Life in Culebrón

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 membersh...

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.

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 ...

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 p...

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.

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.

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...

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.

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 some...

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. ...

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 ...

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.

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...

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 re...

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 Berl...

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 c...

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 ...

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 wa...

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.

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...

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.

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...

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.

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 ...

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.

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

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 s...

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...

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 fin...

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...