Out for the day

I went on a bit of a trip yesterday. The title of the event translates as something like From the Vinalopó to Exile. Vinalopó is the name of our mighty local river which trickles into the sea at Santa Pola and which gives its name to the area. The theme was the end of the Spanish Civil War.

We were shown things in Petrer and Elda but the bit I liked best, apart from eating, was going down the air raid shelters in Hondón. Hondón is a very small village just 9 km from Culebrón. Not the most obvious place for an air raid shelter dug 40 metres into the ground and with space for 250 people.

So it's March 1939, right at the end of the Spanish Civil War (The result of an army rebellion in 1936 against the elected Leftist Republican Government) the Republic is in tatters. The President, Azaña, reckons the only chance is to hang on long enough for the Nazis to start the Second World War so that the French and British may stop looking the other way and come to his aid. Then Republican Barcelona falls to the Francoist troops and Azaña runs away, resigns, and never comes back.

With Azaña gone the ex Prime Minister, Negrín, takes over as President. The Republican Government has moved its headquarters to Elda which just 25kms from Culebrón. The main reason is that Elda isn't being bombed non stop though there are other reasons like decent communications and a strong manufacturing base. Meanwhile Madrid is, miraculously, still in Republican hands. It won't fall to the rebellious Francoist troops till right at the end of the war but in Madrid a Republican Army Colonel, Casado, mounts a coup. He and his pals reckon that all is lost and waiting for the French and British is a stupid plan. They want to cut a deal and save their skins. Franco doesn't talk to them. They have nothing to offer.

So it's all gone pear shaped, the elected President has run off, half your army is caught up in some Communist rebellion and it's pretty obvious that you've lost. Negrín decides the jig is up. He's in Elda. The nearest aerodrome (think of a mowed and level grassy area rather than tarmac runways) is in Hondon, or as we now seem to call it el Fondó using its Valenciano name. The big cars drive in from Elda with a famous writer and poet in one, a fiery Communist Party woman orator in another and Negrin himself in a third. They clear off in a couple of aeroplanes along with some pals. Later that night the remnants of the loyal Republican Army command meet with the left over political big wigs and the next days more planes leave taking them away - generally to Oran. Though it may not seem geographically obvious Algeria is less distance than any other safe country especially for a flimsy 1930s plane loaded to capacity.

That's where our tour ended and about three weeks after those planes left the last few Republican cities - Alicante, Cartagena and Almeria - fell.

________

If you look at the comments below someone wrote to say that there were a couple of incorrect facts in this piece. One was that Negrín was never President and the other was that Azaña wasn't holding out for an Anglo French "rescue". Have a look  at the comments section if you're interested.

Fiesta del cine

I like going to the flicks. I know it's dead old fashioned. I know I should be streaming Netflix from the mobile phone to the telly screen or watching a film on my tablet or something but I quite approve of a four metre head shot and the thirty metre wide panning shot. The faces on my computer screen might get to be 15 centimetres high which isn't quite so impressive. It's good to get off the couch once in a while too.

I think there is a tradition of cinema going amongst Spaniards - it is often grandly referred to as the Seventh Art, but like most places cinema attendances here have been dwindling for years. 

The main reason that Spaniards always give for not going to the pictures is the price. It didn't help when the conservative government moved theatre tickets, and other arty products, on to a higher VAT tariff.

In Madrid, if you go to the wrong cinema at the wrong time, you might pay as much as 9.30€ for a ticket but, even in the capital, it's easy to find a show for 6€. With the Brexit decreased value of the pound making that seem more expensive we're talking less than £8.50 for a couple of hours of entertainment. Back here in Alicante we sometimes go to the outrageously expensive ABC in Elche where, I think, it's 8.10€ but, more usually, we go to a cinema in Petrer where we pay 5.50€. If we go on Wednesday, Spectator's Day, it's even cheaper.

I suppose if you have a bus load of kids it can add up but, then again, if you have a bus load of kids going anywhere, except the park, costs a fortune. The overpriced popcorn and fizzy drinks don't help either. But, per se, I don't see how anyone can class the cinema as being overpriced.

I'm obviously wrong though. Today was the last day of this year's first Fiesta del Cine campaign. During the promotion the cinema entry price drops to just 2.90€ for the three quiet days of Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I think this is the fourth such event since 2014. On Monday, the first day of the campaign, over 600,000 people turned out to watch a film. That's nearly five times as many people in the cinemas as against the equivalent Monday, the year before, when there was no promotion.

At the Flicks

We're just back from the cinema in Petrer. Maggie persuaded me to see something with Meryl and Tommie Lee Jones. Big mistake as a film but always good to get out to the cinema.

Spanish cinemas are just like modern cinemas everywhere.* Ten, twelve, fourteen screens built alongside some shopping centre. Worldwide the building design is similar. Always the ticket office is placed so that people standing in the queue to pay get tangled up with the people grasping their tickets and those milling around the foyer looking for friends or returning from the outrageously overpriced drink, popcorn and pic 'n' mix stand. I suppose the new trend to combine the sales of tickets and snacks at the same counter will either exacerbate or improve that situation depending on your view.

There are still a few cinemas that are single screens with a slightly musty smell and two week old films. They're usually in small towns - we used to go to a great on in Ciudad Rodrigo - they're cheap, have normal sized bags of sweets and sell popcorn at reasonable prices. Their days are obviously numbered so if you are ever in Caravaca de la Cruz on a Monday evening take the opportunity. Their creaky floorboard theatre is a treat.

In a standard multiplex tickets cost around 7.50€ and on one of the duff days of the week, either Monday or Wednesday the cinemas usually knock a couple of euros off the standard price.

Films are generally either Hollywood or Spanish with TV company money. Very occasionally there is a European offering. You might expect a reasonable number of Latin American releases but generally they don't make it out of Madrid and Barcelona to the provinces. I suspect that has something to do with the generally negative feeling that Spanish people have about hearing Spanish spoken with Ecuadorian, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinian and other American accents.

Titles are strange. The Road, for instance was called "The Road (La Carretera)" using both the original title and a direct translation. The Sound of Music though translates as Smiles and Tears and the one we saw today "Hope Springs" came out as "If You Really Want To." I prefer the titles to be in Spanish because then I can say the words reasonably easily. Trying to produce the Spanish pronunciation for an English title is really hard.

There are almost no subtitled films outside the art house venues in the biggest cities. Films are dubbed. This is very strange if you know the actor's voice. Imagine Morgan Freeman speaking Spanish and not sounding at all like Morgan. Or "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow" but without Lauren Bacall. The voice actors who lip sync the Spanish voice versions of various stars usually stick with them through their career. So at the Madrid premiere of a new film there will be the voice star too - Michelle Jenner (English descent, Spanish born) was the voice of Hermione Granger in the first four Harry Potter films for instance. Ernesto Aura did Schwarzenegger for years. "Hasta la vista, baby" the line from Terminator 2 isn't quite so amusing for a Spanish audience and very few Spaniards know that Ernesto's "Sayonara, baby" was just for them.

One very strange side effect of this dubbing is when a Spanish star like Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem makes a film in English. They get dubbed back into Spanish for the Spanish market but not with their own voices. It must be very confusing for a Spanish person who knows what Penélope sounds like hearing her with someone else's voice. 

I should say that the newer digital film formats do allow a third option to subbing or dubbing which is playing a dual soundtrack. This allows the listener to choose between the original language or the dubbed language. I know of a cinema in Torrevieja where you can put on cordless headphones to listen to the Hollywood soundtrack whilst the general audience gets the dubbed version.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Obviously I've not been to cinemas everywhere but I have been to similar complexes in the USA, France, Portugal and Mexico so I'm willing to take the risk of guessing that they are all the same.

A glimpse of an everyday past

Petrer, situated beside Mount Cid and alongside the Puça rivulet had been, until well into the 20th Century, a town with a distinctly rural character dedicated, principally, to agriculture. The streets were of compacted earth and the houses still had cat flaps and stables. The success of the wine harvest , or not, was at the grace of "The Virgin of the Remedy." In the squares and plazas were public fountains where the women filled their water jugs. The markets were held in Dalt Square and in the Altico district were the workshops of the families who earned their living from ceramics and where the shoe makers worked on their porches. Everything had it's season in that town and here, in this museum, we have the tools, instruments, objects and images to stir memories of those times.

Yesterday I got a text message on my phone, in the local Valenciano language from Petrer Town Hall to publicise a theatrical walk through the history of Petrer, at least that's what I think it said. It sounded OK so we went along. We were there by 11.10am for the advertised 11am start, well early by normal Spanish standards. But not a sign, not a sniff. Quiet as a quiet place.

As it happened there was a small  museum in the nice little square where the walk was supposed to gather so we went in there. The piece at the start of this entry is a translated version of one of their signs. I thought it was an excellent spot, very modest really but well laid out, well labelled and well worth half an hour of my time