Demonyms and Gentilicios or Brummies and Gaditanos

Lumi, Elena and José Antionio were most amused. We were in the Culebrón village hall and I'd just asked if the collective name for people from Culebrón were Culebronista. They put me right, I'd be a Culebronero. The Spaniards told me that the -ista ending was usually for supporters of something. I thought Culebronistas sounded good but I was probably thinking about the Nicaraguan Sandinistas from the time when Dani Ortega was still a bit of a hero and not the raving despot that he is nowadays.

You're going to have to stick with me now for a bit of Spanish grammar. I'll try to keep it brief. Spanish has two genders for its words so Lumi, being female, would be a Culebonera and Jose Antonio, being male, would be a Culebronero. In the language sense sex and gender don't always match. Of the many Spanish slang words for penis at least four I know are, grammatically, feminine - picha, polla, chorra and verga - while a couple of the many slang words for a vagina are coño and chocho both of which, surprise surprise, are grammatically masculine. 

So, imagine that we have both females and males with a group identity. Brothers and sisters might be a good example; hermanos and hermanas. The grammar rules say that a group made up of any number of sisters, as long as there is at least brother, should be described as brothers, hermanos. Or, for another example, back in the village hall there is a neighbourhood meeting; just one man but several women. The grammar rules say that we should forget the women and concentrate on the man. The collective group should be referred to as Culebroneros. Nowadays, for obvious reasons, anyone who is reasonably aware wants to include both sexes in the generalised description - like the way that the one time firemen are now firefighters. Imagine the Shakespearean Julius Caesar transported to 21st century Culebrón. Provided he wasn't a card carrying member of VOX he'd be asking that Culebroneros and Culebroneras lend him their ears. In fact, if he were a progressive Spanish politician he may have wanted to get the attention of those who identify with neither of those genders - Culebroneras (women), Culebroneros (men) and Culebroneres (unassigned) lend me etc. 

I can't pretend that this is a particularly stylish linguistic flourish, repeating the male and female forms all the times is tedious. Nonetheless it's a battle that's being fought in Spanish. There is only one possible outcome and it's not a victory for anyone clinging to arguments about rules of grammar. In written forms the @ symbol is often used because it looks like a combined o and a - Culebroner@s

This thing of using a name for the natives or inhabitants of a particular place is dead common worldwide. Scousers, Glaswegians, Brummies and Geordies do it. For Britons there are a range of generic terminations; think endings like  -er and -ian. So we get Londoner, East Ender, Mancunian, Bedfordian and Invernessian. I didn't realise there were some strange British examples Haligonian for Halifax and Cantabrigian for Cambridge, though I've worked in both places and I'd never heard either till Wikiwhatever told me they existed. In the UK some of these demonyms (technical term for the names) are used a lot more than others. Liverpudlian, Mancunian and Aberdonian are, to my mind, in common use whilst Exonian (Exeter) and Silhillian (Solihull) were another Wikisurprise to me. 

It's similar in Spain. For our situation we can start with the region: Valenciano/a, go on to the province, Alicantino/a and then the municipality, Pinosero/a. Just over the border into Murcia it's Murciano/a. Lots of the names are like those, the root is obvious enough, Madrileño/a for Madrid, Barcelonés/esa for Barcelona, Toledano/a for Toledo. Some others are a bit trickier, Gallego/a for Galicia, Oscense for Huesca or Jiennense for Jaen but at least they share some of the same letters. Others you either know or you don't - Gaditano/a from Cadiz, Abulenses from Ávila and Conquense from Cuenca. Cities can be even odder, from Elche for instance we have Ilicitano/a, in Badajoz they're Pacenses and in Ciudad Rodrigo they are Mirobrigenses. 

Once you realise that these terms exist you'd be surprised how regularly they are used in everyday conversation particularly by sports commentators. As I said in English these descriptors are apparently called demonyms and in Spain they are gentilicio. If you're ever curious just ask Google for the gentilicio of a town and you'll usually find that a name pops up even for places as small as Culebrón (not that it really does but I'm not going to spoil a goodish ending with the truth).

Lines on a map

Amazingly it is now 13 years since Maggie took up a job in Ciudad Rodrigo. Ciudad Rodrigo is a small town in Salamanca province in the autonomous community of Castilla y Leon. It's just 30 km from the Portuguese border. When I needed a service on my Mini, not surprisingly, the Spanish Mini Internet site directed me to the nearest Mini garage in Spain, in Salamanca city, nearly 100 km away. The nearest Mini dealer was actually in Guarda, in Portugal, just 70 km away.

A little less romantically Pinoso is in Alicante province on the frontier with Murcia. Maybe here I should clarify how Spain is administratively and politically carved up. The smallest unit is the municipality. Each municipality has a town hall. In our case Culebrón is in the municipality of Pinoso. We pay Pinoso town hall for lots of services like water supply and rubbish collection and it's where we go for administrative tasks like planning permissions or licences to burn garden waste. In turn Pinoso is in the province of Alicante so, for some services we have to go via the provincial capital, Alicante city, or maybe to an office in a larger, nearby town. The province of Alicante is in the autonomous community of Valencia, called La Comunitat Valenciana or the Valencian Community. Our autonomous community has three provinces - Alicante, Valencia and Castellón.

This structure of municipality, province and autonomous community holds good for most of Spain. Some autonomous communities are not divided into provinces. Our next door neighbour, Murcia, for instance is just one unit - The Region of Murcia. It's the same for other autonomous communities like Cantabria, La Rioja and Madrid and there are other variations.

This division is quite rigid. When I signed on the dole for instance I signed on at an office in Alicante province and I might have been offered jobs in Denia, about 140kms away, but I wouldn't be offered suitable jobs in nearby Yecla or Jumilla because they are in the Region of Murcia. I wasn't able to register in Murcia because I didn't live there.

So, back to Pinoso. Pinoso has nearly 8,000 registered inhabitants of whom about 500 are Britons. The very marked British presence in Pinoso owes something to the fact that Pinoso is a wild border town. Villages like Raspay, Cañada del Trigo, Gabrieles and Zarza (for instance) are a stones throw from Pinoso but they are in Murcia, in three different municipalities in fact. Equally people from Chinorlet and Casas del Señor would naturally shop in Pinoso, as the nearest town, but although those villages are in Alicante they are in the municipality of Monóvar. Under normal circumstances there's nothing to stop you driving your Berlingo in from Cañada or cycling in from Raspay to have your hair cut or get a coffee in Pinoso. Nonetheless the people who live in those villages don't figure in the Pinoso population numbers (because they don't live in the municipality) nor can they use services in Pinoso such as schools or health services. If you live on the other side of  the border, in Murcia, and you call 112 the fire engine, police car or ambulance won't come from Pinoso - it will come from further away.

Now comes the virus, comes Covid 19. Cross border travel is limited, banned in fact. I think, though I'm not sure, that there has been some sort of local arrangement between Pinoso and those nearby villages about sensible breaking of that rule - allowing people from just over the border to do their usual supermarket shop in their usual supermarket rather than have to do a 70 km round trip. But there is a limit to that leniency. 

As the confinement has started to loosen up things have started to re-open, amongst them the ITV stations. The ITV is the vehicle road worthiness test. The nearest test centres for Pinoso are in Yecla or Jumilla but both of those are in Murcia. On the wrong side of the uncrossable frontier. Going there, at the moment, is not permitted. Of course Britons being Britons are sure that it can't be that cut and dried and the questions, misinformation and personal stories abound.

There was a post on Facebook asking about going to Jumilla for an ITV during the quarantine. Jumilla is the preferred station because it is perceived as being slightly more lenient than other stations. Personally, after an incident with the steering on a Skoda 1000MB the day after an MOT in Hull in 1972, I'm all for the strictest vehicle tests, but that's another story. 

The question reminded me of an absurdity about the vehicle tests here in the Comunitat Valenciana. It was something I knew but which I'd half forgotten. I think it was back in 2004 that Valencia decided to introduce an additional test to control noise levels. My guess is that this was a weapon to fight those incredibly noisy mopeds and the like rather than to penalise your average Ford Mondeo driver but, nonetheless, the Valencian Community has a requirement that vehicles normally resident in the community must pass this noise test. The test is not a requirement in other communities. The ITV is, supposedly, a national test. Pop into an ITV testing station when you're in Cataluña and you're good for Andalucia or Extremadura or wherever. That's what Central Government says. But Valencia says that for its residents they have to be able to prove that their vehicle passes the noise test. I think it can be done separately so you could pass the ITV in la Rioja and then, within a month, do the noise test somewhere in Valencia but it's obviously easier to just get it done at ITV time. This means it's just possible that an overzealous Guardia Civil, fresh out of the academy and working Traffic, might hand out a fine for not having passed the noise test. I'm not sure what the outcome in court would be but I do know that going to court is an expensive and laborious process.