Life in Culebrón

In the run up to Christmas we bought a couple of coca from the women running the Caritas stall outside the Parish Rooms in Pinoso. The coca were cooked as we watched and wrapped in silver paper. For two we paid one Euro. I like coca and I wolfed mine down. My companion was not so keen. Mind, she's the sort of woman who doesn't like digestive biscuits. She likes something a bit fancier. She calls coca fat pies. Coca has nothing to do with soft drinks or narcotics. Coca is a sort of thickish pancake made with flour, water and olive oil, salted to taste. You make a dough, separate off a small ball shaped lump of it, squash it down with the heel of your hand to make a vague circular shape before frying it up on a plancha which is an oil coated flat hot surface. You couldn't get much simpler. There's another traditional food around here called gachamiga made with just flour, oil, water and garlic. In most of the village fiestas there will be competitions (traditionally for m...

Over the last few weeks we've been in theatres a little more regularly than usual. We saw Carmina Burana in Alcoy, Totally Tina in the Gran Teatre in Elche, Miguel Poveda down at the ADDA in Alicante and then a classical orchestra at The Chapí in Villena. The last thing I went to here in Pinoso was quite a while ago now though, the Akram Trio, at the tail end of November. While we go to theatres for bands, opera, dance, music, zarzuelas and even magic we usually shy away from plays. Too tricky for our dodgy Spanish.  As I hope you know Culebrón is a part of Pinoso and Pinoso has a population of about 8,500. In the English countryside Pinoso would be no more than a village but here it's definitely a town - probably because it provides town like services. One of those services is a theatre, the frequently used Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez. Settlements even smaller than Pinoso boast a theatre. Nearby Algueña (1300 people) and Salinas (1600) both have theatres and so (obviously) ...

Everyone knows that Germans don't have a sense of humour. Everyone knows that people from the United States are fat, that Jamaicans have dreads and smoke ganja all the time or that we English are very formal and reserved. And everyone knows that those generalisations are all totally untrue. Jada Pinkett Smith is American, Usain Bolt is Jamaican and all those people vomiting on the payments in Magaluf are British. Bear that idea in mind as you read. Here are some things that Spaniards do or don't do. The converse is that somebody else typically does do, or doesn't do, these things. Spanish men don't wear shorts once summer is over and until the summer weather comes back. A warm day in February doesn't count. Spaniards don't put butter on the bread - not on sandwiches and not on the plate to go with the bread roll at table. It is true that, in some parts of Spain, Spaniards put butter on toast, with jam. Spaniards do not drink warm drinks - tea, coffee type drinks...

I've been chided many, many times, by friends and acquaintances, for choosing to go into "old men's bars". If you live in Spain you know the sort of place. It's not a particularly lavishly decorated spot. In fact, normally it's a bit dowdy, poorly lit, a bit grubby. It has a tiled floor that has seen better times, the tables and chairs are a bit worse for wear too. Probably there are piles of abandoned kit in plain view - beer crates, extra tables, mop buckets and over there, by the toilets, an old fashioned chest freezer, emblazoned with a company name, now used just for ice and as a resting place for flotsam and jetsam. The bar of the bar is probably quite long and it's not particularly decorative  - stainless steel or some polished stone maybe. In the old days there used to be heaps of used serviettes on the floor by the bar. The telly will be on, though usually the sound is muted. That's not the case with the rest of the place. If what your eyes se...

Last Friday, November 25, there were demonstrations and events all over Spain for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. As you enter the majority of Spanish towns and cities you will see a purple sign telling you that this town is against gender violence - that's one of Pinoso's on the left. When women in Spain are murdered by their partners or ex partners the murder is always given prominence in the news. There is a well publicised, 016, national helpline against gender violence. In Pinoso every first Friday of the month at 8pm, there are a few minutes of silence to remember the victims of gender violence. Spain was the fourth country in the world to introduce same sex marriage. The Yes is Yes Law that has just come into force, and which is having a stormy introduction for some dodgy legal drafting, is legislation which makes prosecution of rapists and abusers much less difficult and less traumatic for women. A new bit of legislation came into fo...