Life in Culebrón

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). ...

We did a bit of a circular tour last week. Up to Albacete, across to Cuenca and back through Teruel before coming home.  Along the way we  visited the winery in Fuentealbilla, run by the Iniesta family, (Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup), we looked at the huge 3rd Century AD Roman Mosaic in the tiny village of Noheda and we stayed in Albarracín which has city status even though it's smaller than either Algueña or Salinas. We even visited some old pals in Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel. I often think Spanish written information is patchy or poor. I wonder why there is no list of the tapas on offer or why the office doesn't show opening times. I have theories; those theories go from the link between information and power to high levels of illiteracy in the Franco years to the much less fanciful idea that Spaniards simply prefer to talk to a person. There's no doubt that written information here is much better, and more common, than in once...

One of the worst films I've ever seen in Spanish, and I've seen some shockers, is called Balada triste de trompeta by the director Álex de la Iglesia. There is one good scene in it though. The protagonists have just finished their meal. The waiter asks if anyone wants coffee and every one of the fifteen or so people around the table specifies a different type of coffee. This is not the Starbucks/Costa/Nero thing. No big coffees served in everything from bucket sized mugs to drinking through a hole in a plastic topped, hand scorching, paper cup. No expensive buns either. No this is just common or garden coffee in a common or garden bar or restaurant. It's one of those things I'd stop noticing but we were on holiday in Andalucia last week and I, we, noticed this very specific ordering because of the accent - the Andalucians have a way of swallowing letters - and because, as good holidaymakers, we were gawping around us. From time to time people still ask about instant co...

A few days ago, in Galicia, where we were, you needed a light jacket in the evening. Daytime temperatures were low but, with the sun, it was perfectly pleasant. A Coruña was the worst, weatherwise. As we joined the crowds to protest the homophobic killing of Samuel Luiz it was bucketing down. I know it rains a lot up North but I'd underestimated the Northern Europeanness of the Galician climate, my shorts got a week off and I had to buy more socks. Sandals and trainers with invisible socks were just too Mediterranean. Back in Alicante the sun was cracking the flags. The news was full of weather warnings for everywhere except where we were. Pinoso is quite high up and the temperature only got to about 38ºC but other places in the province got over 40ºC. On the journey back, and yesterday too, we had dust laden skies and high temperatures. So we returned from temperate climes with greenery and rivers to the dustiness of Alicante. Yesterday was the first full day back so there were sw...

I've been to Skegness and Morecambe and Rochester several times but if Star Trek's Mr Scott were to transport me to one of them without warning I don't think I'd know where I were. It's exactly the same with Spanish towns and cities. Of the 50 Spanish provinces I've been to 49 of their capitals but the only ones I know well are the local ones. The one I'm missing is Palencia. In order to be a completist though I'm also short of one of the two autonomous cities on the African coast; I've been to Ceuta but not to Melilla. Last week we went on a bit of a jaunt, 1,979 kilometres of mainly motorway plugging passing through 15 or so provinces. The plan was simple enough. Up to a village included in the 20 prettiest villages of Spain list for the first night, a village in Huesca more or less on the French border with views to the snowy Pyrenees. Next a couple of nights in Pamplona, the place where they do the bull running with the red and white clothes a ...

The wettest April since Noah took to boating according to some news reports. We had Easter tide guests. We were confined to barracks. The Easter parades were cancelled. Sight seeing was off. We presumed the shopping centres would be closed for the bank holidays. We Brits here in Pinoso seem to call bank holidays, Red Letter Days. I presume that's because the holiday dates are printed in red on paper calendars. I'm going to call them bank holidays because that's what I've always called public holidays. National Holidays are the same all over Spain. Most people will not work on those days but that doesn't, necessarily, mean that they will work fewer days in the working year. The Spanish logic is that bank holidays are not actually holidays, they are days when you don't work. So only the extra non working days need to be included in the holiday calendar. If, for instance, a National Holiday falls on a Sunday, like Christmas Day 2016, it will not be shown as a b...

It's The day of the Valencian Community today, a day off work in Valencia. On Thursday it's the día del Pilar - officially the Fiesta Nacional de España - and that's a holiday in the whole of Spain. In Culebrón then, or anywhere in Valencia, just three working days for most people this week. I noticed that someone on one of the Facebook pages I read was complaining about "yet another" Spanish holiday. In fact there are fourteen official days off. In England and Wales there are normally just eight unless some Royal does something. There's a big difference though. In England the holidays are holidays - you get your eight days off come hell or high water. So, if Christmas day were to fall on a Saturday and Boxing Day on a Sunday there would be substitute holidays on the Monday and Tuesday. In Spain they are not holidays they are non working days. One none working day is the 25th of December. If that day happens to fall on a Saturday then you don't have to...

Somewhere I came across a newspaper piece about Los pueblos más bonitos de España, the prettiest villages in Spain. The organisation that promotes this list seems to be a not for profit organisation. Whatever its origins or purpose it gave us a simple holiday plan. We have friends who run a casa rural, a country house for rent, which goes under the name of Vientos de Gudar in the village of Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel. With a visit to our friends, and their house, as our ultimate destination we decided to do a mid distance tour from Culebrón up through the villages listed in the provinces of Castellón and Teruel with our end point being Fuentes. The first stop on the list was Vilafamés then on to Peñíscola, Calaceite, Valdearobres, Morella, Cantavieja, Puertomingalvo and Rubielos de Mora. We also stopped off in La Fresneda and Beceite which didn't feature on the list but were recommended by locals. The villages varied. Peñíscola for instance is a busy seaside resort with t...

I was born in Yorkshire. Summer holidays were short as I remember, a week usually, and our standard destinations were close by - Scarborough, Brid, Cleethorpes, maybe over to Morecambe or even Blackpool. Relatively local with the occasional long haul down to Newquay or maybe away from the beach in the Lakes. Apart from the school trip to Switzerland I didn't get to Europe till I was eighteen and, even then, it was only to Paris. Nowadays my pals back in the UK tell me that they've been to far flung destinations - Bali, New Zealand, Goa, the Maldives, Abu Dabi. To be different you have to give Skyscanner a good workout and head for Kazakhstan or Greenland and even then it's just another destination. Talking to Spanish students about their holiday plans is a reminder of my Scarborough days. They seem perfectly happy to go to the nearest seaside resort, if it's not too far, or otherwise they head for some rural destination equally close to home. It's a mas...

In the end I wore jeans for both days. I'd packed shorts but they're not my favourite wear; I appreciate their functionality but I simply don't like them. I'd decided to go to Ciudad Real in Castilla la Mancha. I chose it because there is a train from our local station to Ciudad Real so, to be awkward, I decided to drive. Castilla la Mancha is Don Quixote, El Quijote, country. A lot of it is a gently undulating plain covered with wheat, maize, sunflowers, vines and olive trees. There are other crops but as I couldn't identify them we'll pretend they don't exist. It's not that far from home, around 350kms. Most of the way I drove along long, arrow straight ribbons of almost empty tar surrounded by yellows, greens and earth redder than Tara. I drove with the windows open and a rebellious strand of hair whipping my face. I like aircon in cars less than I like shorts. I gurgled with delight at the openness of it all and the shimmering heat. I really like...

We've just got back from a few days in Berlin. Like Passepartout I left the gas fire on all the time we were away! Comparing Culebrón to Berlin would be a little unfair. One is the capital city of of one of the most powerful nations of the last two centuries with a population of three and a half million and the other has a postbox. I wouldn't presume to compare two countries either. I have around a hundred hours recent experience of Germany, glimpsed through the distorting mirror of a capital city, against eleven years in Spain. So these are no more than personal impressions of limited interactions in a strange language at an odd time of year. People in Germany don't like serving other people. We've had some very abrupt service indeed and, with two notable exceptions, very little helpful, friendly or even indifferent service. Indifference would be how I would pigeon hole Spanish service. The waiter, the person in the shop, the doctor says hello, asks what y...

We've just had a bit of a holiday. You know the sort of thing where you drive hundreds of kilometres, 1617 in fact, stay in lots of hotels, wander from bar to bar and church to museum and put on weight in lots of restaurants. We were in Lerida, in Cataluña, and we wandered around the Valle de Arán up in the Pyrenees and we even spent fifteen minutes in France. On the way home, with the garbox on the Mini sounding like it was going to fall apart, we stopped off to see the place where the Ebro, the river with the second greatest volume of water after the Duero and the second longest after the Tajo, flows into the sea. We were there principally to go on the Tren dels Llacs, the Train of the Lakes, but we didn't. It went like this. I'd read somewhere about this train. It sounded a bit like the Settle Carlisle line. A line with lots of bridges and tunnels to cross difficult terrain for a train. There were pictures of old diesel locomotives, apparently often referred to a...

Maggie was most definite in the manner in which she declined to go on the roller coaster that flipped people over and did barrel rolls. She kept reminding me about the Icelander who had died on a similar ride in the same park just a couple of months ago. Later though, by herself - I was too macho to join her - she went on the teen size roller coaster. Emboldened by her experience she agreed to go on the old style big dipper. All Billy Butlin at Skegness. Apparently built of criss crossing wood like the rail bridges in classic cowboy films and with sit up and beg cars. It rattled and shook, it rocked and rolled. Maggie didn't seem to enjoy it much. She did enjoy the boat ride type roller coasters though and she let me go on one of those bungee jump type rides and the one that spins around a central pivot. In fact we had a thoroughly enjoyable time at Terra Mitica theme park. The place is based on the motifs of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. The park has an unhappy financ...

People tell me I complain. I usually think I am commenting or, more often, guffawing, at the preposterousness of whatever it may be. For instance in Of no fixed address Anyway, as usual, I was wrong. Just ask Maggie. Always wrong. My address wasn't the real problem. True I had to go to Elda about 25 kilometres away where I was sent from one office to a second but once I was in the right place it took only a few seconds to change my address with the Social Security, with the Health people. Back at the computer I applied for my European Health Card only to have the application turned down again. So I rang the helpline. I enjoyed the music and the mix of information and encouragement to not go away as the minutes ticked away. The woman told me that I'm not employed, I'm not a pensioner and I'm not unemployed so I can't have a card. I explained that I have a job. She couldn't find me on the system and it took a while before she did. Ah, your contract ended a...

Everyone knows that Brits in Spain wear socks with sandals, go bright red in the sun and swill beer. One of those conversational topics, designed generally to use comparatives in English, with students is about countries. We always agree that one difference is on the Tube. In London everyone keeps to themselves, reading or simply looking grim faced. In Madrid on the other hand the babble between passengers is drowned out only by the occasional impromptu musical jam session. I was in Madrid the last couple of days and I'm sad to report that everyone on the metro is now glued to their mobile phones. For business suits and skaters alike their thumbs are dancing across screens catching or killing things. Earphones are everywhere to block out the surrounding world. Mobile phones, the great leveller. Madrid looked very green too. Trees all over the place and that's without going anywhere near the Retiro. Busy of course but then, if you lived in Culebrón, most places would seem bu...

It's definitely summer now. I suppose summer is a special time of year around the world but here, on the Mediterranean coast, it seems to have a distinct significance. The expectations for summer are somehow much greater than they were, for instance, in the UK. And mention of the UK gives me the perfect cue. We were in the UK last week. I've spent less than a couple of weeks there in the last nine years so, as things change, at times I found myself feeling less like a local and more like a tourist. Interesting place I thought. Full of life, lots of bright ideas all around. Very dynamic. It was also all a bit frenetic. Full and in a hurry. Traffic was incredible, cars everywhere and the poor old TomTom was going mad with beep beeps for radars. I was deeply impressed with being able to wave my credit card at the terminal on the bar and pay for a pint of bitter without codes, PINS or ID. I was a little less impressed with paying three quid for a bottle of water.  It was nice...

We went on holiday last week to Gran Canaria one of the Canary islands just off the coast of Morocco and the Western Sahara. The islands have been Spanish for a long, long time so, despite being geographically in Africa, they look and feel like Spain. Chris Columbus stayed over for a while in 1492 on his way across the Atlantic to what turned out, to his surprise, to be America. Gran Canaria is a smallish sort of island, round in shape and about 50kms in diameter. The island is volcanic and hilly. If you think of it as the summit of a volcano sticking up out of the blue grey ocean you'd be about right. It has a motorway system joining all the main towns on the coast and a mish mash of little roads twisting up hillsides to connect the hundreds of small settlements inland. We drove around the island in an underpowered and hired VW gawping at banana trees, sugar cane plantations and the carpet of spring flowers before stopping to eat wrinkled potatoes with a spicy sauce. It was ...