Life in Culebrón

There seems to be a bit of a conspiracy to keep me on my toes as I reach the end of my working life. Most of it is positive enough. Pension paper mostly. Having found forgotten private pensions I've had to make phone call after phone call and fill in myriad forms. Because I live here and not where the pensions are I've had to talk with the tax people in the UK and fill in more forms to get myself exempted from UK tax. That Spanish tax process, for the calendar year 2018, starts in a few days time and has to be done before the end of June. I hope that having got the UK exemption means it will be easier, if more expensive, to sort out. Then there's the state pension. I did a blog about that . I hoped, I was told, it would be paid through the Spanish Social Security people in Euros but, disappointingly, it now looks as though it's going to be paid in the UK in Pounds. And what about Brexit. Now, to be honest what happens in the UK isn't very important to me. I ce...

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...