5: Routines - the odds and ends

This is the fifth, and hopefully the last, in the series about the boring things I do each week, or at least regularly. As usual I've attempted to add in the Spanish angle.

If there is a culture of car washing on Sunday in Spain, I've never noticed it. Most Spanish towns have by-laws to stop people washing their cars in the street. Most Spaniards live in flats anyway, so their access to the water to wash the car is a bit restricted. Instead they take their motors to a car wash. Even though we have space and water I do too.

There are tunnel washes in Spain, the ones with the brushes that tear off aerials and wing mirrors from time to time. We have one in Pinoso and it seems popular. The most common type though are the pressure washers available on the majority of filling station forecourts. Box is the word used by Spaniards for pits in motor racing, and for the bays in the emergency area of a hospital. It also seems to be the most popular word to describe the places that you pressure wash a car. 

I try, when possible, to do all my shopping errands on one day. The most time consuming, by far, is the weekly supermarket shop. We have four chain supermarkets in Pinoso and a couple of smaller grocery shops. None of them has one of those self service auto checkouts, so we still wander around the shelves, with a basket or trolley, and then go to a manual checkout where we unload to the belt, wait for the items to be scanned and then reload the trolley or pack everything into bags. Although most people take bags with them you can still buy plastic bags at the checkout in Spain. You may see it as an advantage or a disadvantage that being served at a till in a small town means that there are a lot of check out conversations - it's nice if you're the one having the conversation and not so good if the person in front has a long medical history or family trauma to relate.

If any of the supermarkets have an internet service up and running for Pinoso, I'm not aware of it. The supermarkets are only big enough to be food shops plus a few other household items. The nearest superstore, the sort of place that sells underwear, car tyres and muesli would be the Carrefour in Petrer, some 25km away. Most of the supermarkets have some sort of loyalty card/application, but not all.

Our home cooking too has a Spanish bent. Maggie cooks the lunch for Mondays but I generally cook the lunch the rest of the week. Our rural power supply was 2.2kW when we first bought the house. That should mean that if the 2kW kettle were on when the fridge kicked in, then the main circuit breaker should pop. Luckily, there is a lot of elasticity in the supply, so we had very little trouble. We later increased the supply to the maximum permitted without getting all the wiring rechecked, at 3.45kW. Nonetheless, we knew that the electricity was limited, so we chose a gas water heater and gas hob to reduce the load on the system. The gas comes in bottles or cylinders. Even today, piped gas is not particularly common in Spain. It's much more available than it used to be, but in the seven houses and flats I've lived in, none of them has had piped gas. It's easy enough to get cylinders delivered, but we've never bothered. We just take the empty cylinders back to any of the several places where you can exchange depleted cylinders, and money, for full ones. The blokes (I've not see a woman doing it yet) who deliver the gas are called butaneros and the jokes and witticisms around them are exactly analogous to the milkman stories of the UK.

Tuesday is usually cinema day for two reasons. It's the day when we pensioners get a special price at the cinema, just 2€, and when our closest cinema in Petrer shows films that are subtitled rather than dubbed. If there's an English-language film worth the trouble, then Tuesday is a good day to go. Even if there is only stuff in Spanish, it's a good day to take advantage of the low prices. There are other cinemas and other times to go, but Tuesday is a favourite. Mind you our nearest cinema, next door to the underwear selling Carrefour, so the same 25km away, is showing a more and more restricted range of films. Hollywood pap amd nothing much else which means we often go to the cinema in Elche - a round trip of 8okm.

And that's it. Now I have to think of something else to write about.

The Yecla Amusement Park?

I keep a database of the films I've seen. For complicated and boring reasons one database ran from 1986 to 2009 and a second one from 2010 to present. Thanks to my brother in law the two were, finally, combined into one long list just a few days ago. Apparently I've seen 2,706 films at the cinema between 1986 and today. The busiest year was 1995 when I saw 132 films. The quietest was 2008 when I was living in Ciudad Rodrigo. In 2017 I saw 81.

Ciudad Rodrigo is in Salamanca province in Castilla y León very close to the Portuguese border. It's a clean, safe, friendly, walled town that's lovely to look at. It's a long way from anywhere though and the nearest decent sized supermarket or car dealer or cinema is in Salamanca about 90km away. In fact I'm lying because the nearest cinema or main dealer for the Mini was actually in Guarda and that was only 75kms away. Guarda though is in Portugal where they speak Portuguese and as we don't we tended to stick to Spain. It was too far to pop over to the town to see a film but we did see a couple in the multiplex in Guarda when we were there anyway having done something else. The big advantage, for us, is that the Portuguese show their films in the original language with subtitles, unlike Spain where most films are dubbed. Because it was too far to go to Salamanca or Guarda we generally saw films in the Cine Juventud in Ciudad Rodrigo.

The Juventud was a really old fashioned cinema in some huge stone built building. The admission, the sweets and the popcorn were cheap, the seats were past their best and the sound and projection quality were a bit dodgy too. As I remember it the emergency exit lead out through the gardens of the Bishop's Palace. The huge plus of course was that it was close: we could walk into town, see the film, get a drink and walk home. There was only one show a week and, sometimes, that film wasn't for us which is, I suppose, why we only saw 21 films that year.

This evening we went to see a mentalist type magic show in Pinoso at 6pm and then we hurried off to Yecla to see the 8.15 film. A movie that we missed when it was first released; La librería - The Bookshop. We've never been to the cinema in Yecla before. We've seen posters for films but I've always presumed they were shown in the municipal theatre. In fact there's a cinema, the Cine PYA (Initials for Parque Yeclano de Atracciones - the Yecla Theme Park), which apparently opened in 1952 and "closed for good" in 2013. Google has nothing to say about how or why it reopened. The cinema doesn't have much of a frontage but it does have a big screen and, by modern standards, it is a big theatre with row after row of seats on a traditional theatre stalls type plan rather than the steeply raked seats in a modern multiplex. The ticket was torn from a roll, there were no computers in sight to deal with seat allocation and there were even some red velvet curtains over the multiple entry and exit doors. It was a good sized crowd, our regular cinema, the Cinesmax in Petrer would be glad to have such a big audience, and a surprising number of them chose to sit on the same row as us. I read somewhere, in one of those strange surveys that you see from time to time, that Spaniards are one of the nationalities with the least need for personal space in the world. Spaniards, unlike Britons, like to be up close

I didn't particularly care for the film, a bit television drama, but it was a really good outing.

No typical

When I went to the pictures yesterday, and today come to that, the shopping centre in Petrer, where the multiplex is, was heaving. This is unusual. There aren't many shops in the shopping centre and I've always presumed that it's one of those that got it wrong. But not today, or yesterday.

I like this particular cinema because the staff are friendly and because it's not busy. Unlike all the other cinemas, which only show Hollywood, Spanish or worldwide hits, this cinema shows anything they can get hold of. One of the reasons being that in a few of the screens they still had film projectors so they were still showing film or, as a half way measure, they showed Blu Ray stuff. It's not exactly arts cinema, and all of it is dubbed, but I've seen some really offbeat stuff. They have just digitalized the last few screens so I suppose that will change.

The reason for this heavingosity in the car park, the hordes of shoppers in the centre and the queues in the cinema was Black Friday. Until last year I had never even heard of Black Friday.

On Halloween we were in Jumilla to go to the theatre. As we hit the pre theatre tapas there were hundreds of children dressed as witches, spidermen and vampires being shepherded from doorbell to doorbell shouting truco o trato a semi translation of trick or treat. Halloween is definitely gaining ground.

Over a week ago we were doing a big supermarket shop. The in store tannoy system was urging us to put in our order for our festive meat. The Christmas lottery advert is on the telly, there are adverts with snow, the Chinese shops have Christmas trees, the turrón table is out at the local fruit and nut co-op. The Christmas campaigns have started. Until very recently nothing Christmassy happened till December 1st at the earliest.

I haven't seen anything three wheeled or pulled by a donkey or mule for a while. They use contactless technology for the credit card at the petrol station and lots of things that I have complained about having to do in person during the life of this blog can now be done on the Internet. Spain has become much more like everywhere else really quickly recently.

Finger dribbling fat and a diet coke please

To mark International Women's Day a local group - Pinoso against gender violence - organised a showing of a film, La fuente de las mujeres, which is about a group of North African women who, fed up of having to slog up a difficult path to collect water whilst their men folk sit around drinking tea, go on a sex strike until they get the water piped to the village.

The projector was one of those things you use to do a Power Point presentation so the image was small, very dark and affected by stray light. The sound wasn't great either so, although it seemed like a decent enough film, my understanding of the details of everything, apart from the main plot, was pretty rudimentary.

It used to happen to me as I wandered home up Huntingdon High Street and it happened to me tonight. Some sort of fat lust would draw me, inexorably, towards Bunter's. I fancied a kebab or kepab as we Spaniards usually say.

I'm not often in Pinoso at 11.30 on a Friday evening so I was a bit surprised at the long queue in the kebab shop at the bottom of Constitución and I went to the one in Colón instead. Even then I was, like Lady Louise Windsor, tenth in line.

In some ways it was just what I'd expect. The décor was characterless and basic. The man slicing the meat was a tad overweight, wore a striped fat stained shirt outside his trousers and had a close cropped haircut. His assistant was one of those young men best described as a youth. Spaniards were having trouble with his Spanish just as he had trouble with mine.

I've usually had my doners in versions of pitta in the shopping centre kebab houses I've been to here. When I asked for the 5.50€ Doner menu he waved hamburger rolls at me, which I declined. I realised I didn't have the faintest idea what the bread I wanted was called - neither pita nor tortita worked but, by a process of elimination, we got to a wrap. I thought the ones in wraps were called Durums but who knows?

Meat, if that's the right word for the stuff they put in kebabs, comes in either chicken or beef flavours - no lamb. I asked for beef but he gave me a mixture anyway which was what everyone else had asked for. It wasn't shaved into nice long slices, more torn into shreds. So the meat was spread on the circular wrap, the usual brown tinged lettuce and sad looking cucumber was loaded on. Sauce? Yes please, white and red sauces from those plastic bottles that make a sucking sound before they glug and spit - Chilli sauce? Yes please. That was squirted on with a flourish from at least a metre away then the whole thing was rolled very tight and wrapped in silver paper which proved remarkably effective at stopping all the filling from falling out as I ate. The chips got the same sauce treatment and, because I'm being careful about my weight, I asked for sugar free Coke.

The other diners were wearing coats because the door was open and it was only 3ºC outside, the lighting was fluorescent tubes. The table wasn't exactly clean, the plastic chair was very hard, the various coloured sauces oozed onto the polystyrene dishes through my fingers whilst the telly appeared to be speaking Turkish.

An authentic kebab experience.

At the Flicks

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 cheap, have normal sized bags of sweets and sell popcorn at reasonable prices. Their days are obviously numbered so if you are ever in Caravaca de la Cruz on a Monday evening take the opportunity. Their creaky floorboard theatre is a treat.

In a standard multiplex tickets cost around 7.50€ and on one of the duff days of the week, either Monday or Wednesday the cinemas usually knock a couple of euros off the standard price.

Films are generally either Hollywood or Spanish with TV company money. Very occasionally there is a European offering. You might expect a reasonable number of Latin American releases but generally they don't make it out of Madrid and Barcelona to the provinces. I suspect that has something to do with the generally negative feeling that Spanish people have about hearing Spanish spoken with Ecuadorian, Mexican, Chilean, Argentinian and other American accents.

Titles are strange. The Road, for instance was called "The Road (La Carretera)" using both the original title and a direct translation. The Sound of Music though translates as Smiles and Tears and the one we saw today "Hope Springs" came out as "If You Really Want To." I prefer the titles to be in Spanish because then I can say the words reasonably easily. Trying to produce the Spanish pronunciation for an English title is really hard.

There are almost no subtitled films outside the art house venues in the biggest cities. Films are dubbed. This is very strange if you know the actor's voice. Imagine Morgan Freeman speaking Spanish and not sounding at all like Morgan. Or "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow" but without Lauren Bacall. The voice actors who lip sync the Spanish voice versions of various stars usually stick with them through their career. So at the Madrid premiere of a new film there will be the voice star too - Michelle Jenner (English descent, Spanish born) was the voice of Hermione Granger in the first four Harry Potter films for instance. Ernesto Aura did Schwarzenegger for years. "Hasta la vista, baby" the line from Terminator 2 isn't quite so amusing for a Spanish audience and very few Spaniards know that Ernesto's "Sayonara, baby" was just for them.

One very strange side effect of this dubbing is when a Spanish star like Penélope Cruz, Antonio Banderas or Javier Bardem makes a film in English. They get dubbed back into Spanish for the Spanish market but not with their own voices. It must be very confusing for a Spanish person who knows what Penélope sounds like hearing her with someone else's voice. 

I should say that the newer digital film formats do allow a third option to subbing or dubbing which is playing a dual soundtrack. This allows the listener to choose between the original language or the dubbed language. I know of a cinema in Torrevieja where you can put on cordless headphones to listen to the Hollywood soundtrack whilst the general audience gets the dubbed version.

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*Obviously I've not been to cinemas everywhere but I have been to similar complexes in the USA, France, Portugal and Mexico so I'm willing to take the risk of guessing that they are all the same.

Sent to sleep

There was a time when every Spanish film was about the Spanish Civil War, usually about the aftermath and the rough handling of the losers by the nasty winners. Fortunately that has changed nowadays and we get a good spread plots and genres.

Most Spanish films are made with TV money and with subsidies from film funds. This means that they look a bit like those BBC funded films, quite modest in scale, with production values that betray their small screen destinations. If they have a historical theme (and lots do) they are nearly always shot in a sort of muddy brown colour and use the Spanish equivalent of thou to prove their authenticity. Obviously they are voiced in Spanish or, to be more accurate, Castilian. Actually, unless you're in one of the big cities it's nearly impossible to find a film in its original language - everything gets dubbed into Castilian. Colin Firth, King George VI or el Rey Jorge VI has a nice Madrid accent.

The Goyas are the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars. There were plenty of decent nominations this year in genre as diverse as horror, social drama, black comedy and historical. They were presented the same night as the BAFTAs and, as in the UK, one film swept the board. It was a Catalan film called Pa Negre - Black Bread. The theme was the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. One of the interesting things about it was that it was voiced in Catalan with Castilian subtitles.

We had our doubts; the Civil War- hmm? But nine Goyas; it just had to be good and with the bonus that Castilian subtitles would make it dead easy to understand. It wasn't in Catalan by the time we saw it this afternoon, dubbed just like all the rest of the foreign films. And tedious. Tedious as they come. Obviously the theme had to be grim, the film colouring sombre and everyone had to live in filthy unheated hovels. There had to be Guardia Civil with capes and tricorn hats and if there wasn't a gay character then how could it be true to life? Film making by cliché. Actually I could be wrong, I had great difficulty understanding the dialogue and I couldn't tell one raggedy haired person from the next so I slept through a good part of it. Maybe it was a cinematic milestone after all.