Life in Culebrón

I once shook Desmond Tutu's hand. He didn't really shake mine back -  he was looking the other way and talking to someone over his shoulder but he was also shaking any hand that was thrust towards him, and mine was one of those. Our palms touched so I've always claimed it as a handshake. The truth is, but for that handshake I remember nothing else about that day. I presume Nelson was still locked up, I suppose Queen, and many others, were still playing Sun City. No matter - both Dessie and I thought we should be there that day and we were. Google tells me it was probably 1988. That may be the last time I was on a big demonstration—the ones where I joined one of the coaches to take protestors to London. I'm sure I did some picket line duty into the 1990s, and I've been a half participant in a couple of things here about worker's and women's rights but my real demonstration days were Cruise Missiles at Molesworth, the Miners' Strike, Ban the Bomb, and the ...

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 ...

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 eas...

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 ch...

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." I n 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 thi...