Life in Culebrón

A couple of years ago the local weekly newspaper - El Canfali - disappeared from the newsagents. One of the first victims of the hard financial  times I suppose. El Cabeço, the erstwhile monthly magazine produced by Pinoso Town Hall went missing after February 2010 and only two editions have been printed since then so my news and information resources rather dried up. It's true that there are Internet sources but I don't find them as accessible. Grey hair related I suppose. Culebrón is a part of Pinoso and Pinoso was a very rich town. The huge local marble quarry provided 85% of the Town Hall's total income. Stone extraction and the secondary industries associated with it were also a major source of employment. The local politicians found themselves in the perfect position. They had money rolling in and no need to upset the voters by raising money through taxation. No wonder we had some splendid facilities. The marble quarry has been hit hard by the collapse of the buil...

There was a notice on the rubbish bin to say there was a meeting of the Neighbourhood Association in the Village Hall tonight to receive last year's accounts and plan this year's fiesta. I toyed with the idea of going to a talk on olives and almonds in Pinoso; I have an unusual idea of interesting but, finally, a sense of duty to the village prevailed and I went to the meeting. I go every year and every year I understand next to nothing. Obviously the main reason is because my Spanish is crap but the echo in the room, the multiplicity of conversations (Spaniards, in my experience, don't take well to the discipline of someone else controlling when they can talk) and the occasional lapse into Valenciano all contribute. I came home and Maggie was watching something on the BBC so in a vain effort to pretend I live in Spain I went into the kitchen to read the paper. I understood next to nothing. No problem with the headlines, no problem with the gist but the detail escapes...

In Cambridgeshire Henry Morris invented the Village College to try and help to stem the flow of country folk to the towns. In Spain the 1907 Law of Interior Colonization and Repopulation had a similar aim. Today we drove up the Sierra de Salinas mountain chain on the recommendation of one of our pals who had been up there on his bike. It was a lovely spot on a splendid blue sky day. Along the route we passed through an area that was signed as La Colonia de la Sierra de Salinas where, according to the information boards, 49 "poor but suitable" families were given their share of 1400 hectares of public land to farm in 1914. Each tenant received a house, land, a cart, a horse and farming tackle with which to try and cultivate the typical Mediterranean crops of grapes, olives and cereals. As well as the 49 houses the Colony also had some public buildings namely a storehouse, a police post, an administration block, a school and a church. I noticed there was no bar or other so...

I really approved of the radio doctor on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. Full of good advice. He wasn't the sort to recommend a trip to the GP if you had a bit of a sniffle. He did suggest that men of a certain age should take low dose aspirin though and I'm still taking his advice. As I remember in the UK, in 2004, a packet of aspirin in a supermarket or one of those shampoo and  sun cream shops was going for around 16p. A hundred dispersible 75mg aspirin were about a quid so it was a bit of a shock when I got to Spain and a pack of 30 tablets was around 4€. Then I found out that Aspirin is a Bayer trade mark in Spain so, by asking for Aspirina, I was asking for the equivalent of Anadin  rather than the generic. Acido acetilsalicilico may be a bit of a mouthful but salicylic acid is the generic name and the tabs come in at about a quarter of the price. As older men we were talking about illnesses. My pal Geoff said that he didn't take all the aspirin that he was prescribed...

Everywhere in Spain boasts some dish that is considered to be local and special. The other day in one of my classes there was a gentle argument about whether Café Asiatico, a coffee loaded with a sweet liqueur, typical of the area around Cartagena, had been invented in the Murcian village of Albujón or whether everywhere in Spain had some form of alcoholic coffee. Pinoso lays claim to producing the best longaniza sausages, light cakes called perusas and a thick pancake used to make the local stew called gazpacho. Another speciality is a sweet bread produced in dome shaped cakes dusted with sugar and usually served with thick hot drinking chocolate - chocolate y toña. Today was the tenth edition of a fair in Pinoso dedicated to the town's businesswomen and women entrepreneurs. It was opened by a local actress called Ángela Boj and there were a bunch of stalls to represent the majority of the local businesses owned and operated by women. It was fair enough but the most...

Yecla, a small town very close to us here in Culebrón, has a national reputation for furniture making. Every year they have a furniture trade fair with the final Saturday being open to the public. We went along not knowing quite what to expect but hoping that in amongst the extended furniture shop displays there would be some old bloke with a flat cap turning chair legs on string driven thing. There wasn't. Just stand after stand of pretty gruesome furniture. Well I thought most of it was pretty horrid anyway. Never mind, at least we've done it now. .

I've forgotten exactly what Ohm's Law says but I know that it gives you the relationship between current and volts and something else electrical. When I did know what it was I worked out that a 13 amp UK plug was getting stretched with a 3 kilowatt device, like a big electric fire or a fast kettle plugged into it. Down in Cartagena our electric supply is 5.5kw, so two fully loaded 13 amp plugs worth. It's pretty typical for a newish Spanish house. If we're not careful with the cooker, kettle, heater combinations it's easy to pop the circuit breakers. It's been horrid weather in Cartagena for the past few days and, when we got back to Culebrón it was cold, wet and windy here too. Because of the rain we haven't been able to hang out any laundry in Cartagena. In Culebrón we have a tumble dryer so we brought all the laundry back with us. I set the washer going as we were still unpacking. A little later we turned on the tap to make the welcome home cup of t...

I'm going to complain about Spaniards, or rather about Spanish behaviour, so, if you're Spanish and you're easily offended this is one entry to skip. We were in the Mercadona supermarket car park in Yecla. It's a tricky little car park, all wrong angles and sturdy pillars. As we stowed away our purchases I noticed that the car across the way was getting ready to leave. Another car turned the corner and could easily have waited for us both to go - reversing lights and open doors on the car were a dead give-away as to our intentions. But no, this bloke couldn't possibly wait a few seconds to make it easier for him and easier for us. He had to plough on blocking both of us from leaving. As the newcomer began to manoeuvre into the free space next to me he was within centimetres of bumping into my car. I didn't know where the horn was but I found it just in time. He decided to do a circuit and let us both go. A little later we were at the "Feria de la Tapa...