The Knowledge

The fiestas in Pinoso are just about to kick off. As a fully accredited member of the I don't approve of taunting animals and I've just had my hernia fixed besides which my knee is playing up, club, it's a bit unlikely that I'll be taking full advantage of the real partying that the fiestas have to offer. I will wander the stalls, I will eat out, I will see a band or two, I will look at the fair, I'll grin at the ofrenda and laugh at the whacky racers but I'm not going to be there for the incredibly loud music at five in the morning nor will I be running around after the bullocks and it's for sure that nobody is going to be invite me to join their peña to drink cheap alcohol or abuse other substances beside some parked car pumping out music when all sane folk have taken their contact lenses out for the night. Even if I join my age peers to see the equally compromised one (or two) hit wonder from the 1970s I won't know the songs. It won't stop me having a decent time though. 

The phone shows it as a Barcelona number. I very rarely answer those, or the Madrid ones. I don't want a burglar alarm, or solar panels. I'm happy with our electricity provider. But it's the third time today - I crumble under the persistence. I'll do my version of a Woolwich accent. That usually scares them away though it makes Maggie wonder if I'm having a stroke. It turns out to be an Amazon delivery driver. The address they have for a delivery, Maggie's office, doesn't open on Saturday. I realise the driver is having trouble with my Spanish because he isn't. When I see him he looks Dutch or something but he doesn't speak English either - Ukrainian maybe?

On the phone he tells me where he is. I'll be there in five minutes I say. I'm being optimistic, even with a following wind eight might have been closer to the truth, but I'd forgotten the fiesta. Pinoso closes half of its roads at fiesta time. There are four main routes out, or, I suppose, in to Pinoso. None of them is actually closed but three of the four are compromised. It's not a problem for we locals. We can usually find a way around. Sometimes it's simply not possible and close is the best you can do. It's amazing the streets you know after living in a place for 17 years. Dodging around a blocked street, feeling cocky, feeling knowledgeable, Edgeware Road to Astrop Terrace in Shay Boo please cabby, there is a builders merchant's lorry unloading bricks on my route. I don't like going against one way systems but there is no alternative.

I dodge in and out of side streets and park alongside the Amazon van. It must be making your life a nightmare I say to the driver. He knows the Spanish for nightmare.

Unexpected effort and unexpected success

We are going to have a cut down version of the Pinoso Fiestas next week. Less than usual but much better than nothing. Well done Pinoso!

The various conditions to keep the concert type events safe means that the audience for any events has to be controlled and that involves tickets. Most of the events are free so the tickets are called invitations but, nonetheless, you need to have one in your hand to get to see or hear the event. We've had to get the same sort of thing for months, and nearly years, now at lots of venues but mostly the bookings have been possible online. That wasn't the case for Pinoso. 

As well as the fiesta events next week there was a concert by a local choir yesterday and the town band have a concert today. I got the band tickets by going to their office one afternoon. A bit of a trek but easy enough. I went to ask at the Cultural Centre about the choir concerts at the beginning of the month and I was told I was too early. I tried, unsuccessfully, on two separate occasions later in the month to get the invites. The main problem was that nobody seemed exactly sure when and where I should go to get the tickets. In fact, on the night, there were tickets on the door and the space for the outdoors concert was enormous so it was dead easy to keep our distance. The audience capacity of the venue was much, much greater than the size of the audience.

To get the fiesta tickets I went to the Town Hall at the beginning of last week and I was told they would be available later and that there would be an announcement on one of the various online channels that the Town Hall uses. I saw no announcements but I went back anyway a few days later to find a long queue for tickets. The local mayor and the councillor responsible for fiestas were handing out the tickets. A bit extemporised or what? I waited about 20 minutes and got tickets for two of the three events I wanted. The process was inevitably slow because they were taking names and phone numbers just in case there was a need to follow up after an outbreak. For the tickets for the third event I was told to come back tomorrow. Tomorrow was Friday. On Friday I was told Monday. No queue the second time at least.

This is how it always used to be in Spain. Things having to be done face to face. Often you needed "inside" information to be more successful. Nowadays it's not usually the case. Even in Pinoso I was able to get tickets at least one event, a theatre performance, during the fiestas, online.

Yesterday evening, late, I realised my bank card wasn't in my wallet. Pit of the stomach feeling. I searched high and low. Not a sign. My banking app told me there were no dodgy movements and it was easy to suspend the card using the same app. It seemed though that I needed to phone someone to definitely cancel the card and go to a branch to get another one. I tried the free-phone number to report the loss and got a message to say there was a fault with the number and to try later. The extra stumbling block, after psyching myself up for the call, was most unwelcome. Spanish on the phone still can't be counted amongst my strengths. I went back to the website to check how to cancel and renew lost cards. They had a video. I clicked here. I clicked there. Within seconds the website tells me that I've successfully cancelled the card and a new one is on its way. The process I expected to be difficult, and was the last time I did it, was easy peasy whilst something I'd expect to be a piece of cake, getting a couple of event tickets, took eight visits. 

Such, as they say, is Life in Culebrón.

Dolly Parton "It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen".

We'd wasted the Saturday. We'd tried the new pork pie shop but not much else. In the evening though we were spoiled for choice. There was a choir from Valencia singing Habaneras in the Municipal Gardens and then, an hour later, the selection of the Carnival Queens in the Town Hall Car Park. If we'd thought about it there was no need to rush. Spanish things generally start a bit late, unless you presume they will start late in which case they will start without you. This time though there really were no worries as the councillors listening to the Habaneras were an essential part of the Carnival Queen process. Mind you, somebody keeps a seat for them. Not so for we humble folk.

The car park had been turned into a spectacular setting for the Queens event. A fashion model type runway, a big stage with some giant centrepiece, a couple of big screen tellies and two very competent young women being Eurovision Song Contest style comperes. The stars of the evening were the contestants, the girls for Reina Infantil, the Junior Queen, and the young women for Carnival Queen.

The staging and stage management were equally spectacular. The frocks were very Hollywood, the crowd was appreciative and smiling was the order of the evening. It was intriguing watching the man at the mixing desk pressing his headphones hard to his  ears, presumably listening for the OK from lights and sound, before giving the nod to the handler at the start of the runway to let the participants walk. No real losers either. The ones who miss out on the title form the court and go to all the same events, they just don't get the title.

Amongst the complaints levelled against the current and recently victorious, PSOE, administration is one that it's good at fiestas and gardens and not good at the things that count like road repair and rubbish removal. I don't agree but I've heard it lots of times. Equally I've heard the explanation that fiesta spending has actually decreased during their time. I've never inspected the accounts closely but I think that's perfectly possible in that some events (a big concert with a big name Spanish star last year for instance) probably run at a profit, there are always low cost events and whilst there are some that look very flash they are often very participative and cheapish to mount.

As I remember it, before we got this Socialist administration, the opening speeches for the annual fiesta involved the Mayor, flanked by the Carnival Queens and the appropriate councillors, introducing the guest speaker, the Pregónera/o, who addressed the crowd from the balcony and then declared the fiestas open. It's an obvious way to do it. They do it more or less like that for Blackpool Illuminations. But, as soon as the socialists took over it all moved to ground level (I like to think it was a political gesture but it may have been simple logistics). There was a little dais but it was only so the key participants could be seen above the heads of the crowd. There was a big TV screen and the town's press people had made a short promotional video about the town and fiestas. The Carnival Queens and their Court were escorted into the square on the arms of local personalities through a corridor of past Carnival Queens and Fiesta Committee Members. There was lots of music, lots of fanfares and clapping and then it was back to the guest speaker to eventually do the bit they needed to do. The big difference was that it was participative. The event was conjured almost from fresh air with existing resources used to the full.

The do on Saturday followed basically that same pattern. True there was acres of staging and dancers and lots of lights but I suspect that a lot of the outlay was borne by the participants not by we ratepayers. Of course there's a downside to that. Just as any US Citizen can be President of the USA, as long as they can raise the finance I suppose any young woman can aspire to Carnival Queen provided they can afford the gala dresses and the traditional costumes. It can't be an inexpensive undertaking looking at those frocks. Cheaper than being President though - Hilary's campaign cost about $1,400,000,000 and Trump's about $957,600,000.

There are a bundle of photos in the June album

Cows

My brother went to see a bullfight in Alicante. He seemed quite surprised that it was bloody - I wondered what he'd expected. Personally I am totally opposed to bullfights. Arguments about art and heritage cut no ice with me. I'm a bit ambivalent about some things that some people consider to be animal rights issues though - animals in zoos being a good example.

It's a bit the same with bull related events here in Spain. There are lots. Some are plain barbaric, they are simply the abuse of animals by humans reduced to their most savage but others aren't, in my opinion, quite so bad. There are some bull events that worry me no more than people keeping their dogs inside all the time or the donkey rides at the seaside. I'm sure you've seen Sanfermines on the telly where all those people run in front of half a dozen bulls in what's called an encierro, and which I think we call bull running. I don't care about it one way or the other. I'm not interested in seeing it but I don't worry that it happens either. I cannot say the same about the events where bulls are or were cut to pieces with lances or brought down by thousands of darts in their body.

Now in sunny Pinoso we have a bull related event, though they're actually bullocks rather than bulls. The locals always refer to them as vacas, cows. The bullocks are introduced into a big fenced area where anyone over the age of 16 can choose to join them. On the stupid side of the fence there are a number of islands and obstacles which give a semi safe haven for the humans when they have a bullock close behind. Lots of people sit atop the sturdy fences that surround the arena, or indeed on some of those islands and obstacles, to watch the action but there are probably as many people in the makeshift cafes or chiringuitos dotted around the site having a drink and natter. Traffic between the food and drink stalls and the arena is non stop.

Yesterday evening I went to the venue a good half an hour before the event was scheduled to start. I was going to take some pictures of the chiringuitos and their customers. I had no intention of taking any pictures of the event itself. Inside one of the chiringuitos a bloke asked me if I'd take a picture of him and his mates. I did. Then he asked if I'd take some more inside the ring, he explained, and this made me feel reasonably stupid, that he and his chums were the team that made the event work. They were the animal handlers. Perhaps if I'd read the legend on the red shirts they were wearing - Vacques el Pinos: Organizacion - I'd have caught on earlier.

Whether I'd misunderstood or whether the plans changed in the couple of hundred metres walk I have no idea, both are equally plausible, but I was taken to the pens where the bullocks are kept before the event and told to take photos to my heart's content. Given that all of the potential pictures were either directly into bright sun or of bullocks behind sturdy and close spaced bars in dark interiors that wasn't quite as good an opportunity as it may sound. The blokes were being pleasant to me but they were also getting things ready. I felt out of place and my Spanish showed the strain. Anyway, eventually, they suggested that I could use a viewing platform on top of the pens to watch the action and that's what I did.

The process for letting the bullocks in and out was really clever. The animals started in individual pens. There were also two paddocks and a passageway that led to the arena outside. One of the paddocks was empty and, in the other, were two animals with big horns. From their colour I recognised them as mansos or cabestros. Manso in Spanish means something like calm or docile. When you watch the Sanfermines bull running there aren't six bulls; there are twelve. Six of them are these mansos. The idea is that these non aggressive animals know the ropes and they lead the way for the fighting bulls showing them where to go.

So when it's time for a bullock to do its stuff a pen is opened by opening a door, the door opens against a wall so that it forms a barrier that the bullock can't pass and behind which the door opener can hide. It's the same on the gate that leads from the pens into the passageway, the doors are opened, whilst the handlers are shielded behind the metal gates. The bullocks take the obvious path - out into the arena. The bullocks then chase around the arena for a while every now and again giving someone a scare and occasionally catching someone and giving them a bit of a going over. I was on the phone with my camera hanging limply by my side as I watched a young man get thrown about three metres into the air, twice, pushed around on the floor a bit before the bullock was finally distracted away. He was fine. The bullock was fine too.

After a while it's time for the bullock to come in. A door was opened from the paddock where the mansos were so that they could trot out into the arena. The bullock saw them and came over to join them at which point the mansos ambled back into their paddock. The bullock followed and, as soon as he was inside a door, the door was closed behind him using a pulley system. At the same time another two gates were opened allowing him to pass from one paddock to the empty one which was where each successive participant ended up. A lot sweatier and probably scared and confused but basically no worse for wear. I was standing next to some bloke who later introduced himself as the cattle breeder who had supplied the animals for the event. He was from Xalo and even though he was shouting in Valenciano to the red shirts I suddenly realised that the mansos were actually mansas, that is to say they were cows not bulls. That's presumably why the bullocks were interested in following them. All together very informative interlude.

There are lots of pictures in the August 2018 snaps section which you can access by clicking on this link or on the tab at the top of the page if it's still there!