Life in Culebrón

It's often said said that most people stay faithful to the music they first fell in love with as teenagers. For most of us, those formative tracks are added to as we pass through our twenties and thirties, but that's where it stops. That doesn’t mean we never pick up new bands or singers, but we usually stick to our core favourites from those key decades and just bolt on a few extras later. At every stage, and I would suppose in every culture, life inevitably becomes a series of tasks. Whether it is swotting for exams, braving the daily commute, walking a couple of kilometres to the nearest well, or just tackling the laundry, these chores dominate our time. Even when we try to buy time by paying someone else to lighten the burden, other tasks creep in. Even pleasurable experiences, like going on holiday, can become irksome as you fight airline schedules or some hotel booking site. Our habits may shift over time—trading a Friday night pint at the pub in our youth for a takeaway ...

A Scottish pal who lives here in Pinoso commented on one of my photos the other day. He said something along the lines that he was beginning to learn some of the ways and customs of Spain but that it would take a lifetime to learn the subtleties that his Spanish neighbours just know innately. Absolutely right. What a person learns about their own culture comes from so many sources, over such a long time, from so many clues and with so much reinforcement that it is difficult to simply learn it. That's why I know about Harold Wilson, his Gannex coats and the fact that he preferred tinned to fresh salmon. It's why I vaguely know who Katie Price is and what Delia Smith does but also why I'd never heard of Los Monaguillosh until today I was in Elche this morning. Another class had been cancelled, my watch battery had been replaced and I had time to pop in to see the exhibition about la Movida in the MACE (Museu d’art Contemporani d’Elx). I hadn't realised, till I read th...

I see that Adele was on at Glastonbury. I don't imagine that a Spanish festival would think to go for that same sort of mix - Enrique Iglesias alongside Vetusta Morla? Last year, as I remember, Florence inherited the top spot in Somerset, now something like that I can imagine. Indie band turned money spinner alongside the long line of competent but unexceptional bands yes, one time big pop act now reduced to second or third class status, yes, but current big industry acts, no. I like plenty of Spanish bands but I'd be hard pressed to tout any of them as material for world domination. To date there have been no Spanish Kylies or Abbas or U2s. Luz Casals, Paco de Lucia and Mecano aren't really of the same clay. We've been to quite a few Spanish festivals like SOS in Murcia, Low in Benidorm and FIB in Benicassim. We've also seen some Spanish big name acts from old timers to plenty of current top forty stuff and tons of indie. We've done hardly any big name in...