Life in Culebrón

Just in case you're interested the socialists, the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), had a good election. They gained 38 seats and now have 123 seats in the lower house of parliament (they also won the upper house). On the other hand the conservative Partido Popular (PP) had a disastrous day. They lost 71 seats down from 137 to 66. Anyone want to give me odds on the survival of their recently elected leader? On the left Unidas Podemos (UP) dropped 29 seats to 42  and on the right Ciudadanos (Cs) gained 25 to 57. To the shame of Spain and Spaniards the ultra right party VOX went from nothing to 24 parliamentary seats. Another eight parties won representation in the lower house. Most of them have a regional flavour - Catalans, Basques, Valencians, Navarrese etc. The biggest of these, with 15 seats in the Congress, is Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, ERC, which is headed up by a politician who is currently in prison for his part in the dodgy Catalan referendum. ...

I don't get a vote in the General Elections here in Spain. Nonetheless I popped out to the three polling stations in Pinoso to have a bit of a nosey. I took the photos as soon as I arrived and I only stayed a few minutes just to see what numbers were like. The polling stations looked busy to me though it was mid morning, a good time, especially as the church had just chucked out. This lot of elections are the thirteenth since democracy was restored in the late 1970s and the fifth set that we've been here for. We've lived under only three of the, so far seven democratic presidents. Anything is possible, results wise, and coalition wise but it's likely, according to the polls, that the socialist Pedro Sanchez will be returned to power as the head of a coalition with left wing Unidas Podemos and possibly some of the Nationalist groups. There is even speculation that the socialists could form a coalition with the right of centre Ciudadanos party. Who knows? It's m...

Spain is full of fiestas. Fiesta is an idea that we foreigners living here begin to get a glimmer of but which most of us never quite understand fully. It's not just a street party or a carnival. A proper fiesta is based on traditions, sometimes traditions based on beliefs. Fiestas are a collective expression of a community; it's not about somebody organising something and other people watching. Fiestas are commonplace, often nearly ignored by locals yet usually loaded with symbolism in the clothes, dances, music, songs or other manifestations such as language and bonfires. Recognising, and altering, those symbols is something often passed from generation to generation. Fiestas are periodic and repetitive - with the same basic things happening year after year. There are, within towns and cities, fiestas and fiestas. Some are only fiestas in name because they were designed by tourist boards or trade associations. They don't fit the spirit of the definition above. They can ...

There aren't many self serve checkouts in Spain. They have them at Ikea, the scan your goods, push in your credit card type and they have some at Corte Inglés though I've never seen them in use. At Carrefour they used to have self serve but they changed to a single queue system - Checkout Number fourrr please. Generally then supermarket queues are stand in line, stuff to the rubber belt, the person at the till scans your items, you put them into a bag and then you pay, maybe scanning your loyalty card in the process. You can still buy plastic bags at the checkout but most people don't. Consum, probably the largest supermarket in Pinoso, works exactly like that. I'd gone for my usual 30-40€ worth of every second day shopping. There were four of the six tills on the go, the deputy manager was on one till, the women from the deli and fish counter were up too. All the tills in use were busy. The days of the ten items or fewer queue are long gone. I stood in a queue....

The wettest April since Noah took to boating according to some news reports. We had Easter tide guests. We were confined to barracks. The Easter parades were cancelled. Sight seeing was off. We presumed the shopping centres would be closed for the bank holidays. We Brits here in Pinoso seem to call bank holidays, Red Letter Days. I presume that's because the holiday dates are printed in red on paper calendars. I'm going to call them bank holidays because that's what I've always called public holidays. National Holidays are the same all over Spain. Most people will not work on those days but that doesn't, necessarily, mean that they will work fewer days in the working year. The Spanish logic is that bank holidays are not actually holidays, they are days when you don't work. So only the extra non working days need to be included in the holiday calendar. If, for instance, a National Holiday falls on a Sunday, like Christmas Day 2016, it will not be shown as a b...

I've got a bit of a tax problem. It started just before the Easter break. The Spanish tax people seem to think that I lied in my 2014 tax return. I didn't. Well, so far as I know I didn't. The whole process is going to be one huge pain in the backside. Part of the ritual of bureaucratic torture that the Spanish state inflicts on its citizens with a monotonous regularity. In the years that we've been here we've bumped into it time after time. We immigrant Brits complain about Spanish bureaucracy and so do Spaniards. Britons complain about British bureaucracy too and I suppose that Ghanaians complain about Ghanaian bureaucracy. I think the difference with the Spanish system is that it is unassailable, unflinching, unmoving and unrepentant whereas the British one is just long winded. The British version is, was, much more open to question in the case of dissent. The Spanish process starts in one of two ways. Either there is hardly any information. A bill or a fine ...

Easter in Spain is spectacular. Every town has its own Easter. The floats, religious carvings, rolled along, or, much more impressively, borne on the shoulders of men, and nowadays women, along time honoured routes. Some people are in it for the religion, some for the culture, the tradition, or maybe it's just an opportunity to collect bags and bags of sweets. Some of the processions are joyous, some are military, some verge on the bizarre whilst others are organised chaos. I've not seen many, maybe twenty different towns, a few famous ones on the telly and whilst each is similar none is the same. But I'm not out on the streets now. I'm not listening to a plaintiff saeta sung from a balcony or watching mantilla wearing women or bare footed Nazarenos. There will be, almost certainly be no silent and unlit streets and no black hoods as Thursday becomes Friday when death is the order of the day. All because it's raining. There are associations that fund raise and...

First of all it was the journey to Cartagena, then to Fortuna and to Cieza. Places I have worked or lived. Easy blogs to write and also ones that were well read. Next Monday is the last day of my current work contract. I don't think there will be another. My Spanish retirement date is 30th April, my UK old age pension kicks in from May 7th. If I have my way I will never work again. There are only two sessions left. I will only drive to work twice more. This is nearly my last opportunity to repeat the details of home to work journey so here is the story of that 6.3 kilometre route. Dirt track to start. Not too chewed up at the moment. One good thunder storm and the ride can be very bumpety bump through the ruts. A right turn onto the tar to make a legal, rather than the more obvious, illegal turn across the cross hatching in the centre of the road. It's a bad junction. There have been a couple of crashes in the last year. People take no notice of the 60 km/h signs on...

El Jardin de la Seda. The Silk Garden, is an unremarkable public green space in Murcia. It has quite a lot of standard model ducks and some of those red faced Muscovy jobs. Joggers and walkers, some in track suits and others disguised in ordinary street clothes, do their stuff. Dog walkers with dogs large and small, some of them keen on battle. There's even the tall chimney left over from the silk factory that gives its name to the garden. It had been raining. In fact half an hour before we got there it had been pelting down and we had been forced to seek shelter from the storm in a handy bar in the Plaza Circular. I'd even maintained a WhatsApp conversation with Victor, our potential guide, as to whether the walk would go ahead. It's been raining on and off for a couple of weeks now. Last week I posted a photo of a dismal beer festival spoiled by the rain. An old friend in Cambridge saw the photo and commented; "I have made friends with a Spanish woman who now liv...

I haven't done anything very interesting for a while but that won't stop me. I went to stand outside the Town Hall yesterday evening. Every first Friday of the month at 8pm - a reminder that violence against women needs to stop. I've done it a few times. Nobody notices but I should be there. Afterwards the group often puts on a film. I haven't been to that for ages but I did go last night. The film was called Frances Ha and it wasn't bad at all. The interesting thing was that it was introduced by a couple of young women who I think were still at school. They were speaking in Valenciano which means that I caught about as much as I would if I were in a Belshill pub late at night talking to an 80 year old local who was a boxing contender in his youth. The young women talked about similarities in style to Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen, about the handheld camera movements and the framing of the scenes. I was impressed. I don't think the majority of the students I...

For Britons nuts is an easy concept. There is, almost certainly, a scientific description but I think of nuts as having hard shells and an edible bit inside - peanuts, almonds, cashews, hazelnuts, pistachios, brazils, pecans and others I can't remember right now. Spaniards don't share that concept. They use the term frutos secos, dried fruits, and that includes nuts but it also covers what we think of as dried fruit - prunes, dried apricots, raisins, sultanas, currants and the like. It's not all that different really. Just one subdivision more. It is, nonetheless, surprisingly difficult to explain to Spaniards learning English. I like nuts. This is quite a good thing because I don't much care for water, nor for the sawdust flavoured whole grain cereals. Fruit is OK but you get sticky eating it and it's such a faff - all that peeling and de-seeding and slicing. Vegetables and pulses are generally fine but when I say veg. I mean the standard stuff, nothing too sli...

I went to see the doctor this morning. Like all the doctors I've ever encountered, doctors in Spain make you wait. This is obviously because a doctor's time is much more valuable than mine or, indeed, yours. In truth, nowadays, nearly everyone's time is more valuable than mine in a financial sense but, as usual, I seem to be straying up a branch line. I've been to the doctor a few times over the years in Pinoso but not to the point that it's second nature to me. I was quite decided to be decisive today. The last time I was there there was a little printed list stuck up with sellotape outside the doctors door. The appointments were arranged in 15 minute blocks. Inside the fifteen minute block there would be three names; three people had the same appointment time. I couldn't remember whether the system was first come first served or whether the list order gave the order. My decisiveness amounted to no more than asking rather than muddling through. I was stym...