Life in Culebrón

There are lots of Western Europeans, other than Spaniards, in Pinoso. In fact there seem, without knowing the figures, to be more and more. Belgian and Dutch voices are much more evident now than they were a little while ago and there is a good smattering of German and French in the supermarket too. Obviously enough there are other nationalities hoping to carve out a better life and, recently, there has been an influx of Ukrainians but those people have different stories. The Belgians, Germans and Swedes are here, generally, by choice. They may or may not be resident. Signed up Europeans, not the ones who rant about secure borders, have rights in Spain. They can come and go more or less at will, so determining who is and who isn't resident can be quite tricky. As it used to be with Britons. A question I have been asked lots of times by Spaniards is why so many Britons choose to live in Pinoso. I've never been able to think of a good response. I can't now.  Part of it must b...

Even in the analogue days, when a newspaper was something you held in your hands, it always seemed like a lot of work to read one. Nowadays I have a newsreader application that collects news from the Internet. It's not as though I'm a glutton for punishment or anything, I only have three feeds: one for local news, a second for serious news and a third that's a bit more frivolous with the sort of stuff that happens on Twitter or Instagram. Nonetheless the number of articles that turn up each day is simply overwhelming. A podcaster I listen to, in English, promises to summarise all the Spanish news for me so that I don't need to bother. That's not really true but the podcast does, at least, unpack stories where the detail has often escaped me. Last week, as an extra, the podcast did a bit of background on some of the major Spanish newspapers and the rest of this blog is my recap of that El País is still the biggest selling (however that is now counted) newspaper in ...

I've done Chiruca here before. My advanced years mean that I forget where or when I first heard, or read, the word but someone, on the telly, on the radio, on Twitter, used the word in a phrase. I had no idea what it meant so I asked WordReference and the Diccionario de la Lengua Española and they knew. It turned out to be a brand of walking boots; well, famous as walking boots but nowadays they make all sorts of walking footwear. So exactly the same idea as when, in the 1980s, I might have said that I had some new Docs or that I was going to get a Barbour or a Burberry (boots, waxed coat or mac(kintosh)). In fact everyone, well I suppose it's everywhere, does this. I watch American films where they say Band Aid and Scotch tape instead of Elastoplast and Sellotape. Unless I'm mistaken Addison Lee is the UK generic for a cars that aren't taxis but are - Cabify here I suppose. Bubble wrap or taser are both trade names too. The Spanish ones can be useful. One of my favouri...

Pinoso has lots of community websites. The English language one I tend to look at most often is a Facebook page called Pinoso Community. People use it for a whole range of things from lost dogs and questions about where to find services to checking to see if anyone else is having trouble with their Internet provider or power supply. The other day someone, on that page, commented on the price of fuel in the local filling stations. They weren't really complaining about the high price of petrol but more about the price fluctuations between different garages and even in the same filling station. I thought it might be an interesting blog - why and how the price varies. As I started to investigate I found the information both complicated and contradictory. In fact I decided that to do it properly would be both boring and long. That didn't stop me though. So, if you continue, expect boring and long. And sometimes, simply because of the complexity, I've oversimplified. There is als...

I'm not such a big fan of wine. It's not that I don't drink it but I'd nearly always go for other sorts of booze first. Maggie, my partner, on the other hand, is a bit of an enthusiast. One of the things she often does is to take our visitors on one of the bodega tours. Indeed, years ago, she used to organise tours for tourists as a business venture so we got to know nearly all of the bodegas in Jumilla and Yecla and a good number of the bodegas close to Pinoso that allow visits. Jumilla, Yecla and Alicante all produce wines that have Denominación de Origen Protegida (protected designation of origin) as well as wines more suited to drain unblocking or unarmed combat. Lots of the stuff that isn't D.O.P. is shipped to other countries, particularly France, where it is mixed with local wine and then sold as being from that country. The unloved wine is the sort of wine that you would use for things where any old wine will do - preserving fruits, cooking, turning into vin...