Life in Culebrón

I just got a scary looking email. It was full of number codes and it came from the Government of Spain. My first thought was that it was a fine, the second that it was a scam. In fact it was from SUMA, the local tax collection agency, to tell me that a couple of new household bills were waiting for me on their website. Official Spanish is laced with over complicated and little used words. They really do need to start using plain, everyday language. Britons living in Spain often complain about Spanish tax. I can't actually find anything on the internet that directly compares the average tax burden between countries. I suppose, in the end, there are so many variables, from obvious taxes like income tax and VAT/IVA through to the sugar tax on soft drinks, that it's almost impossible to calculate. What there are are official figures, at country level, about how much tax revenues represent, as a percentage of the total budget. For instance in the UK taxes represent 35.5% of the tota...

Bétera, near Valencia, mid August, years ago. Our friends had taken us to join the crowd in the main street. We didn't quite know why. They weren't explaining and our Spanish wasn't up to asking. When the fireworks, hung from overhead lines, started to go off and shower the crowd with sparks and flame we knew what to do though. We retreated before the wall of fire. The end of the street was sealed, there was nowhere to go; hundreds of us cowered, cheek by jowl, knowing, or at least trusting, that the flames and sparks wouldn't reach us. And sputter out they did.  The next night we went back to the same place to join in the fiesta. We noticed there were no parked cars and that all the windows were boarded up. As midnight approached our friends herded us back to the car and abandoned the town centre. We didn't know why. We found out though. After midnight gangs of young people wearing overalls and crash helmets, and with at least one fire extinguisher per group, just ...

My Spanish is odd. I know a fair bit. I can talk alright but sometimes I can't. Sometimes I can get really flustered and cock it up completely. Sometimes I can laugh at my mistakes and plough on or I can get angry and sulky. Language, or problems with language are still, by far, the biggest stumbling block to my day to day dealings with Spain. In the last post I mentioned that the Consumer Office had suggested the only way to sort out our overpaid local taxes was to go to the nearest office of the Land Registry, the Catastro, 60 kilometres away in Alicante city. Nowadays, with most government offices, you need to arrange a prior appointment. That doesn't mean you don't have to queue but it does mean you'll get served. There are lots of systems for making an appointment online and even the most basic website usually offers some sort of email possibility. Not the Catastro though. You can get access to plenty of information online but sorting an appointment has to be d...

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town  by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks. The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government...