Railway talk

Find out about Ciudad Rodrigo's international standing at Life in Ciudad Rodrigo

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Pinoso

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Often, on the Pinoso Community Facebook page people, who are considering moving to this area, ask - 'What's Pinoso like?' So, as a nice easy blog, I thought I'd give my answer to that question for those people. First off, Pinoso is more a big village than a small town and expectations should reflect that. The town is in the province of Alicante, part of the Comunitat Valenciana, but it's right on the border with the Murcia region. Pinoso, like all of Spain, speaks Castilian Spanish which is the Spanish spoken worldwide. However, because it is a part of the Valencian region it also speaks a local variant of Catalan called Valenciano which is taught in all the local schools. You will hear Valenciano all over the place. Increasingly the town hall produces information primarily in Valenciano. The population of the municipality is a bit short of 9,000 people, and that includes all the people living in the satellite villages or pedanías that surround the town. Culebrón, w...
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And just how do you get to be extra virgin?

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I find it vaguely amusing how the Italians seem to get there first. Here the tiny strong black coffee is called a solo but buy one in Teignmouth in Devon or Alberona in Foggia and it'll be an espresso. Expensive British coffees have Italian names. Another example is Spanish ham, the Jamón Serrano. Commonplace here but, when I want to describe it to visiting Britons, I find that I need to describe it as Parma ham so they know what I'm talking about. Spaniards by the way call the British floppy boiled ham York Ham - jamón York. Spaniards are often particularly narked about oil. Oil in Spain means olive oil. The default is olive oil. If, for some strange reason, you want another type of oil then you have to be specific - corn oil, sesame oil etc. Even if the Mediterranean Diet is besieged on all sides by hamburgers, pizzas and kebabs the oil is still an essential part of the Spanish diet. Obviously enough it's easy to buy Spanish oil here but it's not difficult to ...
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2025 Population in Pinoso

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I normally do a roundup of the Pinoso population whenever the town hall releases the latest padrón figures—the official register of all local residents. This usually happens in late January, but for some reason I missed the publication this year. It only struck me the other day, while chatting about the perceived influx of people from the Netherlands and Belgium, that I’d forgotten my annual “easy blog” post. Like everyone else, I’ve noticed a language that I presume is Dutch (though with my ear for languages it could just as easily be Swedish or Lithuanian). I’ve also heard plenty of chatter about the large, somewhat out‑of‑character houses now peppering the Pinoso countryside. Rumour has it this boom in Dutch immigration is largely down to a single family: the Jelies. I can’t say for certain if it’s true, but Perplexity tells me they were featured in a programme called Familie Jelies: Een Huis Vol Emigreert, and more recently in Jelies & Gnodde: Grote Gezinnen Emigreren. Apparent...
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