Life in Culebrón

There was a time when people read magazines printed on paper. One of them,  Cosmopolitan, used to run light-hearted quizzes – Do you have what it takes to be a boss?, Are you a potential serial killer? – that kind of thing. One of the inevitable questions was whether you were a dog or a cat person. Our house is definitely cat, but for many Spanish households that question is about as useful as the outcome of those tests. Lots of Spaniards will tell you they have cats, but they don’t mean that in the same way as they do for dogs, or the same as we do. Our cats sleep on the sofa and they are steadily, and sometimes not so steadily, dismantling the house. Those half on, half off cats might get a name and a bowl of food left out, but little more. Current legislation says that option no longer exists; either people take responsibility for animals in their care or they will get into bother. But rules and reality are often two completely different things. I should add that some Spanish c...

We've just had a few days in Tangier. I'm sure that, in my youth, when Simon Templar went there, we used to say Tangiers. Anyway whatever it's called the city we went to is the one in Morocco, just opposite the southernmost tip of Spain at Tarifa. Between 1923 and 1945, it was a city jointly administered by Britain, France and Spain as an International City. I'd had a vague hankering to go there since I read a Spanish novel which was set in Tanger (Spanish name). So, when I saw a flight from Valencia for 12.99€ one way (even after all the usual Ryanair tricks and ruses it still only cost 40€ there and back) it was a done deal. One of the several things we noted wandering around Tangiers were the cats. There were hundreds of them. Some were skinny, some were clearly unwell, some looked like cared for pets. Whatever their status they were left to their own devices. It's not the same in Spain. Spanish street cats stay well away from people whom they don't trust a...