Life in Culebrón

A little while ago, I blethered on about how impressed I’d been by one of those online language-learning platforms driven by AI. This post is a bit more on AI tools and learning a language—Spanish in my case. For a while now, I’ve tried to motivate myself to squeeze in just ten minutes of Spanish vocabulary every day. It’s ages since I've sat down in front of a grammar book and ploughed through the unremitting grind of learning verb tables or trying to understand demonstrative pronouns, but I decided that trying to increase my vocabulary was reasonable enough. And I still look up the odd grammar point from time to time. The adverts on Facebook and Insta insist that such things are unnecessary, and, much as I'd like to agree, I can't. Learning a language is, I think, one vast memory exercise. Obviously there are principles to understand, but language learning isn't driven by principles in the way that maths or chemistry is. Language is logical only to a point. There’s no...

Every now and again, someone asks me for suggestions for things to do. I suspect it’s because I put photos of almost everywhere we go online, so it looks like we’re constantly out and about. We really aren’t. Still, it made me wonder whether there was a blog in it, a sort of local, "things to see and do".  I imagined it would be simple: mention a few places I liked, add in a few side references, and in no time I’d have an easy and interesting blog. So that's what I started to do. My first thought was the Casa Modernista in Novelda. Not far away, a nice, easy visit—interesting, without much walking and well laid out. People we’ve taken there have always liked it. Recently, opening times have become a bit haphazard, so it’s best to book. The Fundación Mediterráneo, which oversees the Novelda house, also runs the Azorín museum in Monóvar. It’s a nice enough old house, with links to the writer. It has wooden furniture and pretty floor tiles but its main attraction is that it’...

This post has nothing much to do with language, but the starting point is, nonetheless, a series of videos and podcasts that I’ve recommended before. Ben and Marina, the Anglo-Spanish couple, produce this material under the Notes in Spanish banner. They currently have two strands: one devoted to pure language content, something – Six essential phrases with llevar – and the other is about how to learn – Mistakes are good, Fluency before accuracy – and so on. I like their work, and if you’re trying to learn Spanish and haven’t come across them, it’s well worth a look. Much of it is free, though they’re also happy to sell you additional materials. In their How to get better at Spanish strand, they encourage people to read in Spanish, watch Spanish videos and television, and take every chance to speak. They often repeat the idea that “You learned your native language by listening” – the notion being that if it works for babies, why not for adults? It may be a little simplistic, but it’s fa...

No blog last week because we popped over to Mallorca. Mind you, the airlines and the booking agency did their best to complicate it all, going so far as to cancel our hotel booking without mentioning it to us. It all sorted itself out though, as these things so often do. I sort of enjoyed Mallorca and I sort of didn’t. It had some big hills, the sea was sparkly and clear, there was a pleasant greenness to the island and lots of the villages are architecturally worthy even when they’re swamped with visitors like us. I’ve been on the island a few times but, when I checked when we were last there, and it turned out to be over 15 years ago. Naturally, we tourists were everywhere. After our experience in Seville back in June, that came as no surprise. We’d expected the island to be busy — it’s one of Europe’s most established holiday destinations — but some things were worse than I’d anticipated. It seemed that Mallorca had given up on being Mallorcan, or even Spanish, and just become touri...

It was in Vilanova d'Alcolea in Castellón that I really thought I was going to be burned alive. I ran faster that evening than I have since I was fourteen when I was being chased around a cross-country course by some deranged PE teacher who beat me with a stick if I tried to slow down. Then again, only last weekend, in Novelda, a group of men and women, dressed as devils, were making as though to set me on fire. Here in the Comunitat Valenciana, from tiny villages in Castellón to the bustling streets of Valencia or on the beaches of Alicante, people like to set things on fire and to set off pyrotechnics—fireworks of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. It's not just the Fallas in Valencia or the Hogueras de San Juan in Alicante; it's absolutely everywhere - even in the streets and villages of Pinoso. Valencianos always seem ready to put another log on the fire or light the blue touch paper and stand well back at the drop of a hat.  I hoped to find an organised and methodical way t...

My theory is simple enough. Spaniards like to talk. A corollary to that may be that Britons prefer to read. I suppose that Spaniards like to interact with other people, whenever possible. I mean, for goodness’ sake, why else would anyone going into a post office, or a hospital waiting room, feel the need to say hello to the room in general? Or why on that quiet woodland stroll does every sport clothes clad passer-by offer a greeting? I know walkers do it everywhere, but this is for the walk from the car park to the neolithic cave, not a trudge along the Pennine Way. It is, I have to say, possibly true that this universal truth is not so universal where the pace is hustle and bustle. It is right for our little corner of the world, but it may be that nobody in Zaragoza says hello as they enter the bank, although I suspect they do. I mean, otherwise how would they queue? We Britons stand in a line. There is a physical marker. No need to communicate. All we have to do is look up from our p...

I was watching the TV news and guffawing slightly as egg-throwing ratepayers tried to pelt the mayor of Morrazo in Galicia. She was escorted to her car by police officers crouching behind transparent shields. The unpleasantness was caused by an increase in the rubbish collection rates. How much the price was upped depends on which source you believe but it was probably about 70%. All over Spain, rubbish collection charges have been going up. If you live in Pinoso, you will remember that the town doubled its rubbish charge to 120€ from 60€ in 2024. I vaguely recall that Orihuela residents took to the streets a little while ago when their water and rubbish charges went up a lot and I think there are other local examples too. Pinoso residents did not go a burnin' and lootin' in 2024. These increases are driven by European and Spanish legislation that requires town halls to ensure that individuals and businesses cover the real cost of processing the rubbish they produce. Subsidies ...

Often, on the Pinoso Community Facebook page people, who are considering moving to this area, ask - 'What's Pinoso like?' So, as a nice easy blog, I thought I'd give my answer to that question for those people. First off, Pinoso is more a big village than a small town and expectations should reflect that. The town is in the province of Alicante, part of the Comunitat Valenciana, but it's right on the border with the Murcia region. Pinoso, like all of Spain, speaks Castilian Spanish which is the Spanish spoken worldwide. However, because it is a part of the Valencian region it also speaks a local variant of Catalan called Valenciano which is taught in all the local schools. You will hear Valenciano all over the place. Increasingly the town hall produces information primarily in Valenciano. The population of the municipality is a bit short of 9,000 people, and that includes all the people living in the satellite villages or pedanías that surround the town. Culebrón, w...

I've never worked out tipping in Spain. Or rather, I have. Usually though I'm with Northern Europeans, and I wouldn't want them to think I learned my economics in the austerity-strapped and vindictive 80s of the last century. So I leave more. When I've asked Spaniards, they usually say you have to be mean, stingy. Don't pick up the shrapnel, that's all. For many Spaniards it's not even a question: why would you worry about tips? The people who serve you are already paid; why would they need your donation and a couple I asked about tipping last weekend said they thought it was dying out, because of credit card payments as much as anything. So, you get a couple of coffees and the bill comes to €3.40. You leave the 60 céntimos and you're a big tipper. If it were €3.80, then the 20 céntimos is more in the normal range. But pick up the change and nobody will bat an eyelid. They'll serve you the next time you're in. I tend to round up, but I sometimes ...

The other day, on the phone, an old friend, due to visit from the UK next month, asked if I wanted her to bring anything — she was thinking teabags, mint imperials, Horlicks, and the like. I did think of something, but my initial reaction was a simple "no." It’s not that we’ve become Spanish — we’ll always be immigrant Britons here; but choosing oil on toast over butter is hardly akin to burning my Union Flag boxers. It's just that so many things have become so normalised and routine that, ironically, it’s the British way that I now find a bit strange. Many still imagine Spain as somewhat "Third World." We notice when our guests try to haggle over the price of things on a market stall or doubt the drinkability of the tap water. It's true that water from a well, a storage tank, or irrigation water is not, necessarily, safe — but that's equally true in rural Cambridgeshire. The mains water in Spain, the stuff that flows from the taps in 98% of urban homes ...

I identify as male. This means that in a piece describing Spanish public toilets I face an obvious problem. I wouldn't usually consider entering about 50% of the facilities on offer. I have had to extrapolate. That said the other day, in a department store, I went into the toilets, said hello to the woman cleaner, and wondered about the absence of urinals. I did what I needed to do, and while washing my hands, the cleaner drew my attention to the door, well to the pictogram on the door. A tiny stick-figure woman, skirt barely discernible. It hadn't clicked, I'd got the wrong room. I apologised. My quips about kilts or zaraguelles - those traditional baggy culotte trousers - fell on deaf ears. Public conveniences in Spain are like oases in the desert. You see one in the distance from time to time but they're often a mirage. Generally public toilets are locked except for special events. There are also a few of those tardis like plastic cabins on street corners, the ones ...

The title is from a line in a John Betjeman poem about a nightclub. It always makes me think of red velvet and brocades and big casement windows and that, in turn, reminds me of some provincial hotels I knew in the UK and of some of the casinos we know locally. Once elegant, now faded. Once plump sofas, now with springs that poke you in the bottom. And the warped wood and chipped paint of those grand windows that no longer close quite properly. And a slight mustiness in the air. Living in Culebrón, our two nearest, obvious casinos, the one in Monóvar and Novelda, are a bit like that. One welcomes non-members through its doors at all times; the other is still, generally, membership only. Others, like the very grand casino in Murcia, generate income as a tourist attraction—first the cathedral and then the casino. Lots, like the ones in Cartagena, Torrevieja, Alicante and Aspe, make their terrace bar available to the general public to generate income to keep the buildings open for their m...

We’ve been watching Spain burn for the past couple of weeks. It must be absolutely terrifying to be close to such huge areas on fire. You only need to think about the heat from a puny municipal bonfire to imagine watching the equivalent of a thousand or two thousand, or however many, of those bonfires race through the treeline towards your town, your village, your farm, your house or your family and animals. My good fortune has been only to see it on TV. Something I noticed, among the reports centring on the firefighters, the Guardia Civil or the crews of the water planes and helicopters, was that there were the occasional references to Civil Protection. Not as heroes on the ground nor as any sort of active participant but nonetheless there, lurking in the background. For instance, when the rail service between Madrid and Galicia was about to be restarted the news channels mentioned that ADIF, the people who look after the rail network, were waiting for the say-so of Protección Civil...