On being privileged

Sometimes it's surprising the things you don't know even close to home. A while ago we were watching the telly and there was a featurette about Murcia. The cameras visited the Ricote Valley which is some 65kms from Culebrón. One of the villages in the valley is Blanca. It's a small place of around 6,500 inhabitants. We didn't know, but we learned then, that it had an art gallery, the Pedro Cano Foundation. "We must go and have a look one day," I said to Maggie. Today was the day.

As we walked through the door the woman on the desk greeted us in English "We must look very English," I said, in Spanish. "No, but you're the person who phoned yesterday, aren't you?" Now that was true but my instant reaction was then that either they get so few visitors that they remember every phone call or we must look very, very English just like I'd said.

The gallery was really good. A nice light airy building. Interesting and well executed paintings with different themes well explained on each of three floors. On the third floor, the fourth exhibition space, there was a temporary exhibition of some perfectly nice water colours. Not as good, in my opinion, as the permanent stuff but interesting.

Somewhere as we went around I asked Maggie if she knew whether Pedro Cano were still alive. She said she hoped so as the woman on the desk had said he was coming to do a guided tour at midday. My Spanish is so good that I'd heard the bit about the guided tour but not understood who was doing it. To be honest I was for running away before he showed up. He might say something in Spanish, I would splutter and the whole of our Island race would be found wanting and stupid again.

Too late though. As we got to the front desk that guards the door he was there. We recognised him from a video. He held out a hand. He asked us simple things. He asked us if we painted. Other people arrived to divert the conversation. He turned out to be a lovely, lovely man. He radiated pleasantness. He was passionate about his work and about the foundation. He gave us a completely different perspective on the paintings. I often enjoy exhibitions but I haven't had as much fun in an art gallery since the late 70s when I was a member of Leeds City Art Gallery and bumped into Richard Long and Joseph Beuys under similar circumstances.

Rivers, water and the like

Spain has the highest number of reservoirs per inhabitant in the world. At least that's what it says on Wikipedia. I am always wary of these superlatives. I remember hearing in the UK that NHS Blood and Transplant was the best service in the world and I wondered what their criteria were for that statement. My mum is also the best mum in the world. I bet you, mistakenly, thought yours was.

My unchecked and unverified perception is that it is generally pretty sunny in Spain in summer. It is especially sunny along the Mediterranean coast. I hear it even stops raining in Galicia and the rest of Northern Spain in summer. You might think that a hot dry country like Spain would have water supply problems.

Whilst we have lived here there were, a few years ago, some restrictions on the agricultural use of water. It wasn't a big thing though - we were on the verge of trouble rather than in trouble. The last big problems that I can find reference to were down in Andalucia in the mid 1990s. Given that it is sunny and hot that seems to suggest pretty good organisation of water to me. Maybe that reservoir number information was right. Apparently Franco liked building dams. One of his nicknames was Paco the frog which came from his liking for water. Back in 2001 the Aznar Government came up with a plan that was going to move water from the River Ebro, in the North, through a series of pipes and canals down to the drier, southern, parts of Spain. The Catalans and the Aragonese were not keen on this plan. In 2004 the new Zapatero government shelved the Aznar plans and decided to build desalination plants instead. The Valencians and Murcians were not keen on this plan. The graffiti about the "trasvase," the transfer plan, is still clear on many walls all over this area. The plan also had provision for building another 120 reservoirs.

One of the news items during the periods when it doesn't rain as hard or as often as it should is a bulletin on the state of the "Basin Agencies." These Confederaciones Hidrográficas are generally based on river basins and I think there are fourteen or fifteen in total. The reserves are usually expressed as a percentage of capacity  so, for instance, today in the internal Basque Country the level is 95.24% of capacity and for the Ebro it's 85.84%. Healthy figures. The one that matters to us, the Segura basin,  is at 70%. Last year at the same time the Segura's reservoirs were at 49% and the 10 year average is just 32% so one good wet Spring and we have water to burn. Back in the Spring I heard some chap on the radio being asked about the state of the Segura river. He was almost gleeful about the rain. "I had to open sluices on some reservoirs today," he cackled. "Water enough for three years," he boasted.

The Segura goes through Murcia. It looks like a river there by the Whale sculpture and, when I think about it, where it flows into the Med. at Guardamar it still looks quite river like. Certainly it looks more like a river than the mighty Vinalopó, our most local river and the one which gives geographical names to this region. For most of the the Vinalopó is nothing more than a dirty trickle of water.

Despite being aware of the Segura as a name and even having visited several places along its banks I had never really noticed it as a river until yesterday. That's because yesterday I couldn't fail to notice it. I paddled down it in an inflatable boat for 13kms, watched ducks float by at an impressive velocity and, as I stood in it, I felt the swirl of small pebbles bombarding my legs as they were carried along by the current.

None so blind as those who will not see.