The back of beyond

Jesús, a pal, said to me the other day that he and his chums consider that there are three classes of "friends" - amigos, conocidos and reconocidos. Amigos are friends, proper friends, the ones you know well and may even lend you money if you were in a scrape. Conocidos are the ones you might drink or eat with and with whom you can have an extended and detailed conversation. Finally the reconocidos are the people that you vaguely know - the people you nod at in the street and who get a description rather than a name when mentioning them.

The official lists say that 7,966 people now live in Pinoso. Those same figures say that if we were to corral a representative sample of 100 people from the streets of Pinoso then 42 would have been born here, another 25 would have been born in Alicante province and another 18 in some other region of Spain. That would mean that something like 15 people in the sample would be foreigners. The biggest group of foreigners, by far, in Pinoso, are British. If I've got my sums right nearly 7 people from our sample would be Brits. Obviously there are stacks more Britons in Torrevieja, or Madrid, than there are in Pinoso but, as a percentage of the total population Pinoso ranks as the municipality with the fifth highest ratio of foreigners to home grown stock. Who knows, that may be why Vox (a right wing political party) made such a strong showing in the last General Election in Pinoso.

Considering that Pinoso is so small we have one surprisingly trendy clothes shop. Now I'm not but, for one reason or another I ended up in the shop on New Year's Eve. A couple of young women were in the shop gearing up for partying later that evening. I'd taught one of them a little English and the other works in a bar I frequent. The bloke in the shop was laughing and joking with them as he served. It was obvious he knew them. He knows me too, well enough to nod in the street at least.

In the local theatre just yesterday the man on the box office nodded in vague recognition before he sold us our tickets. Inside the theatre we nodded, smiled and waved in this and that direction and even had a couple of conversations with people; fleeting and superficial conversations in both Spanish and English but conversations nonetheless. On stage and in the audience there were other people we half knew and there were others who are small town celebrities - the bloke who organises the singing group, the woman from the cancer association, the local rally driver  - butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. All around people were greeting and being greeted.

In the Post Office today I asked who was last in the queue and exchanged a few words with the person who answered. He later had a conversation with a woman who was wearing a post office uniform. As she left the post office worker shouted across to Enrique, the chap who works behind the post office counter and who always calls me by name, "take care of him, he's my nephew". We all tittered.

There's an old woman who wanders the streets of Pinoso. I've heard that she's Romanian but I've never checked. Everyone knows her by sight. Just before Christmas I saw a car stop beside her. A man got out of the motor, handed the woman an envelope and a blanket, mouthed something, that may well have been Happy Christmas, and got back in the car. I suspect an act of generosity.

Small town life.

The annual census figures

If you live in Spain you are supposed to register with the local town hall. Lots of people don't for one reason or another. For instance when we worked away, but still owned the house here in Culebrón, we couldn't register with two town halls at the same time. People who don't have their papers in order don't usually register (though they can) just in case it causes them problems. For EU Europeans it's reasonably easy to avoid registration so many simply don't bother.

Based on this registration, Pinoso, our home town, the one that "owns" Culebrón, had 7,654 residents at 31st December 2015. That's a tad down from the 7,912 on the same register at the end of 2014. The town hall website says that those 156 men and 102 women fewer are "mainly" foreigners. In the December 2015 figures 6,609 are Spanish and 1,045 are foreigners.

The 1,405 foreigners are made up of citizens from 43 countries. We Brits are way out in front with 489 of us. Morrocans next with 112, Ukranians 69, Ecuadorians 63, Dutch 32 and Bulgarians 30. That leaves 250 people for the remaining 37 countries.

If you are ever in Pinoso you may get the impression that there are more Britons than the figures suggest. The town halls only register their own of course. Only a few hundred metres down the road from our house is the border with Monóvar. Pinoso is in Alicante province but just 3kms away is the border with Murcia and the towns of Abanilla, Yecla and Jumilla all have frontiers with Pinoso. People living in those municipalities don't get counted in the Pinoso figures but for many of them Pinoso offers the nearest supermarket, bar or restaurant.

Wrinkled skin

On the second day I lived here, that is the day after the MGB, Mary the cat and I arrived in Spain to join Maggie, I went to the Town Hall in Santa Pola to register on the padrón. The padrón is a local register of inhabitants. Town Hall's like to have people on their padrón because it increases their funding from national and regional sources. Without being on the padrón it's difficult to access some services.

There were some problems with the paperwork; some tiny little defects. The Town Hall needed the landlord's signature. She was in Switzerland. They needed Maggie's signature. She was at work. I went to the Estate Agent, who had rented us the flat, and asked for advice. She forged the absent landlady's signature. Back at the Town Hall I forged Maggie's signature. As I wrote it with a pen borrowed from the clerk it wasn't much of a forgery. "Ah, the landlady and your wife came back unexpectedly." said the clerk as he stamped our padrón and we became official residents.

Today I had to set off for work within the hour. Maggie had just finished her job for the day and was due to get her nails done. We decided a quick snack lunch in a bar would be just the job. It all went dreadfully wrong, The service was slow and Maggie left after a salad and some indifferent mushrooms. I waited for the double portions we'd ordered to eat together to come. There were some Britons sitting very close to our table. Abandoned by Maggie I started talking to them. They were pretty new to the area. In the few moments we talked I heard that the electricity supply wasn't in their name, that they did not have the deeds for the house, that their water pipes seemed to be leaking and that they weren't registered with anyone for anything.

I began to dole out my ten year old wisdom, most of which is certainly out of date. I mentioned local people to contact to sort this and that problem. More importantly I helped them with their pudding order. They wanted ice cream as well as the fruit salad.

As I drove away there were two thoughts uppermost in my mind. The first was just how confusing I had probably been. For someone who was having trouble with the translation of the word for hake, the fish, talk of various Spanish processes must have been first rate gobbledygook. Padrón this, escritura that  with Iberdrola and gestores up the ying yang. It had probably been confusing for me too all those years ago in Santa Pola. The second, much more rewarding, thought was that I'd had no trouble at all getting them ice cream and fruit salad.

Extrapolate as John D.W. Bottomley, my one time chemistry teacher, used to say.