Life in Culebrón

Every country has some sort of ritual, some sort of symbol, that pulls at the heartstrings and brings tears to the eyes of the true patriot. Maybe it's as the Stars and Stripes ripples in a gentle evening breeze, moments before the flag is struck, standing, hand on heart, thinking land of the free and home of the brave. It could be a Promenader at the Royal Albert Hall on the Last Night exercising their lungs to sing "Land of Hope and Glory". Sometimes the thing is official – "La Marseillaise" for the French almost anywhere and everywhere, or the adulation of the potato, the official state "vegetable" of the good folk of Idaho – and sometimes it's just the ink-black silhouette of a bull. If you've been to Spain you know how that one-dimensional bull stands sentinel over the roads and motorways of the country. If not, maybe you have friends – they may not actually be good friends – who have brought you back the mug with that black bull firmly as...

I always say that it's a part of my cultural education to get out and about in Spain a bit. Getting out and about has several levels. If you consider that our house is a little island of Britishness then going to a bar and getting a coffee is a journey to Spain. It doesn't really matter whether the out and aboutness is big or small. Memorable things happen on the doorstep just as much as hundreds of kilometres away though, obviously, the reverse is also true! Out and about can be villages and towns and cities and parks and castles and museums and hills and churches and, even if they fail you, your luck may be better in a restaurant with something that you've never heard of on the menu. Out and about can be fiestas. Most countries have theatres, cinemas, museums, concerts, coastline, woodland, prehistoric sites and so on and most places have fiestas too. The Tar barl festival in Allendale in Northumberland, the one with the burning tar barrels on the head, is as barmy as any...

In Spain you have to carry ID at all times. For Spanish nationals they have an identity card, the DNI and for foreigners there is a TIE, the Foreigner's Identity Card. EU citizens, within an EU country like Spain, are neither Nationals nor foreigners. This means that EU citizens have to carry the form of ID in use in their country. Now we Brits are a little odd in that we don't have an ID card so Brits are supposed to carry their passport with them at all times in case the "Competent Authority" needs to see it. As well as the need to carry identification EU citizens, living in Spain, have to register. When the scheme was first introduced the registration certificate was a bit of green A4 paper but later it became smaller and more card like, something like the old UK paper driving licence. A couple of weeks ago the UK left the European Union. Consequently the registration document became a bit of an anachronism for UK citizens. Nonetheless with the transitio...

Maggie was most definite in the manner in which she declined to go on the roller coaster that flipped people over and did barrel rolls. She kept reminding me about the Icelander who had died on a similar ride in the same park just a couple of months ago. Later though, by herself - I was too macho to join her - she went on the teen size roller coaster. Emboldened by her experience she agreed to go on the old style big dipper. All Billy Butlin at Skegness. Apparently built of criss crossing wood like the rail bridges in classic cowboy films and with sit up and beg cars. It rattled and shook, it rocked and rolled. Maggie didn't seem to enjoy it much. She did enjoy the boat ride type roller coasters though and she let me go on one of those bungee jump type rides and the one that spins around a central pivot. In fact we had a thoroughly enjoyable time at Terra Mitica theme park. The place is based on the motifs of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The park has an unhappy financ...

It cost more this year. 15€ more to be precise. We set out earlier and I think we maybe got an extra meal. Otherwise it was very much the same. In Spanish style we stuck with what we know and went to the same hotel. Benidorm remains as unique as ever. Maggie said the best part for her was in a bar with a motorbike/Hell's Angels theme and live music on the seafront. I think the bit I enjoyed most was when someone asked us if we wanted to go into a bar - free drink he said. He wasn't the first to ask nor was he the last but, for some reason, we went into his place and not the others. There was a group of girls on a hen party and later a bunch of blokes out for a stag night. They were all in fancy dress and it seemed a bit desperate as they tried, so hard, to have a good time in a tacky bar on a coolish evening in a quiet Benidorm. There was a bloke who took off his shirt maybe in the hope of attracting one of the girls with his six pack. Unfortunately for him any physical plu...

"Good evening, sir," said the Guardia Civil, "Alcohol test." Thus saying he passed me a mouthpiece sealed in cellophane which I cracked open before attaching it to his breath meter thingy. I blew into the machine - "Correct," said the Guardia. "You may proceed." And proceed I did. That's the second time I've been stopped for a random breath test in Spain. It was about three in the morning and I was just joining the motorway to drive back to Culebrón. We'd been to the Low Cost Festival in Benidorm to see a few bands. I understand why the police were waiting. When we'd watched some of the early evening bands we had several acres of space around us and we were surrounded by nice people chatting gently. By the time we got to the bigger bands the space was less than that required for the proverbial cat and the crowd was a little more boisterous. By the time we watched Vetusta Morla at about 2am we had only Ryanair space and everyon...

Benidorm has to be one of the oddest towns in Spain. For a start it looks odd. Far too many tall buildings for your average Spanish town. It also seems to lack any sort of cultural life in the theatre and museum sense of the word. I'm sure that isn't true but as an average visitor all I saw were bars, restaurants, poundstretcher type shops and sex clubs. All of them had that sort of seedy, run down look reserved for brash seaside towns. Benidorm feels oddly foreign too. Obviously the majority of businesses in a Spanish town dedicated to tourism are Spanish but there are so many British, German, Dutch and even Chinese businesses that it would be easy for any of the nationals of those countries to forget that they had left their homelands. Benidorm was odd in another, much less quirky, way. At one point on Saturday night we were strolling along a pedestrianised street. There were bars on both sides and planted firmly in the middle of the street were muscly, shaven headed men...

Back in November at the AGM of the Neighbourhood Association  there was talk of going to Benidorm for a weekend. A couple of weeks ago that vague possibility turned into reality. I got the email. Were we coming? Now the immediate and romantic answer is a resounding yes. Picture it; we two Brits taking our place as members of our adopted community, striding arm in arm with our compañeros down the prom in search of serious fun. When I asked Maggie about it she was more realistic. You think it's a good idea now but, when it happens, you'll get cross because you have trouble with your Spanish. First you'll get cross with yourself, then you'll get cross with me and then you'll start sulking or drink too much and leave me to do all the talking. She's right of course. And, there's not that much serious fun to be had in Benidorm at this time of year anyway. Today I got a second message from the vecinos. They needed a decision and they needed it now. There we...