On C90s and Romesh Ranganathan

Valencia, the region we live in, has had less severe Covid restrictions than some other regions. Bars and restaurants, cinemas and theatres, shops and hairdressers have been open, with varying restrictions, since May of 2020. We've been confined to our region and there has been a curfew from ten in the evening for months and months but, overall, we've got off pretty lightly. On May 9th the State of Emergency will end and, when it does, heaven knows what will happen. The Spanish Constitution outlines rights and duties and free movement is one of the rights. I'm interested to see how things go as the regional governments try to enforce restrictions that will be challenged as unconstitutional in the courts.

Spain hasn't yet reaped many of the apparent benefits of mass immunisation because the vaccination programme has been very slow. At first the organisation was a bit slapdash but now the main problem seems to be the supply of the various vaccines. The regional health authorities have used, or have a use for, all the serum made available to them. The confusion around the safety of some of the vaccines for certain age groups also caused so many fits and starts that the social networks are awash with complaints that some groups have been immunised before other groups have had their first jab.

Given that we have been supposed to stay at home as much as possible lots of the things that normally happen haven't. Even the things that we have been allowed to do have seemed a bit desperate, a little like doggedly lighting the barbecue under the eaves of the building despite the wind and rain. It's fine walking along the coast but gazing out from misted sunspecs, because of the mask, onto a panorama of closed shops and bars soon loses its appeal. It also feels a bit uncivil too. Like the way that dancing has been criminalised. But fewer things happening means less to blog about.

One of my few sources of outside news are the italki sessions, the one to one online Spanish sessions with "native speakers". I've already written blogs based on several of those conversations but, drastic times call for drastic measures, so here I go again. 

Last week Juan Pablo seemed a bit down. He told me he'd just turned 30 and that he was still living at home without anything he could call a career. He supposed his life would be pure decline from then on in. We spent a while talking about what he wanted to do in the future. Simply as something to talk about I suggested that he go into business for himself. It was noticeable how uninterested he was in that idea and how quickly he dismissed most of my suggestions. I wasn't surprised and not just because my ideas were a bit far fetched. General perceptions, backed by numerous surveys, show that most young Spanish people hope to land a traditional, reasonably well paid, steady job rather than to make it big as an entrepreneur. Obviously enough video blogging has now joined the old favourite, pie in the sky, jobs of footballer and rock star in the lists. It's very unlikely that the next Elon Musk or Kylie Jenner will be Spanish. Failing in business here produces a stigma that nobody from the United States, and only very old Britons, would recognise and the bureaucratic obstacles to starting a business in Spain are still manifold and labyrinthine.

If Juan Pablo felt old then Susi helped me to feel ancient. At one point, no doubt after a failed play on words on my part, she told me that she didn't understand British humour. I said that I thought one of the main differences seemed to be that Spaniards often like physical humour. The sort of comedy that involves silly voices and falling over. I was at a bit of a disadvantage because the chance of me knowing anyone famous from the Anglo world who would be famous here was remote. When I left the UK people like Catherine Tate and David Walliams were cutting edge and YouTube comedians hardly existed. My grasp of the Spanish comedy scene is more than tenuous. I suggested to Susi that UK comedians were more like the standups Eva Hache, Berto Romero or Luis Piedrahita and not at all like Santiago Segura in the Torrente films (sexist, racist, slapstick) or José Mota (silly voices but and some sitcom type sketches). As Susi continued to look confused I suddenly remembered. Benny Hill. Benny Hill I shouted. Benny Hill was incredibly famous here. People loved Benny Hill. But apparently not Susi. Too young (her) or too old (me) I suppose.

A bit later I'm talking to Susi about how my experience is that Britons are more culturally in tune with European countries than they are with the United States despite the shared language. I have a time worn anecdote that involves someone in my 1989 Rover 416 Gsi choosing to play a Beethoven cassette because it was "more British" than the salsa, rancheras or cumbia which made up the bulk of my in car entertainment at the time. The story fell down a bit because Susi didn't know what a cassette was and also because my pronunciation of Beethoven wasn't immediately recognisable to her. 

It just goes to show though that whilst Susi may be young she isn't that "hip" either as the new Wolf Alice album in July has a cassette release. I also noticed that a singer from Murcia called Yana Zafiro is offering stuff on cassette along with lots of Bandcamp artists. Never mind, all of it is something to chat about.

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By the way if you fancy having a go at the italki lessons yourself, for any language, let me know. I'll recommend you and we both get to save some money if you actually sign up

When?

For this post to work you're going to have to pretend that lots of generalisations are true. For instance that a man and a woman living together and caring for a few children is the historically normal family unit or that, through time, women have worked at home while men have worked elsewhere. You can't bridle either at the idea that people in the UK go to work in the morning, have a lunch break and then go home sometime in the early evening; 9 to 5. Likewise, for Spain, we're going to agree that people go to work in the morning, stop work in the early afternoon, start work again in the late afternoon and then go back to work till mid evening. Again, Pitman style, we'll call it 9 to 2 and 5 to 8.30.

So, in this generalised world, Britons have a shortish lunch break during the working week which means that they eat their main meal of the day in the evening. Spaniards on the other hand, with a longer midday break, eat their major meal of the day then. This is not to suggest that dinner is non-existent in Spain but it is, usually, a much less substantial meal than lunch. This can cause British holidaymakers to Spain some distress when they want to follow their habit of eating more in the evening. They wonder why so many restaurants are closed in the evening especially out of season or away from tourist areas.

Remember that we are in some sort of world where Victorian values have been restored. As the man comes home his expectation is that his woman will have his food ready. In the UK we're presuming that workplaces finish around 5pm so, with a bit of travel, the mealtime, set by the man's work schedule, will be sometime a little later, maybe 5.30 or 6pm. In Spain the man leaves work at around 2pm so the food should be on the table around 2.30 or 3pm. Spanish men come home from work twice a day, the second time he'll be home around 8.30 so mealtime will be around 9 or 9.30pm.

Leisure activities tend to fit around the work and meal schedule. As a, going to the pub before going on to the disco to get turned down by any number of young women, youth in the UK in the 1970s I would arrange to meet my chums at maybe 8pm in the bus station. That would give me time to eat whatever my mum had cooked for me before putting on my going out clothes (washed and ironed for me by my mum). If I'd been a Spanish youth, and I was working, I'd still be at there at 8pm and even if I were studying or out of work I'd still have to wait for my evening meal. So a Spanish youth would arrange to meet his or her pals in the estación de autobuses at maybe 11pm. In British and Spanish cases we're meeting our pals a couple of hours after mealtime.

It must have been around 1985. I was staying with some chums in Valencia. They asked me if I wanted to go out for the evening and I said yes. They rang a few friends and suggested meeting in a bar at midnight. I thought this was as hilarious as it was outrageous. What a ridiculous time to meet! Surely midnight was a time for coming home after a skinful not time to go out to get one? Remember that at the time British pubs closed at either 10.30 or 11pm. To be honest the thing I most remember about that meeting was not the time, it was the bar. It was like entering Bedlam. The noise, the smoke, the crush of people and the overwhelming nearness of it was impressive but somehow my pals magicked a table and chairs from the chaos and then waited to be served. Table service and paying the bill at the end seemed strange to me too. 

This time shift takes some learning; some deprogramming. To we Northern Europeans used to a different schedule these timings just seem ludicrous. Nonsensical. We don't understand why the Pinoso town fiesta, for instance, has an opening ceremony at 10pm, why the firework display starts at midnight and why the folk dancers will be on stage sometime around one in the morning. It's the same, but in reverse, for Spaniards at the moment. They are having a lot of difficulty with the idea of a theatre performance at 6.30pm or the last session at the cinema being one at 7pm so that everything can be done and dusted for you to be home before the evening curfew.

Time to greet

When I used to teach English to Spanish speakers we had a lot of fun with Good Morning and Good Afternoon. I'd stress with the students that we Brits are often pedantic about the time. At 11:59 it's morning but at 12:01 it's afternoon. Evening is vaguer. Does it really begin at six and run to midnight? In summer surely the evening starts a bit later than on a dismal cold grey day in December? And what about greetings? Spaniards use Good Night when they meet people whilst we Britons don't. In my shebeen going days I used to prove my sobriety to the bouncers at four in the morning (at night?) with a cheery Good Evening. If I'd been a baker or a morning show radio presenter going to work at the same four in the morning I'd probably have greeted my work colleagues with a Good Morning instead.

The word "tarde" is used here to describe both, what Britons call, afternoon and early evening. Most people learning Spanish usually thinks of tarde as translating directly as afternoon. When someone suggests to me that we meet in the tarde my years and years of British training kicks in and I think they mean sometime between three and five whilst they're visualising an early evening drink around eight or nine o'clock. Night starts about then, about nine, but again, it often depends on when you eat your evening meal.

We were watching some afternoon British TV yesterday. People who'd set up businesses in France and Spain were the focus. It's one of those programmes done as a sort of fly on the wall with commentary. In Spain a couple wanted to put Yurts on their land to complement their B&B business. They were waiting for the mayor to talk about planning permission. "He said he'd come in the morning," said the yurt owner, "It's already half past one so I don't suppose he's coming. This is Spain after all". I guffawed because it is, indeed, Spain and in Spain morning lasts till you've eaten lunch. As 2pm is the earliest that you might consider lunching then half past one is still, very much, morning. If someone greets you, at half two with the Spanish version of Good Morning then you know they haven't eaten yet. 

I do and sí quiero

We went to a wedding at the beginning of this month. It was only my second in Spain. The last one was back in 2017. That time it was a civil ceremony but it was a full scale event with both the bride and groom turned out in traditional style  - white frock for her and a suit with a waistcoat for him. The setting for the ceremony was dignified, we threw things at the newly married couple, they drove away in a classic limousine and the do at a hotel afterwards was posh and tasteful. There was copious and excellent food, lots of drink, smart clothes, little presents from the bride and groom, speeches and modern touches like a "photo booth"; the full works. Spanish weddings are very recognisable to Britons, there's no best man and the language is different but otherwise it's all very much to format. 

We did get to go to a wedding in the UK in 2019. That time the setting was a country castle with an oak panelled bar where the Lagavulin flowed. The ceremony was in the open air in a walled garden with the British weather threatening to do its worst. The groom and best man wore tailcoats. There were bridesmaids and pageboys. The bride was in the sort of white wedding dress that people comment on. A sit down meal, forks tinkling on glasses, please be upstanding announcements, loosening of ties, cake cutting, first dance, uncles and aunts, cousins, in laws, a crying baby and never ending photos. Memorable.

Our most recent wedding, planned for 26 March was a bit different. The decisive difference was that it didn't take place as planned. It was also different because it was a same sex wedding. The reason it didn't happen was that the person whose job it was to process the marriage paperwork got ill. The documentation languished on his desk for weeks. The ceremony was due to take place in Pinoso Town Hall with the mayor officiating. I think the story is that when the mayor's secretary phoned the couple to check some details the realisation dawned that none of the appropriate permissions had arrived. The couple kept calm, accepted that the ceremony had to be postponed but saw no reason to cancel the lunch they'd booked at a local restaurant. Maggie was a witness, which is why I got to tag along. Covid restrictions meant that the numbers for the civil ceremony were limited so it was just seven of us that enjoyed the champagne and the special menu. Whilst we were at the table news arrived that the paperwork had been delivered to the Town Hall. A vision of the Japanese Ambassador waiting to deliver the declaration of war to the US Secretary of State in 1941 sprang to mind.

The wedding ceremony did take place nearly a week later. The second time there were just eight of us in the  mayoral office to witness the couple tie that knot: the mayor, the translator, the couple, the two official witnesses and two hangers on (Paco and me, partners to the witnesses). Ceremony wise it wasn't quite on the same scale as the weddings above. It was a really nice event though. The ceremony just felt so friendly with quite a lot of laughing, plenty of verbal asides and a bit of line fluffing when it got to the all important, sí, quiero - the Spanish "I do". I grinned a lot and shed a tear or two. And we got to go back to the same restaurant for a second time.

Trainee journalists always used to start in the births, marriages and deaths department. Fortunately for us, although we're still missing a baptism (and the incredibly important Spanish rite of first communion), the uplifting events still outnumber the one funeral that we've been to this century. I should add that Maggie, being much more sociable than me, has done other weddings whilst I've moped at home claiming poverty.

Shops, shopping and clicking

First my habitual opening diversion. Over the years there has been a fair bit of controversy from time to time about the skin colour of the actors who interpret Othello in the Shakespeare play. You probably know that the full title is The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. Moor, from Blackamoor is an outdated and offensive term to describe a Black African or other person with dark skin. In Spain the word moro is the direct equivalent of moor. It's used to describe dark skinned people, usually people from North Africa: Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans and Sahrawis. As with other, similar, words its use can be racist or not. Generally though, for most Spaniards, moro is just a descriptor, like the use of Eastern European, Whilst the media shy away from the word ordinary people don't. I haven't heard many suggestions of a name change for the Moros y Cristianos events though there are plenty of concerns about white people blacking up during those, and other, events.

Over in Petrer there is a shopping centre. Until recently it was called Bassa el Moro; Bassa the Moor. The  reason for such an odd name is that the shopping centre stands on the site where Bassa surrendered Petrer Castle to the Christian King Jaume I in 1265. The shopping centre recently changed name. It's now Dynamia. When I saw the name I immediately imagined some muscled bloke wearing his purple underpants over his tights but I'm sure the idea was to try and give a new image to the shopping centre which has been a white elephant for years. We used to go there quite a lot because it was home to our preferred cinema but then the cinema closed. We popped in the other day just to have a look at the new paintwork. It was sad. The place has almost no open shops. The cafes and restaurants have closed. Good luck to the new owners on revitalising it though it seems to be generally accepted that physical shops are in decline as we increasingly shop from our phones. The obvious problems of the Dynamia shopping centre made me think there may be a blog about the current situation of other local developments.

In broad stroke I suppose it's fair to say that shopping malls, the shopping centres where lots of individual retailers cluster together in purpose built buildings, are a 20th Century phenomena while department stores, one retailer building a big store with separate areas for separate types of goods, are more 19th Century in origin. I notice that the Burlington Arcade now advertises itself as the original department store so perhaps my homespun definitions aren't correct. Nonetheless it is true that department stores are having a tough time. Here in Spain the near legendary Corte Inglés, a quintessential part of Spanish city life, is struggling, laying people off and closing stores very much like John Lewis and Debenhams in the UK. This ties in with the idea that physical shops are now an outdated concept and that online sales are the way to go. We were in a shopping centre in Elche just a few hours ago though and, given that we are talking about Wednesday afternoon shopping, it looked to me as though lots of people haven't heard that they should be buying online.

Normally we venture into shopping centres because we are going to the cinema but from time to time we do go specifically to buy things. The one I like best, because it's big and because it has a bookshop, is probably Nueva Condomina which is over the border into Murcia. I think that the buildings were originally owned by the supermarket chain Eroski but they got into a lot of trouble with property speculation and sold the centre on a while ago. The last time we were there, over a year ago now because of the travel restrictions, it was still doing well with lots of bag laden shoppers, queues outside the cinema and a wait to get into the fast food cafes and restaurants. 

The other centre we tend to use, for shopping, is the Aljub in Elche; that's where we were this afternoon at the cinema. It's not a particularly big centre and I think that it's main attraction for us is that it's the closest to home and the easiest to get to. Again it was Eroski owned but they hung on in this one by reducing the size of their store so that other shops could open in the freed up space.

If those two seem to be doing OK the shopping centre almost literally across the road from the Nueva Condomina in Murcia, the Thader Centre, is dying on its feet. Every time we pop in there are more and more empty units. Probably it's saving grace is that it's home to one of the successful low price supermarket chains, Alcampo, and on the same site there is IKEA which seems to have some sort of fatal attraction for any number of people. It's the same story at the Puerta de Alicante centre which is, obviously enough, in Alicante. There even the shops opposite the string of tills in the Carrefour hypermarket are unlet but, just across town, the Plaza Mar 2 centre in Alicante seems to be doing OK. It could be because it's more central, it could be because the tram stops there or it could again, be the lure of Alcampo. Whatever it is the last time we were there, at the end of December, the Christmas shoppers were knocking us aside with gleeful abandon in their shopping frenzy. Of course personal perceptions can be wildly misleading. Busy does not, necessarily, mean profitable and it could be that we only ever see the places at their best but it certainly appears that there are big differences between the different developments.

While big shopping centres and online shopping are right enough we've been trying to do that shop local thing recently and I must say that whilst it might be more efficient getting stuff online from Amazon or in the flesh from a series of shops in the same space the service you get from our local shops can be much more uplifting and personal.

Behind the name

Emilio Martínez Sáez. One time mayor of Pinoso who gave his name to our local theatre

When we lived in Cambridgeshire there used to be lots of "jokes" about Fen dwellers, in particular about Chatteris. Jokes to to do with interbreeding and the idea that, at birth, if a family had a surfeit of boys and a lack of girls then you found a family who were baby boy poor and baby girl rich and traded. I presume that Spaniards say, or at least said, something similar about country folk.

As I'm sure you know Spaniards have two family names. Usually that's one from the dad and one from the mum. Be warned if you decide to adopt Spanish nationality and you're surname deficient you will need to choose an extra. 

So you don't need to be a Royal and marry your brother/sister or even your cousin to end up with two surnames which are the same. All you need is to stay off Tinder and stay around the same area for a while. 

I'm reading a book about Pinoso written by a local bloke called Luis Doménech Yáñez. It's good fun; a bit sugary but interesting and entertaining. There's a list of the 106 mayors of Pinoso between 1812 and 2005 - all of them were men. I added the 107th, our current mayor, Lázaro Azorín Salar. That list of 106 includes mayors who were elected twice but not for consecutive terms. Then I did a bit of an analysis of the surnames. There have been 22 mayors with the name Albert as either their first or second surname. There have been 16 Ricos and 12 Verdus. Other surnames with more than 5 appearances include Peréz, Mira, Carbonell, Tortosa, Payá and Blanes. Anyone who lives in or does business here in Pinoso will recognise those family names. In fact I was a bit surprised that names like Domenech, Brotons and Ochoa weren't more common in the list. 

I was a bit disappointed that only 5 mayors doubled up their surname: Albert Albert (twice), Rico Rico, Verdú Verdú and Mira Mira.

Living here first names like Mariano, Isidro, Lorenzo, Emilio, Pascual or Rafael don't sound any stranger than Oliver, George or Grayson but there were some great first names in the list of mayors: Nivardo, Faustino, Dimas, Melecio, Hermelando, Evedasto, Agapito, Amador, Plausides, Antenor, Demetrio, Antoliano and Perfecto. 

Future Culebrón cats be warned!

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I can't imagine that anyone is interested but here are all the surnames. I'm sure there are errors in my transcription for which I apologise: Albert, Alfonso, Amorós, Azorín, Baus, Berenguer, Blanes, Blaquer, Brotóns, Calpena, Carbonell, Cerdá, De los Cobos, Del Pino, Domenech, Domingo, Durante, Falco, Gonzálvez, Graciá, Guardiola, Herrero, Huesca, Jordán, Jover, Juárez, López, Lucas, Maestre, Malhuenda, Martínez, Mauricio, Menda, Mendaro, Mira, Molina, Navarro, Ochoa, Ortega, Payá, Peréz, Poveda, Prats, Ramírez, Rico, Sáez, Salar, Sanchez, Tormo, Tormos, Tortosa, Verdú, Vicente, Vidal and Yánez.