Life in Culebrón

Last weekend we went on a guided visit in Villena. The title was something like Gnomones y saetillas , and, after I’d booked it, I began to wonder whether I had made a big mistake. A gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow; the saetillas are the little grooves or lines which turn that shadow into a reading of the time. It sounded dangerously technical. In fact, it turned out to be really interesting because they led us into a much bigger story about time, its measurement and its ownership. The visit began, as so much of old European life does, with the Church. Before clocks were common, the bells of the church were how people measured time. They rang for the various services and masses: the daily offices of prayer — Matins and Lauds, traditionally during the night or early morning, Prime, Terce, Sext and None through the working day, then Vespers in the evening and Compline before sleep. They also announced Mass, funerals, feasts, emergencies and, no doubt, the occasional...

Television is no longer the shared experience it once was. Streaming services have fragmented our viewing habits, and we no longer all gather around the same handful of channels. Social networks and online platforms claim our attention. Yet national television channels — the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK, or RTVE and Telecinco in Spain — still hold a unique place in shaping a nation’s culture. TV may no longer sit at the cutting edge, but whenever a politician, athlete or online star breaks into the public consciousness, they still end up on the box. Even today it provides common reference points for fashion, language and social norms. In short, it helps define the world we live in. Yet after more than two decades in Spain, I find I have never really connected with Spanish television. It is not simply a matter of language or cultural barriers. It comes down to the nature of the programmes themselves, and the bizarre logic of how they are scheduled. British television has always had a sub...

We inherited a telly the other day. Excellent, 4K, big screen, all that sort of stuff. Suddenly I realised we were still children of the 20th century. It was like the last time I bought a laptop and the one-terabyte disc had gone. Obviously, being in Spain, we watch Spanish telly. Except, no, we don't—mainly because most of what's on offer is truly terrible. I think they called it 'Zoo Radio' for a while: that format where an individual DJ playing individual tunes gave way to a group of people talking about how their mum pickled eggs, with the occasional song thrown in. Spaniards aren't big followers of the ping-pong conversational style of us Brits at the best of times; they prefer overlapping conversations, but with a group it just turns into a verbal brawl. And that's the very fuel of Spanish telly. So I don't watch a lot. I try the occasional series, or maybe a programme here or there that looks OK, but basically I watch the news in Spanish and that'...

Now, anyone who has ever heard of Pinoso will know it is famed for wine (Pinoso’s bodega is the biggest producer of organic wine in the province), marble (we have the largest marble quarry in Europe), shoemaking (now largely a thing of the past), and Mediterranean agricultural products (Frutos Secos Mañán is one of the largest almond producers and processors in Europe). Not much is said about salt. Yet Pinoso is a major salt producer. Unfortunately, the town sees little of that wealth: the salt deposit is owned by the Spanish Treasury (Hacienda), and the profits from working it go to a French company within the Salins Group. We’re friendly with wine. Well, we’re members of the local "Amigos del Vino" here in Pinoso. We usually go on trips out in a charabanc which have some passing association with wine. If possible, we like to drink some. But last week we went on a trip with a different focus. We followed the route of that salt from deep inside our emblematic hill down to the...

I had the very strangest conversation not an hour ago—well, it was an hour ago as I type, but it may be days ago as you read—with a couple of local Pinoso women who I may well know. Not that I recognised them. But one day I'll tell you the story about not recognising my mum in an airport that only handles about five flights a day. So, on the 18th there will be the annual cancer walk. It's against cancer, you understand. I'm not quite sure how that works but, for years, I've bought the T-shirt and once or twice I've walked around the route with a couple of hundred other people. To get hold of the T-shirt you have to go along to the HQ of the local AECC (Asociación Española Contra el Cáncer) and hand over the cash. You can usually do that twice a week between such-and-such and such-and-such a fortnight before the event. So I turned up. Oddly, I'd bumped into a phrase last week that's a variation on "the T-shirts tend to be on the small side"—the idea...

We’ll always be the “English neighbours”, no matter how much local paint I recommend or how many Spanish ministers I can name. That’s fine by me—but it’s not for everyone. A Scots bloke posted a video the other day—someone I’d never come across before—wrestling with his doubts about living in Spain. He was heading back to Scotland for a few weeks to test if it was still the place of his memories before committing to staying or going “home”. Reading between the lines of his eleven-minute video, what he missed was the easy comfort and deep-rooted sense of belonging from his past. Spain was great, but he felt he’d never truly belong. And frankly, I suspect he has a point. I’ve never once doubted our own move here. I’ve bought my funeral plan. I expect to end my days here. We didn’t leave the UK for negative reasons; we came to Spain for positive ones, and lots of those things still amuse me even now. It wasn’t even about chasing the sun—our initial plan in Castilla y León would have invol...