Life in Culebrón

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...

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 M...

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 b...

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...

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 ow...

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 w...

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 bu...

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. ...

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

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." I n 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 thi...