El Misteri d'Elx

Tangible World Heritage sites, on the United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization list, include places like the Taj Mahal and the Egyptian Pyramids or, in the UK, Stonehenge, Blenheim Palace, The Ironbridge Gorge and the old maritime parts of Liverpool. Spain has lots and lots of sites with forty four all together putting it third in the world ranking behind China and Italy.

But not all heritage is "bricks and mortar" - heritage also includes cultural traditions. A good British example might be pantomime although it seems, from a bit of Googling, as though the UK has not yet joined the list of countries which subscribe to the UNESCO definition of what intangible cultural heritage is. Spain has and things like the Human Towers of Catalunya, Flamenco and the Whistling Language of the island of Gomera in the Canaries are all there.

The Elche Mystery play, or in the local Valencian language el Misteri d' Elx, was given the staus of  Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 2001.

This play only takes place for a couple of days in mid August each year just before Assumption - the Christian festival which celebrates the taking of the earthly remains of Mary, mother of Jesus, to Heaven. It takes place in the basilica church in Elche and it has done so every year, without fail, for 600 years. Apparently it was a close run thing in 1632 when it took a Bapal Bull from Pope Urban VIII to exempt it from the ban on performing theatrical works in churches.

Despite Elche being just 50km from Culebrón we've never seen the play and it seemed ridiculous to let the event slip by us yet again this year. A quick check on one of the Internet ticket sites and we were in. Front row, only row, on the Puerta del Sol balcony. Just 17€. Well, on the site it was marked as a seat. In fact it was just a space, about 45cms wide, for us to lean against the rail. Nearly everyone else had seats but as recompense we had a splendid view of the action. The heat in the church was impressive. It wasn't actually that hot, maybe around 29ºC, but the humidity was incredible and looking down from above anybody and everybody was fanning themselves. A sea of hand fans in constant motion.

Although I'm on the cradle roll of the Weslyan Chapel in Elland I'm not much of a Christian but, being English and of a certain generation, Christianity came as more or less a standard extra. I know a few parables, the old version of the Lord's Prayer and I know who did what at Christmas and Easter. That didn't help me at all with this story. I didn't have a clue what was going on.

In fact the play was about as boring an event as I have ever witnessed. I don't think I was the only bored person in the audience either. Looking through the telephoto lens of my camera it was easy to spy on people playing with Facebook and WhatApp on their mobile phones. The play was all sung in an ancient form of Valencian and Latin by an all male cast. It lasted for about fifteen hours though my watch must have failed as it measured the actual performance as only lasting about two and a half hours. The watch seemed to work fine before the event, after the event and even in the intermission but during the event no. There were a couple of impressive bits when a trapdoor in the ceiling of the church opened and first one and later five people were gently lowered to the ground wearing angel wings, singing, playing harps and ukeleles (well that's what Maggie says they were though I suspect she may be jesting.) Actually at one point there were two ropes on the go with the five piece being joined by another couple of angels. It must be quite an experience to be hoisted up and down the highest part of a cathedral sized church whilst being required to sing or play an instrument.

Another good bit was that the human Mary, Mother of Jesus, Mary, was replaced by sleight of hand by the carved wooden Mary that represents Mary of the Assumption the Patron Saint of Elche. It was she who was hoisted up into the heavens amongst the harps and angel wings amidst the applause of the retreating audience who headed for the fresh air without any shouts for an encore or curtain call.

Despite it being boring, incomprehensible, sweltering and painful I am really glad I went and I would recommend it to you.

Welcomed into the bosom of our adopted family

I'm not much of a dancer. I don't care for it anyway but then I hurt my hip dancing in 1973 so there was a bit of a hiatus till I tried it again. That must have been the mid 90s. I hurt myself again then though I can't really blame the dancing. I was so drunk that I was a tad unsteady and I cracked my head on the wall when I was in the urinal. I didn't notice at the time but Maggie was apparently put off dancing by the trickle of blood running down my forehead. Anyway I don't dance.

So last night at around 2am I was the only person left seated at the big long table where we'd just eaten. Several people tried to persuade me to dance. I said no, I always say no. Looking at my actions from the outside I must be a bit of a party pooper. I never dance, never sing, never get involved in the hilarious games. Stand offish. I'm better when I've been drinking but I had to drive last night so there was no liquid help to hand.

The events leading up to the non dancing were odd. Last year as we wandered the Pinoso Fiesta we saw hundreds of people having a meal in the car park next to the Town Hall. It looked like good fun. So, this year when I read somewhere that to go to the Cena de Convivencia, something like the Living Together Dinner, you had to register at the Town Hall for a seat that's just what we did. At the time we were told that we had to provide our own food. Fair enough we thought, a late night picnic.

One of the leading lights in the Culebrón village hierarchy is a young woman called Elena. She works on the local radio and, if I understood what she told me correctly, she was reading out, on air, the names of the people going to the Cena and she saw our names there. It turns out, and we didn't understand this at all when we booked up, that the dinner exists principally for the groups that participate in the floral offering which takes place earlier on the same evening.

By sheer chance Elena saw our lone names and invited us to join her and a few other people we knew. At this point we were still under the impression that it was individuals, or groups of chums, taking the meal together. So began a series of WhatsApp messages as I tried to wrest the information from Elena about our part in the jollities. Pretty early we learned that the key element the food was going to come from a local roast chicken takeaway but in lots of ways we were still completely in the dark. When and where exactly would we meet, did we need to take plates and glasses, how was the food being bought, did we need starters, puddings or drinks to accompany the meal? In an English way I wanted full chapter and verse and in a Spanish way it was all in hand because it would be "as always."

It is ages since I have felt quite so confused about what was going on. My WhatsApp messages used lots of words like confused, lost and foreigners.

On the night of course it ran like clockwork. The villagers had everything under control. We were directed to the appropriate seats to make sure we weren't left out of anything. Maggie joined in without any problem. She was grinning, chatting and dancing.

Of course I wasn't dancing, I'm so old that my tenuous grip on the Spanish slipped away as the multidirectional conversation had to be shouted above the noise of the live band providing the dance music. Not much chatting then but I did do my best to grin.

 "Now you don't feel so lost, do you?" said Elena to Maggie.

String and glue

I may well be wrong. I haven't checked last year's programme against this. Nonetheless it seems to me that the Pinoso Fair and Fiesta has been simplified because there isn't any money. And, in being simplified I think it has been improved.

When I wrote about the fiesta a couple of years ago I made a point that maybe the event had lost some of it's purpose. I suggested that the rich and mobile population of Pinoso could now seek out entertainment and goods whenever it wanted. The Fair and Fiesta had become less relevant. Maybe by changing its focus it can regain that relevance.

I've got it into my head that initiative has taken over from cash as the way of making an impact. As Ernest Rutherford said "We've got no money, so we've got to think"

Take the opening ceremony. In years past that used to be somebody giving a speech from the Town Hall balcony before the great and the good of the town trooped off, en masse, to stroll around the fair and take the front row seats for some musical event.

This year the square in front of the Town Hall was brightly lit. They made use of a big screen (the Town Hall has television production facilities) to warm up the crowd and then they introduced all the Carnival Queens by parading them through a passageway formed by a dance troupe. For the cost of a few spotlights and a bit of computer wizadry the organisers turned the opening speech into a bit of a show. The speech, like last year, took place on a dais in amongst the crowd so that ordinary people were much closer to the action. It all felt much more participative to me. The fireworks afterwards were set off right in the heart of the town using an empty building plot. A simple change but so much cosier.

Yesterday there were classic cars in a square that isn't usually used for much. I've noticed in the programme that the events are much more evenly spread through the squares and open areas of the town.

Classic cars, very cheap to arrange and a bit different. There was some gachamigas cooking going on in the same square. Cheap and cheerful again. Oh, and there was a little band trogging around the streets playing some regional instuments. Very jolly. Later it was judging the decorated streets. I have no idea how it actually works but I can see a model for that - get your 50€ grant from the Town Hall to deck out your street. So some streets ask for the grant but they have to put in a bit extra. People from the street get involved. The town looks pettier and the band comes down your road along with the Mayor.

We're off into town tonight to see some music and we've paid for a concert on Saturday night. We've still to get along to one of the vermouth sessions (old hat now) but the wine tasting is new. As is the idea of a paella competition rather than the usual free giant paella (which apparently cost 5,000€ last year.) There's lots more that's different and I must say that being less of a consumer and more of a participant feels better to me.

All in all it seems a much more grass roots sort of festival. If that's the thinking then I reckon it's good work on somebody's part. I'd heard that we were into a post industrial phase, a return to pre industrial revolution thinking. Now all we have to do in Pinoso is to tag it up as being sustainable and we'll be very 21st Century.

Time passes

I was wandering home from the village yesterday evening. I'd just been to watch San Jaime and San José get their annual walkabout on the shoulders of the villagers. After all our village fiesta is held in honour of San Jaime.

Last year when I was taking my snaps I tried hard to get shots without the ubiquitous small vans in the background, without tractors and without the recycling bins. This time I decided that they were an integral part of the fun. More than that I decided they were actually a symbol of the relevance and the continuity of the event.

In the procession the Carnival Queen and her Maids of Honour were in a traditional costume. Everyone else (priest excepted) wore ordinary clothes. It's an interesting idea "traditional costume" - most young Alicantino women seem to be wearing shorts this summer or at least clothes bought from Zara, Mango and Stradivarius. They are unlikely to ever wear long pleated skirts and shawls. So, at some time in the future, will the Carnival Queen be decked out in shorts and T shirt? Who decides what period represents traditional? Why not 12th Century costume or clothes from the 1960s?

In fact the whole procession was a very everyday sort of event. I've seen scores of small carved this or that saint or virgin moving around the streets of Spain dodging the parked cars and litter bins just as presumably they once dodged middens and loose animals.

So, back to where I started. Wandering home, watching the sun set and thinking how nice it all looked in a scruffy and non twee sort of way. Time may be slower in the countryside but it hasn't stopped.

Boom boom

I began to laugh out loud. My head was ringing. It was about 2am and all around me people dressed in a motley uniform of black robes and red scarves plus any number of personal touches from cigars and sunglasses to multicoloured wigs were walking up and down banging the hell out of drums.

Big drums, little drums, every size of drum. Children, adults, teenagers. bang, bang, bang.

I was in Hellín where they celebrate the Resurrection by banging on drums. They call it a tamborada from tambor the Spanish for a drum. As far as I could see there was no organisation to the event. People turned up with any number of friends or family and banged drums.

I laughed because I suddenly thought how mad it all was.

Not a decent snap all night. The flash ones look horrid and the ambient light ones are all blurred. But you should get the idea.

Els Enfarinats in Ibi

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town  by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks.

The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government gives way to the old.

The taxes levied go to local charities.

Snuggly and warm

Would I lie? The knife stall.

The fair and fiesta in Pinoso runs from the 1st of August for nine or ten days. When I suggested that the event was getting quieter each year and perhaps, not so important in the lives of Pinoseros as it once was a young woman, born in the UK but bred in Spain, was quick to reprimand me for my disloyalty in a "Go Home Limey!" sort of way.

Officially the fair and fiesta aren't yet underway. The official opening, the pregon, a sort of opening speech, will happen on Monday evening. But, weekends are weekends, and last night the stalls and fairground rides were in full swing.

The town's equivalent of running with the bulls, a sort of chase and be chased by a small terrified bullock around some waste ground, took place for the first time this year, or at least I understand it did, fortunately for both my boredom and cruel stupidity tolerance thresholds I wasn't there. Later the new Carnival Queens and their entourages were crowned in a ceremony that seemed to last for an eternity. As we strolled around the stalls and fairground rides the crowds seemed pretty sparse to me. We could have chosen to sit at almost any of the food and drink establishments from the 5€ bargain specials to the upmarket shining crystal and linen napkin places.

So it wasn't the heart racing, non stop fun event we may have hoped for. There was an odd thing though. We started by the Town Hall. "Nice lights," said Maggie - "not as good as the lanterns but better than last year." We said hello to someone we knew. Later, as we bumped into the first of the stalls and the commentary started - aah, I see the pots and pans man is here, and the knife stall. We avoid the free samples at the "Mr Galicia" ham and cheese stall and consider, for at least the sixth year, whether we should buy a grilled corn cob, the white chocolate crepe was my first. We have comments about so many of the stalls and bars - not there, they overcharge at fiesta time, that bloke with the waffles always plays heavy metal - what a character, crikey that Peruvian man's hair is even longer than last year but he looks so much older, look the jewellery stall isn't here - I wonder if she died, she was knocking on a bit, no way! - the chips are always cold and expensive there.

We've strolled those stalls a lot over the past seven years; we're old hands. Gently re-assuring in a small town sort of way.

Fiestas again

Friday evening. With this solemn act I now declare the 2011 Culebrón Fiesta open. Thus saying Inma popped a couple of ice cubes into a plastic glass ready for the vermouth. Inma is our "mayoress" and it was fiesta weekend. Blow the ceremony - on with the party. Drinking vermouth, a traditional local drink, was the kick off. The event was a bit of a damp squib because it rained. Rain in July in Spain. Mind you María Luisa kept us entertained.

Next we had the big race. Saturday morning. Five and a half kilometres of either walking or running. Two separate starts half an hour apart but the first runner home was only seconds behind the first walker. There was a little lad walking home swinging his hips, like someone from a "Carry On" film, apparently in second place but as soon as he crossed the line the judges disqualified him; they said he'd run. It was odd, hundreds of people there but hardly any of the usual suspects from the village.

Gachamigas are poor people's food. Flour, water, garlic and oil traditionally cooked in a big deep frying pan and tossed like pancakes. There was a gachamigas competition as part of the do so we expected to find a few people cooking around open fires but instead we encountered a picnic. We'd eaten at home and we hadn't taken any food or drink. We were invited to almost every table for a drink and a bite to eat. We felt like spongers. Maggie spent some time talking to and eating with people up from Alicante to visit relatives but we really sat with Enrique and Victoria's family. Good choice as Enrique's gachamigas carried off the first prize.

Missed the football competition but we were back for the evening meal. No main dish this time just lots of little snacklets - maybe not the best food we've ever had in the village but good company and a good event. Luisa made us feel particularly welcome. The Mayor and a few other politicians from Pinoso are always invited to the meal at each of the village fiestas and it was good to see new faces there after the PSOE victory back in May. Eli, who I once worked with and who is now a councillor, introduced me to Lázaro the new Mayor. I like that sort of thing.

We were too lazy to turn out for the hot chocolate and sweet bread on Sunday morning but being so devoutly religious we were back for the Sunday mass. The fiestas are for our patron saint, St. James, so I suppose the mass and procession were, technically, the main event of the weekend but my reason for turning out was that I'd been asked to take a few snaps. The photos weren't good - always a stray tractor in the background or a telegraph pole out of someone's head. It was a chilly evening. Eli, processing with the other politicians, commented on the coolness. "Well, it is July," I said. The look on her face suggested that she misinterpreted my English humour for a linguistic failing.

So that's it then. All over. The village can get back to normality. Definitely the village fiesta at which I have felt most welcome since we first arrived here. People were uniformly kind and friendly. Smashing.

Fiestas and paper hankies in Abanilla

The tissues were not needed for an annoying sniffle. They were not needed to dab away a breakaway tear at an emotional moment. They were needed to block up our ears; torn in half and twisted into a cone they produced makeshift, but perfectly serviceable, ear plugs. The clue was that the majority of people cradling an arquebus were also sporting ear defenders.

The One True Cross was doing a tour of the town of Abanilla supported by the Captains, Pages, Queens, the Faithful and the Holy Brotherhood of the Vera Cruz. The Town Band, the Santa Cruz, were out too and when that Cross appeared at the church door the arquebuses made an awful din and covered us in smoke and soot. "It's a salute to the Cross," said a man, "no bullets in them today."

We caught up with the shooters a little further down the route, salvo after salvo, then one of the girls in the funny frocks bowed to the armed guard escorting the Cross and they let go a volley as well. Distinctly odd but good fun.

Summer

Summer in Spain is an odd time. Whole towns and cities more or less close down. Rural villages fill up as people move to their country houses often inherited from relatives, now dead, who worked the land. Even the shops and offices that stay open generally change their opening times usually doing just the morning shift rather than re-opening after the long lunch break. All to avoid the heat.

Summer lasts two months, from the first of July to the thirty first of August. The Guardia Civil, who deal with traffic, mount special campaigns because there are so many traffic movements. Madrid, for instance, more or less empties its population to the various coasts and inland resorts. Once upon a time people would take a whole month off, more or less their whole holiday entitlement, but that seems to have become a couple of weeks in summer with the rest spread around the year particularly at Easter and Christmas. Spain is in the midst of a financial crisis so not everyone can get away but even then family visits and time with friends offer some compensation.

Fiestas, the local carnivals, are in full swing. They are everywhere. For instance today we could have gone to the big wine harvest celebration in Jumilla or to the much more modest events in la Romana, Chinorlet or Paredon all of which are only a few kilometres from home. There are lots more.

Our summer has been excellent. Maggie's teacher holidays are two full months and with me not starting work till September first I've been sunning myself too.

Apart from the week and a bit on the boat and the weekend in Castilla la Mancha we've not been away from home overnight but a quick skim of the photos shows that we've spent a lot of time doing this and that and we've seen a lot of friends.

Very nice.

Gearing up for the Fiesta and Fair

This is pure conjecture.

The 10 day long Pinoso Fiesta starts officially tomorrow. The rides and stalls are already setting up in the town. Just from a quick look this morning I'd say there are fewer stalls than last year and last year there were fewer stalls than the year before.

Spain is a rich country nowadays. The IMF may say that the economy faces some serious challenges and the word crisis is still on everyone's lips. Unemployment reached a 13 year peak yesterday with over 20% of the working population idle. Nonetheless, the last time I looked we were still the ninth biggest economy in the World. In 1965 Spain was on the UN list of "Third World" countries. Quite a change in 45 years.

When I used to do Spanish lessons with a chap who lives here in Pinoso he told me that, in 1984, there was only one tarmac road through the town - in from Monóvar and out towards Fortuna - somewhere, I heard that mains electricity didn't arrive in Pinoso till 1974. I have photos of the town in the 60s and 70s. There's a mule in the street, dirt roads, poverty.

Pinoso is still pretty isolated, still a rural farming community. Imagine the annual fair and carnival twenty or thirty years ago. Stalls selling pots and pans, knives and agricultural implements. New clothes for the kids, toys, strangers in town. The fairground rides, the opportunity to eat strange food, to let your hair down.

Nowadays if someone wants a new fridge freezer or a garlic crusher they can get it in town or jump into their motor and zip off to the Aljub or Thader or Nueva Condomina shopping centres. If they want entertainment Elche and Alicante and Murcia are all less than an hour away. Terra Mítica, the huge theme park is an easy day trip.

Maybe the knife seller from Albacete, the ham and sausage from Galicia and the dodgems just don't have the appeal for the population that they once had. Or maybe I'm a foreigner and I still don't understand how Spaniards like to party.

A Long Weekend

May 1st is May Day in Spain. None of this nearest Monday malarkey. Maggie's school though chose to extend her weekend by giving her Friday off.

We went to Alicante on Friday, it was sunny and warm. I was still after juice but the idea was to make a bit of a day out of it. Go and stare at the sand and waves and maybe find a museum. It didn't go well; in Spain, in most city centres it's a toss up as to whether there are more bars, chemist shops or banks and we were looking for a bank, the Banesto, to activate a bank card. We didn't find one before closing time. There was no juice either. The worst thing though was that we went, first to a sandwich bar and then to a tapas bar to get some sort of snack at lunchtime and we bailed out of both. "Too busy - nowhere to sit" and "Good Lord, could the service be any slower?" but really it was because it wasn't straightforward and it would have been difficult and embarrasing Spanish so we fled. Actually we went in a Chinese restaurant in the end which was much better value and tasty stuff but the easy surrender upset me all day.

Saturday was fine, both weatherwise, at least till early evening, and in the "How are you?" sense. We saw a pal newly returned from Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam etc. with tales of tuk tuk bandits and the price of beer in Vientiane. Otherwise we did very little. We talked about going to the Moors and Christians in Abanilla or maybe dancing (as if!) at La Perdiz but it began to rain and somehow the opportunity just drifted away. The windows rattled with the thunder though as I watched TV and drank brandy.

Sunday, Mother's day here, Sunny start but my most exciting plan was to exchange a gas bottle and maybe buy a Sunday paper offering a deal on a slow cooker. Books, phone calls and computer tinkering swallowed the bulk of the day. We set off for Cartagena much earlier than usual leaving the cat to the care of Gail our near neighbour and finally we made it to Abanilla for the Ofrenda de Flores, the flower offering, as part of the local celebrations. Some distinctly odd costumes. Back in time to see Doctor Mateo on the telly.

You see, and you thought living in Spain was like one long sunny week in Benidorm or Torremolinos!

Barking at the moon

I've done it before. I don't quite know why. Inma, the "Mayor" of our little village sends me an email - "There's a meeting tomorrow in the Village Hall to talk about the summer fiesta, it would be good to have you there." Like a fathead I go. Maggie has more sense.

I knew what it would be like. Twenty or so people. Plastic chairs. The sound echoing off the tiles and bare walls of the village hall. The side conversations, when things get heated, usually in Valenciano and always shrill and loud. Me, wanting to say something, having something to say but not tonight. Tonight, I had to be content with formulating the ideas in my mind, unsure of how to express, in Spanish, what I wanted to say.

They managed without me though.

The problem is money. The village fiesta, an event in honour of our Patron Saint has always been sponsored by the local Town Hall. Last year the Town Hall, strapped for cash could only find 2,500€ to support the village Neighbourhood Assocaition. This year it's down to 900€ and that amount is still a budget figure rather than cash in the bank. The town's quarry, the largest in Europe in terms of the tons of stone dug out, just isn't providing the revenue it has for ever so many years. Pinoso is grinding to a halt. A Town Council, used only to spending, doesn't know what to do.

Back at the village hall we decided to ask each house in the village to support the fiesta to the tune of just 10€. Add that to the 500€ plus in the accounts and the vermouth evening, the gachamigas cooking, the football games, the band for Saturday evening, the childrens games, the chocolate party and the church parade (including flowers and live music) should be safe. Reducing the brochure to an A4 sheet was the work of seconds. Not so the evening meal. We went back and forth, we talked about the large families being excluded by the price. We talked about cheaper menus, about cutting out the booze, the coffee, the pudding - but good sense won out. We're going to have a proper sit down meal with all the trimmings - waiters and everything.

Looks as though there won't be any poor people at the meal then.

Shelter from the storm

We've been in Spain a while now and we've seen lots of Easter processions. The routine varies from town to town and procession to procession but the basic formula is the same. Individual squads dressed in pointed Klu Klux Klan hats and heavy, floor sweeping robes, escort carved, blood stained Christs and religious banners through the streets to solemn music based on slow, repetive drum beats. It can be impressive stuff but as it happens every night of Holy Week with extra processions to move this or that statue from one spot to another it soon drags as a spectator sport.

My procession count this year has been low so I went, for the first time, to see the midnight procession that marks the start of Good Friday here in Pinoso.

The town was pitch black. The street lights were off. The house shutters were down. The only light came from rogue phone boxes and bank machines. No cars were moving. People walking to the procession trod quietly with none of the normal chatter. Nobody was smoking. I took up my place in a side street and only after a moment did I realise that the procession was already moving past me. The drummer and his muffled, one beat every five seconds, was already gone. The black pointed hoods and black robes rolled silently by.

I had my camera but I was rather relieved when the autofocus, autoflash settings couldn't come to grips with the totally dark streets and black clothes. It seemed wrong to take snaps somehow. Amongst the silent watchers a young man talked too loud, on purpose, maybe to impress a girl. His friends left him high and dry. A mobile phone spurted to life but was silenced mid tone whilst a big, bloody Jesus on a cross lit with subtle blue light, swayed past on the backs of black hooded bearers.

Behind the cross came the silent crowd; hundreds of people of all ages, nearly everyone with a candle, Lots of spectators stepped off the pavement to join the procession. I began to feel uncomfortable for watching. Fifteen or maybe twenty minutes and it was all over.

As I walked back to my car I saw a bloke lighting up, a family walking in my direction were giggling and chatting. The night was crackling back to life in tiny little ways.

Odd behaviour

Pinoso, our local town, is keen to promote tourist activity. After all tourism was one of the engines of the Spain's recent economic growth and it is still an enormously important industry here.

So Pinoso has been getting involved in promoting a wine trail, is talking about turning part of the huge marble quarries into a tourist attraction and re-equipping the old flour mill as a museum. Good stuff.

As a part of this drive they have just opened a new tourist office. It's only open weekdays from 10 till 2 at the moment to see how business develops. Being blessed with clairvoyant powers, I predict that it will be an utter failiure. Maybe if they had put it somewhere in Pinoso town rather than over a kilometre from the town centre, in the last building before open countryside, there might have been a better chance. Who thought of that?

We went to the building where the tourist office is today because they also stage exhibitions there from time to time. We were the only people in the building and we had to ring a bell to get in but the custodian was welcoming enough. I liked the exhibition though Maggie didn't so whilst I was looking around Maggie talked to the chap about the upcoming Villazgo celebrations.

Villazgo is a festival to celebrate the town's identity. It's a good event and it attracts plenty of people. It could attract more though if the publicity were not available only in Valenciano, the local dialect of the Catalan language. The main language of Spain, the one most people call Spanish is more accurately called Castellano. Nearly every Spaniard speaks Castellano but Valenciano, obviously enough, is spoken mainly in Valencia though what percentage speak it varies from town to town. Valenciano is not spoken in Murcia. Pinoso borders onto Murcia so the populations of two of the largest nearby towns, as well as anyone else outside Valencia, will have to guess at the programme.

I really think whoever is driving forward the tourist drive in Pinoso needs to reconsider their strategy.

They think it's all over

We were in Valencia over the weekend. As we went back to our hotel on a bus it was noticeable how much traffic there was - lanes and lanes of the stuff stretching on apparently for ever. Being Spain the bus lane was just as crowded as the rest. It took us ages to get to the hotel though I think that the friend who was with us gained some caché by travelling with two Brits speaking excrutiatingly bad Spanish. Light relief that other Spanish passengers on the bus could guiltily share with her. It was busy because everyone was out Christmas shopping.

A Spanish friend, who mentioned in her card that she'd only sent two, posted her card on 29 December. Plenty of time before Christmas.

When we finally settled down in front of the telly last night there were at least ten perfume ads in a row and one breath of fresher air with an amusing little advert from Scalextric.

This is because Christmas isn't done here. Shops will continue to sell as much as they possibly can right up to late night closing tomorrow evening. They hope to be assisted by the crowds brought to towns the length and breadth of Spain to see the Three Kings parade through town throwing sweeties to the assembled hordes. Some of those parades will be camel and elephant riding all singing and dancing and others will be three blokes with dodgy beards (and a blacked up face) riding in the back of a chum's tractor trailer. No matter, no child in Spain will be denied seeing the Kings close to their house. Tomorrow evening Spanish children will go to bed hoping to waken up to piles of Assassin's Creed 2 and Wii Sports rather than the coal reserved for bad children. And on the 6th with all the shops closed Spanish families will reassemble for the last big feast of Christmas before the children go back to school on Friday. Just time for them to get down the Sales and spend their Christmas money.

Downbeat

The pregon has done his stuff, he opened the 10 days of fiestas in Pinoso on Saturday evening by cutting the ribbon and turning on the lights just after he'd finished his turgid little speech.

Talking of crisis, financial crisis, is old hat in Spain. Every radio show I've heard this weekend has said something like "We don't want to talk about the crisis on this show but...." Not having money, huge unemployment, people losing their homes, deflation, apalling economic figures, banks pulling up the drawbridges - that's crisis - and it is everywhere here.

For Pinoso, with income from the marble quarries slashed, the local Town hall has no idea how to balance its books. Increasing income through increased local taxes is on the cards but cutting services, making people redundant and axing posts is something the local councillors have never had to do before and they don't want to do it now. Presumably the people they would have to sack would all be family members anyway! - so I suppose most of them are a bit worried about getting it in the neck from Aunt Inmaculada or Cousin Paco if they end up sacking young Manuel.

So, no bull fight this year. Too expensive. The lights in the street are less gaudy and there are fewer of them. The programme features no big name acts and even the programme itself, the paper version, is slimmer and less lavish. There are fewer stalls too. Presumably some of them have gone to the wall since last year.

My guess is that traditional fiestas in Spain were having a hard time before the crisis. Where we live would have been very isolated not very long ago. When the time came for Fiestas it would be the opportunity to buy new pots and pans for the house, to try some tasty tid bits of food, to drink too much, to have a laugh on the stalls, to eat out, to buy and show off new clothes, to dance, to sing, to run with bulls - to take a bit of time for yourself and for your family to do all those fun things that were denied to you most of the year - things miles away from your everyday existence. But it's not like that now is it? Carrefour and Mercadona have pots and pans and more exotic food than ever came to town with the fair. It's easy to drive to any number of shopping centres or hypermarkets in your car and it's easy to do all of the other things too. How can a ghost train set out in a dusty car park compete with the multi million Euro equivalent just 60 minutes away in Terra Mitica Theme park?

Big John

The weather in Culebrón remains warm. It's been up and down a bit, temperature wise, but at the moment we're a tad over 37ºC. When I've done the gardening the temperature doesn't seem to be too much of a hindrance so long as there is a cooling drink to hand. The sweat that dribbles into my eye sockets and then splashes onto the inside of my sunglasses to dry into salty smears makes precision work more difficult but there is always the compensation of feeling a bit like Big John Wayne wiping his forehead way out West.

We've just taken our house guest, John Leigh, to Novelda, a nearby town, where there is a very nice Art Nouveau house. When we arrived parking was dead easy because the town's fiesta is under way so all the shops and businesses were shut. Luckily the house was open. A bit of a bonus was that there was a bike race going on around the streets.

I've been on a bike once or twice in my life; they seem like hard work. The route is always uphill and every time there's a gale force headwind. Those cyclists must have been feeling the heat but, worse than that, for them no John Wayne compensation - I mean can you imagine the Duke in Lycra?

All things must pass

I slept through the Gran Chocolatada which, according to the programme, would help the children to gather their forces ready for the games afterwards and I slept through the men cooking Gachamigas (usually a sort of pancake but sometimes crumbs - poor people's food made mainly from flour and water) and I was eating lunch with Maggie, recently returned from Andalucia, when the table games began at 5pm.

But we saw the Solemn Procession with the images of Saint James and Saint Joseph carried through the streets accompanied by the Parish Priest of Pinoso, the Authorities, the Queens and Courtiers and the Terrós Pipe and Drum Band (whoever wrote the programme for the fiesta showed a fine turn of phrase.)

All done for another year then.

The Melody Duo

I've never cared much for dancing. It may have something to do with the humiliation of Miss Robert's enforced Highland Reels when I was seven or it may just be in my nature. I was watching something perfectly decent on the telly anyway but when it finished at around 12.30am and I went out for a smoke in the garden the sound of the old Andy Williams hit "I can't take my eyes off of you," sung in Spanish floated, in from the village. It seemed silly not to walk down and have a look. After all I hadn't bothered to go to the meal because of the possibility that someone may speak to me in Spanish - Maggie, who talks to me in English and deflects unwanted small talk, is away in Granada at the moment - but I was pretty sure that I could avoid most conversations, get a drink and lean, anonymously, against the wall whilst the Melody Duo did their stuff. Maybe I prefer to be out of it in a a crowd rather than out of it all together. On the other hand I'm relatively old; I've been there and I've done that, I knew how the evening would enfold and I couldn't really see the fun in it. Walking into the village, shelling out for some drinks, being bored and trying to avoid eye contact isn't a recipe for a diverting evening. But to miss the highlight of the fiesta seemed plain wrong. What to do?

I went. The Melody Duo, two blokes in white suits standing on the decorated farm trailer, were doing their thing. Inma saw me walking in, she shouted me over, I hovered, Paco then Eduardo shook my hand, I sidled away, I bought a whisky, I bought another, I skulked by the church, I smoked two cigars and I sloped off when they were all dancing the Macarena.

Written 19 July 2009