Life in Culebrón

I think someone has it in for our palm tree. If you are a long time reader you may remember a post about an invasion of palm eating beetles, the picudo rojo. It isn't so much the adult beetles that cause the problem but their larvae which feast on the soft tissue and buds of the palms. The trees, I know they're not trees but that's what we call them, die as a result. Working out how to protect the tree against the beetle and overcoming a slight difficulty with power cables made me think we were going to have to cut the tree down a few years ago but, one by one, we solved the problems. In time I settled into a gentle, and relatively inexpensive regime of spraying insecticide every six weeks. As I understand it the insecticide I am using works like fly spray and interferes with the way the muscles of the beetles work so they die of asphyxiation. The big problem is that it does the same to other beasts, including bees and that's bad. In a more general way, living in Eu...

Spanish museums used to be awful. Piles of stuff in random order often without any labelling or information. Most, though not all, are much better now and some of them even have levers to pull or computer screens to tap. There is still a tendency for the information to be a bit long winded (something I get accused of), and only very infrequently do you get the news story type labelling with a brief résumé in the first paragraph and more detailed information below. The most common style is a four or five hundred word description on each section. With all good intentions I read the first couple of information boards, scan the next two or three, read the first couple of lines of the next dozen or so boards and then start to wander aimlessly without reading anything unless it catches my attention. Usually the notices are in Castilian Spanish and quite often in English too. Occasionally around here, it's just in Valenciano which always annoys me. It was sunny yesterday and neither M...

Culebrón has a breakfast club. Well sort of. A couple of years ago, it could be even longer, some British chums made me aware of the Wednesday morning group at Eduardo's, our local restaurant, and I started to go along. It was quite a big group, made up of around the same numbers of Britons and Spaniards. I used to go most weeks but I stopped when I started Wednesday morning classes and I never got back into the habit. There used to be a lot of laughing as language failed and gestures and pointing took over so it was good fun as well as an opportunity to catch up on local gossip.  I haven't been for months but, this morning, with nothing better to do I went for a late breakfast and to see who was there. As well as the home team there was Belgian representation. Just me representing the UK and only seven of us. One of the Spaniards who regularly attends the group spent a lot of her life in the UK and she is hoping to return there in the near future. She's still trying to...

I bought some books on Sunday. This is not, in itself, such an unusual thing. I usually have a book on the go. The difference was that I bought ten in one fell swoop. Nowadays I can read almost any Spanish book without too much trouble. I've chosen to read more Spanish than English for two main reasons. The first is to improve my Spanish and the second is to bone up on the home culture. It does mean that I have no idea who is hip and cool amongst contemporary British writers but as I don't know the name of the Home Secretary, or the modern way to say hip and cool, you can take it that I've given up on keeping up to date with Britain. One biggish problem is that I often forget the names of the authors I've read. For some reason names like Eva García Sáenz de Urturi just don't stick in the same way as, say, Jessie Greengrass. Anyway I am reading a book called Women of the Post War Period (Mujeres de la posguerra) by a woman called Inmaculada de la Fuente. I am f...

Whilst I was shaving this morning, I heard a piece on the radio about changes to the rail service in Murcia. The National news has ten minute sections of local news every now and then. In the bathroom the local news comes from Murcia and in the kitchen the local news covers the Valencian Community. It's to do with signal strengths and because we are on the frontier between two regions. RENFE, the train operator and ADIF, the rail infrastructure operator, have been in the news a lot lately. Over in Extremadura there was lots of fuss about really old diesel trains breaking down all the time and leaving people stranded for hours. The people of Extremadura complained that they live in a forgotten part of the country. In fact there has been a lot of grumbling, from several parts of Spain, that all the railway money is being poured into the glamorous high speed trains whilst the much more travelled commuter lines are being largely ignored. The story was rekindled a few days ago w...

When we first got here I used to buy El País newspaper every day. It was a part of my introduction to Spain. El País is a left leaning Spanish daily that came into being shortly after Franco's death. If you were looking for a British political and literary equivalent it would be The Guardian. Although its paper sales have plummeted El País is still the second most read printed newspaper in Spain (after the sports only newspaper, Marca). The digital edition of El País is number one amongst all the online Spanish newspapers. The newspaper has an English version which I've read for quite a while. About a month ago the English edition started to promote a new weekly podcast called ¿Qué? The podcast is presented by the Editor, a bloke called Simon Hunter. He gave us his Twitter name should anyone wish to comment. I'd enjoyed the podcast so I sent a message to say so. There was a photo alongside Simon's profile picture and I thought he'd done pretty well for himse...

I've always liked cinema so, when I began to take an interest in Spain, I made an effort to see Spanish films. For years and years it seemed that every Spanish film ever made was about the Spanish Civil War. They were almost all dull and drear. I also read Hugh Thomas's book about the war and I found it hard going. Paul Preston's more recent history of the same event persuaded me that he was one of the most boring writers that has ever put pen to paper. Years later, I thought I should give him a second chance, he seemed to be well regarded by everyone else, so I read his book about Franco. I have never been tempted to try him again. The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to 1939. That's a long time ago. As I mentioned in a post a few days ago there are two schools of thought amongst Spaniards about the war and more particularly about the dictatorship that resulted from it. That it should be forgotten or that it should be given a thorough airing so that it can be finall...