Life in Culebrón

Every country has some sort of ritual, some sort of symbol, that pulls at the heartstrings and brings tears to the eyes of the true patriot. Maybe it's as the Stars and Stripes ripples in a gentle evening breeze, moments before the flag is struck, standing, hand on heart, thinking land of the free and home of the brave. It could be a Promenader at the Royal Albert Hall on the Last Night exercising their lungs to sing "Land of Hope and Glory". Sometimes the thing is official – "La Marseillaise" for the French almost anywhere and everywhere, or the adulation of the potato, the official state "vegetable" of the good folk of Idaho – and sometimes it's just the ink-black silhouette of a bull. If you've been to Spain you know how that one-dimensional bull stands sentinel over the roads and motorways of the country. If not, maybe you have friends – they may not actually be good friends – who have brought you back the mug with that black bull firmly as...

I like to be active, not climbing hills or doing press-ups active, but doing something out and about. I'm not keen on work as a substitute. I don't need to paint walls or clean the kitchen, prune trees, shop, cook, clean toilets or keep drains clear to keep myself occupied. We're all a bit work obsessed in my opinion. I did a lot of it at one time, the paid sort, and now I look back on it and wonder why I wasted all that time. The pay, obviously, but that doesn't explain its centrality in British society. So here I like to get out and about. We go to fiestas, we go to events, we visit castles, we go to the theatre and concerts and the cinema. We see exhibitions, we go to talks and tramp around forests for stargazing and to hunt out scorpions. Some things are never repetitive, even though you've done them before, because each event is different enough to make it potentially memorable. On the other hand there are some things which are so much of a muchness and start t...

Maggie suggested we should marry. It wasn't that, after a 32-year-long trial period and 28 years living under the same roof, we were ideally suited; it was because she thought it might be easier to arrange for care and nursing if we were legally bound. I was my usual enthusiastic and romantic self. I said fair enough. The list of documentation for a civil marriage in Pinoso is not too onerous. Proof of identity and sometimes proof of address. Something to prove that you are free to marry – single, divorced or widowed plus a full birth certificate for each person. Foreign birth certificates need an apostille and have to be translated, by an official translator, into Spanish. That translated birth certificate can be no more than three months old at the presentation of the paperwork to the Justice of the Peace. On top of that we would have needed a couple of Spanish speaking witnesses when we handed over the documentation and later, at the ceremony, two more to sort of represent each ...

Maggie and I got married down in Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago. The chances that I won't blog about that are very slim so we'll leave the details for now. Anyway, after a few days on the Rock, with friends and family, our wedding party dispersed and we newlyweds toddled off to wander around Andalucía. Our first stop was Seville.  Now I'm not sure how many times I've been to Sevilla but, without trying too hard, I can easily bring eight or nine visits to mind. The very first time I was there I stayed over three weeks and, as historic centres don't change much, I've always felt to know the heart of the city quite well. The terrible thing is that, looking back at my photo albums, it turns out that the last time we stayed there was fifteen years ago. Seville is a great place to visit. It's just full of Spanish clichés, it brims over with history, culture and life. I've had some interesting experiences in Seville over the years, not all of them pleasant and...

Spaniards can happily talk for hours about food. One never-ending topic of conversation is the “best” way to make almost any traditional dish, from fabada to cocido. This piece is about paella, or maybe rice. For a few years, I have made a rice dish at home that I describe as paella to Maggie. I would never make the mistake of describing it as paella to any Spanish person. I would always describe it as rice with things. That’s because I added things that are “not allowed” – like pepper and onions – and I use pre-prepared caldo, a ready-made broth, to cook it in. However wrong my version was it was a quick and easy meal for me to cook that we both liked. The principal taste came from the broth prepared by a company called Fallera, who ruined the whole thing by discontinuing the broth. Since then, I have tried several other ready-prepared broths and I’ve liked none of them. Next, I worked my way through a couple of varieties of packets of powdered flavourings that can be added to the wat...

Nearly everyone who lives in Spain has to do an IRPF, income tax, return each year; the declaración de la renta. Before Brexit, some Britons argued they paid their taxes in the UK and didn’t need to pay in Spain. While there may be rare exceptions, in general, if you live here, you pay income tax here. Many Britons living in Spain are also taxed in the UK, for example, on Government Pensions (ex-teachers, ex-military and the like). However, thanks to a bilateral tax agreement between Spain and the UK, the income that is taxed in the UK isn't taxed again in Spain. People, living in Spain, with an income below 22,000€ from just one source, and paying tax on that income, don't need to file a tax return. If the income is below 15,000€ the income can come from two sources but the second income can't be more than about 2,000€. These figures change each year, but they are roughly accurate for now. So, it’s not easy to avoid doing a declaración. It's not a particularly onerous,...

I know as much about flamenco music as I do about quantum mechanics. That's quite a bit. Sorry, that was a typo - that's almost nothing. So if you know anything about flamenco I apologise now and suggest you read no further. Nonetheless, for a style of music that tends to make me fidget after listening to about twenty minutes of it, I have seen an awful lot of live flamenco and  I've bought even more recorded stuff. So if you know next to nothing about flamenco you may like to read on. Long, long ago, when we were new to, and relatively lost, in Spain, we went to the Benicassim Festival and we stumbled across a set by Enrique Morente. The name was new to us but we were entertained as we watched. We later learned that Enrique was a bit of a flamenco legend. A typical bio reads: "Enrique Morente revolutionised flamenco by blending traditional forms with poetry, rock, and jazz. His fearless innovation expanded flamenco’s expressive range and inspired a new generation of a...

I wear contact lenses. Because my eyes are a funny shape they have to be "old fashioned" rigid contact lenses. Little plastic discs that float on the tears in my eyes. They're not a bit like the flexible contact lenses that most people wear. One of the consequences of their characteristics is that the liquids needed to clean and store them are not available at the local supermarket. The liquids generally come from an optician. There are three opticians, that I know of, in Pinoso, and Maria, the optician for one of them, has the lens solutions I like most for my particular contacts. Maria must have had sex within the last nine months or so because she's quite pregnant at the moment. Someone had mentioned this to me - the pregnancy, not the sex - so I thought I'd stock up on lens solutions. Just in case there was none of that "having the baby behind the tractor before getting on with the ploughing" spirit of the old Soviet, and she closed the shop for a wh...

Antoni Gaudí, was a well known Catalan architect; he's the bloke who drew the original plans for the Sagrada Familia. He's well on the way to being declared a saint; Pope Francis made him a Venerable earlier this year. Gaudí was knocked down by a number 30 tram in Barcelona on his way to his daily confession at Sant Felip Neri church. Apparently he was hit when he stepped back to avoid one tram but reversed into the path of another going in the opposite direction. He didn't actually perish at the scene but was so badly injured that he died three days later.  As a result of Gaudí's death, a public inquiry was held in Barcelona. One of the people who played a significant role in this inquiry was Mercedes Rodrigo. Mercedes and her sister, María, were a bit like the Bronte sisters in that they achieved individual recognition at a time when women didn't. María was a pioneering Spanish composer, pianist and teacher; she was the first woman to premier an opera in Spain. Me...