Life in Culebrón

The rights and wrongs of running cars in Spain, originally registered on foreign plates, is one of the staples of the many expat Internet bulletin boards. Whatever the legal technicalities the idea is pretty simple. If you live in Spain your car should have Spanish plates, Spanish insurance and the rest whilst if, for instance, you live in the UK your motor should have UK plates, tax, insurance and safety checks. Living here means you spend more than 183 days of the year in Spain. A Swedish chum who lives in Pinoso was pulled over at a police checkpoint a couple of weeks ago. Her car, which was running on Swedish plates, was briefly impounded until she was able to register the vehicle on temporary "tourist" plates. Now she is going through the process of re-registering on Spanish plates. The police told her they were having a bit of a blitz on foreign cars and that there would be no fine (I can't remember whether she said that could have been two or three thousand euros...

On 12 February 1826 good King Ferdinand VII granted independence to Pinoso from the larger nearby town of Monóvar. Nowadays, on the most appropriate Sunday nearest the 12th, the town puts on its gladrags, well lots of traditional smocks and frocks, to celebrate the town's coming of age. The main event centres around eating - as do all Spanish celebrations. In this case punters buy eight tickets which can be swopped at the participating stalls for a drink, a snack or other edibles. It starts slowly but by 2pm the site is heaving with people balancing wine glasses and local delicacies on paper trays as they elbow their neighbours to create enough eating space. Spaniards have a remarkable facility for eating without stopping speaking and the noise level is incredible. As it all starts to tail off the heaps of rubbish and food on the floor become more noticeable and make for an interesting orienteering exercise. As well as the food there is a traditional competition a bit like hors...

The town Hall in Pinoso produces a glossy magazine each month, called el Cabeço , as a way of keeping its citizens up to date. It's always good fun with plenty of argy bargy between the political parties in amongst the real news and those human interest stories with a local flavour - Pinoso man moistened; Titanic sinks! Big stories this month included the idea that Spain's strategic oil reserve may be pumped from the refineries at Cartagena into the caverns formed where salt has been "mined" from our local mountain. There are our new water prices too, a new tiered pricing system which will see those houses that use most charged a massive 1.10€ for every 250 gallons of water - luckily for us we don't like washing much and I expect we'll be in the 28 cents per 250 gallons bracket. It was the population figures that I lingered over most though. At the start of 2010 there were 8,031 people living in Pinoso (that includes the villages such as Culebrón), 6,627...

I hear that in the UK it's only MENSA members who have a chance of keeping track of which rubbish has to be put out on what day and date - Tuesday for the organic stuff, every third Friday for household waste etc. Here in Spain there are no household collections. There are big containers dotted all over the place though. Round Pinoso the basic green jobs are for general stuff then there are the recycling bins - yellow ones for containers, blue for paper and light green for glass. You have the responsibility of getting the stuff to the bins. The general rubbish is picked up overnight in urban areas and maybe two or three times a week in rural areas. The recycling bins are cleared less frequently. It's a simple but effective system.