Life in Culebrón

I went to see a magic show last Sunday. I’ve never liked performing or being on stage, and it’s obvious that, in a magic show, some punters are going to be pulled out of the audience to become part of the act. With that in mind, I chose where to sit, hoping the magician would hardly notice me, let alone single me out as the person who supplied him or her with a wristwatch to pulverise or magic rings to test as being forged from pure titanium—and it worked. Dylan hadn’t been so careful. I think he said he was eight years old. Among other things, Dylan had to draw a picture of the magician. Just before he did that, he was asked how good he was at plástica. The answer from young Dylan wasn't a description of his abilities but a simple numerical response: 7 or 8. For me, before I came to Spain, both those answers would have seemed odd. For a start, I’d have expected the question to be how good I was at Art—plástica sounds like something for recycling and, as to my abilities, I would ha...

I went to a little bilingual talk last night about the history of the nearby village of La Romana. It wasn't at all bad. The local expert, Francesc Gallardo, did his stuff and answered, knowledgeably, the questions he was asked. He was ably assisted by a woman, Anabel, who handled the translation. She was the same woman who did the talk back in December . I had no real trouble understanding nearly all of the Spanish part of the talk and my English was up to the English part though that didn't seem to be everyone's case. I'm not talking about the Spanish; I'm talking about the English. I thought we had some most amusing culture and translation problems. In the Q&A session someone asked in English about a building that had a "big flat stone" inside, "probably" for processing grapes. The translator turned the English into Spanish and talked about grapes and wine to the Francesc, the speaker. He said he didn't know of any bodegas (winer...

A Facebook group that I'm a member of, Spanish International Alicante, advertised a bilingual history evening in the nearby village of la Romana some 16 or 17 km down the hill towards Elche. The title, or at least one of the titles, was Spain's Transition to Democracy. I turned up. It looked to me as though the room for the meeting had only recently been finished because it was all a bit sparse. There was a decent enough crowd, mainly Spanish and British. A couple of people made a point of greeting me so the welcome was warm enough even if the room was a bit chilly. We started pretty much on time, maybe fifteen to twenty minutes late, with a welcome from the Deputy Mayor of La Romana. He was young and dressed in a sort of modern teddy boy style. We went to a very strange parade in la Romana once. Maybe alternative is something they cultivate. The woman who gave the talk was called Anabel Sánchez. She'd given herself quite a task, to cover the years from the proclama...