Life in Culebrón

I got a message from SUMA, a local government tax collection agency, telling me that I could check what they were going to take out of my bank account in April. In their email there was a link that took me to something called Carpeta Ciudadana - the Citizen File. The Carpeta Ciudadana is basically a site that collects together lots of the information held on me by various Government agencies. There was a list of all the ministries - from defence and education to work and immigration - and any procedures that I had open with them. There was another section for notifications, another for information held on me and so on. I was a bit worried that the page showed that Hacienda, the tax people, had two processes open on me but then I realised that it was to do with the time I sorted out some unpaid tax on a small UK pension during a tax amnesty. It's not as though I have anything to hide but the fewer dealings I have with authority the better I like it. It was amazing checking t...

The Catastro, the Spanish version of the Land Registry, told me that article 18 of the Legislative Royal Decree of the 5th March 2004 (1/2004) says that any dispute must be attended within six months of receipt. I remember those things from when I used to work. We will acknowledge receipt of your communication within 24 hours and respond within 72 hours. Except that, this time, it was six months. I have a bit of a conversation cum reading sheet about drinks that I use with my English learners. The drinks sheet starts with tea. It says Britain is a tea drinking nation. It has variations on "A pint of sheepshagger, please" and it mentions how overpriced coffee has Italian, rather than Spanish or French, names. But it starts with the phrase Britain is a tea drinking nation. Now I have a critic. Every now and then a Spanish bloke, living in the UK, feels incensed enough, on reading my blogs, to put fingers to keyboard and play merry hell. He tells me off for lots of things ...

It's Constitution Day today. We're celebrating the 39th anniversary of the document that formalised the new order and the end of the dictatorship.  In Pinoso Town Hall yesterday there was a reading of some of the articles of the Constitution by members of the community. Obviously it couldn't be today. Today is a holiday and the Town Hall wouldn't be open on a holiday. I thought I'd go and have a look. I got there nearly at the beginning, the Mayor was doing the opening spiel but I couldn't get into the room where the reading was taking place because the door was blocked by the throng of people waiting to read their bit of the document. I'm not sure if there were people inside the room, an audience, or not. Peering in all I could see was someone standing behind a tripod videoing the whole thing. When I said hello to Colin, there to read his bit and presumably a representative of my clan, someone shushed me so I decided to give it up as a spectator sport. I...

I wrote a couple of articles for the TIM magazine which were never published. This is one of them. It was called Spanish Government The current form of government in Spain dates from the 1978 Constitution which was drafted three years after the death of General Franco. Central government takes care of the “big things” like foreign affairs, external trade, defence, justice, law making, shipping and civil aviation but in many areas it shares responsibility with the regions - for instance in education and health care. The National Parliament, las Cortes Generales, has two chambers. The lower house, equivalent to the UK Commons, is the Congress of Deputies and the upper house, something like the Lords, is the Senate. The lower house is the more important. It has 350 members, against the 650 in the House of Commons. The deputies are elected in the 50 Spanish provinces and also from the Spanish North African enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. Each province is an electoral constituency an...

As I type I'm listening to the radio. They are voting for the investiture of the President of the Spanish Government.  The man who's up for President, Mariano Rajoy, is a right winger from the Partido Popular, the conservatives. The process involves reading out the name of each deputy who then says yes, for Rajoy, no against Rajoy or abstention. Rajoy needs a simple majority to be elected. The only way he can get his majority is if the PSOE, the socialists, don't vote against him and, in fact with the number of abstentions already recorded he's in. The abstention of the socialists is either a tactical move to avoid a third general election or a complete betrayal of principal depending on your point of view. The socialist party has lost its leader during the in fighting about what to do. Even to the last minute there were two options. Abstention of all of the socialist ranks or just the minimum abstention to let Rajoy win. The latter option would have allowed the ide...

It's pretty hot. Yesterday I went to Villena to have a look at the Moors and Christians parade. The parade started at 4pm and, according to the State Weather Agency, that was the exact time when the day's temperature reached its zenith  of 40.4ºC. Just for my mum that's 104ºF. It's a bit unusual for it to be so warm in September. September is the month when Spain gets back to normal. The youngsters are going back to school, shops are back on regular opening hours, the Guardia Civil shelves its various traffic campaigns until either Christmas or the next long bank holiday weekend. On the telly the new series are getting under way and, on the radio, the journalists and DJs who have held the fort whilst the better known presenters take their holidays are going back to whatever it is they do when it's not July or August. League football is more or less back into full swing. The courts are about to go back into session too so we can look forward to a revival of all...