Hi, I'm calling to sell you something

We all know about spam phone calls. We all have our methods for getting shut. At the end of the call we block the number but the baddies seem to have a limitless supply. Here in Spain we Brits have a ready made get out with the old "Me no speaky foreign strategy". If that doesn't work then rudeness, anger or simply putting the phone down will - at least till the next call. 

Since 2009 it's supposed to have been possible to stop these people pestering you by signing up to the Lista Robinson, the Robinson list. I did and it seems reasonably effective but I've heard that, for some call centres, the Robinson list is just another database to plunder. At the end of June 2023 new legislation came into force which is supposed to make it more difficult for these cold callers to keep on pestering us. The general consensus is that the legislation is so full of holes that it won't change anything. Oh, and by the way if you're registered as a business or as self employed the new legislation doesn't cover you. Business cold calling to business is considered legitimate.

The first reason the new legislation is likely to fail is that it doesn't apply if you have given your consent for companies to call you. Not many of us think we give consent but just how often do you read the fine print on that Internet contract or new phone app before you tick the little box? That's where the clause is that gives them permission to call us or even to sell our data on to a third party. And it's often Catch 22; if you don't give your consent then you can't have whatever service is on offer.

The second reason is that the new legislation allows the companies, which have your number, to call you when there is a legitimate interest. What exactly legitimate interest means depends on how much wiggle room a company thinks there is in the legislation. Security, for instance, is a legitimate interest. The company says that it needs to contact you because they are worried that, with a new scam, your account is at risk. So, your bank phones to say that you don't have a backup, just in case of a security breach, phone number. Oh, and while we're on the phone, talking about security, have you ever considered the advantages of our new super gold plus security plan?

But the biggest problem is that the legislation is Spanish and European, not worldwide. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) tells Spanish firms it's illegal to use randomly generated phone numbers for cold calling. The AEPD says telemarketing companies are obliged to identify themselves, say that they are trying to sell you something and tell you you can ask to stop receiving calls if you ask. Calls must be recorded so that the recording can be used as proof that the call complied with the law. The fines for not following the protocol can be up to a couple of million euros. 

So if some advertiser makes a call from Spain and they don't follow the rules they can get into hot water. But Morocco, Ecuador (and lots of other countries) are not in the European Union. So, a Spanish firm hires a call centre, based in Ecuador or Uruguay, to make the calls on their behalf. Even if the phone number that's shown on your mobile looks like a Spanish one it's quite likely it's not. Nobody in Spain makes the call. The Spanish Consumers Association tried, in March 2022, to identify 210 cold call telephone numbers and they only tracked down about a third of them. It's difficult to chase someone for being naughty if you can't find them. 

Cold calling produces a lot of business. We're often a bit fed up with our current phone provider or we wonder if another electric contract wouldn't save us money. If we let the cold caller speak and the deal on the phone sounds good, well, why not? The companies realise that stopping cold calling, obeying the new legislation, could cause a big drop in profits.

The new rules say that the Spanish companies have to behave legally and so they do. The Spanish company signs a contract with, say, a Nicaraguan call centre which stresses that the Nicaraguans will comply with European and Spanish rules when making calls to Spain. The contract is signed in that "foreign" country and it clearly states that the call centre can only call people who have expressly consented to receive calls or where there is a legitimate concern. What doesn't go into the contract is that the call centre and the Spanish company agree, while they're having a cuba libre down the bar, that the call centre can call whoever they want.

Back in Spain, where nobody drinks cuba libres till late at night, Pedro or Pepe, Mariló or Susan complains to the AEPD about unsolicited calls. Maybe the case ends up in court. Let's pretend that this process happens almost instantly and doesn't drag on for years. The telephone company defends itself by showing the contract and saying how disappointed and cross it is with the overseas company for breaching its contract. The AEPD or the judge will not be able to do much to the phone company because any contracts that the phone companies have with the call centres say that they guarantee to only make legitimate calls. The judge can't do much about an Ecuadorian or Peruvian contract because they are outside their jurisdiction. And if the complaints keep coming and the judges begin to suspect some skulduggery then the phone company will throw their hands up in horror and break the call centre contract for not complying with the terms of the agreement. There are lots of call centres looking for business. There may be penalties for breaking contracts, there may even be fines within the EU but the profits will outweigh the losses and so it's more than likely that the system will go blithely on and you, and I, can expect those unwanted phone calls to pepper the day.

Crumbling pegs

It's been sunny and hot for a few days now. Everyone, everywhere is complaining. I'm surprised too. Imagine, hot in Spain, and in August.

I was just bringing in some washing. Five or six pegs crumbled in my hands. The plastic just gives up the ghost when faced with day after day of bright sunlight and heat. That's why Spaniards park their cars in the shade. If not expect the paint to peel off the bodywork and the headlight lenses to go cloudy in time. Oh, and expect singed skin and lots of oohing! and aahing! getting into the car.

Garden furniture doesn't have a chance. The chairs that have the nylon seats and metal frames have proved to outlast the nice rattan designs, the good looking wooden furniture and even the very basic, very cheap, plastic, stacking chairs. Even then, eventually, the thread fails. You realise it's happening when you hear a faint ripping sound and your bottom begins to sink earthward though, usually, fortunately, there is time to save your drink.

When you start to realise that the Spanish climate makes short work of almost anything left outside you start to look for answers. Surely it can't do anything to a glass and steel table? But the steel will rust as the constant expansion and contraction produces little fissures in the paintwork which let in the moisture and the glass will discolour. Often the repeated expansion and contraction means that the legs end up different lengths too so that the tables start dancing or limping as Spaniards say. Years ago my partner, for whom looking at garden furniture is a bit of a hobby, realised why lots of Spanish gardens have furniture that looks like marble but it actually concrete. It holds up well. We bought a table with benches maybe ten years ago. It still looks fine but close inspection reveals the stresses and strains even there. And it's not that soft, being concrete.

A couple of long weeks ago we had a "reventón seco"? The reventón is a short lived very fast, very hot  wind. The explanation is something to do with rain evaporating before it reaches the ground. The mass of air that held the rain continues downwards, hits the ground and flows out leaving a void into which ground level hot air rushes. One of our trees, one of those that doesn't do the bend like a reed thing of the Chinese proverb but prefers the Battle of Little Round Top dictum - Stand Firm Ye Boys from Maine - was swaying quite a lot despite the girth of its trunk. I moved the car in case it fell. I couldn't move the house. The chairs skipped and hopped like the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk.

When the thunder and lightning comes so, sometimes, does the torrential rain. It gouges great trenches in our roadway. In towns and cities it tears down the street carrying cars and containers before it. Fifteen minutes later it's all over and the neighbours start brushing out the mud and quarreling with their insurance company. Sometimes it comes with hailstones, often it comes with hailstones, big hailstones that dent cars, break windscreens and destroy the crops in the field.

Extreme weather is commonplace in Spain. Too hot, too windy, too stormy, too hailstoney, two rainy and, in our living room in winter, even too cold.

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.

¡Olé! ¡Qué arte hija! ¡Arsa!

Last Saturday evening, we went over to Yecla to see a pre-selection concert for the Cante de las Minas flamenco competition which takes place in La Unión, near Cartagena.

La Unión, the town, has a strong tradition of Flamenco, the music more usually associated with gypsies and Andalucia. The link came about because La Unión, which mined lead and silver in Roman times, had a resurgence of mining activity in the mid-nineteenth century. With the liberalisation of certain laws and particularly with new technologies, the mines became potentially profitable for the first time in centuries. The mining industry needed workers. Starving peasants from Andalucia, particularly from Almeria province, saw the opportunity to escape the misery they were living in. They should have known better. Poor people always get it in the neck. They simply replaced the misery inflicted on them by the rich and uncaring farmers of Andalucia for more misery and hardship inflicted on them by rich and uncaring mine owners of Murcia. The miners started to sing songs about their woes in the style they knew, flamenco, and so the song type called Minera was born.

Flamenco has lots of different styles. They all sound the same to me, but if you find someone who actually understands the music, they will be able to clap out the different rhythms, the palos, by clapping, dando palmas, to styles with names like fandangos, tangos, bulerias, alegrias, and lots more.

Back in 1961, Esteban Bernal thought that with the decline of the mining industry, the flamenco style invented there was about to be lost forever. He decided to try to maintain the music by organising a competition for young talent. The competition includes the three main elements of flamenco - singing, el cante, playing, el toque, and dancing, el baile. Competitors for the semi-finals are chosen through a series of heats, like the one we went to in Yecla, and the singers, guitarists and dancers go on to perform in La Unión in the old Victorian-style market hall now dubbed la Catedral del Cante, The Cathedral of Song.

The festival Cante de las Minas, the Song of the Mines, takes place at the beginning of August, this year from 3rd to 12th. For the first four or five nights, there are concerts from established stars of flamenco, and then, from Wednesday on, there are three semi-finals with the big final on Saturday night. The big prize is only 6,000€, but there are prizes for the best this and that, so the actual winner may collect a reasonable amount from a variety of prizes. The real prize, though, is the publicity. Win Cante de las Minas or do well, and the offers of recording contracts or performances will almost certainly come rolling in.

We've been to performances by established stars, and we've done the semi-finals three or maybe four times. It's fascinating and boring in equal measure. If you think flamenco is tight spotty frocks and twirling hands to poppety little tunes then you'd probably be quite surprised by the performances and by the people involved. Tickets are best bought online before the night. The semi finals start at 10pm and go on till very late. When we go we try to be there a few minutes beforehand in order to find and settle into our plastic chairs. Despite our promptness the performance will start the habitual fifteen to twenty five minutes late. When it does get underway the singer will sing and the guitarist will play. I'm impressed. Twenty minutes in and I'm a bit bored. I can't understand the words, and the songs sound very similar (to me). We see someone dance, we see some guitarists, maybe there's a flamenco pianist. The hall is very, very hot. There's a lot of movement of people coming and going to their seats. My bum starts to ache, we're 90 minutes in, two hours. I'm bored to tears and in severe pain. We decide we'll stay till 1:00am or some other agreed time. Finally, we muster the courage to rise from our seats - perdona, gracias, permiso. We push past, we're out and the flamenco stops and we can enjoy the cool of the evening. We say how good it all was, we say how bored we were too. In the square outside the hall, the bars are doing a good trade in food and drink. Maybe we have a last drink before setting out on the 90-minute journey home.

Only the last time we were there did we realize that Spaniards get fed up with sitting on hard chairs in sweltering conditions too. They get a pass and pop outside for a beer or a snack then they go back in so they do their viewing and listening in stints. They don't try to tough it out. Even knowing that I suspect it's a bit unlikely that I'll be able to persuade my partner we should give it another try.

If you haven't done it though consider it. The tickets for the stars aren't cheap and the final usually sells out pretty fast but the semi-finals cost a bit under 16€ this year. Who knows you may fall in love with flamenco. They say people do.

Chansons d'amour

We went to see Monte de la Sal, one of the local choir, music, and dance groups, doing its annual Cançons a la fresca, canciones a la fresca - something like songs in the cool of the evening. They usually do two concerts with that title in July of each year. In the first, the full choir sings popular tunes. The choir dresses in black and white. In the second concert the focus is on traditional dance with the musicians, singers and dancers all wearing traditional clothing. We've seen them in action several times over the years.

My favourite performance, in all these years, was one the group did outside the Cultural centre a few years ago. The dancers took to the stage in their (period) underwear and explained their clothing as they added layers: petticoats, corsets, stockings, and eventually the skirts and blouses. The solitary man who dances with the group wasn't there that year!

It's a lovely event. Sometimes the singers don't quite hit the note or th person presenting a song fluffs their lines, but who cares? The people, the songs and the dances belong here. They belong to this area and to Pinoso. The director of the group, I think I'm right in saying, was in a local pop group back in the 80s, Saturday down the Palais when the Palais was, what is now, the Hiperber supermarket on the Badén. Half the audience know half the choir and most of the other half of the audience. Everything just belongs.

We don't belong, of course. Much of the event tends to be in Valenciano, as it should be. That doesn't stop us from being smiled at, occasionally greeted, and always prodded and goaded towards the celebratory after-event horchata and fartones - Valencian products both.

Road types

From trunk roads, main roads, and motorways, through to the tarmac ribbons in the countryside, the different sorts and standards of roads in Spain are owned and looked after by different levels of government.

Most of the roads operated by the national government are the ones that cross provincial and regional boundaries. This includes both motorways and conventional roads. The motorways are divided into two types: autovías and autopistas. There are technical differences between the two types of road (such as the style of junctions, width of carriageways, design speed, and the like), for most Spaniards, autovía is the all-purpose word for motorways, and they reserve autopista for toll motorways. For Brits the distinction might be that autopistas are motorways and autovias are major dual carriageways. Both types have a median separating the carriageways and at least two carriageways in either direction and the generic speed limit of 120 km/h.

The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these autovías and autopistas have a blue background and white lettering. Their road numbers start with an A or AP if it's a toll road. Roads which were toll roads but are now toll-free tend to keep the AP designation. This blog explains more about their numbering.

The toll motorways were usually built as a partnership between public and private funds. The normal deal is that the constructor gets to maintain the road and charge a toll during the period of a temporary contract, typically 25 years. When the contract ends, the road becomes toll-free, and the title of the road falls to the government. Lots of toll roads have had to be bailed out of financial difficulties. During the current election campaign there have been several claims and counter claims that a general toll will be introduced on Spanish motorways from the start of January 2024. There's little doubt that tolls are coming, because Brussels is looking to recover some of the money invested, but the chance of it happening so soon are pretty slim.

The state's conventional roads, two-lane roads, one in each direction, often with a third uphill crawler lane on steeper sections, are traditionally called national roads. The generic maximum speed allowed on national roads is 90 km/h. In the Basque Country and Navarre, these roads are owned by the regional government. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these roads have a red background with white lettering. The road number will begin with the letter N. The same blog as mentioned above explains the road numbering system.

Outside the Basque Country and Navarre, the regional governments manage the roads that are within their territory. There are three classes or levels.

The first level comprises the most important roads in each autonomous community. They tend to be the busy, longer-distance roads within a region, and they can be either conventional or motorway-style. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these roads have an orange background and black lettering. The road number will usually start with an identifier for the autonomous community. CV for the Comunitat Valenciana, RM for the Region of Murcia, etc. When one of these first-level roads is a motorway, the signs are sometimes blue, and some regions use a version that starts with A before the regional identifier (e.g., AG-59 in Galicia), but most seem to stick to the orange background and the regional initials.

The second level comprises "intercomarcal" roads, and they tend to connect towns or act as feeder roads to either the first-level roads or the national roads and motorways. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these roads have a green background with white lettering. The letter (usually) corresponds to the province, and the numbers to the road.

The third level comprises local roads, which are usually short and link nearby localities or go to places of interest. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these roads have a yellow background and black lettering that identifies the province or locality to which they belong and the number of the road.

Finally, there are the roads maintained by the local municipalities, which are very local roads and country roads within municipal borders. Usually, they don't have any sort of identifier except the signs which give the destination. There are, of course, exceptions. Some municipalities own and manage bigger roads, including motorway-standard roads, which usually have a letter for the municipality followed by a road number, such as the M30 in Madrid or the CT32 in Cartagena, for instance.

To cap off the signs you might see and to make sure that Big Chief I-Spy gives you due recognition, I should mention the European road network. These are the through routes across the continent. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, etc., for these roads add a green panel with white lettering to the existing road name, prefaced by the letter E.

And finally, just for completeness, I wanted to mention the roads which don't fit into this classification, particularly the roads run by the hydrographic confederations. If you drive across the countryside, you will come across these from time to time - usually, they are strange gated roads with dire warning signs set among acres of plastic sheeting or extensive crops. Ports and airports also maintain their own roads.

Road Numbers

In the Plaza del Sol, in Madrid, capital of Spain more frequently than not since 1561, there is a plaque set in the pavement marked as Kilometre Zero. If Google Maps tells you that it's 395 km to Madrid, that's the point it's measuring to. As a local aside there's a similar point in Murcia in the street called Platería.

There are a series of arterial roads that radiate from Madrid. The arterial roads have numbers prefaced by the letter N for Nacional/National. The six radial roads were given Roman numeral names, NI, NII, etc. As examples, the NIII goes to Valencia from Madrid. The NIV goes from Madrid to Seville and on to Cádiz. The effect is that Spain is divided up, cake-like, into slices or segments. Any main road, any national road, in the slice between the NIII and NIV, in a clockwise direction, will have a number that starts with N3. The NV goes to Badajoz from Madrid. Any road clockwise of the NIV but before the NV will have a name in the style of N420. Lots of us know the Guardia Civil Facebook page N332, for instance. It's called that because that's the road the site's authors patrol. I think the photo at the top left makes the idea very clear.

Going back to our informative Guardia chums and the N332. We know now why it's N3, but why the second 3? Go back to that point in the Plaza del Sol in Madrid and draw concentric rings from it with a distance between the rings of 100 km. If a road in that segment between the N3 and the N4 starts between 0 and 99 km from Kilometre Zero, then the road number will start with N30. If the road begins more between 100 and 199 km from Madrid, and it's in the segment between the N3 and the N4, then the road number will start with N31. So the N332 starts between 300 km and 400 km from Madrid. The last number comes from whether the road, and remember this only applies to the National roads, is radial (if it were prolonged, it would go towards Madrid) or transversal (it would never get to Madrid no matter how much it were lengthened).

Now we have the basic idea.

It all changed, of course, with the advent of motorways. The National Roads are no longer the reference points they once were. The National Motorways have numbers that begin with A or AP (around Madrid, some begin with R), but the road numbers follow the original model and the same sort of numbering system is applied. The A3 heads out of Madrid to Valencia. The A4 goes to Seville and on to Cádiz.

Oh, and the A7, the one that runs along the coast - somebody just thought to call it that because it didn't fit the scheme. They did the same up on the North Coast with the A8.

Next time we'll have a look at how to spot the types of roads and non-National Roads. Bate that breath!

Not raising a glass but it is a toast

A couple of weeks ago we went over to Extremadura. It's a while since we've been there and it's a nice part of the world. Easy to get to too. No planes, no passports, no luggage restrictions. Just tank up the motor and point it in the right direction.

We took the scenic route. We stopped over for the night in Andalucia, in Córdoba, before heading on to Zafra, Mérida, Cáceres, Trujillo and Plasencia. It's a while since we've been so far from home in Spain and it reminded me of something I already knew, but often forget, those small but significant regional differences.

Toast for breakfast. Usual, traditional, commonplace all over Spain. Near to home toast is, usually, half of a smallish breadstick or baguette. Just the half, media or, if you want the whole thing entera. The most basic version comes dry and you self add the oil and salt. The next step up, pricewise, is to add a layer of grated tomato (in Catalonia they usually rub the tomato directly into the bread). Richer people add serrano, cured, ham and even cheese. In trendy spots they offer avocado too. 

In Andalucia the differences from home are subtle. There is a tendency to flat slices of bread though "burger bun" molletes are also pretty common. Bread apart, the routine with oil and grated tomato is much of a muchness. Pork dripping, with or without paprika, wasn't on offer. In Sevilla and Cádiz it would have been. The next day, in Zafra, now into Extremadura, the tomato looked completely different. It had been mashed up with garlic and oil and then blitzed with one of those hand blenders. To be honest it looked a bit unpleasant. Our cats have been known to produce something with a similar colour scheme and texture. Fortunately I'd chosen to be radically local and I'd asked for the local paté, cachuela. Adding pork products to toast is big in Extremadura because of the fame of the local, cured ham - it's often quoted as the best in Spain. Maggie was stoic as she chewed on her toast with tomato. Next morning she wondered if they might have the Madrid (and ever so English) variant of butter and jam. In Madrid, where Maggie lived years ago, butter and jam was the norm. Usually in Madrid the bread has the same colour and consistency as a slice of Mother's Pride but three times as thick. Extremadura offered sliced bread too but from far less industrial looking loaves. In Trujillo they even offered brown bread. I wonder if there's a doctorate in this?  Varieties of toast on the Iberian Peninsula.

about this thing of trying the local variant I should mention my consternation in not noticing something in Córdoba before I ordered. When in Rome and all that. There lots of people were having pitufos for breakfast. I've only ever used the word pitufo to describe what we Brits call Smurfs but in Córdoba a toasted sandwiches with oil, cooked ham and cheese is a pitufo. I understand that they're more typical of Malaga. 

Now moving on to croquetas...

On the difficulties of knowing what's going on

I was catching up on the news, reading elDiario.es, and I came across this headline: 

War in the Social Networks between the Gay idols of Vox and the activist known for his "Txapote would vote for you." 

The first paragraph went on to say: The conflict, which is causing furore among streamers from the Extreme Right  - the people who produce digital content in social networks -  has reached the courts. The lawsuit presented by the YouTubers Carlitos de España (Charlie boy of Spain) and Madame in Spain, two of the gay idols of Vox, against Chema de la Cierva, the activist who menaced a team from TVE by shouting directly on air, Txapote would vote for you Sanchez," has had a trial date set. 

The reason for this blog has nothing to do with the actual news story. It's about how difficult it is, sometimes, to have the faintest idea about what's going on around us; just how much information you need to decipher even a simple story.

Some of the basics I knew. 

Vox is a far right Spanish political party. It is homophobic, racist, anti immigrant, super conservative and, basically, in my humble opinion, a party of dangerous nutters. They did well in the local regional and local elections and in several towns, cities and regions they hold the balance of power. In those places they have been getting close to book burning. No to LGTBI flags on public buildings, banning plays they don't like, changing the names of departments, cutting budgets and services etc.

Txapote was an ETA terrorist. ETA fought for independence in the Basque region of Spain by killing and maiming lots and lots of people. Txapote was one of ETA's mass murderers.

Sanchez is the current socialist President of Spain, He has pushed through various bits of legislation and maintained his coalition government with backing from, and doing deals with, several small parties with very specific agendas. One of those small parties has historical links with ETA. Think Sinn Féin and the IRA.

TVE is the Spanish State television broadcaster. They are always accused of being pro government by the parties in opposition.

It was easy to guess who Carlitos de España and Madame in Spain were. People who are Gay or Trans or whatever, the sort of people you would expect to be opposed the the policies of a group like Vox, but were, instead, outspoken and public supporters.

I knew the Txapote quote but I had no idea about the person behind it. Until recently Chema de la Cierva was one of the Vox faithful. De la Cierva was producing video blogs to support Vox and to distribute their message among young people. Apparently he got a bit fed up with the "soft line" the party are taking and he now claims that Vox owe him lots and lots of money.  He has decided to join the Falange which was Franco's party; basically fascists.

I didn't know about his full outburst on the TVE telly programme Hablando Claro, Speaking Out, which went something like this: "The media at the service of the people....!! Txapote would vote for you, Sánchez! Socialist! Mass murderer! Son of a bitch!" and then he went on to the programme's team "Don't come near me or I'll kill you! Don't come near me, you TV motherfu**er! I'll beat you to death! Get out of my fu**ing town! I'll beat you both to death! You bloodsuckers! You sons of bitches!".

And the court case? Well apparently he had a bit of a go at Carlitos de España and Madame in Spain. "What next?", he asked, "Child abusers on the Right?"

So, now we know.

-----------------------------------------------

This is the actual text rather than my bastardised translations

Guerra en las redes de la extrema derecha: el agitador de 'que te vote Txapote' contra los youtubers LGTBI referentes de Vox

El conflicto que azuzó la atmósfera digital de streamers –creadores de contenido– de extrema derecha ha llegado a los tribunales. La querella presentada por los youtubers Carlitos de España y Madame in Spain, dos de los referentes LGTBI de Vox, contra Chema de la Cierva, el agitador que amenazó a un equipo de TVE y gritó en directo “Que te vote Txapote, Sánchez", ha sido admitida a trámite

Two kisses and a big hug

I wrote about the Pinoso Book Club, El Club de Lectura Maxi Banegas, only a year ago but that's not going to stop me doing it again. The group is named for a local teacher and poet - well loved and still missed. You may have seen the poetry competition named after her. It also just happens to be her centenary this year.

The club is organised by the Pinoso public library, which is housed in the Centro Cultural - the modern building halfway up el Paseo de la Constitución, next to the Indian restaurant.

Like the majority of book clubs I've heard of, the plot is simple. The group reads the same book. I don't actually mean that - we have more than one. I thought to change the sentence to read that we all read similar books, but that doesn't work either. So I'll take it that you know what I mean. Anyway, after reading a book, the group comes together and comments on it. We have some, nominal, say about books for inclusion in the next "course," but really, the librarians choose the books using criteria like who's fashionable, mixing international, Latin American and Spanish authors, access to the books through the library system and slightly politicized things like not only choosing male writers.

The organization is pretty slick. We get a spiral-bound, bulky magazine-thickness booklet, which details the members of the group with contact details, dates of meetings, dates of national or international literary events, books that we'll be reading this year with a bio of the authors, a bibliography, the cover notes on the book, and any additional paperwork. It's comprehensive. The librarian and archivist who look after the group must put a fair bit of graft into its production. There are about fifteen of us in the group. I'm the only bloke, but I'm not the only Briton.

So when I joined, and I joined it as a language challenge, something a bit beyond my grasp, with the advantage of being local and with local people, I supposed that the process would be clean and simple. Read a book, in Spanish, turn up at one of the usually three weekly meetings, natter about the book, go home, and repeat the process. It turns out that the group life is much more involved than that. There are quite often book launches from local authors, and the club gets involved in those as well as things like World Women's Day or World Poetry Day. There are sometimes little outings to do with a book that we've read or an author visiting a nearby town. I've found that there have been nearly as many ancillary meetings as scheduled ones. Naturally, being Spain, the group has its own WhatsApp group, and that too can be most amusing.

I taught English in Pinoso for two or three years. In that time, quite a few local people passed through my classes, but it's only very occasionally that I see any of those old students. On the other hand, when I'm out and about in Pinoso, I keep bumping into members of the book club. I don't know why, but the book club people seem to be everywhere. It's rather nice. They're a good bunch, and they've been very kind about my faltering Spanish.

Anyway, at the beginning of this month, as the sort of end-of-course do, the group - well, the librarians - had taken the opportunity to organise a Q&A session with a writer called Elia Barceló. I read something of hers for the session, but before that, I'd never even heard of her. Her Wikipedia entry suggests that I should have. She's both well known and well regarded.

She did her session with us, and then, as we are in Spain, we went to a bar to eat and drink. I wasn't at the same table as the writer, and when the people at my table started to go home, I got ready to leave too. I thought it only good manners to say goodnight to our guest of honour even though I hadn't said a word to her all evening. The writer was effusive when she said goodbye to me. I suspect she was probably impressed by the good humour and bonhomie that the Club de Lectura Maxi Banegas generates and that she'd had a good evening.

Dylan in Alicante

We went to see the Bob Dylan concert in Alicante yesterday. I'm not a big fan but I have to accept that the man's a living legend, a Nobel Prize winner. How could I not go if he was just down the road? After all, there may not be many more opportunities to see him, given that he's not exactly a spring chicken. Besides, the ticket price wasn't bad. Overall, it seemed like a good idea. I even bought the album for the tour, Rough and Rowdy Ways, so that I'd recognise the songs.

So, we saw him. I thought the concert was terrible. It reminded me of another concert we went to back in around 2005. That was Van Morrison, and he was at Terra Mitica just outside Benidorm. In both cases, we were a long way from the stage. In both cases, the artists played their songs and hardly acknowledged the crowd. In both cases, the stage lighting was just so they could see, not so we could see them. There was no sort of light show. In both cases, the audience seemed secondary to the performer. All those years ago, it was perfectly reasonable that there were no big screens so we could see Van Morrison. But in 2023, not having screens is a form of subtle insult to a fee-paying audience seated a long way from the stage. To make sure we in the audience didn't sneak a couple of photos, they sealed our mobile phones inside padded pouches. The argument was that we should be centering our attention on the man and his music, not on our phones. Hmm? I didn't see any of the professional photographers who usually buzz around concert musicians either. My guess is that they, too, were barred from taking photos of the great man. 

I still go to see live bands pretty frequently. My partner says she isn't fit enough to stand around for hours at festivals anymore and that has rather curtailed our festival going which is a shame as there are enough festivals in Spain for that proverbial squirrell to go from one to the next without ever touching the ground. Fortunately, even locally, there are quite a lot of opportunities to see both newish and established musicians, either for free or at remarkably reasonable prices. It's a pity about the festivals because they are definitely my favorite way of seeing modern music. I like them because they are always good value for money. I like them because they are more impressive than going to see this or that band at this or that venue. I particularly like the festival acts that are on early, the up-and-comers, the bands and musicians that are pleased to get the chance to perform, even if it is at 6 pm. They want to impress. Also, as an old bloke who doesn't like to be pushed and shoved, the crowds for the early bands are sparse, made up of a few die-hard fans, friends and family. An added bonus with these early evening bands is that, with a bit of luck, a few years later you'll be able to say that you saw such and such musician/band long before they were famous. I like festivals as well because I quickly get bored with listening to the same band. If there are three or four stages on the go you have to keep moving to see the maximum number of performances.

Festivals also give you the opportunity to see the bigger, established acts, both national and international, but I often find their performances a bit lacklustre. They're already famous, and they have no particular need to impress, just like Bob. Because whatever he does, however good or bad his performance is on a Thursday evening in Alicante, he'll always be Bob Dylan.

Porky pies

I mentioned last week that we tend towards the things that we grew up with. I was thinking about this again when we went to a British shop to buy sausage. I'll explain later.

At any traditional till in a Spanish supermarket, particularly in rural areas, you will notice that the person in front, generally, has ingredients and not the finished product. We're not talking extremes. Spaniards buy crisps, not raw potatoes. It's very unlikely though that they would buy a ready made lasagne. They cook from the raw materials. There are nowhere near as many packets, cans and jars of prepared foods as there are in the UK.

I've been making the midday meal for a while using a British cookery book. The book often lists a packet of this or a jar of that as one of the ingredients. As those packets and jars are not available I have to buy individual ingredients to simulate the packet or the can that the recipe suggests. Sometimes it simply has to be a substitute because, Jim Lovell and Apollo 13 like, if the recipe calls for mangetout, tarragon stalk, pak choi, hoisin sauce, tahini, harissa paste or even chilli flakes (all, obviously as British as jellied eels) then we have a problem. Then there are things that have similar names to a British product but they just won't do for the recipes. They are products designed for a local market. You can buy a jar full or a yellow powder called curry in any Spanish food retailer. The taste is like the curry sauce I used to get on my chips at the chip shop. It's not even a distant cousin to a Sharwood's or Patak's like curry powder that the recipes call for. 

One of the key aspects of a capitalist economy is that if there's a market someone will be ready to exploit it. Carrefour, the French chain, is a big player in Spain and all of their stores have an international food section - malta for Ecuadorians, sauerkraut for Germans, dill pickles for Poles, Batchelor's mushy peas for Britons and so on. Even a small Spanish supermarket will usually have a few foreign things if they perceive a market. In Pinoso the local Consum supermarket has Warburton's crumpets, Oxo cubes, Heinz sandwich spread, HP sauce, Tetley's tea, Cathedral Cheddar and lots more. Some of the things we think of as British are readily available but with a different name. Gary Lineker could advertise Lays crisps for instance and Fontaneda digestives still have McVitie's baked into the biscuit. Other things, like Heinz tomato ketchup or Pepsi Cola, and tens of others, are international and thousands of others products are, as you'd expect, from tomatoes and oranges to canned tuna and chickpeas.

As well as the Spanish shops carrying a few foreign items there are occasional "foreign" shops selling food that Spaniards don't, usually, eat. Russian and various South American shops are reasonably common but, in this area, we Britons, even though Brexit is sapping our strength, still have the upper hand. It was curry paste that we needed. Making up a curry paste from scratch is just a bridge too far. Besides which Maggie had complained that the Spanish sausages in one of the recipes were too meaty; we needed the British product, full of rusk and recovered meat. The British shop we went to, like so many others, was a bit odd. These shops nearly always look understocked. I think that's probably because they are not expected to provide the staples. They specialise in those British things that people miss. Pork pies, ploughman's pickle, Bombay mix, Marmite, mango chutney, spaghetti hoops, custard creams, Paxo stuffing, Bird's custard powder, dandelion and burdock pop. Anyone wanting eggs, potatoes, sugar, coffee or apples will go to a normal supermarket. I suppose, understandably, because they are at the end of a long supply chain, with everyone taking their profit, the prices in the British shops tend to be quite high.

I should be fair and say that where there are larger populations of Britons there are supermarkets that look exactly like supermarkets and not like grocer's shops. Iceland for instance is involved in something called Overseas Supermarkets and Tesco has some outlets too. They have lots of stuff in tins and packets. They have piped music, the staff wear uniforms and they sell harissa paste.

Realising there's still a long way to go

Now when we first arrived here, and ever since, I determined not to be too British. I am British, I will always be British. I'm fine with being British. I understand why Britons living in Spain watch Eastenders, why we still get our news from tried and tested sources "back home," why we continue to eat at "sensible" times. In short why our reference points are the systems we were brought up with. Nonetheless, living in Spain, I thought I should find out about the place and try to merge into the background. Of course, you, one, can't. I don't do socks and sandals but I'm obviously British. If I'd had children here, they would have been a different class of Briton. They'd watch the same TikTok as their contemporaries in school, they'd read the same comics, not see anything strange about pizza carbonara, like the same brands of biscuits and speak the same language as their peers. They might speak my language too and even have a British passport, but their first language, and most of their their reference points, would be the ones all around them.

In reckon it's the language that's the biggest stumbling block to us immigrants. I've been engaged in close combat with Castilian Spanish for years. I probably speak Spanish that's grammatically inferior to a five-year-old Spaniard, but I have the advantage of a largish vocabulary and a lot more life experience to get me through. Having some Spanish means that I can read and understand things here, that I can listen to the radio and podcasts, watch TV, films, and videos, and even talk to people. My understanding often fails, my conversation habitually so, but I have enough language to have garnered a reasonable amount of information about what's going on, about history, about things Spanish, in general.

I've said before that it's quite easy, well, at least there are tried and tested methods, to learn about things Spanish. The problem is that lots of our knowledge isn't purposefully learned, it just seeps in. I never wanted to learn the words to Tie a Yellow Ribbon or Jerusalem, but I know them. How do you learn to recognize the cultural equivalents of Gerry Marsden, Shirley Bassey, Fanny Craddock, Blur, Depeche Mode, Kazuo Ishiguro, Enid Blyton, Gary Glitter, Lenny Henry, Rolf Harris, Vivienne Westwood, Pat Phoenix, or Kate Adie? Why do I know about The Last Night of the Proms and the Open University or that Port Vale is a football team from Stoke? I was reminded of the knowledge I still lack, knowledge that I will probably never gather, when I was at the San Isidro cavalcade in Yecla and then in Elda for the Moros y Cristianos.

For the San Isidro parade, there are floats, and each float is escorted by a charanga, the slightly chaotic, informal bands that are as chalk to cheese to the uniformed, well-drilled town bands. The atmosphere was festive, there were a lot of empty wine bottles and beer cans on the floor. The bands were banging out Here we go, here we go type songs. I was repeatedly, briefly, roped into the throng surrounding a passing float. They offered me drink, they offered me food, they invited me to sing along. In Elda we were almost at the end of the route watching the Moros in their full regalia. As the various comparsas approached the finish line the bands played a tune and the members of the groups sang vigorously. Often sections of the crowd joined in. 

In neither case did I know the songs or the tunes. Not my town, not my culture, not my people. 

Still so much to learn!

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used

I don't know if you were made to read Shakespeare at school. I was. Shakespearean characters drink lots of wine. The wine they drank would be like a wine that is, nowadays, produced in just a handful of bodegas here in Alicante province. It's called Fondillón. I like it. It's price shot up when hordes of pesky wine reviewers discovered it and gave it big points scores so it's a while since I tasted it.

In the distant past a standard form of vineyard tenancy agreement lasted as long as the original vines were still in production. Vines produce fewer grapes over time so growers uproot old vines and plant anew. To maintain their lease the growers left some of the original vines in place. These old, tired plants were hardly worth harvesting so, by the time the grapes were cut from the vines, they had withered and were raisin like.

Fondillón is made from monastrell grapes. Fondillón has to have at least 16% volume of alcohol. To the casual drinker Fondillón has similarities to the sweeter sherries or ports but its high alcohol content, unlike theirs, doesn't come from addeing alcohol to the wine base. The alcohol comes from the high sugar content of the raisined grapes. The grapes are mashed up and the yeast on the grape goes to work turning the sugar into alcohol. There's a lot of sugar so the alcohol content gets up to between 16º/18º. That amount of alcohol kills the yeast and the fermentation stops. This process takes about three or four weeks. There is still plenty of sugar left in the mix which is why Fondillón is sweet. This newly fermented wine is added to barrels which hold similar wine from earlier harvests.

To be called a Fondillón the wines have to be aged in huge, old oak barrels for at least ten years; it's the long ageing that makes the wine what it is. The wine is produced using the solera method where wines from different vintages are mixed together to ensure a uniformity of style. If you've ever drunk sherry, decent sherry, not the stuff that Auntie Gladys has at the back of the sideboard from last Christmas, you'll know that it doesn't have a vintage, a year, on the label. That's because it's a blend of the wine from several years. The date on the Fondillón label, if there is one, is the date that the barrel was first laid down. It's an expensive wine to make because it has to be stored for ages, often for decades.

When it's time to sell the wine about a third of the amount in the barrel is drawn off. Obviously enough it's drawn from the bottom of the barrel and one of the Spanish words for bottom is fondo which is why the wine is called Fondillón.

Fondillón nearly died out in Alicante. Around the turn of the 20th Century an insect plague, phylloxera, devastated European wine production. It hit France first and the Spanish wine growers grabbed their opportunity to sell their product to drinkers left thirsty by the French. The low yield Fondillón vines made no economic sense at all. Fondillón production collapsed, Then phylloxera hit the Spanish vineyards and reduced production to a trickle. Nobody produced Fondillón. A chance meeting of two men in the Primitivo Quiles bodega in Monóvar, where there was still an old barrel of Fondillón, led to the wine being produced again in tiny quantities. In time production spread to a few more bodegas in Monóvar, Algueña, Pinoso and Villena. Our bodega in Culebrón makes Fondillón.

So, if you fancy supporting a world class wine with local history you know what to do. But don't expect it to be cheap.

Bewildered at the person - computer interface

When, as a student, I had to decide between putting petrol in my car or eating, the answer was obvious. I'd keep going for a while, the car wouldn't. Besides someone might give me food, nobody gave me petrol. The sort of cars I bought were cheap and unreliable. I spent hours messing with bits I didn't really understand. I was expert in stripping threads, drawing blood as I worked and dancing from side to side, dying to go to the toilet, but with oil stained hands determined to finish before the light failed. Those cars had carburettors and points and lots of things to twiddle.

It's ages since I've done anything other than check pressures or liquid levels on a car. Nowadays I pay for someone else, someone with a stronger bladder, to do it.

My current car tells me when it wants something. In fact it demands. The warnings for the 60,000 km oil change came on 2,000 km before. When I booked the car in they gave me a date three weeks hence. Today was hence.

Oil change, a couple of filters and plugs they said on the phone. I bought the service contract at the time I bought the car. For the dealer I suspect that one of the main reasons the contracts are good value is that it means you go to see them and that gives them the chance to sell you something else.

It's 2023 and there were no oily rags or overalls to be seen at a garage. Shiny desks, corporate image, computer tablets to sign and piped music instead. As the bloke stared at the computer screen I wondered. Do the bits of software on Spanish computers change the way they look every time? The service reception bloke kept squinting at the screen and looking puzzled. I've seen the same look at the Post Office; a look of surprise, slight bewilderment. They do it at the Post Office even when they're selling you one of those label things that now serves as a a stamp even though they must do that tens of times every day. It's the same in banks with everyday transactions. In government offices the first person calls over a second person to stare at the screen so they can look perplexed together.

“Ah, no, said the workshop man,” (who I presume takes in cars for service and repair every day of his working week), “no plugs this time. It'll be when you come back in August or September, or when you reach 60,000 km.” “But it's a 60k service now,” I said. He re-squinted. He showed me the screen, I pointed to the tick boxes on the screen where it said bujías, filtro de aceite, filtro de polen. “Ah, yes. Correct. New plug and new filters.”

The art of simultaneous talking

It's local and regional election day next Sunday, the 28th, and the local politicians are doing the rounds. This post came about as a result of one of the meetings I went to.

We got the usual sort of presentation from politicians on the hustings - lauding their party's past record and future plans with the occasional disparaging side comment about the meagre offer of the other parties. 

My Spanish coherency seems to be on hold at the moment and even my understanding is faltering. I'm hoping for a comeback but the slough has been a long and depressing one. So, as the politicians spoke, I only just kept up with the patter. Then came a comment which gave space for a local question. The meeting turned into a bunfight - claim and counterclaim, suggestion and rejection. Red faces and aggressive body language. I lost the detail completely but the broad stroke of the conversation was easy and it wasn't friendly.

In the Anthropocene past I used to run community buildings and my life often seemed to be one long committee meeting. A colleague suggested that the art to running a successful committee meeting was to get everyone to talk themselves out about something that anyone could have a valid opinion about - hand dryers as against paper towels, whether the vending machine should stock sugary snacks - just before you introduced the item or project that you wanted to push forward or stymie. It was a bit like that at the meeting but in reverse. We didn't get to talk about local concerns or the bigger questions because it was time to air old grievances. Conclusions were not reached.

I've often been impressed with how Spaniards handle themselves in large group conversations. Three Spaniards can easily maintain four conversations at once. It's a bit like that quiz show University Challenge where, sometimes, the contestants interrupt the question to answer. There the contestants guess at what's coming next to score points. Usually English speakers let someone finish their phrase before launching into the next. At times, amongst we Brits, there is a bit of a race to be the next to make the most erudite or argument winning point but, once someone is speaking, the rest hold fire, breathlessly awaiting their turn. Not so Spaniards. The person making the point may respond to two or three challenges or suggestions at the same time, turning from one conversation to the next with a dexterity as inbred as the ¡viva! call and response. Something Pavlovian. And of course, around here, when the raised voices and gesticulating starts you can guarantee that someone will break free of the Castilian chains and let loose in Valenciano.

I left the meeting a little early but long after it had finished.

My dad used to cut us in half wit' bread knife

We were in a bar in Alicante the other day and there were newspapers on sticks. The rods slide along the spine of the newspaper which makes them easy to hang from a wall frame. The frame keeps the papers neat and organised. It also makes it more difficult to sidle out, unnoticed, with a stolen newspaper. It was the first one I've seen for years.

It made me wonder about other things that have largely disappeared since I first started wandering around Spain. It also made me feel very old as the first time I came to Spain was over forty years ago. To be honest lots of the changes are just universal European changes - the disappearance of things like fax machines, floppy discs, dial telephones and typewriters. Some though are much more Spanish.

The first thing that came to mind, and where else but in a bar, was the floor sized waste bin. Bars were places for men. Women wouldn't be idling around in a bar, instead they'd be at home wearing one of those wrap around aprons getting the lentejas (lentil stew) ready. Plenty of bars didn't have bar stools so it was normal to see lots of men leaning against the bar snacking on something as they drank beer or wine. They would use those completely useless serviettes made out of some sort of liquid repellent paper and throw them on the floor along with their fag ends, nut shells, olive pits and shrimp peelings. Every now and then a waiter wearing a yellowed, bri-nylon, sweat stained armpit, once white shirt would push a broom along the floor to snow plough away the detritus. There were very few women servers in bars in the 80s.

In bigger towns there were street corner tables, card tables or upturned orange boxes, selling small, cheap, everyday items. I used to use them to buy single cigars but they were good for things like shoe laces, matches and tissues too. This was long before people needed a plastic bottle of water to survive leaving the house. There were far more pavement kiosks too selling a multitude of small things.

There wasn't a vehicle in Spain without a dent. Once, in Valencia, I was sitting outside a bar when a biggish van found that it couldn't get past because a badly parked car. The van driver got out of his van, looked at the gap, looked at the width of his van and started to boot in the corner of the offending car. The instant bodywork remodelling gave the van driver the extra few centimetres he needed to get by. When the car owner came back he glanced, and I mean glanced, at the dented in bodywork, got in his car and drove away. Oh, and it was a national sport to break into cars if there was anything of value on show. As a preventative measure people used to walk around with their car radios hanging, like handbags, from their wrists.

Puddings were another thing. Menús, not menu as in a list of things to eat in a café or restaurant, but menú, as in a set meal, had a very limited range of options but the puddings were even less varied. Flan (a table creeper), natillas (vanilla custard), ice cream and fruit of the day. Never anything else. Oh, and the wine was always so rough that it came with Casera (sugared, fizzy water). And of course everyone everywhere smoked. Between courses, in the doctor's and as you queued at a train station ticket office. Even as late as 2005, when I finally moved here, there were chain smoking people behind the desks in places like the Traffic Office.

All our local knowledge perished when we left the UK. We needed lots of things for our new house but finding them was hard. If we wanted a locksmith or a plumber or an exotic masseuse we couldn't ask on the Pinoso Community Facebook page because there wasn't one. Our British solution at the time would be Yellow Pages but the Spanish version was useless. It drove me to distraction. Everything was "organised" into towns. That meant we had to trawl through locksmiths in Pinoso, none, locksmiths in Monóvar, none, locksmiths in Petrer etc. Once I'd found a number and plucked up the courage to ring, phone calls in a foreign language are tortuous, most of the numbers were incorrect anyway.

There were so many things. Women dressed in black as a sign of mourning for their dead husbands. Women shuffling, on their knees, towards the altar in church as some sort of penance. Hotel rooms with washbasins and clean sheets on the bed but otherwise almost bare. Just two television channels with the national anthem sounding over the fluttering flag at midnight until 1990 when the commercial channels began regular broadcasts. In Galicia in the 1990s donkeys and carts were still common and because not everyone had access to a car you could catch buses from anywhere to anywhere. Oh, and a train journey from one place to another could take ages. I remember a trip between Seville and Alicante with a compartment load of drunken squaddies, just released from compulsory military service, that took around 12 hours.

And, of course, you could ride into town on the tram, buy a fish supper for your girl, get a bag of sherbet on the way home and still have change from a farthing. And if you told young people that today they wouldn't believe you!

And Running with Horses

Back in 2017 I was on the cuesta, the slope, in Caravaca, the crowd parted, as it does, to let the horse and handlers through. Peering through the viewfinder of the camera I saw no danger but the bloke behind me yanked me back and let loose a load of verbal abuse about death and injury. The photos were a bit blurred too. So this year I decided to be sensible and I went early enough to bag a spot on the castle wall looking down to where the horses run. 

The photos were in focus, the viewpoint was safe and I was able to talk to a family from Llano de Brujas who were leaning on the same wall  But after about ten horses had run past I thought I'd have a bit of a wander and see if I could get some nice, safe, snaps of the horses as they arrived at the top of the hill. It was the first time I'd done that. Interesting. Injured horse handlers, crying horse handlers, girlfriends greeting their hero horse handlers. The horses looked happier too now that nobody was poking them with a stick and demanding that they run through a red and white coloured mob of shouting people. My personal favourite chant was "It smells of armpits here" - it did.

I had seen enough horses and decided to leave so I had no option but to join the throng of people on the slope as the only route to get to the signed emergency exit, the way back to my parked car. It wasn't so easy pushing my way through hundreds and hundreds of boozed and drugged up young people enjoying themselves with just a tad of danger to spice it up a bit. In fact I found myself caught up in this ebb and flow of bodies long enough for about five horses to pass. I have to be honest, I was glad when I reached the way out. I thought I might be there for the whole event. Some of those snaps with the bits of horse showing above the mass of red and white are in focus.

The Caballos del Vino, the Wine Horses, is something that happens every 2nd May in Caravaca de la Cruz. There are about 70 groups, peñas, and each one has a horse that takes part in three contests over the three days. The 2nd May is the big day though. Like baguettes and dry stone walling this event too is Intangible Cultural Heritage. The story goes that the Castle/Church in Caravaca was under siege by the Muslims, the Moors, in the middle of the 13th Century. Caravaca is called Caravaca de la Cruz because the church there has a piece of the "One True Cross". Not letting the Muslims get their hands on such an important Christian relic was considered to be top priority. The defenders had emptied their water cisterns so a group of Knights Templar decided to run the siege and take them something to drink. They couldn't find any water (!) so they loaded their steeds with wine skins and charged, bat out of hell like, up the slope taking the besiegers by surprise. They made it into the castle and the defenders, being well pleased to have a bit of something to slake their thirst, decorated the horses with flowers and suchlike.

The 2nd of May celebrations are dedicated to the One True Cross. Before the horses start running there is a floral offering taken to the church. Then it's the popular bit. The horses, wearing incredibly intricate embroidered mantles, start from a flat spot below the castle and run up a slope to the castle gates. The horses have four handlers, two on each side, and it's a simple time trial to run from the start to the finish. The starter says such and such horse can run, the four handlers try to get into position before they cross the start line and then horse and handlers run up the hill, it takes a few seconds. Caballo en carrera, racing horse, is the warning to the crowd. If you don't heed the warning four blokes and a horse may trample you to death. If the handlers arrive at the finish line still attached to the horse then the run is valid. Keeping up with the horse can't be easy especially as there are several hundred, possibly several thousand, people in the way who have to move to one side to let the horses pass.

Caravaca is pretty lively on the second of May.

Lots of pictures in the May album

Walking with sheep

UNESCO produces a list of things of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Flamenco is on the list, so are baguettes. 

Dry Stone walling is on the list too - it got there after flamenco but before baguettes. You may think a blog about dry stone walling could be a bit "dry" but if the UN says that dry stone is one of things that makes all our lives richer then I think it's incumbent on us to believe them.

Dry stone involves building things with stones that are not bound together with mortar. The things don't fall down because the stones are naturally interlocked or because of the use of load bearing structures. Dry stone techniques use rough, field, stones. So, for instance, Inca temples built without mortar but with dressed stone are not considered to be dry stone structures. Wherever you come from I'm sure you know dry stone structures. 

Dry stone is most commonly used to build boundary walls but the technique can be used to construct anything from a way marker to a corral or a building. Around here the terraces (bancales in Spanish) are bounded by and held up by dry stone walls called ribazos. It's usually assumed (partly because they were responsible for so many agricultural improvements) that the bancales and ribazos, were built by the descendants of the North Africans, the Moors, who invaded Spain in the 8th Century. The problem is that field terraces use the local earth and field stones so that it's tricky to say whether they were built last year, last century or last millennium. Accurate dating of the terraces requires archaeological excavation. It turns out that the oldest terraces around here are Bronze Age, lots more are Moorish but the majority were actually built in the last three centuries.

The use of the bancales also varies. We logically assume, quite rightly, that terraces make hillsides easier to farm, and reduce the amount of soil carried away during torrential downpours. There are, though, other reasons for levelling the land. For instance, in this province, archaeologists have found that some of the Bronze age terraces were constructed as defensible positions to protect herds and flocks of animals as they were moved from pasture to pasture. This system of moving animals from higher to lower ground, from winter to summer pasture, is called transhumance. 

Transhumance has always been important in Spain, more important in some parts than others. In the 13th Century Alfonso X, the Spanish king, defined a series of tracks and routes and a whole load of rules and regulations to stop conflicts between the nomadic herders and more settled farmers. The rules defined the characteristics of overnight resting places, widths of the tracks etc. It's these ancient rights that still protect these paths as public spaces today. At their height, there were over 125,000 kms of tracks in Spain.

One of the reasons for the importance of transhumance was that, from the 15th to the 19th Century, Spain had a monopoly on merino wool. All that time the wool trade brought enormous wealth to Spain. It's usually the explanation behind huge houses in now almost abandoned villages. The fine merino wool was the best material, at the time, for making high value clothing like underwear and stockings. That monopoly was broken when the Spanish royals gave gifts of herds of sheep to their royal relatives in other countries. Also, around the same time, both the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon recognised the economic potential of the sheep and sent a few home as their armies battled it out in the Spanish Peninsular War. The Australian merino flocks are descended from that looted Spanish stock.

The tracks the animals move along are called vías pecuarias, cañadas and the big wide ones, the ones that have to be 75 metres wide, Cañadas Reales (Royal droves). In this area the big tracks are also called veredas. One of the most important routes that comes through Pinoso is the Vereda de los Serranos which starts up near Cuenca and goes on to Jaen. There are lots of branch tracks (just like our motorways, trunk roads and local roads). Most of the animals passing through Pinoso were headed for the coast around Cartagena.

In this area there is another link between dry stone and transhumance as well as ancient terraces. Field stones were used to build shelters, stone sheds, called cucos. They could be used by farm labourers at busy times to save travelling time and also for shepherds and drovers passing by on those rural rights of way. 

If you're local and you haven't seen them there are lots of cucos to the left of the road that runs from the Yecla Road down to Lel in the area called el Toscar and there are more alongside the road from Lel towards Ubeda - there are others in various places but these are easy to see from the road. Monóvar has the dry stone mapped out on this link and every now and again Pinoso and Jumilla Tourist offices do something about their dry stone.

Visiting Parliament

I've always been relatively interested in politics, not in any deep intellectual way, but in the way of knowing which side I was on in any political argument.

When we first arrived in Spain, when there was hardly any Internet, when news came in newspapers and on TV and radio, keeping up was tricky. I could read the Spanish papers, finger pointingly slowly, but the spoken news was, initially, incomprehensible gabble. I was quite worried that I would turn from informed to stupid. For months I copied down the names, to try to make sense of the weekly political round-up in English in the Costa Blanca News. Nowadays I know, reasonably well, what's going on politically in Spain but I haven't a clue about the UK.

This year there will be a general, local and regional elections in Spain. This May will be our fifth set of local elections here. We're on nodding terms with a few of the local councillors. One of those is the Pinoso Mayor, Lázaro Azorín. Now Lázaro as well as being our mayor is a deputy, an MP, in the national parliament.

The traditional pattern in the UK is that the politicians are affiliated to a political party and elected to a geographical area. Electors may choose to vote for a political party but, sometimes, and especially at the local level, people vote for personalities; for people they know and trust. The same is true of Spanish voting except that the system for candidates is substantially different; it's much more party based. Electors vote for a list of names put forward by a political party to cover the whole town, not wards, or the whole province, not towns.

The Spanish idea is that for any particular area there are so many seats available. For instance, for the Town Hall in Pinoso there are currently 13 councillors. Alicante province, based on population and other weighting factors, returned 12 deputies to the national parliament. For any election the political parties prepare a list of candidates long enough to fill all the available seats plus a couple of "just in case" extras. If one party were to win 100% of the votes then the party's whole list would be elected. In practice, each party gets a number of seats in proportion to the number of votes they capture. If there were just two parties, and each got the same number of votes, then they would both get the same number of seats. In fact it's much more complicated than that but that's the basic scheme.

This list system means that the political heavyweights are secure; there are never shock defeats. It also means that ordinary voters often only know the people at the top of the list. The list system also avoids by-elections. If one of the elected members dies or resigns then there is a ready made successor, waiting in the wings. It does mean though that, if the party you favour ideologically puts forward someone you disapprove of for any reason, you have to decide between person and party.

Lázaro was top of the list for the socialists in Pinoso. In the 2019 elections his party won 10 of the 13 Pinoso seats. Lázaro was also number five on the list of candidates for election to the national government from Alicante province. His party won sufficient votes to return four national deputies to Madrid. So Lázaro just missed getting in. Later the number one on that list, an ex astronaut and government minister, resigned his parliamentary seat. The reasoning was relatively complex but it was to do with ensuring a secure parliamentary vote in a minority coalition government. With that resignation Lazaró, as next in line, became a national deputy. He decided to continue as Mayor of Pinoso but he gave up his local salary.

We know Lázaro a bit. He says hello in the street. I was talking to him a while ago about his dual role and he said that if we were ever in Madrid we should ask him to arrange a visit to the Congreso de los Diputados, the lower house of the national parliament. We had plans to go to Madrid, I asked, and Lázaro was as good as his word. He arranged for us to visit.

We got to sit in the gallery and watch the debate about changing the "Sí es Sí", law, basically anti rape legislation that went wrong because of dodgy legal drafting. Convicted sex offenders have been getting early release on appeal. The resulting political storm has played into the hands of the right of centre parties and stretched the limits of the leftist governing coalition. Maggie and I were sitting in the visitor's gallery, during the debate, political personality spotting. When there was a bit of a break in the voting Lázaro gave us a quick tour of the Congress from committee rooms, offices and underground tunnels to the cafeteria. He left us to our own devices when he went to vote for the final, and in my mind flawed, version of the revised law. After the vote the building emptied and we were able to visit parts of the building that we see all the time on the TV news including the main debating chamber, the hemiciclo.

I should say that it's reasonably easy to get to visit the parliament. There are regular slots for visits and slots can be arranged online but getting the personalised tour was just brilliant.