Life in Culebrón

There's quite a lot of stuff that I'm aware of because I'm English. Stuff like knowing that Belgravia and Chelsea are rich parts of London, that Trafalgar Square is the (English) place to be for New Year, that Land of Hope and Glory will get a lung bashing the Last Night of the Proms and that haddock is not the usual fish in fish and chips but it was where I grew up. One of the pleasures and pitfalls of living in a place you were not born is that the common knowledge in the new place will be different. I've mentioned this in blogs lots of times before. I find it interesting, otherwise why would I be in the least interested in the story of Suavina lip balm  and why would I keep going on about how strange Spaniards find it that we drink hot drinks with food or think that cheese and onion sandwiches are normal? Last month we stayed over in Alcoy during the weekend of their Modernista Fair. Modernista, modernism is something else that I'd never really heard of till I go...

Some friends asked us if we could organise a visit to a bodega. They didn't really mean me, they meant my partner, Maggie. She likes wine, she likes to visit bodegas. Wine is one of her hobbies, she knows a good deal about the local wineries and their products. I count beer and brandy among my hobbies but the focus is somewhat different. Spain produces a lot of wine. I wasn't quite sure how much or where the country was in the pecking order of wine producers but I was sure the Internet would know. Like so many times before I found that the information is not so cut and dried as you might expect.  Where Spain ranks in world wine production fits with what may, or may not, be a Spanish urban myth about Italian olive oil. Spaniards say that the oil produced in Spain is shipped in bulk to Italy where it is put into stylish bottles with Italian labels and passed off as Italian. The Italians have, for a long time,  marketed their oil as a top quality product, much better than the hum...

Our house is a shade over 600 metres above sea level. If you say that in feet it's just shy of 2,000 feet which, in the UK, would be hilly. The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge with Pen-y-Ghent at 694 metres, Whernside at 736 metres and Ingleborough at 723 metres are all a bit lower than the humble, but 800 metre high hill, Xirivell, at the back of our house. Just a little further away the Sierra del Carche range, which you can see from Pinoso and which you drive alongside on the way to nearby Jumilla, rises to 1371 metres which is just a few metres up on Ben Nevis at 1345 metres. That said the Grampians, the Lake District or the Machynlleth Hills call for high tech footwear, cuben fibre gear and trekking poles while Xirivell is much more a flip flops and shorts hill. The difference is the height of the surrounding flatland. The Spanish Ordnance Survey, the National Geographic Institute (IGN from it's initials in Spanish), began work on the first topographic maps in 1857. One of...

Second-hand car prices being what they are in Spain, and because I could, I bought a car from new. I was actually in a situation where I could have paid outright (pension lump sum), but the dealer offered a better price, even with all the interest, on a finance package. The finance period had to be 48 months or more. When the last instalment left my bank account on September 14 this year I grinned. The car was mine. Or so I thought. I have an application on my phone called Mi DGT or My DGT (DGT is Dirección General de Transporte - something like The Ministry of Transport ). Apart from being a bit on the clunky side, the phone app's OK. It holds my driving licence and most of the official documentation on the car. At the top of the details about the car, there is a red band and a warning sign. Basically, it says I'm not the owner of the car, VW Finance is. I've been waiting for the red notice to go away since I paid the last instalment, but today, for the first time, I bothe...

I forget exactly but I think it was when they were burying the old Queen. As the cortege passed, at least on one stretch, people applauded. The British public didn't keep quiet, they didn't hold with the old stiff upper lip rule. No "dignified" silence. They showed their appreciation. They clapped. Spaniards always applaud at funerals, at celebrity funerals, at funerals for victims, at funerals for heroes. Reverence isn't the way; full voiced appreciation is. Spaniards applauded the health workers every evening for 64 consecutive days during the pandemic. Spaniards applaud under lots of circumstances. When something bad happens. When women are murdered by their partners. When children are kidnapped, when workers die in industrial accidents, Spaniards go and stand somewhere, together, and make a show of their concern and solidarity. A short period of silence, at noon, followed by applause, outside the town hall is typical. When something bad happens in a town. When...