Searching for authentic

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 be the "introduce a friend factor" the sort of thing that attracts immigrant communities to stick together all over the world. That doesn't explain why Pinoso has such a robust population of Britons while other towns close by don't. Pinoso is a pleasant little town, it's well organised, it's clean, there's plenty going on and it offers a good range of services. Those things are solid positives but they are not the sort of thing that really attract people to an area; they are things you discover after you've moved in. The other day, as I was parking my car someone was parking alongside. The driver turned out to be a retired police officer who I've known for a long time. We were hanging in the car doors, nattering, when a man interrupted our conversation. He explained he was a visitor to the town and he wondered what there was to see. "Not much," said my pal.

Lots of Britons probably choose Alicante province because they have fond memories of getting burned to a crisp on a Costa Blanca beach or a night of sangria fuelled passion in a Benidorm hotel. The weather is an obvious draw but why here, why not somewhere else? I suspect one reason for we Brits, and probably the Belgians and Norwegians too, is that we are looking to move to the real Spain. We're the sort of  Britons, Irish and French who don't think that the coast is authentically Spanish. Real Spain should be full of gnarled widows in black weeds stringing garlic on their doorsteps or wrinkled faced, flat hat wearing horny handed sons of toil driving tractors or, better still, riding donkeys as they drink from wineskins. It should be full of independent shops with dusty window displays of sun faded fans. It should be somewhere that takes a siesta. Even better though if you can have those things but still get a bit of help, in your own language, should the need arise.

I became much more aware of where we lived, how anachronistic our Spain is, when Covid struck. I'd presumed we lived in one of the many possible Spains but what I saw on the telly, what the politicians were legislating for, wasn't where I lived. Every evening for weeks and weeks thousands and thousands of Spaniards crowded onto their balconies at 8pm to applaud the health workers. That outpouring of solidarity brought home to me that most of Spain lives in flats. Most of Spain has very little private exterior space. Most of Spain lives cheek by jowl in places with traffic jams, with no parking spaces, with chain brand shops, with Glovo food delivery, with access to taxis, public transport, with a hospital on the doorstep and with occasional street violence. Those of us living in houses, maybe with a garden, with a bit of space, were a fortunate minority who knew that those urban statistics of cases per 100,000 didn't reflect any real emergency in our rural communities.

So maybe if we did come here looking for the Real Spain we were searching in the wrong place. It isn't an individual country villa with a pool where vapid curtains waft in a gentle breeze while the sunlight streams in from the terrace. It's really a third floor flat with communal washing lines on the roof and the blinds closed tight to keep out the searing heat. In fact, without knowing it, Pinoso may offer a much more lyrical version of Spain than that enjoyed by most Spaniards.