Life in Culebrón

My theory is simple enough. Spaniards like to talk. A corollary to that may be that Britons prefer to read. I suppose that Spaniards like to interact with other people, whenever possible. I mean, for goodness’ sake, why else would anyone going into a post office, or a hospital waiting room, feel the need to say hello to the room in general? Or why on that quiet woodland stroll does every sport clothes clad passer-by offer a greeting? I know walkers do it everywhere, but this is for the walk from the car park to the neolithic cave, not a trudge along the Pennine Way. It is, I have to say, possibly true that this universal truth is not so universal where the pace is hustle and bustle. It is right for our little corner of the world, but it may be that nobody in Zaragoza says hello as they enter the bank, although I suspect they do. I mean, otherwise how would they queue? We Britons stand in a line. There is a physical marker. No need to communicate. All we have to do is look up from our p...

I was watching the TV news and guffawing slightly as egg-throwing ratepayers tried to pelt the mayor of Morrazo in Galicia. She was escorted to her car by police officers crouching behind transparent shields. The unpleasantness was caused by an increase in the rubbish collection rates. How much the price was upped depends on which source you believe but it was probably about 70%. All over Spain, rubbish collection charges have been going up. If you live in Pinoso, you will remember that the town doubled its rubbish charge to 120€ from 60€ in 2024. I vaguely recall that Orihuela residents took to the streets a little while ago when their water and rubbish charges went up a lot and I think there are other local examples too. Pinoso residents did not go a burnin' and lootin' in 2024. These increases are driven by European and Spanish legislation that requires town halls to ensure that individuals and businesses cover the real cost of processing the rubbish they produce. Subsidies ...

Often, on the Pinoso Community Facebook page people, who are considering moving to this area, ask - 'What's Pinoso like?' So, as a nice easy blog, I thought I'd give my answer to that question for those people. First off, Pinoso is more a big village than a small town and expectations should reflect that. The town is in the province of Alicante, part of the Comunitat Valenciana, but it's right on the border with the Murcia region. Pinoso, like all of Spain, speaks Castilian Spanish which is the Spanish spoken worldwide. However, because it is a part of the Valencian region it also speaks a local variant of Catalan called Valenciano which is taught in all the local schools. You will hear Valenciano all over the place. Increasingly the town hall produces information primarily in Valenciano. The population of the municipality is a bit short of 9,000 people, and that includes all the people living in the satellite villages or pedanías that surround the town. Culebrón, w...

There was a time when people read magazines printed on paper. One of them,  Cosmopolitan, used to run light-hearted quizzes – Do you have what it takes to be a boss?, Are you a potential serial killer? – that kind of thing. One of the inevitable questions was whether you were a dog or a cat person. Our house is definitely cat, but for many Spanish households that question is about as useful as the outcome of those tests. Lots of Spaniards will tell you they have cats, but they don’t mean that in the same way as they do for dogs, or the same as we do. Our cats sleep on the sofa and they are steadily, and sometimes not so steadily, dismantling the house. Those half on, half off cats might get a name and a bowl of food left out, but little more. Current legislation says that option no longer exists; either people take responsibility for animals in their care or they will get into bother. But rules and reality are often two completely different things. I should add that some Spanish c...