Life in Culebrón

I nearly forgot. 49 to Inma and 26 to Antonio so Culebrón has a new Mayor.

Sitting in the car, in the centre of the road, signalling left to turn across traffic. I waited as three cars passed by on the other side of the road. I'd been there at least twenty seconds when a Peugeot 307 slaps into the back of me. Damage to people none. Damage to the MG: broken lamp cluster and a metal retaining strip hanging loose. Damage to Peugeot: radiator holed on engine block, destroyed bumper, destroyed wing and headlamp cluster, destroyed bonnet, destroyed door and crumpled rear wing. When it comes to low speed collisions big steel bumpers are definitely tougher than crumple zone modern cars. Mind you I suppose the reason neither of us were hurt is because the Peugeot was designed to fold up and absorb the impact. Poor old car though. It makes my heart bleed to see the state it's reduced to. And now the ridiculous chase around with insurance companies even though it's probably not worth my while making any sort of claim.

It has been voting day in el Culebrón. As you may imagine the populace of the village were gripped. I went and did my bit. There were maybe 20 people there wandering around, having a natter. Odd that one of the candidates was sitting at the voting table and the other was leaning against the bar enjoying "el vino de honor" - the free wine often supplied at any event. But the ballot was secret enough. Voting finishes at 6.0pm- we should know the winner by 6.02pm with something like 60 to 70 people entitled to vote.

The Red Cross seems to be a key institution in Spanish life. As the boats full of refugees from Africa turn up on the Spanish coastline it's Red Cross volunteers who help them ashore. Old people, alone in their homes, are tended by the Red Cross and, if I need an ambulance at 2am in the morning in Pinoso, it will be faster to call on the Red Cross than to dial 112 and wait for an ambulance to come out from Elda. Today the local branch of the Red Cross had organised a day with a theme of Living Together, they hoped to have representation from lots of the communities living here in Spain and there were Ecuadorians, Peruvians and Senegalese stalls set up in the local municipal gardens but it was all a bit desultory and down beat.

There's another long weekend due at the end of the month so I thought I'd go and see Maggie. Problems in getting the transport sorted have included a bus company website not working for three days, a ticket office that only opens weekdays for two hours per day and a strike by one of the companies which may or may not mean that there is a coach for me to catch! The best route involves me driving to the nearest big town to catch the bus (at 1am in the morning), hanging around a couple of hours in Madrid bus station and Maggie driving the 100kms from her home to Salamanca to pick me up. The reverse route also needs a car at each end and includes a three hour wait in Madrid. Train times weren't any better and the cost was a fair bit higher; and we'd still need the two cars. I considered hiring a car, it would have been much quicker but it would have cost about twice as much as the train. Mind you, if I hadn't been travelling alone it would have won hands down as the che...

I pay the princely sum of 18€ per year to attend the Spanish for Foreigners course that runs at the local Cultural Centre. The course is described as a sort of Intermediate course and, to be honest, it's too easy for me. The advantage though is that it makes me concentrate on grammar and vocabulary and what not each week. So last night was the first session and there was the usual start of term turnout, about twenty of us - mainly Brits but a good number of Dutch, a Zimbabwean, a US citizen and, I think, a Romanian. Just like Julie Andrews we started at the very beginning (a very good place to start) and we were asked to ask questions across the class - where do you live, do you have children, how long have you been in Spain etc? Cruz (the teacher) started the ball rolling by getting us to ask names ¿Comó te llamas? the answer being "me llamo Chris" pronounced a bit like "may yammo Chris" and translating as "What do you call yourself?, "I call myself ...

I have to go down to Alicante this weekend and I saw an entry on the Valencian Community Tourist Information website called Abstract Alicante about an abstract art show. I thought it may be interesting to pop in and have a look. Unfortunately neither the English nor the Spanish version of the website says what the dates of the show are, there are no times and the only clue as to where it's on are the initials MUA. Now, to be honest, it didn't take much Googling to find the Museo de la Universidad de Alicante and its website describes the show, gives the hours and even has a rather vague map. But it still amazes me that Spaniards, more often than not, fail to apply the what, where and when test to their information be it on posters, leaflets or websites. This is the text just to prove that I'm not making it up Abstract art remains a powerful creative trend that is well and alive. Artists such as Luis Mondragon, Francisco Farreras or Aurelia Masanet show their personal way of...

It's not that things haven't happened. We had the festival that celebrates Spanishness last week just a couple of days after the day to celebrate Valencianess, Maggie has been home because of the opportunity afforded by the long bank holiday weekend, we saw some Flamenco in a cave where they gave us dodgy tapas and very watery sangria and I borrowed another book from Pinoso library. Maybe there was a blog entry in my visit to the library but to be honest the place in Pinoso is very much like the badly stocked, book only, libraries of my youth. As such it is unremarkable. The mega shopping centres down in Murcia where I've been the last two Saturdays are just as unremarkable. Fast food, chain clothes stores, a nice line in pot plants and a multiplex cinema. They are like shopping centres from windswept Minnesota to down town Cancun. They even have the same music. Though the toilets at the Thader Commercial Centre in Murcia perhaps deserve a mention. Above the urinals in the ...