Life in Culebrón

A couple of weekends ago, we went to the Low Festival in Benidorm. Maggie, my partner, knows that I like festivals. She doesn't. She doesn't like the push and the shove and the constant standing and, generally, the music does nothing for her. She's decided on her favourite musicians now, and she pretty much sticks with them. She doesn't discount newer stuff; it's just that, generally, she finds it falls short of her established preferences. I'm going to try to do a piece here on the accessibility of music, but I know I'm going to meander and wander around the houses. So, what I want to say is that music is very accessible in Spain. From local concerts by town bands to municipal festivals for pianists or guitarists, through any number of styles and formats of music supported by local town halls for no other reason than that they see it as their job to enrich the cultural life of their populations. In the bigger towns, small, commercial, performance spaces co...

Spain is full of "pop" festivals. I think the biggest is now the Mad Cool Festival in Madrid but the one we were at over the weekend, the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim or FIB, certainly used to be the biggest. There are lots more - Primavera Sound, The Barcelona Beach Festival, Bilbao BBK Live, the Rototom Sunsplash Festival, Low Festival, Sonorama, Arenal Sound and many more. We were last at Benicàssim in 2008. That time we were in a very small tent and we slept on stones. Although we still tell stories about seeing Enrique Morente, Calvin Harris, Leonard Cohen, Morrissey or La Casa Azul we decided that we would never do it again. At least we would never camp again. We were too old, too bone breaky. So now, with me drawing my pension, Maggie decided we would go back and we'd stay in a tent. She called it glamping. I didn't argue. I like festivals. I have to be honest that I much prefer the first bands on. I like them because everything is more comfortable ...