Life in Culebrón

The other morning on the radio, half drowned out by my electric shaver and then the shower, I realised someone was talking about problems in the Spanish education system. It caught my attention because I spent about twelve years teaching English here, in enough different contexts to see that system at close quarters. Earning a crust as an employee in Spain — especially if your Spanish isn’t top-notch — can be hard. What saved me was ending up in a town in Salamanca province where being a Brit was still a novelty. A local language academy was happy to employ me so it could advertise native-speaker classes, and from there it became relatively easy to find work whenever I moved. Over the years I taught everyone from tiny, biting children through to university students trying to beef up their CVs, as well as employees in places as varied as shopping centres, power stations and chemical works. I also spent a year teaching across the full secondary age range in a state-funded but privately r...

Sometimes I use words that I don’t really understand. Recently, those words might have been health-related: "Just off for a PET-TAC scan," or "I’m glad to hear that your lymph nodes were OK." It wasn’t a health word that I eventually noticed, though; it was one related to churches. Now I’m not a big church user. I usually go into them if they’re open and in some place I’m visiting, but I’ve no idea why. They all look pretty much of a muchness inside—nice enough if you like statues and gold leaf and lots and lots of stone. I have tens, maybe hundreds, of photos of the insides of churches and, unless the photo has a caption, I never know where they are. This all started some while ago on a walk around Yecla in the Purísima church. Our guide pointed out a big red and yellow umbrella that she told us all basilicas have. I’ve noticed them since in various big churches and I’ve said, "Ooh, look, there’s one of those big red and yellow umbrellas to say that this place...

I often go to the cinema on Tuesdays and I usually buy the tickets online. The price of my ticket is just 2€ because of a government subsidy. The ticket for Maggie, mere stripling of a girl that she is, costs €7.40 at the over 60s rate. While it's rare at our habitual cinema, it's common at other venues, that I am asked for identification to prove that I am over 65. If I did not have my official ID with me, I presume they would refuse entry. So, despite having an unquestionable right to the subsidised price (because I'm over 65), I must prove it. In practice, this remains a theoretical concern, as carrying official identification is a legal requirement in Spain. For visiting Britons, and I presume for people of other nations, there is an obligation to carry official ID which means a passport for British citizens. Spain has a deep-rooted culture of identification, and ID cards are requested in the most unexpected situations. I often have to provide my ID number for local the...