Life in Culebrón

When I put the clocks back later tonight I'm going to retune the telly. The way the frequencies are divided up between mobile phone services and TV networks is being changed so it's either a laborious retune (splendid design Samsung people!) or lose channels. TV is one of the few things we generally get as well here as anywhere in Spain. My phone provider sent me one of those super offers the other day. For just two euros more per month I could have 40 new TV channels, increase the ADSL speed to a maximum of 100 Mb and get double the number of download gigs on my mobile phone. I tried to sign up. None of the advantages were available here in Culebrón - no 4G, no fibre, not even the TV channels. That's what you get for living in the countryside. ADSL at 3 Mb maximum and a dodgy mobile signal. When I worked at the furniture shop my boss had a go at house selling. I used to take the pictures and write the blurb for the sales sheets. Lots of people who lived up some unm...

Wikipedia tells me that Don Juan Tenorio,written by José Zorrilla in 1844, is the more romantic of the two principal Spanish-language plays about the legend of Don Juan. The other is the 1630 El Burlador de Sevilla probably written by Tirso de Molina. So now you know. It's a Spanish theatre tradition to perform El Tenorio on All Saints Day as part of the Bank Holiday "celebrations". In turn this has made it one of the most lucrative of Spanish plays. It's a pity poor old  Zorilla sold the rights soon after he wrote it. He thought it was just another pot boiler. I fear that a play written in the mid 19th Century, based on an older 17th Century work, is going to be a bit of a push for my Spanish. But blow it. Something traditional that we still haven't done being performed in Jumilla just 35k from home with the most expensive tickets priced at just 10€. Why the hell not? It must be worth a punt. We can always sneak away at the intermission if needs be. Maggie ...

I never really took to La Unión the small town I lived in last year. One small plus though was that a local firm, operating under the Zafiro Tours franchise, organised day trips by coach. The model was simple. An early morning start, a guide or guides to show us around before lunch then maybe a bit more visiting in the afternoon before the inevitable dribbling and snoring on the trip back to La Unión. The all in price was usually in the 30 to 40€ bracket. The first time I did it I thought it would be a bit of a hoot going on a coach trip with a load of older Spaniards. I imagined myself chatting away whilst we gawped at this or that before troughing down on the local delicacy. It never quite matched my expectations. I was always a bit of an outsider but it wasn't because people were unwelcoming. More my fault than theirs. The trips though were good. Interesting destinations and good guides. So I kept going. Obviously as I no longer live in La Unión the trips aren't ...

I've been living in Spain for ten years and five days now. We've owned the house in Culebrón for all but three months of that time. Despite that we've lived in Santa Pola, Ciudad Rodrigo, Cartagena and La Unión. We've rented six different flats all because of where we have found work. So it's nice to be finally living at home and paying just one electric bill, one phone bill and not having to move here and there for weekends or bank holidays. Culebrón, or more accurately Pinoso is, nonetheless, the most British of all the places I've lived in Spain. Now don't get me wrong Spain is just outside the door. The mountain view is Spanish, the crops in the field are Spanish, the traffic is Spanish, the opening times are Spanish but Britishness crowds in here in a way that it hasn't in any of those other places. I say Pinoso by the way because that's where we go to buy bread and beer. In Culebrón we live right on the edge of the village and we only reall...

We live in the province of Alicante. Along with Castellon and Valencia these three provinces make up the Valencian Community. Back in 1238, on October 9th, King Jaume I to give him his Valencian name or Jaime I in Spanish successfully took Valencia City as part of the Christian reconquest of Spain. The Moorish invaders weren't actually cleared from all of Valencia till 1305 and the last bits of what is now geographically Valencia weren't added until 1851. Nonetheless, when the powers that be were looking for a day to celebrate being Valencian they settled on October 9th. In the days when public holidays used to take us by surprise our pal Pepa, who is a born and bred Valencian, told us that on this day the tradition is to give little marzipan sweets wrapped in a silk handkerchief. Wikipedia tells me that this is because October 9th is also San Dionisio's day who is the patron saint of lovers (odd, I thought Valentine had that job sewn up). I remember going in to Pin...