Life in Culebrón

I was in town this morning, on Bulevar, drinking coffee and reading a really interesting book about doors. A car stopped, the driver jumped out and went into the paper shop to get a newspaper. While he was parked, in the middle of the one way street, a van came up behind and had to wait. When the paper purchaser came out of the shop the van driver shouted to him "You couldn't do that in Madrid".  And it's true Nobody would describe Pinoso, or even Culebrón, as "Deep Spain", la España profunda. That's the Spain that's empty, without services, left behind by the modern world. No mobile network, no health services locally, no Internet access, no shops. But lots of Spain is like that; nearly empty. There are hundreds of villages that only have a few inhabitants, usually older people, and there are even villages that are totally abandoned apart from, maybe, occasional weekend and summer occupants. There's a whole movement about la España vaciada, empt...

Anyone who has followed this blog for any time will know that we have a piddling electrical supply of just 2.2 kW or some 10 amps. Not technically sufficient to run the kettle and the iron at the same time. Nonetheless because of the tolerances of the system we get by. Things change though and we recently got a letter to say that our power supplier, Iberdrola, is on the verge of fitting a smart meter with a built in cut-out. We decided that we couldn't be sure that more modern kit would be as elastic as our ancient equipment so I started an email correspondence with Iberdrola to see if we could up the power. The last time I asked I was told that 3.45kW was as high as we could go. This time, because Iberdrola replaced the supply cables a little while ago, we were told that we could have up to 15kW. There was a snag though. The boletín, the thing that shows that we have wiring to such and such a standard, would only allow us to have 3.45kW unless we got an electrician...

There are a lot of people in Spain who have difficulty in paying their energy bills. A nice warm house, when it's cold outside, is one of those symbols of well being and comfort. Just think of any of the filmed versions of A Christmas Carol. Being cold is miserable I've lived in six different flats in my time in Spain. None of them have had gas, just electricity. Whilst there are plenty of people who have piped gas and many more who use bottled gas when Spaniards talk about energy they are really talking about electric. That's not our case; in Culebrón we have a gas hob, gas water heater and we generally use gas fires to heat the house. We have a pellet burner too, a device that burns reconstituted wood pellets, but it has been giving us a bit of trouble recently and we have fallen back on the gas fires over Christmas. Because we have been in the house for longer periods and, because we are rich enough and determined enough not to be cold we have bought five gas bottl...

My Auntie Lizzie used to take me to Blackpool when I was a lad. We stayed in B&Bs that advertised hot and cold running water. It was a long time before en suite bathrooms. In Auntie Lizzie's day people used to say that houses had mod cons - modern conveniences. Our house, the one we live in now, has all those mod cons but they seem to be in open revolt. I told you about the water a while ago . To sort our water supply we rang the Town Hall. Their people came in a Jeep, wielded a spanner or two, and told me it was all sorted. It wasn't though. Inside the house water flow was still a problem. I called a plumber. He changed a couple of valves and assured me that it was all hunky dory. It wasn't though. I rang our gas contract supplier and asked them to service the boiler. They did, they said it was as right as rain. It wasn't though. They are going to have another stab tomorrow. A bulb blew. When I took the cover off the lamp I was surprised to find an...

A few years ago I used to take photos of houses and write the descriptions for an estate agency here in Spain. Often, if it were a house in the countryside, the sellers would tell me how they had spent loads of money on putting in piped water or connecting the house to the electricity grid. I had to be careful how I told them that all that money was irrecoverable. If they hadn't done it the house would have been worth less – off grid houses or with tanked rather than live water are less popular than the connected ones - but nobody pays extra because a house has electric and water. When you click the switch you expect the current to flow, when you open the tap there should be water. Utilities, like roofs, are things you expect in a house. There was a little piece on the Town Hall website the other day about improving the water supply to some little hamlet and there was a picture of the pipe. It wasn't a very big pipe maybe 6 or 7cms in diameter. It wasn't very high tech ...

I painted the front door last week. I did an awful job; all runs and dead flies. Maggie and I agreed that it looked better than before though. Anyway it was bucolic, rustic, in keeping with our living situation. Our electric supply is a bit rural too. When we moved in, we were smart enough to put our cooking and weater heating onto gas. True, we have to lug the gas bottles about but we don't have circuit breakers popping all the time. The hot water isn't as hot in winter as in summer. Insulation is not common in our part of the world so we were not at all surprised that the water was cooler in the colder months. It had to pass through all that cold earth. We weren't surprised either that the water got hotter more quickly in one bathroom than the others - more cold ground = cooler water for longer. We've had some lovely weather recently. High 20s and sunny so and I was a bit surprised that the hot water was more like tepid water. Shower time was not a pleasure....

We'd popped in to town to do some exciting jobs - buy screen wash was one of them. I was also going to bank some money. Take note of the opening sentences and be warned now that this blog is not going to be the usual emotional roller coaster ride of an entry. My phone rang when I was in the bank queue. It was our next door neighbour to say that Iberdrola, the electricity supply people, wanted to get into our garden. You will remember I talked to Iberdrola about moving some supply cables that were either menacing or being menaced by our palm tree. Nothing has happened for months. The discussion that I'd had with some Iberdrola employed tree trimmers had suggested that we were talking thousands of euros if we got the cables re-routed and I'd quietly let the whole thing slide. We hurried back from town. I feared the worst. I could imagine the euros flowing out of that bank account to pay for new cables, new installations and a new meter. The three blokes said they wante...

Maggie thinks we should be greener. She fancied solar panels to provide at least some of our power. Good idea. After all it's pretty sunny where we live. Just by chance a cold caller got in touch and it was Maggie who took the call. So, this morning, a man came to talk to us about solar panels and other green solutions. He told us it didn't make economic sense. Plan scotched. If solar power was Maggie's concern mine was a the palm tree. The palm tree that I've been spraying religiously to protect it against the dreaded boring beetle thing. The palm tree is fit and healthy - so fit and healthy that it's growing into the power lines. Just a bit of bad luck and either the tree gets fried or it blacks out our house and the two next door. For various reasons I don't want to talk to the power company but our neighbours came up with the bright idea of moving the tree rather than the power lines. I checked with the environmental people at the town hall to m...

Probably the main reason that we have a house in Culebrón is because when we first came here Maggie had a job in Elche. One of Elche's claims to fame is that it has the largest palm forest in Europe. Looking for a house we could afford we moved up the Vinalopo valley and away from Elche. The first time I saw our house in Culebrón it was the little drive, framed by trees, that impressed. Then there was the palm tree. There are other trees in the garden, there are some nice trees, but it was the palm tree that drew my attention. The outside space in Culebrón has always been its biggest plus. All those years ago the palm trees in Elche were menaced by a little red beetle. The other day our village mayoress WhatsApped me a pamphlet to say that the Town Hall here was concerned about the spread of that same beetle and that there was a census under way of palm trees. Infected trees would have to be culled for the greater good. The thought crossed my mind that we were going to lose ...

Around 6.30am, as dawn breaks Eduardo the cat starts to moan and demand food outside our ground floor bedroom window. The bathroom is a bit of a favourite for a late night visit amongst we older people. I tend to go to bed later than Maggie. All in all then one or other of us is often wandering around the house in the dark. Last night Maggie, pestered by a singing mosquito and contemplating a "call of nature" noticed that the normal Christmas tree like lights were missing from the bedroom and living room. No glowing LEDs on the modem, alarm clock, anti-mosquito plug in, TV or satellite box. Eerily dark. A power cut of course. Power cuts are not an unusual event in the countryside, well not in our house anyway. Our power supply is rudimentary to say the least and we often lose power for a few minutes. Occasionally it's longer. We left the house today with the power still not restored. When we got home all was well. Doing the maths from the flashing alarm clock the ...

I mentioned that one of the local political parties "employs" a chap to help the Brit community. Today he sent around information about legislation that says we need to fit a limiting device to the electric supply. Apparently this limiting device was supposed to be installed by January 2010 with the power companies having an obligation to send a letter informing us of that responsibility. Obviously we haven't received the letter but I suppose it will be on its way soon. I was vaguely aware of the legislation from some mumblings on the letters pages of the newspapers and from a conversation in a Spanish class but until the information today I hadn't checked the detail. Lots of Spanish houses have really miserable power supplies by UK standards. Our house, for instance has a contracted supply of about 2.2kw which means that the circuit breakers should pop when we plug in the 3kw electric kettle. They don't because when we moved into the place we had it rewired and...