a school and a church. I noticed there was no bar or other social area which sounds, to me, like a grave oversight for any Spanish community.

At its height the colony had 287 inhabitants but the bad harvests, the outbreak of the Civil War, and the general harshness of rural life half way up a mountain meant that the colony was abandoned. Nowadays the homes are used as weekend cottages.

We drove down to Villena after our visit to get a bite to eat, exhausted by our exertions. The Colonists used to need a whole day to make the same journey. Maybe they got a spot of something when they were in town too.

16 pence a pack

2011-03-18T22:21:00.000+01:00

I really approved of the radio doctor on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Full of good advice. He wasn't the sort to recommend a trip to the GP if you had a bit of a sniffle. He did suggest that men of a certain age should take low dose aspirin though and I'm still taking his advice.

As I remember in the UK, in 2004, a packet of aspirin in a supermarket or one of those shampoo and sun cream shops was going for around 16p. A hundred dispersible 75mg aspirin were about a quid so it was a bit of a shock when I got to Spain and a pack of 30 tablets was around 4€.

Then I found out that Aspirin is a Bayer trade mark in Spain so, by asking for Aspirina, I was asking for the equivalent of Anadin rather than the generic. Acido acetilsalicilico may be a bit of a mouthful but salicylic acid is the generic name and the tabs come in at about a quarter of the price.

As older men we were talking about illnesses. My pal Geoff said that he didn't take all the aspirin that he was prescribed and would I like them? When he dropped them off I wondered why he was being prescribed the Bayer brand rather than the cheap generic equivalent. I could have sworn that the Spanish health care system had pledged to save millions by prescribing generic. Maybe I misunderstood or maybe it's the doctor who misunderstood.

Businesswomen in Pinoso

2011-03-13T12:25:00.002+01:00

Everywhere in Spain boasts some dish that is considered to be local and special. The other day in one of my classes there was a gentle argument about whether Café Asiatico, a coffee loaded with a sweet liqueur, typical of the area around Cartagena, had been invented in the Murcian village of Albujón or whether everywhere in Spain had some form of alcoholic coffee.

Pinoso lays claim to producing the best longaniza sausages, light cakes called perusas and a thick pancake used to make the local stew called gazpacho. Another speciality is a sweet bread produced in dome shaped cakes dusted with sugar and usually served with thick hot drinking chocolate - chocolate y toña.

Today was the tenth edition of a fair in Pinoso dedicated to the town's businesswomen and women entrepreneurs. It was opened by a local actress called Ángela Boj and there were a bunch of stalls to represent the majority of the local businesses owned and operated by women. It was fair enough but the most popular stall was the one giving away chocolate y toña. I got my ration.

Furniture

2011-03-12T17:23:00.000+01:00

Yecla, a small town very close to us here in Culebrón, has a national reputation for furniture making. Every year they have a furniture trade fair with the final Saturday being open to the public.

We went along not knowing quite what to expect but hoping that in amongst the extended furniture shop displays there would be some old bloke with a flat cap turning chair legs on string driven thing. There wasn't. Just stand after stand of pretty gruesome furniture. Well I thought most of it was pretty horrid anyway.

Never mind, at least we've done it now.
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Country life

2011-03-12T17:13:00.001+01:00

I've forgotten exactly what Ohm's Law says but I know that it gives you the relationship between current and volts and something else electrical. When I did know what it was I worked out that a 13 amp UK plug was getting stretched with a 3 kilowatt device, like a big electric fire or a fast kettle plugged into it.

Down in Cartagena our electric supply is 5.5kw, so two fully loaded 13 amp plugs worth. It's pretty typical for a newish Spanish house. If we're not careful with the cooker, kettle, heater combinations it's easy to pop the circuit breakers.

It's been horrid weather in Cartagena for the past few days and, when we got back to Culebrón it was cold, wet and windy here too. Because of the rain we haven't been able to hang out any laundry in Cartagena. In Culebrón we have a tumble dryer so we brought all the laundry back with us.

I set the washer going as we were still unpacking. A little later we turned on the tap to make the welcome home cup of tea but the tap spat and bellowed as spurts of water mixed with air exploded into the sink. Obviously the water had been off and when it did finally start to flow sensibly again the pressure was next to nothing. It was still bad this morning. My shower involved kneeling with one hand on the mixer tap.

Back on Friday afternoon the washer was bleeping. ERR 10 on the display. Maggie set it going again. The low water pressure had caused the machine a problem. The washer load done I loaded up the tumble dryer. In Culebrón we only have a 2.2kw electric supply but when we got the house rewired the sparks put in a circuit breaker board capable of dealing with 5.5kw. What this means is that the fuses hardly ever pop but that everything goes slower as more demand is put on the supply - lights dim, the air conditioner slows down and defrosting something in the microwave takes longer than driving into Pinoso to get the unfrozen version from the supermarket.

I'm on the Internet, it seems to be taking a long time to load something. I check the speed and we have 2.75mgb. We are way below the Alicante, Valencian or Spanish averages but at least we have broadband of sorts - not everyone around here does.

Geoff, who lives about 3km from us, phones me. He's been having trouble with his phone. His land-line, provided by some sort of radio system, has been on the blink. The mobile signal is weak, coverage is a bit dodgy. We have the conversation OK though.

It's always nice to come home. To get comfy on the sofa in front of the telly with our own things around us but there is no doubt about it that basic services in the Spanish countryside are miles behind the services provided to town dwellers.

In a bad mood

2011-03-12T16:09:00.000+01:00

I'm going to complain about Spaniards, or rather about Spanish behaviour, so, if you're Spanish and you're easily offended this is one entry to skip.

We were in the Mercadona supermarket car park in Yecla. It's a tricky little car park, all wrong angles and sturdy pillars. As we stowed away our purchases I noticed that the car across the way was getting ready to leave. Another car turned the corner and could easily have waited for us both to go - reversing lights and open doors on the car were a dead give-away as to our intentions. But no, this bloke couldn't possibly wait a few seconds to make it easier for him and easier for us. He had to plough on blocking both of us from leaving. As the newcomer began to manoeuvre into the free space next to me he was within centimetres of bumping into my car. I didn't know where the horn was but I found it just in time. He decided to do a circuit and let us both go.

A little later we were at the "Feria de la Tapa" - lots of stalls selling lots of snacks. Spaniards and eating definitely go together. I usually enjoy the crowds, the life, the hustle and bustle but today it just seemed that everyone was determined to slam into me. I was standing quietly at a counter waiting to get some michirones. I wasn't looking forward to asking, I was sure that, given my mood even the simplest phrase would elude me and I was cross with myself because of that. Suddenly a fat, fifty something woman purposely barged into me in an attempt to get past me and to the front. I repulsed the first onslaught and with a quick shoulder movement sent her staggering backwards. She just picked the wrong moment. She's probably complaining on her blog about the rude foreigners as I type.

Obviously these are a couple of isolated events but I've been noticing a certain disregard for other people recently. For instance, years of training means that I tend to give way at doorways and hold doors open for people. It upsets me that Spaniards don't. It upsets me that, door in hand, people behind me take the opportunity to push past or that the person crossing the threshold decides to stop mid manoeuvre to turn and chat to their friend who is following behind. I learned years ago that Spaniards seldom say thank you for such a common courtesy but there is something extra disrespectful about being discourteous in the face of courtesy. It's the same on zebra crossings when people purposely dawdle as they cross - as though they are fingering their nose at you.

Maybe it is a difference between their tribe and mine or it could just be because I'm a grumpy old man who has been in a bad mood all day.

Sent to sleep

2011-02-26T20:52:00.000+01:00

There was a time when every Spanish film was about the Spanish Civil War, usually about the aftermath and the rough handling of the losers by the nasty winners. Fortunately that has changed nowadays and we get a good spread plots and genres.

Most Spanish films are made with TV money and with subsidies from film funds. This means that they look a bit like those BBC funded films, quite modest in scale, with production values that betray their small screen destinations. If they have a historical theme (and lots do) they are nearly always shot in a sort of muddy brown colour and use the Spanish equivalent of thou to prove their authenticity. Obviously they are voiced in Spanish or, to be more accurate, Castilian. Actually, unless you're in one of the big cities it's nearly impossible to find a film in its original language - everything gets dubbed into Castilian. Colin Firth, King George VI or el Rey Jorge VI has a nice Madrid accent.

The Goyas are the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars. There were plenty of decent nominations this year in genre as diverse as horror, social drama, black comedy and historical. They were presented the same night as the BAFTAs and, as in the UK, one film swept the board. It was a Catalan film called Pa Negre - Black Bread. The theme was the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. One of the interesting things about it was that it was voiced in Catalan with Castilian subtitles.

We had our doubts; the Civil War- hmm? But nine Goyas; it just had to be good and with the bonus that Castilian subtitles would make it dead easy to understand. It wasn't in Catalan by the time we saw it this afternoon, dubbed just like all the rest of the foreign films. And tedious. Tedious as they come. Obviously the theme had to be grim, the film colouring sombre and everyone had to live in filthy unheated hovels. There had to be Guardia Civil with capes and tricorn hats and if there wasn't a gay character then how could it be true to life? Film making by cliché. Actually I could be wrong, I had great difficulty understanding the dialogue and I couldn't tell one raggedy haired person from the next so I slept through a good part of it. Maybe it was a cinematic milestone after all.

Smarter than the average bear

2011-02-21T01:29:00.000+01:00

Eduardo the cat isn't keen on the journey between Culebrón and Cartagena. In fact he definitely doesn't like it. His protest is a loud wailing from the start to finish of the journey. Sometimes his protest is reminiscent of Bobby Sands.

Eduardo the cat isn't keen on the flat in Cartagena. Warmer than the unheated parts of the Culebrón house maybe but lacking in key elements such as the ability to wander freely and the opportunity to slaughter smaller species of animal.

We were packing up to go. Cats may have smallish brains but Eduardo spotted the signs. Glum expressions on our faces, movement back and forth to the car with bags and boxes. He's learned the trick; run away and Uncle Geoff turns up to feed him. It's worked well when we have had no option, when work awaits on Monday morning 110 kms and ninety minutes down the road; on a schedule. Tonight though we waited him out. He thought it was safe. He came back to soak up the heat in front of the gas fire.

He looks very sorry for himself, his face buried in his blanket on the sofa in the Cartagena flat.

Missing Culebrón.

.

Villazgo

2011-02-13T18:10:00.001+01:00

Villazgo is an event in Pinoso to celebrate the town's independence from the nearby town of Monóvar in 1826. It takes place in the town on the Sunday nearest to February 12th and it's one of the nicest festivals that we go to each year anywhere.

Villazgo is a celebration of local culture so the stalls are loaded with local crafts, industries and traditions like wine making, basket weaving and shoe making. In the side streets they organise traditional games, basically the local handball and a version of horshoes called caliche. On the stage the town band plays traditional music and the dance groups like Monte de la Sal don the traditional gear and get up and do dances from the local area. Hundreds and hundreds of people wear black smocks that were the everyday work gear around here for years.

Perhaps the best bit though is the food fair. You hand over a few Euros in return for which you get ten tickets, a tray, a wine glass and a ceramic dish. You then go from stall to stall handing over your tickets in return for local food and drink like wine, migas, gachamigas, rice with rabbit and snails, gazpacho (not the Andalucian one but a meaty broth on a dough base), pelotas, longanizas, morcilla, perusas, torrijes, rollitos de vino or anis and lots more that I don't remember the names of. The only down side to this event is that thousands of other people enjoy it as much as we do and sharp elbows are an essential element of getting to the food stalls.

The programme for the day has, up to now, only been available in the local language, in Valenciano, and I asked a pal who acts as a go between between we Brits and the local politicians to suggest that it should be available in standard Spanish. The answer he got was that the event was "ours" and I suppose by implication if you don't speak Valenciano then you are not one of us. Nonetheless, Maggie has just pointed out to me that the programme for this year is in Castilian too.

Nice and warm outside

2011-02-12T10:49:00.001+01:00

As we left Cartagena yesterday it was a pleasant, sunny day and 18ºC. Six hundred metres higher in Culebrón we were down at 15ºC but it was still sunny and pleasant. Inside the house though it was pretty arctic with the motionless cool air in the living room literally taking my breath away.

One of the photos has the cat Eduardo sitting in front of one of the gas heaters that we use to keep the rooms warm. In the living room we also set the air conditioner to heat, that plus two gas heaters and we can get the room nice and warm. The trouble is that the heat just vanishes as soon as we stop pumping the calories in. The other photo with those nice air gaps around the kitchen door perhaps indicate why!

Alicante country houses of a certain age just aren't insulated in any way.

Another trim

2011-02-11T18:49:00.000+01:00

I mentioned last week that I go for a haircut when the hair starts menacing my ears. It's much the same with the palm tree in our garden. Not that the palm has ears, at least I don't think it has, though it is a grass apparently and lots of grasses do have ears. No, in the case of the palm tree the time for a trim has come when the fronds start to scrape the roof of the mini as I park up. And that's what happened as we came home this afternoon.

Not being a traditionalist I don't shimmy up the tree using a rope harness nor do I lop off the fronds with a billhook instead it's a pruning saw and a set of stepladders - more Tunbridge Wells than Elche but, then again, there aren't that many palms in Kent.

Bars again

2011-02-06T20:02:00.000+01:00

Back at the end of 2009 the Government introduced some legislation which said that bars shouldn't be cooled below 26ºC in summer or heated above 21ºC in winter. Obviously the measure was designed to save power and to help reduce the country's carbon dioxide emissions.

I remember thinking at the time that 21ºC wasn't very warm. Spanish bars can be cold and unwelcoming spots in winter with their tiled floors, tiled walls, hard, unpadded chairs and open doors.

Fortunately the bar owners have taken no notice. Only the other morning I was warming my frozen hands around a hot cup of coffee in a nice warm bar and later mentioned to Maggie how much more comfortable bars are than they were only a couple of years ago. But now some consumer group has been going around stirring things up and publicising the fact that the bars are failing to stick to the law.

Killjoys.

A day out

2011-02-06T14:12:00.000+01:00

We really haven't done much recently partly through work, partly through sloth and partly because it is relatively unpleasant out when the sun isn't shining. Weekends in Culebrón tend towards tasks of one sort and another or maybe the exact opposite as we take the opportunity to forget about chores and work.

Yesterday though Maggie was keen that we did something other than vegetate. She suggested a trip to the seaside at Santa Pola but I baulked at travelling the 60 or so kilometres each way for no real reason. I was happy to go somewhere but with a bit more purpose. In the end we settled on going to Alicante because there were a number of exhibitions on.

We saw the photos of Alfredo Calíz at the FNAC shop in Alicante (nice use of colour but not many snaps) and later, at MUBAG (Fine Arts Museum) we saw a show that covered the Spanish Avant Garde from the 1960s to the 80s - informalism, abstraction, op art, hyper realism etc. Next it was MACA (Contemporary Art) where there was a show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an art movement that called itself Arte Normativa (the translation eludes me - Art by Rules maybe) which was a Spanish geometric abstract movement of the 1950s. Just to finish off we went to a remarkably tedious showing of Russian Sacred Art at one of the exhibition spaces run by the charitable arm of a savings bank.

Something I noticed was the staffing. The busiest space was the Savings Bank where there was one security guard at the entrance, in FNAC where the show was in the concourse outside the shop surrounded by coffee bars there was nobody obvious looking out for the exhibit at all. In both MUBAG and MACA only one large space was open for viewing but in both places, which are local authority run museums, there were two people on the welcome desk and two more museum staff keeping an eye on us as we looked around. I think there was also a uniformed security guard in each foyer, there usually is. Quite different staffing levels between the public and private sector then.

Good do though Alicante. Nice to do a bit of culture vulture stuff for a change.

Getting a hair cut

2011-02-05T20:39:00.000+01:00

I popped into Alfredo's in Pinoso this morning to get a trim. I don't like it when the hair grows over my ears. Up to that point I don't really notice my hair except for thinking that it's very white. Alfredo does a perfectly decent job for a very reasonable 8€. The conversation usually centres on the weather and Cartagena.

As I waited an oldish chap pottered in and Alfredo called his dad to deal with his client. I watched and marvelled as with shaking hands he wielded the cutthroat and hair trimmer. A trust established over the years I suppose.

There's nothing special about a haircut in Spain. I've been to trendy haircutters here where they offer coffee and wash my hair before and after and where young women with piercings and low slung trousers quiz me carefully about the style I want before cutting my hair to look the same as it always does. I've been to lots of those nondescript places that once had pretensions to trendiness but where time and clients from the neighbourhood have taken the shine off. Mostly though I've gone to proper barbers where a middle aged man wearing a barber's smock talks about football, holidays and football. My regular barber in Ciudad Rodrigo was keen on politics. It's a while since I've been to Alfredo and it was nice to get back to normality.

Tourist offices

2011-01-08T11:13:00.000+01:00

I usually start most phrases in Spanish with a mistake. It comes from my insecurity about speaking. This, as often as not, is the cue for any Spanish person who can manage a few broken words of English to take over the conversation.

Yesterday we went to the tourist office in Yecla to pick up a map that we knew existed showing the delights of Murcia province. I vaguely remembered that there were cave paintings close to Yecla which means within easy striking distance of Culebrón.

I fluffed my lines but the Information person picked up what we were after and produced said map. Then she started to explain about the place we wanted to see, we asked a question, she expanded the detail, she produced another map - and so it went until we had a fistful of leaflets and maps and all the information we needed. She never once doubted that we understood what she was saying or talked to us as though we were imbeciles

Maggie commented, as we walked away, on the quality of the tourist people in Murcia. We remembered how well we'd been treated at the office in Jumilla when we asked about the bodega tours. No condescending attitude, quality information and, on that occasion, she even rang and booked a tour for us. In Cartagena they are busier and perhaps a little more brusque but their information is always good and nearly always includes the stuff you need - the where, when and how type information.

We saw the cave paintings and we're thinking of going back to Yecla today to see all those things that we've missed before. Good result all round.

Diddled

2011-01-06T11:48:00.001+01:00

I've said before that I rather suspect that our planet will shrug off humankind has it has so many other "supreme" species in it's history. That doesn't mean I'm not willing to try to recycle carrier bags, walk when I don't need the car and make all those other little cynical gestures that I'm told will "save the planet" for "future generations."

You can still buy ordinary incandescent bulbs in Spain but generally we use low consumption stuff wherever the situation allows. The other day the bulb in one of the ceiling fittings started to flicker and the spares we had on hand were the wrong wattage. So, when I was back in Cartagena I walked up to one the big supermarkets and got a replacement and a couple of spares. Three bulbs, 24€. I notice on the (excessive) packing that it says the bulb will last eight years. Hang on though, the ceiling this bulb was attached to wasn't there till Easter 2009 because we'd only just got a new roof. In fact, the bulb has lasted maybe 20 months instead of the 96 promised. Never mind, not much to be done; can you imagine trying to get a replacement bulb under guarantee after a couple of years?

I paid for one of the made from unbleached cotton re-usable carrier bags to carry the bulbs and my other purchases home and fretted a little.

Blow it, time for a little payback. I caught the bus home.

A New Era

2011-01-01T20:29:00.001+01:00

We haven't ventured out at all today but the next time we do it will all be different. From 2nd Jnauary the new anti tobacco law will be in place in Spain.

About five years ago a no smoking law was passed in Spain which made it illegal to smoke at work but gave public spaces, like bars, the option of being either smoking or non smoking within certain limits to do with the size of the space. It was all a bit of a mish mash and, basically, it meant that the vast majority of bars and restaurants remained smoky. Lots that tried to go no smoking saw their trade collapse and quickly went back to ashtrays on the bar and fag ends on the floor.

The new law is much more straightforward and says that nearly all enclosed public spaces will have to be smoke free. The terraces of bars continue to be smoker's havens but even there the definition of when a space is enclosed is quite strict and some of the more weatherproof terraces will be non smoking.

I know it's happened all over the World but Spain and smoky bars just seem to go together. It will be interesting to see whether there is any sort of revolt. We've certainly been in lots of bars that have no smoking signs all over the place but where the clientele have taken no notice at all. Years ago when Corte Inglés first went non smoking they had to use signs which said something like "No lighted cigarettes, pipes or cigars in this store" because so many smokers were arguing that they weren't smoking just carrying a fag or that the sign showed a cigarette and not a pipe etc.

Twelve lucky grapes

2010-12-31T13:35:00.000+01:00

Tonight when the clock (Reloj de la Gobernación) on the old Post Office (Casa de Correos) in the Puerta del Sol in Madrid starts chiming midnight people all over Spain will start popping grapes into their mouth trying to eat at the rythm of the boings.

If you manage to eat all twelve grapes in the alloted time then the idea is that you will have a prosperous year.

The tradition appears to have started at the very end of the Nineteenth Century in Madrid but it was popularised all over Spain in 1909 by grape growers from Murcia and Alicante who had a glut of grapes and found a clever way to shift them.

The sorry looking white examples in the photo will provide the twenty four grapes for Maggie and me. They have been sitting on the one vine that we have in our garden which grows reasonably well. I think it may be because its roots are very close to our cess pit! We covered the bunches with paper bags back in October to try and keep the grapes relatively fit quite a while after they are ready for picking. I have no idea why we get black and white grapes from the same vine but we do.

¡Feliz Año!

Breathe in

2010-12-31T01:22:00.000+01:00

We have a Tom Tom. Excellent little device for getting you to somewhere and getting you away again. It does mean though that I have even less idea about where I'm going and where I've been. The machine just tells me to do this or that and I do.

One disadvantage of allowing the device to take you to a place in Spain is that lots of the streets in the old town centres look like the ones in the photos. Narrow and with difficult angles. Tom doesn't worry too much about road widths and it's possible to find yourself in a street with a nearly impossible right angled turn. Scrapes along the walls show that other people have found it tricky too.

Nowadays of course roads are built with modern traffic in mind and they are perfectly navigable. I have this theory though that to compensate the designers of underground car parks have mimicked the labyrinthine design of the old Spanish town centres. Many underground car parks have huge pillars in strange places, a bizarre layout and lots of protruding obstacles out of sight below the waistline of any car.

You just know you'll be in California soon

2010-12-29T21:59:00.002+01:00

Over the past couple of days we've passed the Giralda a couple of times, we've seen the Torre de Oro, the Maestranza bull ring, we've drunk sherry, eaten salmorejo and today we were in the Mezquita and on the Roman Bridge. For those of you who have as much trouble with geography as I do that means we've been in Sevilla and Cordoba; we're in Andalucia.

Andalucia is the part of Spain that provides all the tourist clichés - the swirly frocks, bullfighting, sherry, flamenco, prancing horses and castanets.

We were strolling the old streets of Cordoba, we weren't the only foreigners. In fact the visitors may well have outnumbered the home crowd. We passed a bar (something I try to avoid) and sounds of flamenco floated out into the street. For once we weren't put off by the little knot of people huddled around the door. We pushed through, leaned against the bar and listened as some old chaps passed the guitar between them and took turns strumming and wailing flamenco. Several of the crowd joined in. It was like being in Dingle without the Guinness or the fiddles!

New personal best

2010-12-26T23:45:00.000+01:00

There have been high speed trains in Spain for a long time. As visitors to the Seville Expo in 1992, before we met, Maggie and I both went on the one that links Seville and Madrid. Until today that was the last time for either of us.

On December 19th this year the newest AVE or high speed line was opened between Madrid and Valencia with a spur off to Albacete. This now makes Spain the country with the second longest system of high speed rail links in the World, after China.

Albacete is only an hour and a half by road from Culebrón and at just 22€ for the round trip it sounded like a good way to pop into Cuenca for lunch. At one point the speed indicator inside our carriage showed us as doing 301 kph. As the take off speed for a Boeing 747 is 290 kph that must mean today I set a new personal land speed record. The journey only took us 30 minutes and though I can't find any detail about the rail distance between these two provincial capitals the road distance is 160 kms.

To be honest the train wasn't that spectacular inside; it looked like a train. From outside the locomotives are impressive though. Apparently they use the Talgo series 112 on the route. The loco has been nicknamed "the duck" though I have no idea why!

New stations have been built in both towns as the AVE runs on a different gauge to the majority of Spanish trains. The station in Albacete includes a small shopping centre and multi screen cinema. We ate miguelitos there, a cake speciality from the nearby town of Roda. I recommend them.

And the lunch in Cuenca was good too if a little hard on the wallet. I tried another local recipe called morteruelo which is based around hare, pheasant, chicken and pig's liver mashed up into a paste. Maggie played it safe with roast lamb.

Eating at Christmas

2010-12-25T21:34:00.002+01:00

Teaching English to adults is a good way to gather local information.

Coming up to Christmas an easy topic is holiday traditions in Spain and the UK. Whilst it's not true that "everyone" in the UK eats turkey on Christmas day it is as true as saying that there are no longer pea soupers in London and that we Brits don't all stop for afternoon tea (still firm beliefs for most Spaniards.)

"On Christmas Day we will have roast turkey, carrots, sprouts and various forms of potatoes followed by Christmas pudding - what will you eat?" The Spanish answer is that there is no answer. If there is any sort of routine it seems to be that the starters will be lots of small dishes and nearly everyone seemed to include gambas or langostinas in their list of starters - what I'd call prawns - unshelled and dead tasty. The queues around the fish counters in every supermarket we've been in over the past week add circumstantial weight. Main courses were as varied as traditional food gets in most Spanish houses - fish is big, roast lamb turned up a lot and various forms of paella were strong runners too. Puddings seem to come with the guests as their contribution.

Oh, and it's Christmas Eve and Christmas Day when the families come round with the same alternating year pattern of in laws for one of the dates and your family for the other much as we do with the 25th and 26th.

Nobody but nobody mentioned popping out for a curry though one of my students said that as there would be forty of them this year they had booked the meal at a restaurant to save on washing up.

No taxes without drains

2010-12-22T14:47:00.000+01:00

As a follow up to the last post (not the haunting melody but my last entry on this blog) I wrote out my appeal against the new drainage charge using the official form downloaded from the SUMA website.

On Tuesdays I meet with a Spanish bloke called Carlos to do a language exchange. I fail to speak Spanish and he talks some English. I asked him to check the grammar and what not of my appeal. "No problems," he said, "all the right boxes filled in and the explanation is simple but clear and accurate." The last item asked me to list any supporting documentation I was sending and as I had none that's what I'd written.

"You should send a copy of your DNI," said Carlos.

The DNI is the Identity Card that all Spaniards carry. I have an equivalent but it would never have struck me to send a copy. Thinking about it though I knew that Carlos was right. Everyone, but everyone wants to check your identity here and it has become so routine for Spaniards to show their ID that it never crosses their mind that it's an intrusive and overly bureaucratic measure.

Lots of faff to post the letter too. "Better not to fold the documents, get a big envelope," was what Carlos had advised. So I bought an envelope. I'd filled in the Certificated letter form at the Post Office and handed it across the counter with the unsealed envelope. "Just one small detail and you'll be there," said the friendly chappie at the Post Office, "You need to complete a Registered mail certificate as well as a sort of receipt."

It's away now. Just a simple form and an item to post but it feels like a small scale triumph whether SUMA finally accept the appeal or not.

Excuse me, what am I paying for?

2010-12-19T13:32:00.001+01:00

The majority of the local taxes in Alicante are collected by an agency called SUMA. So the water bills, the rubbish collection, car road tax and the equivalent of the council tax all come from SUMA despite actually being set by the local Town Hall in Pinoso.

SUMA, in my experience, is an efficient organisation. I pay most of my bills by "direct debit" and SUMA's notifications always come a couple of weeks before the due date reminding me to check that I have sufficient funds in the bank etc. So unlike the banks, phone company and electric people who just take the money on random dates often without notification (though to be fair the phone and electric people have improved recently) SUMA do it the correct way.

So the other week a notification arrives that says that there has been a bit of a cock up on their part and that for some tax period they have either made an error in or forgotten a charge relating to sewerage and sewage charges. The language is the archaic stuff of official documentation and there is no date set on which they intend to take the payment (only 42€) though there is a section which tells me my rights should I wish to challenge this ruling. My guess is that this is notification that there will be a charge and that shortly they will send an actual bill.

Now we got new drains in Culebrón a while ago but ours was one of the six houses that was left out of the scheme. I could see a link, new service, new charge. So I wrote an email to them asking what the charge was and whether it applied to us as we don't have any drains. Their reply came back in a couple of days (another good sign, most Spanish organisations don't respond to email) though it offered no explanation except to tell me the official routes for lodging a complaint. Those routes include going into an office, using their virtual office (which requires an electronic signature) or sending the official form which has to be validated in a post office before the envelope is sealed.

I have two forms of electronic signature on my computer but neither of them will get me past their gate-keeping. Going to an office is a bit tricky as their working day and mine don't mesh and sending an official complaint by post seems a bit drastic. All I really want to know is what I'm paying for and whether it's a one off charge or an annual increase.

I've just spent an hour or so writing the few lines in Spanish (checking and rechecking grammar and phraseology takes me ages) to try to explain what I'm after, saying that I'm not after any sort of privileged information so we don't need the secure measures that they are asking for etc.

This could be the real test as to whether SUMA really is more human and one notch easier to deal with than the majority of Spanish bureaucracies. It would be so nice if they just did the decent thing and replied with a nice simple explanation in everyday language. Somehow though I doubt that will be the case.

Monday update: Not only have they replied (well done boys!)) but they've also said it's probably a mistake and I should appeal the decision as it's a recurring payment.

La Comunidad Británica

2010-12-18T23:15:00.000+01:00

Back in November the Royal British Legion, Pinoso Branch, organised a Remembrance Day Service in the local Parish Church. According to a pal of ours who was one of the organisers the Town Band pulled out all the stops to learn the hymns. By all accounts the event was a resounding success attended by Brits and Spaniards alike.

Tonight we went to a carol concert. The bulk of the carols were performed by the Parish Choir but the first two carols of the evening were performed by a group of Britons who had formed a small choir especially for the occasion - "The British Community Choir." For a couple of songs Britons and Spaniards sang side by side. It was a splendid little event.

Next May there are local elections and one of the political parties has been using the services of another British pal of ours to act as their liaison. He speaks good Spanish and offers a sort of general help-desk to Britons. One of his recent innovations has been an email newsletter which includes a "what's on" guide and my guess is that that newsletter has produced a massive upsurge in British awareness of local events and opportunities.

In my opinion all the people, Britons and Spaniards alike, who are involved in these sort of initiatives should be well pleased with themselves.

Well tricked

2010-12-12T20:45:00.000+01:00

"What do you fancy doing today? - I want to go to the Nueva Condomina Shopping Centre," said Maggie. I groaned.

It's not that I've got anything against shopping centres but I only choose to go to them when I need or want something that one of the shops there may have. Maggie goes to shopping centres for fun. She may have some vague idea about buying a top or shoes or something else but that translates into traipsing around shops that don't sell tops or shoes or that other thing. Different philosophy.

She had something in her favour though. I teach English to the staff of another shopping centre and the boss there had mentioned that a couple of quite well known Spanish fashion designers had created the Christmas lights at the Nueva Condomina so there was a vague reason for going.

"Alright," I said.

I have to say I was mightily disappointed. These two blokes, José Víctor Rodríguez Caro and José Luis Medina del Corral trade as Victorio and Lucchino. They made their names as ready to wear fashion designers who branched out into bridal wear, interior design and perfumes. They are also famous for being a married gay couple and for using themes from Southern Spain; from Andalucia as their inspiration. Maybe I missed something but the lights looked like they were from a Chinese Shop and it took me a while to even notice the half life size figures hanging from the ceiling.

I left Maggie to it. Fnac, the bookshop, was good though and they were playing music by a Spanish Tom Waits sound alike that I liked so much I actually bought it.

Good morning

2010-12-12T10:41:00.000+01:00

Sunday morning and I was strolling around the garden with a pot of tea in one hand and a cigar in the other. Down the road I noticed the "higos chungos" glowing red against the broad green leaves in the early morning sun. I finished the tea and went to take some snaps and then had a look at Wikipedia. Apparently they are not called higos chungos but higos chumbos - though it's apparently a common mistake. Chungo means something akin to dodgy, dicey or nasty and higo is fig; seemed reasonable enough - a dodgy sort of fig. We'd definitely been told they were called chungos.

Apparently the plant is Mexican in origin. The leaves of the cactus are eaten like vegetables and the fruit, well as fruit. In Spain the leaves are used as animal fodder but in my search for information I came across lots of Spanish recipes and childhood reminisences of the "We always used to get these as children when we went to see my gran at Christmas," type.

As we never got around to eating the thousands of ordinary figs that grew in our garden I don't imagine we'll be braving the spines of these prickly pears as part of our Christmas diet.