No more worries for a week or two

Summer is an interesting time in Spain. When the sun shines the country slows. In August the country treads water. It's not as true as it once was and it's never been 100% true but it's true enough for a blog.

The first to prepare for the Spanish summer, which lasts from 1 July to 31 August, are the TV advertisers. From the beginning of June happy groups of friends and families will begin to appear on TV screens, sitting around big tables in the garden eating paella or pizza and drinking beer. Most of the rest of Spain begins to prepare for Summer around San Juan, June 23. Those who have a beachside or country property start to ackle it up for the summer. It's amazing how many people have access to a country home or a seaside flat. In both cases the trick is inheritance. The money from the sale of Grandma's house made the flat affordable. The other option is that Grandma's house is where the family now spends Summer. The house gives the family roots, they may live in the big city, they may eat takeaway but this is where they belong. Even if you don't have a flat on the coast or a house in the country you may well have friends who do and who are willing to let you use, or even share, the place with them. If not, well, plenty of places to rent.

Then the schools close so the families have to arrange summer camps or playschemes or just the long suffering grandparents as childcare. A surprising number of people get laid off work for the summer. "Non state" teachers, the ones who work in academies or in private schools, are a good example. They find that their fixed discontinuous contracts come into play. The job will still be there when the new term starts in September/October but, in the meantime it's a case of drawing the dole or finding a summer job or, if that fails, simply hunkering down with the family and spending nothing.

Traditionally lots of Spaniards would take a month's holiday in summer. All of August for instance. Lots of local and government workplaces would close and several still do. The Health Service goes into an, almost, emergency only situation. Lots of businesses change their working hours to be from early morning to early afternoon rather than the traditional split day. Who wants to work and swelter in the summer afternoon heat? 

For most people a whole month off is no longer feasible and horizons have broadened. The tendency now is maybe a fortnight at the beach/pueblo keeping some of the holiday back for Christmas and other times of the year. There's also the other possibility that the flat or pueblo house is pretty close by. Lots of Ilicitanos, people from Elche, have places on the coast in El Altet or Gran Alacant or Santa Pola for instance. That distance is commutable so people go back to the coast at the end of the reduced day. If that isn't the case then, unlike the US Marines, Spanish families do leave men behind. At least it used to be men. They were abandoned to tread the melting tarmac of, the almost deserted, Madrid while the family paddled at the coast or gossiped in the country village square. Any man in that situation could explain it quickly with the phrase "estoy de Rodríguez". Nowadays I suppose who stays behind, in the holiday spot, providing the childcare, and who commutes to work or stays in the city depends on individual circumstances. If nobody is left in the summer home to look after the kids then that's what grandparents are for.

There are lots and lots of summer habits to be observed: the beach bar or chiringuito, the silver foil wrapped tortilla sandwich, the 2pm exodus from the beach, the queue at the fountain with water containers or just trying to mimic that particular swooshing slapping sound that Spanish men elicit from their flip flops as they move along the beachside pavement. July and August are just stuffed full of "we've always done it that way" events. The municipal swimming pools as a centre of neighbourhood or small town activity, particularly for young people, the outdoor cinema, the village fiestas with their orquestas or show bands, concerts in the parks etc., etc., etc. 

Strangely most Britons won't see a lot of it because so much takes place late at night as the world cools down. A concert that starts at midnight just smacks of summer madness to most of we Brits. For Spaniards of course a late night start just about gives them time to get there after the evening meal. Different rhythms.

Breakdown of the 2021 Pinoso population figures by country of origin

A little while ago I published a blog about the population of Pinoso. A lot of people showed some interest in that entry. As a result I asked the Pinoso Town Hall if they'd publish a breakdown of the figures as several people had asked about their home countries. The Town Hall published the figures. I'd like to think it's because I asked but it's probably sheer chance!
Nationalities	MEN	WOMEN	TOTAL
EUROPE
Austria	1	0	1
Belgium	35	34	69
Bulgaria	12	13	25
Czech Republic	0	2	2
Denmark	2	0	2
Finland	0	1	1
France	9	4	13
Germany	16	17	33
Iceland	2	1	3
Ireland	12	6	18
Italy	9	10	19
Latvia	0	1	1
Lithuania	1	1	2
Macedonia	1	0	1
Netherlands	34	37	71
Norway	3	3	6
Poland	8	11	19
Portugal	1	2	3
Rumania	30	37	67
Russia	1	2	3
Slovakia	0	1	1
Spain	3437	3337	6774
Sweden	3	2	5
Switzerland	0	1	1
Ukraine	23	28	51
United Kingdom	429	406	835
AFRICA
Algeria	15	9	24
Mali	2	0	2
Morocco	102	97	199
Mauritania	1	1	2
Senegal	3	0	3
Zambia	0	1	1
Zimbabwe	1	0	1
AMERICA
Argentina	4	2	6
Bolivia	5	6	11
Brazil	2	2	4
Canada	2	0	2
Colombia	10	12	22
Cuba	2	3	5
Dominican Republic	6	6	12
Ecuador	23	18	41
Guatemala	2	2	4
Honduras	0	4	4
Mexico	0	2	2
Nicaragua	9	5	14
Paraguay	0	4	4
Peru	4	3	7
USA	2	3	5
Uruguay	3	6	9
Venezuela	4	4	8
ASIA
China	10	8	18
India	5	0	5
Japan	0	1	1
Pakistan	16	12	28
Thailand	1	2	3
OTHER
Stateless	0	1	1
Former Spanish Territories	2	2	4
Total	4305	4173	8478
.

Not shaken, not stirred

When I was young I was confused about many things. One of them was the Martini adverts. There were beautiful people Martini drinkers in floaty fabrics with red or white coloured drinks and sunny backdrops. Then there were Hollywood Martini drinkers at posh parties in elegant frocks and dinner jackets with conical cocktail glasses and swizzle sticks. It took me years to work out that Martinis and Martini were different things. 

Anyway, Martini, the stuff with the bright young things, like Cinzano is just a branded vermouth and, as so often, we Britons think of something Italian when we think of Mediterranean staples. Vermouth is, basically a wine with various herbs, spices, barks and plant extracts added to give it a particular taste. Wikipedia tells me the name originates from the German word wermut which means wormwood and wormwood is used in nearly all vermouth to give it that particular flavour.

So, years ago, in a Spanish evening class, the teacher told us that most bars in Spain did their own vermouth. My guess is that slapping in a few herbs and roots and bits of bark into rough wine is a way to hide its true taste. Nowadays, when the bars and restaurants want to offload the same sort of plonk they simply put it in the fridge. So, all those years ago, I'm in a raggedy bar in Granada with lots of rickety chairs on the dusty forecourt cum car park. I remember this factlet about homemade vermouth from the evening class. I ask if they serve vermut. They do. The barkeeper produces a well used, cork stoppered, white wine bottle from underneath the bar and pours me a generous measure. I forget what it tasted like. 

Thirty something years later I'm in Granada again and I remember that bar. On my first visit it was the sort of place with toothless, domino playing old men smoking Ducados. By the second decade of the 21st Century the bar had been trendied up so that it looked even more traditionally Spanish. I was surprised there was no guitar player and no horse parked outside. The bar was full of tourists who had read about the place in their Lonely Planet guides. The vermouth bottle had a nice label.

Vermouth didn't really cross my path again till we settled in Culebrón. One of our first tasks was to investigate the local bodegas, the places that produce and sell wine. Most of them had a vermouth and all of them tasted slightly different. Obviously it was our cultural duty to investigate the differences and we did so with due diligence. When the novelty wore off, and the morning after consequences became unacceptable, Maggie went back to unsullied wine and I divided my time between tea and beer. 

Vermouth resurfaced again, for us, some years ago when our local Culebrón village fiesta advertised a vermouth session as the opening event for the weekend. Roberto, from the village bodega, brought a few litres of vermouth to the social centre and we all set around drinking it. Vermouth can be taken with or without soda water, sifón, but definitely with ice, orange slices and green olives. A little later, when the Socialists won the town elections, in 2011, they changed the character of the town fiestas to be more participative (take that as personal opinion rather than demonstrable fact). Among other things they introduced a vermouth session in the municipal gardens just before lunch. I presumed it was a well established Spanish tradition and I applied myself, once more, to this cultural activity with British rigour.

Vermouth hour, la hora del vermut, really is a Spanish social tradition; a time for friends and family (and presumably enemies and complete strangers) to have a bit of a preprandial drink. It's quite odd, as I was drafting this post there was an author on the radio talking about his book and about the book fair that is on in Madrid at the moment. When the interviewer asked the writer when he was signing he said he was working la hora del vermut.

The idea of having an aperitif before eating is hardly uniquely Spanish, lots of countries do it, but, in most countries it's an evening rather than an afternoon tradition. Apparently there are two principal theories as to why Spain is different. The first has it that before the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) Spaniards did as most of the rest of Europe and had an aperitif before the evening meal but, after the war, people were often so hard up that they needed two jobs to get by. This prompted a change in working patterns with people combining a morning shift with an afternoon/evening shift. The late evening finish relegated the evening meal to being more akin to a snack than a full blown meal and the main meal of the day shifted to the time between the finish of the morning job and the start of the afternoon/evening job. This change not only affected the hora del vermut but also radically arranged the Spanish working day. The second, and much more widely accepted theory, is that the hora del vermut was originally something that rich people did in the slot between finishing mass on Sunday and eating lunch. As the Spanish economy grew, and a middle class began to develop, one of the first luxuries that this new class could afford, one of the few habits of the rich that they could easily copy, was to have a bit of a tipple before Sunday lunch. And it's easy to see that developing into a daily routine.

Whilst the original drink for the preprandial was vermouth tastes began to change and people tended to other drinks to "open their appetite" maybe a beer, maybe a wine. As the habits changed the name didn't. Just as people in the UK may have coffee at teatime or tea at coffee break the name, hora del vermut, stuck to describe this pre-lunch drink. At the end of the last century vermut was relegated to a very secondary place in Spanish drinking habits but recently there has been a bit of a resurgence and there are now lots of craft vermouths and even specialist vermouth bars. Some of these vermuterias offer drinks that bear only a passing resemblance to traditional vermouth - things like cider or gin laced with those "botanic" ingredients.

We're still waiting for our first vermuteria in Pinoso but in the meantime I think it's beholden to all of us to embrace the traditions of our new home and do what we can to promote this age old custom!

Fattening of geese

I know that Christmas cards are a thing of the past. I know that they clutter up all the surfaces not occupied by the Laughing Santa and the Nativity Scene. I know that they are only read once - usually quickly - but I also know that they are homely and nice. A reminder that we still have some friends. Of course, it's a return on investment landscape. To receive cards you have to send cards. I didn't in 2018 and it didn't feel right. Where to get some for this year?

We had a bit of a look around locally. Not very seriously. Actually it was more like a virtual tour - we thought our way around possible local suppliers. We knew of places with hand crafted cards and obviously the Post Office would be selling the UNICEF ones but either option would be a bit pricey for a bulk mailing. If we'd thought harder or started earlier we'd have found somewhere but we didn't and we hadn't. I looked at Amazon but delivery dates were sometimes dodgy and it's difficult to tell how flimsy and even how big the cards are from the on screen photos.

So we drove the 60kms to San Fulgencio. Everyone calls the supermarket Iceland even though the sign outside says Overseas. They are scattered throughout Spain. The last time we shopped in one was probably in 2018 though it may have been 2017. Generally we pop in around this time of year with thoughts fixed on Christmas stuff. When I say Christmas stuff I actually mean Quality Street (or Roses or Celebrations or Heroes). "I'm only going to buy sweets, sauces and chutney, oh and maybe some Stilton, and Bombay Mix," I said, as we got out of the car. 

Hah! I've just finished off a pork pie and we have some Gregg's cheese and onion pasties warming in the oven. As always we fell prey to fondly remembered tastes even though we know that the memory nearly always tastes better.

It's an interesting place is the Overseas Supermarket. There is very little concession to the store being in Spain apart from the prices being in euros. The buyers and sellers are Britons, the music is British Christmas staple, the language is English and the products are "British" too. Usually there is a Spaniard who has learned to love Robertson's jam, Princes Corned Beef or Gray Dunn Caramel Wafers but today it was just us, just Britons. Even the public information announcements, which punctuated the in-store music, about wearing face coverings and keeping your distance, were from England.

Right then now for an Army & Navy sweet and maybe then I'll start writing cards.

Spanish for Siegfried, Triston and James

I read a book last week. In it a young woman has moved to the country, to a small village in the middle of nowhere Spain. She's thinking community and tranquillity. She rents a house and the first thing that she asks her landlord is if he knows someone who might have a dog for her. I was reminded of one of Maggie's stories. Maggie worked with a woman in Madrid who had a Spanish partner. The couple decided to move to the countryside and one of the requisites, one of the first things to do, according to Maggie's friend, was to get a "brute of a dog".

In the book the landlord palms the young woman off with one of his own dodgy dogs. Like all good country Spaniards the landlord thinks that it's cruel and unusual to sterilize a pet. The newcomer is from the city though and she takes the dog, for sterilization, to the nearest vet. The description of the vet's office is of a dusty and run down place where the vet is reading his phone and where there are no clients. It was much like that when we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo - except that it was before smartphones became our every time diversion. Eduardo the cat went with us. When it got to the time for his annual jabs I took him to the local veterinarian. The office was a scruffy and the vet was his own receptionist. I went more than once and I never had to wait.

It's not like that in Pinoso. We have a vet who trades under the name of Huellas; Pawprints. There's quite a team at Huellas including a receptionist, a bloke who seems to do a bit of everything, a couple of small animal vets - vets who deal with small animals not diminutive vets - and I think there's also a large animal vet (variation on the same explanation) but I haven't seen him for years so he may or may not still be there. There must be a dog groomer too because they offer doggie trims. Whatever, and whoever, the point is that it's a biggish team and it's a busy office. 

Turn up unannounced and you usually have to hang around for a while even when both vets are on duty. Plenty of Spaniards use the vet but, considering we Britons are outnumbered about 15 to 1 by Spaniards in Pinoso, we have a very strong presence in that office. It's amazing how often there is a Briton waiting with their (usually) dog or (sometimes) cat before I arrive. The vet's is fairly modern and the treatment rooms look properly medical with cupboards full of vials and tablets and sterile wrapped stuff. The vets are pleasant and well regarded.

Pinoso is very affected by we British. Brexit may be changing that a bit and there may be more Belgians and Dutch joining the Moroccans, Ecuadoreans and everyone else but there are still a lot of Britons and we are very noticeable. We're loud, we're old Empire confident and we don't blend in.

Whether we Brits are the reason that Cristina's is so busy or whether she was simply a vet with a well thought through business plan is something you'd have to ask her.

The Home Counties

Maggie has a plan for a bit of a rebuild of our house. Demolition and rebuild apart there is also a long list of ancillary jobs. One of those is putting a sliding door between the kitchen and living room. Maggie has something specific in her mind's eye, something rustic, something wooden, and a visit to the Fundación Casa Pintada in Mula yesterday made her wonder about reclaimed doors.

I remembered that we'd been to a market where they had a supply of antique doors. We misremembered (something that seems to happen more and more frequently) the name of the market and ended up going to a place called el Mercadillo el Zoco in Algorfa rather than the Mercadillo el Moncayo in Guardamar.

I've been here, in Spain, a while. It's not new to me, not novel, but it still takes me by surprise when we go somewhere public and Britons apparently outnumber Spaniards. It can happen in bars, in housing estates, and even in towns. It happened today. Maggie was sure that there were lots of Belgians, Dutch, Germans and French at the market, which is almost certainly true, but there was no doubt that the lingua franca was English, not Spanish. Also, in my opinion, the overriding presence was British.

Home and away

There's a strangeness about being home and yet being a foreigner.

Last week I asked the lad who served me coffee how his birthday celebrations had gone. He'd told me his plans the last time I was in. I got the full story. Later, in the same bar and in the same session a different, and new to me, waiter asked me if I wanted another coffee. He asked in broken English - to him I was just another foreigner.

There were a lot of political meetings running up to the local elections. I went to one of them and the prospective, now elected, candidates were lined up against the wall in a show of solidarity at a political rally. A couple of them greeted me by name. We knew each other because I'd taught them a bit of English. I'd actually worked alongside another of them several years ago.

Alfredo, the barber, nods through the window - he cuts my hair and I didn't get his daughter through her B1 English exam. And so it goes on and on with example after example of knowing both Spanish and British people in Pinoso.

We've been here a while. If a road in town is sealed off, and they often are, I know how to skip around. If I need knicker elastic, tracing paper or knitting needles I know which shop to use - actually nowadays I'd probably go to the Chinese shop but I'm sure you take the point. There are new things to learn all the time. We're as local as local could be and yet we are still foreigners.

I walked past one of the three British run bars in town and there were a bunch of young (to me) people outside. They were talking estuary English. My father, who was so politically incorrect that I probably wouldn't speak to him nowadays, if he were still alive, used to describe people speaking languages other than English on the streets of England as jabbering. I wondered if he would think the same of our very noticeable presence on the streets of Pinoso?

We Britons are obvious here. Most Spanish people I meet presume I know next to nothing about Spain. I'm not surprised. From what I can see the majority of my compatriots have very little idea of the country around them. I don't mean in the sense of filling their car with fuel, buying bread, getting a drink or paying the electric bill. They are perfectly well able to get on with their lives but culturally, linguistically, geographically and historically they are clueless. It's a choice. I have never worried myself too much about football yet I know people whose very existence would be much meaner without the beautiful game. Lots of Britons here are much more "integrated" than me but there is another group who continually surprise me with how little they know of the place they have chosen to immigrate to. It's that choice though; they have chosen a sort of voluntary isolation.

He hasn't been on at me for a while but there used to be a Spanish bloke who read and commented on this blog. He blamed me for the hubris that lots of Europe lays at the door of we Britons but he also took me to task for my British perspective on things. That's true. I do. I must. Just in the same way as his viewpoint would be a Spanish one. Our backgrounds are coded in through years of experience. I remember, years ago, in Cuba. I forget where we were, Trinidad maybe or Cienfuegos. We were beginning to get the idea that everything in Cuba was in short supply even if you had dollars. "Do you have alcohol other than rum?," we asked. "Of course, for tourists we have everything," said the owner. I missed the irony. "Okey dokey, she'll have a red wine and I'll have a beer, please." The man came back and put down two rums - "Here's the beer and here's the wine," he said. It's often not a good idea to presume that you've got the measure of a place.

The Spanish health system, the medical system, traffic law, the voting system and the way that parliament runs are exactly similar to the UK. Well they are in broad-stroke yet they are completely different. The British first-past-the-post voting isn't the Spanish party list D'Hondt method of proportional representation. Actually even the mechanics of how you vote, crosses on paper and lists in envelopes is different. The effect is the same though and both produce democratically elected governments. Externally verified end of secondary schooling GCSEs are not the same as the internally marked ESO, the certificate recognised as the successful completion of obligatory secondary education, in Spain. Both have a similar purpose and similar recognition by employers or higher education establishments too. Nearly everything has a different equivalent from electricity bills to the etiquette of using a knife and fork.

All of this is because someone commented on one of my blog entries. The one about washing up. I could write the blog with any number of perspectives. I've generally written it based on the things that happen to us or around us. I've wondered about making it more current affairs and I've wondered about doing the sort of information pieces that I used to do for the TIM Magazine. In the end though I decided to stick with the mundane and everyday with references to those wider issues as I bumped into them. The entries are often too wordy but, in general, I think I'm happy with it. I'd be interested in any views you may have about the blog in general though.

Beep Beep Lettuce

Our fridge went beep when the door was opened. It shouldn't. It still worked though. We could live with that. Then the handle came off in my hand. Not so good. A beeping handle-less fridge. I put it off. I tried the enquiry form on the repairer's website. They didn't answer. Nothing for it but a phone-call. I could procrastinate no more. It went alright really. The woman on the phone asked me for the model number. "RD-46," I began. "Sorry?" RD-46. "What?" I tried hard to roll the R. I was reduced to "R - like the capital of Italy, Roma". "Loma?" she went. No, Roberto, Robot, Real, Radio." "Ah, R," she said. D for Dinamarca was easier. The engineer came today. The conversation went well and the fridge is mute though I'm 110€ poorer.

The electrical goods in the kitchen are in open revolt. The kettle, bought eleven weeks ago, started to leak. I had the receipt. I took it back. "No, this isn't guaranteed," said the bloke in the shop. "It's the limescale that's done for it and improper use isn't guaranteed." I became very cross very quickly. "If you want me to ever buy anything, ever again, in this shop - I listed some of the several big things we've bought there - then you will take this back as part payment against a better make of kettle". He argued, I blustered. My Spanish held together remarkably well. I heard myself using a third conditional. I was impressed. We agreed the kettle was guaranteed and I came home with a shiny Bosch one.

As we drove across Castilla la Mancha I knew the sign said to watch out for otters crossing the road. Otter is not an everyday sort of word. I can watch a film in Spanish without too much trouble. I can read a novel in Spanish though I may miss the nuances. I can maintain a conversation - well sort of. Imagine if you can't. Imagine talking to an insurance company about the burst pipes in your house or opening a bank account or going to the doctor with a pain. What do you do when the instructions for the self service petrol pump make no sense to you and you need fuel and it's 2am. Having a conversation using Google Translate, with gestures, drawings, odd words and a lot of smiling is fine when you're on holiday but it's not so good if you need an O-ring for your pool pump and it won't help you decipher the letter from the bank.

I'm of a certain age. Lots of the Britons I know here are of a similar age. A friend, back in the UK, sent me a message minutes ago to say that someone I once worked with has cancer. We're getting to the time of life when death is not such an abstract idea. When chronic illness is probable as well as possible. Someone was talking to me about their concern that they may end up alone, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by people they couldn't talk to and being subjected to processes they didn't understand. I know of lots of people who have decided that it's time to move from that rural house that looked so idyllic just a few years ago. Now the garden seems boundless. The drive in to town a real chore, and with failing sight and a gammy knee, a potential problem. Some have moved into Spanish towns, others have gone back to the UK.

I know that I write about language a lot but, as I look around me, I understand the British ghettoes, the low level of knowledge about the place we live, the effort that Britons make to find people to provide British television and doctors and plumbers who speak English. It wasn't just the fridge door that reminded me to write this same blog yet again. I am appalled at the lack of support for the boats cruising the Med looking to rescue refugees and migrants. Count the emergency vehicles for a derailed train and compare that to the lack of response to a boat load of people abandoned at sea. I am disgusted at the racist attitudes of far too many people. I heard some MP, on £77,000 a year plus expenses, asking why some refugees don't stop when they get to the first safe country. I wondered if he would have walked from Senegal to Morocco and then crossed the water in a boat from Toys“R”Us to get his job? He wouldn't get it anyway without speaking English.

Down on the coast

Tell someone that you live in Alicante and most people think coast, they think we live by the side of the sparkling Mediterranean. It may, in reality, be one of the most polluted stretches of water in the world, full of plastic, sewage, lead and agricultural chemicals to rival the dead patch in the Gulf of Mexico, but there's no denying that the Med can look lovely.

Actually we live inland, about 60 km from the coast. We also live up a hill so we are at about 600 metres which means, other climatic factors being equal, we are 5.8ºC cooler than at sea level. That difference is notable at this time of year. Very noticeable. As I type, Bohème like, my little hands are frozen.

So, one of the conversations between immigrant Britons is based on the major division between those who live on the coast and those who live inland. There are all sorts of perceptions about the Spanishness, or not, of the two locations. The probable truth is that the influence of immigrants is a product of population percentage. The 500 Britons in Pinoso make up 6 or 7% of the population so we make a significant difference to how the town looks and feels. In Abarán the 14 Britons pass unnoticed. I have no idea how many Britons live in Alicante City but even if it were a couple of thousand they would be under half a percent of the population lost amongst the tourists. There are other towns where the influence of Germans, Moroccans, Norwegians or whatever is pronounced. There are also perceptions of that influence which may or may not be true. When I think of Torrevieja, for instance, I think of Iceland and other English speaking shops but I remember that, for Spaniards in Santa Pola one of their initial comments in any conversation about the town would be the presence of the Russian Mafia.

Several people we know have chosen to move from Pinoso to the coast. Reasons vary from looking for more variety of food and entertainment to the weather and the ease of being able to do so many more things in English. A couple of pals moved from Pinoso to a spot between Torrevieja and San Miguel de Salinas a couple of months ago and we popped down to see them. They chose to downsize altogether and they moved onto a campsite but bought a sort of small wooden chalet. I have to say that I thought the site was remarkable. There is a huge variety of caravans, park homes and  motorhomes on numbered pitches and most of them have a variety of more or less permanent structures, awnings, sheds and adapted carports, to increase the living space. There is artificial grass and there are mountains of pot plants, sculptures and ornaments of every shape and size from wind chimes and mobiles to gnomes and fountains. The space was very organised and nicely landscaped with lots of greenery, with numbered pitches along streets, shower and toilet blocks on each street and a big communal pool. I'm told there is a restaurant and bar too. All of it with security and various systems for Wi-Fi, televisión etc. I saw vehicles with Belgian, British, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Spanish plates and I wasn't really looking. The nodding and "good afternoon" language was definitely English and the sun was shining.

I looked at the for sale sign on one of the plots - 8,950€ I think. Hmm? Warm and only 10 minutes to the beach.

There are snaps at the tail end of this December 2018 album

Without news

I've just been scanning through a number of other English language blogs looking for inspiration. It's time to write a blog entry and I can't think of anything to write about.

I could do New Year of course but I must have done cava (which is not, by the way, pronounced carver - but more like kavva), red underwear and the twelve grapes about as many years as I've lived here. I've already done a bit of a Christmas piece so I can't do that again even though it's still in full swing with the shopping centres clogged with cars and the telly full of perfume adverts. It's still a week to Kings and I've done Kings so many times that regular readers must be able to imagine what a Roscón tastes like. We haven't done many non British Christmas events but, even if we had, there's not a lot of mileage in living nativity scenes, carol concerts or Christmas story telling. I didn't get caught by any jokes yesterday on "Day of the Innocents" (think of it as Spanish April 1st) nor did I make the well trodden journey to see the egg, flour, fire extinguisher and firework fight in Ibi. 

I wondered if I could do something on the Valenciano language or yet another entry on speaking, or not speaking, Spanish. The thought came to me when I remembered the bit of a language triumph I had in the KFC in Elche the other day dealing with the bastardised Spanish pronunciation of isolated English words. I didn't hesitate once in the twenty question interrogation that is now the routine for ordering the simplest thing from the Good Colonel. Then I remembered that, only a few moments before, it had been exactly the opposite in asking for tickets for Wonder Wheel (the latest and shockingly boring Woody Allen) when I had to resort to mispronouncing the old man's name - Gwuddy Al-in - because my versions of gwanda weal, wander weyl and anything else, all the way back to a well modulated English pronunciation of Wonder Wheel, just left the ticket seller looking blank. I'm still a long way from writing that handy little booklet - "How to pronounce English words like a Spaniard."

The weather is always a good mainstay - Spain has had its second borrasca, or big storm, over the last few days since the new naming regime came into being. Storms of a certain intensity, it seems, now get named alphabetically - like hurricanes. This one was Bruno, we had Ana a while ago. It killed a couple of people across Spain and the snow and coastal storms looked really impressive on the telly. Here in sunny Culebrón though the worst that happened was that I had to get out of bed at 6.25am to secure a few things because the wind was blowing pots and chairs around. Hardly the stuff of a riveting blog.

Something with the students then or something from the news, the television, the radio; a second hand tale? My bosses have a Christmas play-scheme so they've laid me off for a couple of weeks leaving me with no students to talk to. No students, no stories. At home, with it being Christmas, the British TV companies have spent lots of money and Maggie has been watching their special offerings. Nothing there then either. Without the structure of work the routine has gone out of the window so I've not been keeping up with the news as well as usual. Anyway half the journalists are taking a few days off. And in Cataluña, which has more or less monopolised the news for months, it's all very quiet because all the politicians are horse trading, some of them via Skype, after the inconclusive elections. No blog fodder.

No. Another lifetime ago, I was in Saudi Arabia one Christmas. Lots of people I worked with went back to the UK to eat turkey and snooze on the sofa and, when they got back to Wadi Al-Batin, we asked for their Christmas reports. They were like José Moscardó, the bloke in charge of the fascist defence of the Alcázar in Toledo during the Spanish Civil War. The fortress was under siege, Franco sent troops to relieve it and, when they got there the siege was lifted. Moscardó was asked for his report. He said "Nothing new in the Alcázar." I know the feeling.  Nothing new in Culebrón.

When in Rome

I'm not a big Google+ user. The other day I came across something called Communities, which seem to be collections of items around a theme. So I posted some blog entries there. At least one person read some of the blog because he commented on it. So I read his blog back and then I pinched his idea for this post.

Antonio's piece was about how to recognise tourists by their non Spanish behaviour in restaurants. For instance by eating lunch before 2pm, drinking large beers, ordering sangria or having paella as an evening meal. It made me think about the things that I do, that my British pals who live here do or our British visitors do that aren't quite Spanish. In general I stuck to foodie variations rather than commenting on hats, shorts, sandals and walking in the sun type differences.

Obviously eating too early is something that sets us apart. You know that lunch in Spain is anytime between about 2pm and 4pm and dinner anytime after around 9.30pm but maybe we breakfast too early as well. The Spaniards are a bit out of kilter with most other nations by taking their breakfast mid morning. Most Spaniards don't really have the cereals and toast type start to the day breakfasts that we Britons do. The majority just bolt from their house soon after rising, maybe grabbing a quick coffee. Although it's nowhere near as odd to ask for toast in a bar at 9am as it is to try and get dinner at 7.30pm it isn't quite right either. The busy time for Spaniards getting their toast, often topped with oil and grated tomato, will be an hour or two later.

There's no problem with ordering a coffee or a tea to go with your breakfast but generally Spaniards only drink water, beer, coke or wine with lunch or dinner, with savoury food in general. Years ago I was in a bar with someone having a mid morning coffee. The bar had several hams hanging from the roof and we succumbed. As the barman served the ham he whisked our coffees away and asked what we wanted to drink. Beer and ham is fine but coffee and ham is a bit Pet Shop Boys - It's a Sin. Oh, and getting milk in your tea is an enormous effort and prone to failiure. And, oh again, and this is pretty new to me, gin and tonic seems to be a post-prandial rather than a pre-prandial drink in Spain.

Butter on bread is another odd thing. The last time I was in the UK, in a decentish restaurant, I was a bit surprised to be served a bread roll, on my side plate, along with a little pat of butter. I'm pretty sure it was always dry bread, to go with the soup, in restaurants in my youth. Eating bread and butter with the meal was something you did at home but not when you ate out. Bread is an essential element of any Spanish meal but "nobody" uses butter. Britons often complain about the lack of butter or ask for some. Spaniards don't put oil on bread either, at least in public. There's normally salt on a restaurant table because salt goes with the oil and vinegar to dress a salad but it's not as omnipresent as it is in the UK. There is very seldom any pepper. Asking for pepper is very British.

The bread is usually served in a basket in the centre of the table. This idea of things for everyone is something Britons don't seem to take to either. If you go for a set meal, el menú del día, then whatever you order is yours but, if you go for something that you order a la carte, the usual thing is that the group of diners order a bunch of things go in the middle of the table and you take your choice. Only the main course is yours and yours alone though, even then, it's not unusual for a couple to put their mains in the centre and share them. If Spaniards go eating tapas those are nearly always for sharing. Someone at the Spanish Tourist Board must have mounted a brilliant campaign to promote tapas in the UK because everybody who comes to see us seems to know the word and be dead keen to try what are, after all, just a bunch of bar snacks. Some are great, some are boring.

Back to bread for a moment, well to sandwiches or rolls. We have lots of very traditional British sandwiches that are something and something. Ham and mustard, cheese and tomato, chicken and lettuce, egg and cress, beef and horseradish. Spaniards sometimes put two elements in a sandwich and there are lots of trendy sandwich places with plenty of variety but, in most bars, the traditional choices are still quite fixed. Ham, cheese, ham and cheese, ham and grated tomato, tuna maybe, lomo, chorizo, salchichon, maybe anchovies. In Malaga, years ago, I was refused a cheese and onion sandwich - the man just couldn't bring himself to sell me one despite having both ingredients. Nowadays Spaniards still think it's an odd mix but if that's what I want then that's what I get. Bacon sandwiches are available too but every time I ask for just bacon there is an "are you sure?" type question and, of course, there's no butter.

The fixed price set meals are served at lunchtime. This is not invariable but it is normal. Evening meals are a much simpler affair and whilst you may go out to eat in the evening to celebrate Valentine's or somesuch, it's really at lunchtime that you eat the main meal of the day. Lots of restaurants don't even open in the evening except at weekends and nowadays we're often a bit surprised when visiting Britons automatically think of going out for a meal equates with going out in the evening.

It's not at all unusual, if you order a glass of wine to go with your meal, that the server will put a bottle of wine on the table. It probably won't be particularly good wine but it will be a full or nearly full bottle. Britons don't like to leave alcohol, particularly when they think they've paid for it. When someone asks me how to say cork in Spanish I find that I suddenly need to just pop out to get something from the car. The shame of my compatriots wanting to carry off the dregs of the bottle is too much for my wannabe Spanishness. Doggy bags aren't a Spanish concept either.

And when the meal is over it's tipping time. I tend to tip, I tip on coffee even but most Spaniards don't. They may do but there is no moral imperative to tip. If the service is good, if the price makes it easy then tipping it is. So if the meal cost 47€ then the fifty note will do nicely but if it's 50€ and the service was as service should be then lots of people won't add anything. It can be a bit embarassing as Maggie and I put in a euro each towards the tip and one of our visitors throws a ten note down worked out on the British Imperial Standard.

There are more but I think that's enough ammunition for my "you British" critics for now.

Easily amused

I've talked about Spanish supermarkets before. Just as a quick recap. We have four decent sized supermarkets in Pinoso and I use them all. My choice is usually based on geography, wherever the car is parked. Sometimes on product - only two of the four for instance carry English Council House tea.

Whilst I'm not at work I've started to use Día more frequently than I used to. This is because it's on our side of town and the car parking is good. Now I'm going to fall into all sorts of problems with stereotyping here so please forgive me. Día is exactly the opposite of the UK's Waitrose or Spain's Corte Inglés supermarket operations in both its products and its customer profile. Día sells some quality products but it is typified by cheap and, sometimes, low quality in the sense of industrially processed food. Día does not, generally, attract well heeled clients in search of premium product. Now you can already see the stress lines in my argument because the one in Pinoso has plenty of British clients and, again generalising, we're not a hard up community. It's a touch of that Lidl/Aldi mentality - there are bargains to be had for the careful shopper and the other stuff can be bought elsewhere.

I'm beginning to really like Día. All of the supermarkets in Pinoso have their adherents and all of them will tell you how friendly the staff are. Personally I think the people in Consum and at Día are pleasant whilst the Más y Más and HiperBer people are neither pleasant nor unpleasant. But the women on the till in Día seem to go out of their way to say hello to people. The food varies in quality. With a bit of care you can save a fair amount of money and get perfectly reasonable product. It's not the easiest supermarket to shop in though. The aisles seem to block up easily, I still find the layout illogical and there seems to be a mentality amongst Día shoppers to take up the maximum space, to talk at maximum volume and to choose product at the minimum pace. Waiting for a family group to choose a flavour of yoghurt, a family group that is blocking access to the packet of butter that I can't quite get to, can be very frustrating. The shelf stacking staff can be nearly as bad - they seem quite oblivious to my attempts to slide between their palette cart loaded with pop to get to the diet Fanta as they chat about football. The till area is another weak spot. One of them seems to be used as the makeshift office. It is always piled high with paperwork and it is never open. There seems to be an unwillingness to open a second till until the queue has snaked well past the fresh fruit stand and is passing the pickled gherkins.

So far then not a glowing report. But the place is just bursting with life. There are always incidents. Often the incidents involve my compatriots. Confusions with language, confusions about the price, about the queuing structure, about the money off coupons. There are also the strange conversations I have with Spaniards - usually as they let me go before them because I only have a packet of peanuts and a bottle of brandy - conversations about my food habits.

Today, for instance, I did something very Spanish. I put my stuff on the cash desk belt and, whilst the man in front's stuff was going through the scanner, I rushed off to pick up the bread that I'd forgotten. When I came back the man in front of me still hadn't had all of his things go through the checkout but a couple of Britons were grumbling about bloody Spaniards leaving their stuff and then going off. They were standing over my things and they had already usurped the Spanish bloke behind me. After a little chat about who owned what they went to the other till. As they left I asked the Spanish bloke why he hadn't said anything - "It's what I expect," he said.

The other day a group of Britons had bought loads and loads of stuff. They'd brought lots of old carrier bags to load it into too and they hung each newly filled bag on the back of a pushchair that contained a toddler. There was a flurry of argument about who was going to pay. As everyone, including the pram pusher, proffered biggish banknotes and deluged the grinning checkout woman in a flood of English, the pram overbalanced and toddler and supermarket produce spilled everywhere. All the people, maybe six or seven of them, scrabbled for rolling oranges, cans of pop and bawling children as fifty euro notes drifted back and forth in the gentle breeze from the sliding door.

Another bottle of brandy and some onions. A Scottish pal let me queue jump. The woman in front of me was a Culebrón resident. Strange conversation in English to my left, in Spanish to my right and in Spanish again across the little perspex shield of the checkout.

I'm sure there's an advertising slogan in there somewhere for Día.

History evenings

I went to a little bilingual talk last night about the history of the nearby village of La Romana. It wasn't at all bad. The local expert, Francesc Gallardo, did his stuff and answered, knowledgeably, the questions he was asked. He was ably assisted by a woman, Anabel, who handled the translation. She was the same woman who did the talk back in December.

I had no real trouble understanding nearly all of the Spanish part of the talk and my English was up to the English part though that didn't seem to be everyone's case. I'm not talking about the Spanish; I'm talking about the English. I thought we had some most amusing culture and translation problems.

In the Q&A session someone asked in English about a building that had a "big flat stone" inside, "probably" for processing grapes. The translator turned the English into Spanish and talked about grapes and wine to the Francesc, the speaker. He said he didn't know of any bodegas (wineries) but, in his answer, he mentioned almazaras, oil mills, places to press olives. The translator, missing the cultural confusion of what was being processed, didn't mention the oil mill reference at first. It was all sorted out in the end of course. The big flat stone was for crushing olives - oil not wine. Back in Elland we Britons didn't process a lot of wine or oil either.

Someone else asked about the history of some cave houses. They asked if it were true that the houses had originally been dug in Roman times so that people with leprosy had somewhere to live away from the village. As we'd just been told that basically there wasn't a village of la Romana until the turn of the 20th century and that no Roman artefacts had been found in the area the answer was going to be disappointing for the questioners. I could imagine the number of times that story had been told to visitors.

I don't know about you but I don't really have any trouble with American English. If someone talks about fawcets and car trunks I am not confused.  And if neither pronounced one way and neither pronounced the other are American and British English then I have no idea which is which. Although I may be dissimulating I think I remember being taken to see South Pacific and, if I do, I would have been four at the time. So I have been watching Hollywood movies (films) for a long time. I would suppose the true is same for almost any English speaker worldwide.

So, last night, there is a second question about cave houses in nearby Algueña. There is some initial confusion about which cave houses and where. There is a secondary question, in English, in the air, from an audience member, about whether these may be the cave houses behind the petrol station. The translator picks up this question and relays it to the speaker. The Spanish word gasolinera for petrol station, service station, comes back in the translator's American English. "Are these the caves behind ther gas station? The original question asker says she doesn't know anything about a gas station in Algueña and the whole question just sort of evaporates. I don't know Algueña well but the petrol station on the main road through the village is obvious. I'm sure the original questioner knows it too. So this time I think we have a linguistic problem related to gas, as in cookers, as against gas, as in gasoline.

The group that made me aware of this event - Spanish International Alicante - says that its aim is to promote friendship, integration and interchange of languages through social evenings, events and cultural activities. That was certainly going on last night.

Spanish stereotypes

In the last post about Albacete I mentioned an exercise I use with my students as a conversation starter. It's not my piece, I took it from a Spanish source and translated it into English.

I disagree with a couple of them, I don't whoeheartedly agree with lots of them and I don't actually know what a couple are getting at. But it's an easy post and I rather suspect that at least one of my readers - that sounds posh doesn't it? - will have a response.

Spain: bulls, guitars and flouncy skirts

This is how tourist guides, written in France, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan and Russia describe Spain. The old image of bulls and castanets may have disappeared but are these new generalisations any more accurate?

What do you think?

1 Spain is the European country where the fewest number of newspapers are read and where the most popular newspaper deals only with sport.

2 Spain is a desert for vegetarians and a place where ham is considered to be part of a vegetarian diet.

3 Spain isn't all sun but then again everything is conditioned by the sun.

4 It's the place where breakfast in a bar includes a shot of the hard stuff alongside a coffee.

5 Spain is a country where almost nobody gets drunk in public.

6 Where chocolate is sweet and thick.

7 In Spain body hair on women, particularly underarm or on the legs, is socially unacceptable.

8 Where everything, or almost everything, closes down for the afternoon.

9 Where people parade from bar to bar greeting friends and eating tapas before having dinner.

10 RENFE trains are clean and efficient.

11 Where pedestrians are terrorised by motorists at every junction and every zebra crossing.

12 Where life begins as the rest of Europe dons its pyjamas.

13 Where restaurants still sell a bottle of drinkable plonk for 5€.

14 Where crossing yourself and calling on God is still an everyday part of many transactions.

15 It may be Europe but Spaniards aren't Europeans.

16 Where the toilets are clean but never have toilet paper.

17 A country where it's dangerous to get involved in chit chat.

18 Where everyone is criticised - except for the King.

19 A country whose past is marked by hunger and famine.

20 A country that has no cuisine to speak of.

Toodle Pip

I got up early this morning to check the result and, rather as I'd feared, the UK had voted to leave the Union. I wasn't in the least surprised but I was shocked.

To me, on a day to day basis, at the moment it means very little. My only real concern is about the exchange rate. I get a pension paid in sterling. As the pound loses ground against the euro I get fewer euros to spend for the same number of pounds. Of course, when the two years and three months are up, then I suppose I'll have to relearn Fahrenheit and furlongs but at least I will be able to recover my blue passport, rest assured that a cucumber is a vegetable and eat curved bananas till the cows come home.

The concerns of  expats of my age are mainly around health care and pensions. Reciprocal arrangements within the EU mean that pensioners get free medical care in Spain and there is no problem with the UK state pension being paid here with all its rights intact. In all likelihood something reasonable will be hammered out between the UK and Spain over the next couple of years and those of us who have been out of the UK for a while will find we have some sort "grandparent" rights. 

Of course there is nothing to stop the UK Government going the other way and denying we expats all sorts of things that are currently considered as rights. The Spaniards might also be mean to us when we no longer have citizenship. We already lose the right to vote in the UK if we stay away too long so why not take away other benefits? "You've been out of the UK for 10 years? No healthcare for you then my lad - and as for benefits". In 1981 dear old Maggie changed the status of lots of people who had always considered themselves British. There's no reason at all why somebody, in the future, should not do the same to the likes of me. And the Spaniards used to tax Britons more than nationals when, for instance, we sold a house. In a couple of years that could well be back on the books.

If you start to think about the number of things that have a European tinge to them, from the CE safety mark and Erasmus students through set aside for farmers and low priced mobile phone roaming or maybe the blue channels at your holiday destination then, I don't envy the poor sods who have to try to piece it all back together over the next twenty seven months.

It's strange that on the day that expat healthcare in the EU is in doubt  I went to a hospital to visit a British friend. He's had a heart incident. He is in the new hospital down in Elche. I've seen the inside of lots of Spanish hospitals for one reason or another, but it's the first time I've been on the wards. In fact it wasn't a ward, it was a private room with telly and internet (though that cost 4€ per day). In the hour or two we were there two doctors came in to see the patient and both of them spoke English. We had one cleaner and two nursing auxiliary types also pop in to do this or that and all but the cleaner spoke to us in English too. The story of the treatment sounded quick and professional. All in all I suspect that our friend is in safe and professional hands. I should mention that the hospital expects that our friend has somebody at his bedside to deal with those little things all the time. If he needs a crash cart that's the hospital's job but if he needs his pillows fluffing or help getting his slippers on then that's a job for the patient's friends or family. I wonder if the hospital will still be there for me in two years and three months when I have a heart incident?

Oh, and one last thing. If you voted to leave the EU because you had concerns about its structures or funding then fine - I don't agree with you but a reasoned argument is a reasoned argument. On the other hand, if, as I suspect, you voted to leave the EU because of immigration, floods of people coming to take our jobs, classrooms full of children who can't speak English and a terrible strain on the NHS from foreigners then I think you're xenophobic at the least and probably a raging racist bigot.

So you gotta let me know. Should I stay or should I go?

Our voting papers arrived on Friday. That's a good start. Huntingdonshire District Council blithely denied me the right to vote in the last General Election when they failed to get the voting papers to me. "We send out a lot of overseas voting papers, some are forced to get lost", was their pathetic excuse.

Anyway I put the cross in the box, Maggie did likewise and the forms went in the post today.

Just an interesting thing about posting the ballot papers. You can see, if you look at the photo, that the envelope reads No Stamp Required yet, in the "Quick Guide to Postal Voting", which came with the ballot paper, it says, "Seal and post envelope B. If it's posted in the UK, this will be free." When I got to the Post Office I asked for stamps for the envelopes and the woman in the Post Office told me there was no need. I insisted and explained that the instructions were quite clear. I presume that she has said the same thing to lots of other Britons returning their ballot papers. Am I being oversuspicious if I sesnse a touch of skulduggery there?

I don't normally tell anyone how I voted. It's something between me and the ballot box, well me and the ballot box and probably some department that secretly compiles the records of who voted how in case they are ever needed. But in 1972, in 1975 and this time around I'm definitely pro European.

I'm sure that a Spaniard has asked me about the UK leaving the EU but I don't actually remember the conversation. It was certainly no more than a passing comment. There isn't that much interest in what the UK does or doesn't do amongst your average Spaniard as far as I can gauge. It gets reported of course so it's on the radio and TV every now and again. I have had the conversation with a few Britons. Usually in that conversation I get cross because it seems to me that one of the driving forces behind the anti EU movement in the UK is plain and simple racism or at least xenophobia. I've stopped trying to put together a cogent argument. I can't be bothered to argue with racists any more and I no longer hope they will have a road to Damascus moment. Nowadays I've adopted the Dame Helen Mirren approach, you know, the one where she says that she regrets not telling more people to “f*** off” though I usually restrict myself to refuting their idiotic remarks with the single word "bollocks".

It could be interesting times ahead if we Britons here had to do something like the nationality test that other non EU foreigners are submitted to. First of all there is a level test in Spanish, which a lot of us would fail, then there is the series of questions about the country. These are questions one and eighteen from a sample paper:

1. Según la Constitución española, la soberanía nacional reside en el pueblo, del que proceden...
a) las leyes orgánicas del Estado. b) los estatutos de autonomía. c) los poderes del Estado

18. ¿Cuál es la fiesta más famosa en Cádiz y Canarias?
a) El Carnaval. b) La Semana Santa. c) Los Sanfermines.

If you are a Briton living in Spain how did you do?

Hands against the wall and drop your trousers

In the 70s, when much of South and Central America were in political turmoil, I read an impressive book about the violation of human rights there. The book was full of torture stories. I was most impressed by the way that ordinary people didn't buckle under but I also pondered where the torturers came from. One Sunday you have a nice civilised country but by Monday morning there are people connecting electric wires to mens' testicles and stubbing out their fag ends on the soles of peoples' feet. What's the selection process, what skills and qualities are on the job description?

At the time when the IRA and UFF and everyone else in Northern Ireland was going at it I heard some bloke, who'd served in the British Army, describing a common technique for obtaining information from prisoners. They put a plastic bucket over their victim's head and then beat the bucket with a mop handle. It made me realise just how easy torture can be and I still, sometimes, think of that as I shop amongst the Addis stuff in the supermarket.

About a month ago a judge, talking in some conference here in Spain, said that he thought ETA (The Basque terrorist organisation) members had been routinely tortured by Spanish Security Forces. Now I have no idea whether he's right but in all probability he is. If I were a Guardia Civil member, who had just seen some mates blown to pieces by a bomb,  I might well become a little over zealous too. The Association of the Victims of Terrorism thought the judge should be sacked. They thought that it was outrageous that he should suggest that the Security Forces were other than on the side of the angels.

A couple of days ago a branch of Local Government in Madrid decided to ban a flag from a big football match final due to take part in the capital on Sunday. The flag is a version of the official Catalan flag with some adaptations. It has a nationlist significance and is a symbol often used by people who want an independent Catlonia. I was apalled, incensed and troubled by the decision in equal measure. The idea of trying to stop an opinion being expressed, in a democracy, by waving a flag seems akin to totalitarianism to me. I know that some Spaniards were of the same opinion but I got the feeling that for many Spaniards the equation was flag waving equals Catalan Separatists, Catalan Separatists bad, Stop them. Four legs good, two legs bad!

During the last twelve months a law has been enacted in Spain that fines or imprisons people for doing things that the Government thinks endangers citizens. It's not as though Spain is short of laws to deal with wrongdoers. You can get into trouble if you go burning and looting. Attacking people is also considered to be a bit beyond the pale. In fact if you can think of some bad thing I 'm pretty sure there is a Spanish law against doing it. There wasn't, though, a law to stop people posting videos to YouTube of police officers beating people with sticks for no obvious reason. The fines for scaling the fence at a nuclear power plant and hanging up a banner were related to trespass and damage to property. Organising a demonstration without a licence wasn't that big a deal either in the punishment afterwards sense. But the new law toughened that up. I forget, and I can't be bothered to look because it makes me seethe, but that banner might now cost 300,000 or 600,000€. Suck on that you Greenpeace types! The result? Someone was arrested in a town close to us when they posted a picture on Facebook of a police car parked in a disabled parking slot. It was considered a slur on the local police. Now I may just have an alternative view about that incident but it's perhaps better that I don't write it down or they may be knocking on my door.

So, suggesting that police officers may have been involved in torture or lazy parking, waving a flag or taking a video could, under certain circumstances, lead to people being sacked, fined or jailed. These things don't go unchallenged of course, the courts overturned the flag waving ban yesterday, but the concensus view  makes me wonder if Spaniards have quite got the hang of this democracy thing.

What seems blatantly obvious to me, that having a different opinion should not, generally, lead to legal action seems to slip by a lot of Spaniards. The judge's opinion that torture happened is confused with siding with the evil that was or is ETA. Supporting the right of anyone to wave a Nationalist flag is confused with supporting that Nationalism and exposing police officers for abusing their role is only a step away from robbing a bank.

Maybe it's just a case of old habits dying hard.

Bar library nexus

On Friday afternoons, in Cartagena, Maggie and I used to go to a Spanish language group organised by one of the local language schools. We paid a couple of euros and the language centre sent a teacher or two to moderate the session. The group was made up of lots of us foreigners - principally Brits and Dutch but with the occasional Czech and Zimbabwean thrown in - and the idea was that we all spoke Spanish to each other. It was organised into largish discussion groups dependant on the number of attendees with some chosen topic of conversation. The numbers dwindled when the language school upped the price to five euros and, eventually, so few people attended that it was knocked on the head.

Maggie wondered about doing something similar between Spaniards and English speakers in Pinoso but somebody else beat her to it. Every Wednesday one of the local bars, Cafe Coliseum, acts as the venue. The organiser is an efficient young woman, who I'm sure introduced herself to me but whose name I forget. She divvies us up into little knots for conversation. I usually end up with two or three Spanish speakers to talk to. I drink a couple of non alcoholic beers whilst I'm doing it and vainly try to eat the nut mix that comes free with the beer flavoured pop.

I have no idea why the group exists. I suppose it could be an act of altruism on the part of the nameless young woman but it's more likely that the bar saw it as a way to increase trade during the early part of a quiet evening, Early Wednesday can't be a big night for a bar in a village of fewer than 8,000 people! I've never thought to ask and I don't really care too much. The outcome though is that I'm meeting more locals and getting a bit of Spanish practice too.

An odd side effect has to do with the library. I joined Pinoso library when we first moved here. The library was in a different building then. I was quite an active borrower until life got in the way. Work kept us away from Pinoso for long periods so I joined other libraries, in other towns. Then the world went digital and Maggie bought me a Kindle which offered cheap books and the major advantage, for reading in a language that isn't my own, of a built in dictionary.

The language thing in the bar meets more or less opposite the super modern library that we now have in Pinoso. I have a bit of free time between the start of the language group and the time that I reach Pinoso after leaving work. Each evening I have to record what I did with the classes I taught and, for the majority of those classes, share that information with one of my teaching colleagues. Rather than sitting in the car with the laptop to do the recording I took to going into the library. As well as lights and desks they have free WiFi too so I asked about the process for getting a password. It revolved around me being a member of the library. The amazing thing is that I am. Despite my library card saying, very clearly, that it expired in 2007 the library people have constantly renewed my membership.

Nice to see a performance indicator working for me for a change.