Life in Culebrón

I have friends who love to walk. They stride out across moors, along coastal paths and through forests carting tasteless cereal bars and bottles of water in their high tech backpacks. They comment on the fauna and flora and marvel at the views. I have no problem with the basic idea of walking as a method of shrugging off a mild hangover or as penance for a good lunch but serious walking has never appealed.  Now don't get me wrong. I don't have any problem with people enjoying walking for walking's sake and I definitely approve of walking as a form of transport. For instance, if I were in the British Museum and still lusting for enlightenment the walk down to the Natural History Museum, with the promise of all those landmarks along the way, would get my vote over the Tube. As a young man I worked in Leeds and often caught the last train to Huddersfield. With a following wind that train might get me in early enough to catch the last bus home to Elland but, as often as not, ...

I was in a bar this morning. The bar is called Arturo but the boss isn't; his name is Salvador or Salva to his friends. Arturo is a nice bar, an ordinary bar. Plenty of Britons use it but we tend to be mid or late morning users. Earlyish morning it's a pretty Spanish environment. Clientele wise it's for anybody and everybody from pensioners and office workers to parents on the school run and working class blokes. From what I can gather lots of Spaniards seem to leave home without a decent breakfast. I get the idea that most shower the night before so they're ready to go in the morning. It seems to be up and out rather than dawdling over toast and cereals. But regular food stops, and a real interest in food, are very Spanish traits. Anytime between nine and eleven in the morning overall wearing blokes down tools and open up their lunch-boxes. In a similar time slot bars the length and breadth of Spain fill up with people getting something to eat as a sort of more s...

We were talking to some Americans - North Americans, from the United States. We were in the Gods, the gallinero or chicken coop in Spanish, at the top of the Teatro Principal in Alicante. We were high enough to consider breathing apparatus. The seats were so steeply raked that Maggie worried about plummeting.  It was absolutely roasting presumably because the people in the stalls were at just the right temperature. Heat rises, rich people comfy, poor people sweltering. First I took off my jacket and then I took off my pullover to reveal my Gas Monkey T-shirt. That was the talking point to begin the conversation. All four of us were there to see a zarzuela. Say it like Thar thway la. Have you ever seen a zarzuela before asked the Americans, "Yes," I said, "No," said Maggie. In a way we were both right. We've seen several scenes from various zarzuelas in full costume and three concerts of zarzuela music. It was the first time though that we'd seen a full p...

We have a couple of very active theatre groups in Pinoso. One of them, Taules, was even the joint winner of a prestigious national award for amateur theatre this year. Taules usually put on a show for the August fiesta and another for Christmas. For some events in Pinoso you can buy tickets online but for most of the events in our 400 plus seat theatre you have to get tickets, or invitations, from the box office which opens for a couple hours for a couple of nights before the event. It's a bit of a pain for us because we're not usually in town in the evenings so we have to drive in specially. We've learned that normally we can chance to luck and there will be tickets available on the night. You can't do that with Taules though. I'd misread the programme information. I thought tickets were on sale from 4pm. In fact it was 6pm. I didn't realise though because, when I got there, there were about 40 people waiting. Now the Spanish have a queuing system that I...

I listen to a fair few podcasts. Most are arty or documentary like and just one of them, Spanishpodcast ,  is aimed directly at people learning Spanish. This week the episode was called True or False, ¿Verdadero o Falso? and dealt with some of those commonly repeated "facts". You know the sort of thing - we only use 10% of our brains (false), hippos have pink sweat (true), hair and nails continue to grow after death (false), koalas have two penises/vaginas (true) and others of the same ilk. There were a couple of Spanish related stories in the podcast that I thought I could safely pinch for this blog. The stories have the added advantage of satisfying any cravings I might have to write a blog entry whilst gently steering me away from politics. I'd been tempted though because, yesterday, Parliamentarians were being sworn in as "MPs" at which time they have to promise or swear to uphold the Spanish Constitution. Lots of the Deputies used their brief moment in ...

It's strange how the same thing has more or less value depending on your own thoughts and when you have them. I was listening to some high up politician from Navarre (an area of Spain) on the wireless. She was going on about how her right of centre party had done well because it had picked up more votes in the last election. I won't extrapolate on her model by pointing out that her party came second. Instead I'll pick up on her complaint about a Catalan party that probably holds the key to the formation of the next Spanish Government. The party in question are Catalan separatists, they want some form of autonomy, nationhood even, for their region. So the Navarre woman says her party's votes give them legitimacy. She argues that Cataluña is an integral part of Spain. By her own reasoning the people who live in Cataluña are Spanish and, in Cataluña this separatist party got sufficient votes, enough to make them potential kingmakers. But, for the woman from Navarre, ...