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We did a bit of a circular tour last week. Up to Albacete, across to Cuenca and back through Teruel before coming home. 

Along the way we  visited the winery in Fuentealbilla, run by the Iniesta family, (Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup), we looked at the huge 3rd Century AD Roman Mosaic in the tiny village of Noheda and we stayed in Albarracín which has city status even though it's smaller than either Algueña or Salinas. We even visited some old pals in Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel.

I often think Spanish written information is patchy or poor. I wonder why there is no list of the tapas on offer or why the office doesn't show opening times. I have theories; those theories go from the link between information and power to high levels of illiteracy in the Franco years to the much less fanciful idea that Spaniards simply prefer to talk to a person. There's no doubt that written information here is much better, and more common, than in once was but it can still be woefully lacking.

Raul, who showed us around Albarracín, was a pretty decent guide. He introduced himself, he asked people in the group where they were from, he modulated his voice when telling stories and he spoke louder when someone revved a motorbike or beat a drum within earshot. Nonetheless the information was a bit stodgy - there were a couple of stories but it was still, basically, dates and facts. Years ago, when Maggie worked in Ciudad Rodrigo she helped a couple of young women to prepare for their oposiciones, the official exams for local government and civil service type jobs. Both of them had to be able to present the "official" script, in English, for the cathedral or castle; any deviation from the script was considered an error and would cost them exam marks.

I have another story that ties in with this Spanish idea of memorising things as being good. The first time I came across the Trinity College Speaking exam in English was when I had to help a student prepare for the exam. Her talk was going to be about the first of the Modern Olympic Games. When she'd finished her presentation I asked her a question about it. She replied, in Spanish, that all she needed me to do was to correct the script which she intended to learn and regurgitate. That method was so common in Spain that Trinity changed the exam to ensure that it was a better test of speaking skills.

The tour of the bodega at Fuentealbilla, the introductory welcome to the museum house in Albarracín, the guide who explained the Roman mosaics to us and the volunteer guide who showed us around Albarracín Cathedral were all fine, maybe a bit monotone, a bit emotionless, but fine. There was good information. When the cathedral guide told us that the decoration had been done on the cheap, the marble on the wall was just decorated plaster, the marble columns in the side chapel were painted pine trees, I thought this may lead to a bit of interaction, a bit of story telling. But no. Under such circumstances I often think back to a tour I did around St Peter's in Rome. The story of Michelangelo lying on scaffolding, with Dulux dripping into his eye from painting the Sistine Chapel, swearing at the Pope and complaining that he was a sculptor, not a painter, as he was asked if he could turn his hand to building the biggest dome ever because the tarpaulin draped across the unfinished church was letting in the rain water and giving the Protestants a good laugh. There was a guide who knew how to engage his audience in a tour.

In the Ethnological museum in Cuenca. I was reading one of the "labels" by an exhibit. It was, at least, 500 words long, a side of typed A4 paper. It was full of Spanish words in the style of the English word ashlar. Who ever says ashlar? Isn't dressed stone a bit more accessible? Couldn't they write, ashlar,  finely cut stone, to help out we non architects? I reckon that there was as much reading as in a normal length paperback on the walls of that museum. It takes me a few days to read a novel. Again, all it needs is a bit of thought to do this right. 

At the MARQ, the archaeological museum in Alicante, they do the British newspaper thing of a headline followed by an explanatory paragraph followed by the full story. An example. Let's suppose there are some hats and helmets and other headgear on display. The label title says Visigoth headgear. You can stop there if that's enough for you. Under the title the label says something like: Hats, helmets, scarves and other head coverings were worn by both men and women during the Visigoth rule in Spain (5th to 8th century AD). Whilst most of the headgear had some practical purpose, protection for soldiers, hygienic hair covering for cooks, a sun shade for shepherds etc. the style and decoration also emphasised the importance of the wearer in the social pecking order. Again, stop there if you will but if you're a millinery student looking for inspiration or simply a devout museum goer each exhibit has a longer, explanatory description.

But I would have forgotten all about the guides, and information and museums, if it hadn't been for the TV news yesterday. They said there were a shortage of place in FP courses. Now I happen to know what FP courses are but I wondered why they chose to use initials rather than use the full version. FP=Formación Profesional. The literal translation is Professional Training - it's the sort of training that is more directly work related. I was reminded of my potential blog topic and here it is.

Mainly the Archaeology Museum in Jumilla

Spanish museums used to be awful. Piles of stuff in random order often without any labelling or information. Most, though not all, are much better now and some of them even have levers to pull or computer screens to tap. There is still a tendency for the information to be a bit long winded (something I get accused of), and only very infrequently do you get the news story type labelling with a brief résumé in the first paragraph and more detailed information below. The most common style is a four or five hundred word description on each section. With all good intentions I read the first couple of information boards, scan the next two or three, read the first couple of lines of the next dozen or so boards and then start to wander aimlessly without reading anything unless it catches my attention. Usually the notices are in Castilian Spanish and quite often in English too. Occasionally around here, it's just in Valenciano which always annoys me.

It was sunny yesterday and neither Maggie nor I had work in the afternoon. We went for a bit of an explore and, more by happenstance than design we ended up heading towards Jumilla. I knew that there was an exhibition called Capturas individuales at the Archaeology museum there, the Museo Arqueológico Jerónimo Molina, but, I wasn't sure whether it was photos or paintings. If we were passing we may as well pop in to have a look.

Archaeology museums tend to be organised from old to new. Pre-history with cave paintings, arrowheads and the like close to the entrance moving on to the stone carvings of jewellery bedecked Iberian women and so on through Greek vases, Phoenician boats, Roman central heating. Then on to the Goths, the North African Moorish Invasion, onward to the Middle Ages and upwards through time stopping wherever the collections or the curators see fit.

We've done the Jumilla museum a bundle of times. We've listened to live music as we leaned against the display case that hold the two and a half thousand old year column featuring an armed rider. We've been on the roof on Museum Night to listen to poetry where the Republican prisoners took their exercise when the building was used as a prison and we've been to a talk about old Jumilla surrounded by Roman mosaics. So, when the bloke behind the desk asked us if we'd ever been before we said yes and that we'd only come to have a look at the temporary exhibition. The museum was not awash with people. Indeed we were the only customers. Moises, the man on the door, wasn't too busy. Our saying that we'd been before didn't stop him. He caught up with as we lingered over a bit of Iberian pottery on the first floor and started to give us a guided tour. His English was good and he knew his exhibits well. Altogether a very interesting tour. We didn't really get to see the temporary exhibition - they were paintings by the way. But, thank you, anyway Moises.

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There was an advert when we went to the cinema this afternoon for Coca Cola. It is about the people responsible for the success of Coke in Spain over the past 65 years. The funny thing in watching it was just how "Spanish" it looked. There is, for instance, a shot of a door with a polished aluminium door knob. The wood veneer, the colours, everything looks, and is, Spanish. It's the same with the men walking up the road in their fluorescent and grey overalls. I've seen those very same blokes getting the set meal in scores of restaurants in Spain. I've opened that door.

So how did those Coca Cola people make the advert look so Spain? After all we live in Spain but I don't think that anyone could argue that our microcosm represents the totality of Spain.

The very first time I went to Madrid I wasn't that impressed. There didn't seem to be anything notable in the Coliseum or Eiffel Tower "must see" mould. There were plenty of interesting buildings, squares, places and palaces but it was like being in New York and finding that the best they had to offer was the New York Federal Reserve’s Gold Vault. Very nice but hardly the Empire State. It was August to be fair and Madrid used to more or less close down in August. It was hot too. Very hot. I spent a fortune on trying to keep from dying of thirst.

I don't think the same about Madrid nowadays. I find something to stare at on every corner. I know the city a little better, partly because Maggie used to live there at the start of the nineties and, as an inhabitant, she stopped being as interested in just the Prado or the Plaza Mayor and started to know those hidden corners that locals know - the place for the best fried egg sandwiches at 3am, the best free music venues and which metro route to use to avoid long walks as she moved from one line to another. We've also been there a lot of times now but, even then, my knowledge is very superficial. In some ways my knowledge of Madrid is a bit like my knowledge of London - I know Bush House as well as Marble Arch and I can vaguely navigate from Shaftesbury Avenue to the ICA but it's a generalised and incomplete knowledge that sometimes fails spectacularly. "What's that building there?" I asked Maggie. A minute later, when we realised that we were almost in Colón, I knew it was the National Library but to that point I hadn't even recognised Recoletos.

In my youth I had a period living in or close to London. The excitement was tempered by the inconveniences. Travelling the Tube at rush hour and marvelling at people who could read a broadsheet newspaper given the crowds is interesting to someone heading for a job interview but it's a pain in the kidneys when you have to do it day after day surrounded by people with scant regard for personal hygiene. When I go to Madrid I'm usually there for a few days. I'm a tourist who recognises the similarities and the differences to the place I live. The number of people, the hustle and bustle is great, at times, and at others it's suffocating. We were somewhere on Alcalá looking for a gallery that I'd heard about on a radio programme and the number of people, blinded by their mobile phones, who kept crashing into me tried my patience. But there aren't any galleries loaded with Goyas, Tapies and Reubens in Pinoso so I suppose it's a choice; quiet streets or something to see.

There are differences too of a more prosaic nature. We went to a Thai restaurant. One of those that gets an honourable mention in the Michelin guide without getting a star. I don't actually know much about Thai food but I'm pretty sure that Thai is commonplace in the UK. The sort of thing you can get in packets from Tesco's as well as in plenty of high street restaurants. My impression is that it's not the same in Spain. Not that it's scientific or anything but I just Googled Thai restaurants in Murcia city, the seventh largest city in Spain, and Trip Advisor came up with just three. The Madrid restaurant had a table for us even though they were busy. We decided on the tasting menu but lots of people just had a main, or a starter and a main, with a drink and then cleared off. There were other tourists but, if I were guessing, I would say that most of the people eating there were on a lunch break and in a hurry.

A couple of things strike me about my hypotheses. One is that there were sufficient Madrileños in this one district willing and happy to eat Thai food often enough to keep an ordinary sort of restaurant in business - nothing like reluctance to stray away from traditional food common around here. The second was that, if I were right about the lunch break, then the model of a day split in half by a two or three hour break, which is alive and well near us, is losing ground in the city to the intensive day, the "nine to five" with a lunch break, of Swedes, Germans and Britons.

So, we saw the Pat Metheny concert in Madrid, we ate Thai, we went to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, we saw a Brassai exhibition and we rode around on the Metro, we went up the Faro de Moncloa. In Atocha, we caught the train in a station full of smoothie stalls, sushi bars and vegetarian cafes but when a few of us got off the train in Villena, in the gentle warmth of the Alicantino evening, with the aroma of the vineyards wafting around us I thought it was nice to be home.

The Mercedes

Arturo Perez Reverte is a well known Spanish author. I've read a fair few of his books. Even in Spanish he's easy to read and often there is an informative element to the novels which I like. The last one I read was called Un día de cólera. It was written back in 2007 but it was new to me and I found it fascinating. It was about the 2nd of May street revolt in Madrid in 1808. We're with Napoleon, Trafalgar, Arthur Wellesley and all that. It's one of the few times that Britain and Spain have been on the same side. It's a period we bumped into a lot when Maggie lived in Ciudad Rodrigo because the town had been one of the battle sites as Wellington moved against the French inside Spain.

Intrigued by the Perez Reverte book I hunted around for a book to increase my knowledge of the War of Independence (Peninsula War) without overtaxing my age enfeebled brain. A likely candidate was a book by a chap called Adrian Galsworthy. I think the name's a giveaway. He's not Spanish and I decided it was stupid to read a book translated into Spanish from an original English language source. The clincher was that it was cheaper in English than Spanish.

It was Father's day last week. I got a day off work. Adventurers that we are we went to the MARQ archaeological museum in Alicante to see a temporary exhibition about the frigate Mercedes. The Mercedes was a Spanish sailing ship sunk by the Royal Navy in 1804. The Mercedes, along with the Medea, Fama and Clara, was on it's way back from America to Spain loaded with taxes for the Spanish exchequer, generally in the form of silver pieces of eight. The ships were bound from Montevideo which was, at the time, a part of Spain referred to as the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata. Just one day out from home the Spanish ships were intercepted by four British frigates. The British Government knew about the money on the ships and they were keen that it did not eventually find its way into Napoleon's war chest. Europe was involved in persistent warfare at the time with alliances being formed and broken constantly. Despite Britain and Spain being at peace at the time the British ships demanded that the Spanish ships follow them to a British port. The Spanish ships refused and the commander of the British detachment, Sir Graham Moore, opened fire. During the battle the Mercedes exploded with the loss of two hundred and sixty three lives. The British won and the three Spanish ships were all taken to Britain.

Two hundred and three years later a treasure hunting company, Odyssey, found the ship and plundered what was left of the cargo. They didn't take much care about the archaeological merit of the ship and seemed instead to be simply after the treasure. Odyssey were taken to court in the United States and the Spanish Government eventually won the case. Everything found on the remains of the Mercedes was returned to Spain and much of it was used in the exhibition we saw. It wasn't at all bad. Spanish museums have definitely improved in the last ten years (see last post.)

Back in Culebrón with a cup of tea in one hand and the Galsworthy book in the other I read this morning about an attack on Copenhagen by the British in 1807. Apparently the Danes had a nice little fleet. Denmark was neutral in the wars being waged all over Europe but the British Government was concerned that Napoleon would take no notice of that neutrality and go and steal their ships. If he did that the supremacy of the Royal Navy might be threatened. So we British went and nabbed the ships first.

But for living in Spain I don't think I'd ever have known about the tiny footnote of history that is the Mercedes. And what is this about fighting the Danes? Isn't that the place with Lurpak and Carlsberg? Interesting stuff you find in novels and museums.

Centro de interpretación Casa del Mármol y del Vino

It was, I think, called the Wine Resource Centre - well it wasn't because it's name was in Valenciá - but now it is called Centro de Interpretación Casa del Marmól y del Vino - The Sociocultural Institution for the Interpretation of Marble and Wine. Casa doesn't translate easily in this context. Even then you think they could have worked on something snappier. Perhaps the reason they haven't got around to giving the exhibit a new sign is that they are going to need quite a big board to fit all those words on. The idea had been talked about for quite a long time but the actual implementation seemed to happen with remarkable speed. Perhaps funding had to be spent to a timetable or somesuch. Perhaps that's why there is no sign.

The idea of a celebration of wine and marble is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in Pinoso where the two are big economic activities. Marble is the biggest moneyspinner in the town by far because of the huge open cast quarry. It's owned by Pinoso but generally hidden from view behind Monte Coto mountain. It's the village on the other side of the hill that gets the blighted view, the noise and the dust in return for very little economic benefit. Wine of course has been important in the area for centuries. We try to reflect that importance in our own house.

With funding from Levantina, one of the big stone companies that quarries the marble, and a bit more from Pinoso Town Hall for the wine exhibits we now have the Interpretstion Centre in this building that used to be used for occasional exhibitions, book launches and lots of meetings.

The new venture opened last week but we took until today to get there. The man who looks after the building showed us around the whole thing. It's not that big to be brutally honest and, even if you took the time to read all the information presented in Castillian, Valencian and very acceptable English, you could probably do it in twenty minutes  Our guide made it a much lengthier affair but we also got a lot more information and probably someone else to say hello to as we walk around the town.

My personal favourite was the video that went with the wine exhibition. It showed a family out picking the grapes and loading them into the trailer behind a tractor. Not a lot of rush about the process. Time to stop to eat and to drink wine from a wineskin whilst the background music provided the right sort of mood. It reminded me of the film that goes with Video Games by Lana del Rey if you know it. In the marble exhibits the quotes from locals were what I liked best - such as the advice from a mother to her children - if you hear the sound of the charges being set you go and hide!

Nice little addition to what Pinoso has to offer. I hope it attracts a few more visitors. There was nobody else to look around with us today and I guessed we had been the only visitors all morning. Mind you it will probably help when they get a sign. At the moment, only we locals know it's there.

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Para abrir una cantera hasta la década de los cincuenta era necesario un cabrestante, cable, dos grapas, ocho o diez picos, dos mazas, diez o doce cuñas con sus flejes y, muy importante una escuadra para que el bloque estuviera a escuadra y poco a poco se iba comprando otros.

Trains, culture and city life

I had a lot of trouble getting a job when I was a young man. One day in the 70s after another disastrous interview I was on the milk train back from London to Halifax. It was early morning when the train made an unscheduled stop in my home town of Elland presumably waiting for the signals or somesuch. Beeching had done for Elland as an official stop. I jumped out of the train (no conductor controlled doors in those days) and despite the protestations of the British Rail staff legged it over the semi derelict platforms and pushed through a hole in the wire that I knew from my boyhood adventures. It saved me the four mile hike back from the official stop in Halifax.

Yesterday we decided to travel to Valencia for one last outing before I go back to work on Monday. We agreed to use  the train. Quite by chance we'd been in the station at Villena a couple of days before. That's where I got the idea. It was interesting looking at the routes of the slower trains that run on the wider traditional gauge of Spanish railways. The train we got from Elda for instance had come from Cartagena and had passed through Murcia, Elche and Alicante. From Elda/Petrer it went on to Villena, Xátiva, Valencia and then up through Teruel and on to Zaragoza. Plenty of interesting stops there, Plenty of places that I had never thought of as train destinations. As well as our route there was another that went up to Barcelona and a third went through Castilla La Mancha taking in Campo de Criptana (one of the places with lots of white windmills) on its way to Ciudad Real - a town I haven't visited for years.

One of the reasons that the very fast Spanish AVE trains cover the ground so quickly is not just because they can travel at over 300 kph but because they don't stop. Between Alicante and Madrid for instance, a distance of just over 420kms, they stop just twice to keep the time to around two hours and ten minutes. It adds fifteen minutes to put in another couple of stops. I think I've got used to thinking of trains as long distance services rather than considering their routes through lots of interesting towns.

Spanish trains are usually clean and prompt and generally it's allocated seats too. So even if there are suitcases all over the place on the crowded routes you still get a seat. Prices seem reasonable to me. The 290km round trip cost 31€ for full price tickets or a tad under 25 quid. Covering the 450 kms from Madrid to Cartagena in January of this year on a special ticket (no passes or cards - just an offer) cost me 15€.

So we got off the train into the modernist Estación del Norte built in 1917 and we were plunged into Valencia city. There were back packer type tourists everywhere, a variation on the tourist families of the Costa Blanca, and lots of lots of ordinary people just going about their lives. Valencia is the third largest city in Spain and even on a Saturday it was obvious that we were a long way from Culebrón.

I always like to take in an exhibition when I'm in a town. To be honest I'm not a good gallery goer. I soon get bored of looking at pictures or sculptures or installations or whatever but I just love going to galleries. Places full of ideas, the effervescence of human endeavour. Maggie suggested the Cathedral. That sounded good to me too as it's years since I've been inside. The entrance price (wasn't there a story about Jesus and people doing business in a temple?) included a surprisingly interesting audio guide despite lots of references to polychrome figures and retables. And, unlike the Monty Python crowd we didn't have any trouble finding the Holy Grail. It's stop 20 on the audio guide.

We got to a gallery too, though they are always termed museums in Spanish, with the IVAM, the Valencia Institute of Modern Art. To get there we wandered through the bohemian Barrio Carmen which is full of bars, eateries, antique clothes shops and bike hire places. We even found time to down a jug of Agua de Valencia, a sparkling wine, orange juice, gin and vodka combo before heading back to a Talgo train to whip us back to Petrer and the waiting Mini.

Keeping schtum

Everyone knows that Brits in Spain wear socks with sandals, go bright red in the sun and swill beer. One of those conversational topics, designed generally to use comparatives in English, with students is about countries. We always agree that one difference is on the Tube. In London everyone keeps to themselves, reading or simply looking grim faced. In Madrid on the other hand the babble between passengers is drowned out only by the occasional impromptu musical jam session.

I was in Madrid the last couple of days and I'm sad to report that everyone on the metro is now glued to their mobile phones. For business suits and skaters alike their thumbs are dancing across screens catching or killing things. Earphones are everywhere to block out the surrounding world. Mobile phones, the great leveller.

Madrid looked very green too. Trees all over the place and that's without going anywhere near the Retiro. Busy of course but then, if you lived in Culebrón, most places would seem busy to you too. And expensive; it's not that paying 2.20€ or 2.50€ for a bottle of beer or 4€ for a tapa is too bad really but we generally pay about half of that so the final bill can be a bit of a surprise. And exciting - flash motors on the street, odd and stylish characters in equal measure, galleries, museums and events everywhere. And, best of all in the recently renamed Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Maggie popped out of one of the doors with a cartload of luggage which means she gets to eat pork and drink wine and I get my playmate back.

Spanishness

I fancied a museum this afternoon so I checked the opening times of a couple of places on the Internet and set off to have a look. My official city map was a few hundred metres out in its placement of the first gallery on my list but I finally sweated and cursed my way there.

It was closed.

There was an opening hours notice on the right of the main doors. Opening time was 6pm, not the same as the 5pm on the Internet. It was only 6.15pm so I waited a while. Then I saw a notice on the left hand side of the door, not for the gallery, but for the archive, which said that it was closed after mid June in the afternoons. I put two and two together and headed off for another gallery which I'd come across whilst wandering lost. It wasn't on the map but it was open. It was an awful exhibition.

Off to the second gallery on my Internet list. The location was as marked on the map. I could see the security guard talking to someone as I approached the big glass doors. I went inside. "The Museum's closed in the afternoons," said the guard.

I went to the pictures instead and saw a Cameron Diaz film.

A day out

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 was a show to celebrate the 50th anniversary of an art movement that called itself Arte Normativa (the translation eludes me - Art by Rules maybe) which was a Spanish geometric abstract movement of the 1950s. Just to finish off we went to a remarkably tedious showing of Russian Sacred Art at one of the exhibition spaces run by the charitable arm of a savings bank.

Something I noticed was the staffing. The busiest space was the Savings Bank where there was one security guard at the entrance, in FNAC where the show was in the concourse outside the shop surrounded by coffee bars there was nobody obvious looking out for the exhibit at all. In both MUBAG and MACA only one large space was open for viewing but in both places, which are local authority run museums, there were two people on the welcome desk and two more museum staff keeping an eye on us as we looked around. I think there was also a uniformed security guard in each foyer, there usually is. Quite different staffing levels between the public and private sector then.

Good do though Alicante. Nice to do a bit of culture vulture stuff for a change.

A glimpse of an everyday past

Petrer, situated beside Mount Cid and alongside the Puça rivulet had been, until well into the 20th Century, a town with a distinctly rural character dedicated, principally, to agriculture. The streets were of compacted earth and the houses still had cat flaps and stables. The success of the wine harvest , or not, was at the grace of "The Virgin of the Remedy." In the squares and plazas were public fountains where the women filled their water jugs. The markets were held in Dalt Square and in the Altico district were the workshops of the families who earned their living from ceramics and where the shoe makers worked on their porches. Everything had it's season in that town and here, in this museum, we have the tools, instruments, objects and images to stir memories of those times.

Yesterday I got a text message on my phone, in the local Valenciano language from Petrer Town Hall to publicise a theatrical walk through the history of Petrer, at least that's what I think it said. It sounded OK so we went along. We were there by 11.10am for the advertised 11am start, well early by normal Spanish standards. But not a sign, not a sniff. Quiet as a quiet place.

As it happened there was a small  museum in the nice little square where the walk was supposed to gather so we went in there. The piece at the start of this entry is a translated version of one of their signs. I thought it was an excellent spot, very modest really but well laid out, well labelled and well worth half an hour of my time