I like this particular cinema because the staff are friendly and because it's not busy. Unlike all the other cinemas, which only show Hollywood, Spanish or worldwide hits, this cinema shows anything they can get hold of. One of the reasons being that in a few of the screens they still had film projectors so they were still showing film or, as a half way measure, they showed Blu Ray stuff. It's not exactly arts cinema, and all of it is dubbed, but I've seen some really offbeat stuff. They have just digitalized the last few screens so I suppose that will change.
The reason for this heavingosity in the car park, the hordes of shoppers in the centre and the queues in the cinema was Black Friday. Until last year I had never even heard of Black Friday.
On Halloween we were in Jumilla to go to the theatre. As we hit the pre theatre tapas there were hundreds of children dressed as witches, spidermen and vampires being shepherded from doorbell to doorbell shouting truco o trato a semi translation of trick or treat. Halloween is definitely gaining ground.
Over a week ago we were doing a big supermarket shop. The in store tannoy system was urging us to put in our order for our festive meat. The Christmas lottery advert is on the telly, there are adverts with snow, the Chinese shops have Christmas trees, the turrón table is out at the local fruit and nut co-op. The Christmas campaigns have started. Until very recently nothing Christmassy happened till December 1st at the earliest.
I haven't seen anything three wheeled or pulled by a donkey or mule for a while. They use contactless technology for the credit card at the petrol station and lots of things that I have complained about having to do in person during the life of this blog can now be done on the Internet. Spain has become much more like everywhere else really quickly recently.
