Life in Culebrón

Sometimes it's surprising the things you don't know even close to home. A while ago we were watching the telly and there was a featurette about Murcia. The cameras visited the Ricote Valley which is some 65kms from Culebrón. One of the villages in the valley is Blanca. It's a small place of around 6,500 inhabitants. We didn't know, but we learned then, that it had an art gallery, the Pedro Cano Foundation. "We must go and have a look one day," I said to Maggie. Today was the day. As we walked through the door the woman on the desk greeted us in English "We must look very English," I said, in Spanish. "No, but you're the person who phoned yesterday, aren't you?" Now that was true but my instant reaction was then that either they get so few visitors that they remember every phone call or we must look very, very English just like I'd said. The gallery was really good. A nice light airy building. Interesting and well execute...

I reckon I was the only person in the audience who wasn't a mother, father, sister brother, uncle or other relative of someone on stage. There were fat girls, thin girls and the occasional boy. There were parents on stage and youngsters with learning and physical difficulties.They danced and sang. They were wired up to headset mics and they did acrobatics too. There was a father in the row in front of me who could hardly contain his enthusiasm every time his daughter appeared on stage. Waving, clapping - close to orgasm. The poster said The Musical by the Family Espadas. In aid of a not for profit setup that works with youngsters with disabilities. I had no idea what to expect but there was nothing much on at the flicks and the house is freezing so why not something at the local theatre? It's not the sort of thing I go for really but I had a whale of a time. I laughed and clapped a lot and I even understood a few of the jokes. My favourite bit of Spanishness was ...

Many, many years ago I had quite a good collection of salsa, cumbia, son and other Latin American music. A colleague I gave a lift to soon grew tired of my conversation and turned on the tape player to be greeted by Celia Cruz. He wasn't impressed with the Latin sound. "Don't you have anything British?" he said as he shuffled my tapes. Finally, with a little whoop of joy, he found Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Now there's some proper music," he said, as he pushed the cassette into the slot and began to hum along. He was an educated chap, I'm pretty sure he knew Beethoven was German but that isn't the point. He was culturally in tune with Beethoven in a way that he wasn't to with Los Van Van. Pinoso has a nice theatre, the Teatro Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez, named for an ex Mayor of the town. The walls of the theatre are lined with light wood panelling and the ceiling slopes gently from the back of the circle to the rear of the stage...

My mum reads these blogs so I'm going to be in trouble. If you tell Spanish people, presumably those who aren't from Albacete, that you are going there they trot out a little phrase of advice "Albacete, caga y vete" Albacete: shit and leave. There, I've done it now. No pocket money for weeks. Better not to recount the story of my first ever visit to Albacete on a perishing December night as it involves a porn cinema. I could end up grounded for years. Maggie is not here so I'm alone. She's not a big fan of Albacete anyway. Personally I like it. On a sizzling August afternoon with the heat haze rippling off the plain I think it's about as Spanish as Spanish can get. Today it was a bit dull and then a bit wet. The town isn't large. It's small or at least it feels small though apparently it has 170,000 people. We, I was with my pal Geoff, found ourselves wandering in circles because we had no map. I would have liked a map. Indeed we followed t...

One of my favourite places in Spain is Trujillo, no I mean Santiago, no, no, the Peña de Francia, ooh, or maybe that ride down to Granada over whatjamacallit pass? Spain is chockablock with eyepopping landscapes and lively, interesting cities but Alicante and Murcia don't feature too highly on my list. Nice enough, some interesting spots but, overall, a bit ordinary. Tonight we went to an art exhibition mounted by a couple of local British artists at one of the exhibition spaces in Pinoso. Nice show, good space, good little event. I know one of the artists from when she was a customer in the furniture shop where I worked. In her welcome speech, in Spanish (good job Linda!) she said how the local landscapes and the light inspired her. Later I was talking to her husband, Richard, and he was full of praise for the area too - about the landscapes he rides on his bike and about the general lifestyle though, like me, he's waiting for the flag cracking heat. Maybe I'm bein...

We really haven't done much recently partly through work, partly through sloth and partly because it is relatively unpleasant out when the sun isn't shining. Weekends in Culebrón tend towards tasks of one sort and another or maybe the exact opposite as we take the opportunity to forget about chores and work. Yesterday though Maggie was keen that we did something other than vegetate. She suggested a trip to the seaside at Santa Pola but I baulked at travelling the 60 or so kilometres each way for no real reason. I was happy to go somewhere but with a bit more purpose. In the end we settled on going to Alicante because there were a number of exhibitions on. We saw the photos of Alfredo Calíz at the FNAC shop in Alicante (nice use of colour but not many snaps) and later, at MUBAG (Fine Arts Museum) we saw a show that covered the Spanish Avant Garde from the 1960s to the 80s - informalism, abstraction, op art, hyper realism etc. Next it was MACA (Contemporary Art) where there w...