A quiet week

I was backing up the computer last week and there wasn't a single new photo to add to the photo album. This is distinctly odd. It means that I didn't go anywhere or do anything away from the daily routine. It's true my life is a bit off kilter at the moment and I wasn't much in the mood for galavanting but nothing? It also set me thinking about some of the things that we have done over the years

Tourism accounts for nearly 13% of the Spanish Gross Domestic Product—cars, the main Spanish export, account for about 10%, and agriculture just a tad under 9%. Tourism is becoming a problem in Spain, not really because of the tourists, but because of the people who make the most profit from them. In places like Barcelona, Mallorca, and Málaga, there is so much money to be made out of tourists that investment funds and the like have got in on the act. They buy up a block of flats to let out to tourists—if people have to be evicted in the process, so be it—because they make stacks more cash out of short-term lets to tourists than from the more traditional landlord-tenant relationship. So, whereas it used to be pretty simple for a couple setting up a new home to live in the same neighbourhood as their family and friends, they now find themselves unable to pay the inflated prices, and there is a general price hike all around as money chases the available rentals. Tourists have different spending profiles to residents. Trendy bars, vermuterías, bike hire shops, guided tours of the city, etc., aren't the first shops that locals need, just as the tourists are less likely to use butchers, pharmacies, and supermarkets. Traditional retail moves out along with the traditional residents as quickly as craft and local produce shops move in.

Obviously, the phenomenon of mass tourism overwhelming places is much more complex than a few nasty investors. Pop into a village on the Adriatic where three cruise ships of three thousand each pour 10,000 tourists onto the streets every second morning and see how it changes the face of the village. Up in the Pyrenees, we queued behind tens of motorhomes trying to negotiate streets that were too narrow and then sat among tourists in expensive-looking but spotlessly clean mountain gear, eating "traditional" ice cream. We were there too, though. We're a part of this.

Nonetheless, tourism is still something that lots and lots of town halls try to encourage. On one side, there are the places designed for tourists, like Benidorm, or places that attract tourists because they are loaded with things to see and do, like Seville and Madrid. But here, I'm thinking about the surrounding areas and how the decent tourist offices exploit what they have. It has to be said that most of Alicante province, or Murcia, isn't awash with lovely little villages or small towns enclosed by mediaeval walls. But tourist offices exist to promote what there is, what can be wrung out of the local environment. If what you have is the remains of the rail and steam-powered boom of the mid-19th century, or if it's Bronze Age remains and cave paintings, or a wine industry, or saffron packaging, or an architectural style, or a grape harvest, or a monumental cemetery, or a church, then that's what you have to work with. Some tourist offices are much better at coming up with something new than others but nearly all have their moments of genius.

We've got a lot of castles around here. If they weren't guarding the frontier between Christians and Muslims, they were guarding the frontiers between the old Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon. Often, where a town has something so obvious, they can either open the doors and hope someone turns up, or they can get on with a bit of promotion and arrange the dramatised visits, the reconstructions, and the jousts. I remember that in Sax, it was Juan Pacheco, Marquis of Villena, who tells you about his support, or not, for Juana la Beltraneja, whereas in Petrer, for a nighttime visit, the ghost of a murdered Moor told the story of the struggle for power in the city between Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Petrer also managed to weave the castle into its sessions about the end of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s.

Some towns don't have very much at all. The better tourist offices don't let that stop them, though. In Yecla, we've done a tour where each landmark—or where there had once been a landmark—had someone tell us the story of that place, accompanied by a musical performance. So, mediaeval music for the old church, and a bit further on, at the old gate to the town, we'd get North African music as a reminder of the Moorish conquest. We've done modernist architecture and the development of churches in Yecla, as well as tours by night. In Monóvar, we've gone on walks built around going out for a picnic as the locals did for years and getting a bit of history at the same time. With mention of Monóvar that leads to a couple of sessions based around the writer, Azorín, born in Monóvar, and schooled in Yecla. And while we're in Yecla, we went for a walk around their network of urban/rural paths and then went on an oil tasting session. They are only examples. The ingenuity is relentless. In Elda, we walked from spot to spot where someone dressed as a 16th-century peasant, a 19th-century shoe salesman, and a 20th-century nurse told us about the development of the shoe trade and the business community in Elda. In Novelda, the number of variations they can find on the theme of modernist architecture or their links to the seafaring scientist Jorge Juan seems endless. And while we're on Modernism, the week in Alcoy with half the town, and visitors, dressed up in Edwardian costumes and eating Edwardian snacks is really good fun.

There are also a lot of things that are based on activities. We've done any number of stargazing type tours—the culmination is counting the meteors or seeing Saturn's rings through the local astronomical society's telescopes - but it's also about perching you next to the Christ statue in Abanilla to explain the once Christian-Muslim divide, how the streets have twists and turns to give defensive positions and the construction of cave houses as much as to show off the 11-inch reflector. We've hunted for scorpions with ultraviolet light in the hills behind Elda, clambered up apparently vertical mountainsides to get to some Bronze Age cave site, and even planted trees.

Our very own town is a good example of this. Nice place that it is, Pinoso is hardly a tourist destination. The clock tower isn't exactly awe-inspiring, the Wine and Marble museum is nice enough but not exactly extensive, The Maxi Banegas route doesn't set the pulse racing and the recent travelling exhibitions in the Cultural Centre have all looked a bit dog-eared by the time they've got to us. Mind you, we've done some good stuff here. The tour of the cemetery around All Saints' Day, the tour of the local cucos, the dry stone-built rural shelters complete with dramatised episodes, the tour of the town's Civil War sites which was all done without seeing a single palpable trace, the tours of the town archives—all of them conjuring something from not very much. We've done walks with the town biologist, and we've seen rescued animals set free in the wild after they've recovered. Recently, Pinoso has started to explore food-based activities more because someone spent a lot of money on a show kitchen. Turning that into how to mix a good vermouth cocktail, how to cut ham, and any number of activities based on the local cuisine has been the upside to that.

The point is that with a bit of looking, there are any number of things to do alongside popping down to the coast, eating out, getting a drink with friends, watching the local fiesta or attending a local concert. 

On message

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.

The menoo

It's nice to think that people remember me from time to time. This week two old friends sent me the same article they'd both seen in the Guardian about the slow death of the Spanish "menú del día". The piece said that ordinary working Spaniards no longer had time to eat a big meal at lunchtimes, that diners were looking for different sorts of food and that restaurants were no longer able to work on such low profit returns. Actually I wrote about some of this in ปลาออกจากน้ำ  (Thai for fish out of water) when we were in Madrid. So, I partly agree and I'm sure that the Guardian correspondent is right in suggesting that there is a trend away from the traditional three course meal. Nonetheless, away from the big cities, the menú is very definitely alive and well.

Just before we go on something about the pronunciation. Menu, pronounced the English way, is carta in Spanish. Here we're talking about menú, with the accent over the U. This word is pronounced something like menoo, the full phrase is menoo del dear, menú del día and it's a fixed price, set meal.

The menú is, generally, served in restaurants at lunchtime (2pm to 4pm) on working days from Monday to Friday. The price is fixed and it usually includes two savoury courses and then a pudding. It generally comes with a drink - water, wine, beer or pop - and bread. Spanish servers will be surprised if you order a tea or coffee to drink alongside your meal; hot drinks are for afterwards not during. Often, especially on the Mediterranean coast, you'll get a basic salad thrown in too. It's usually an either or between coffee and dessert though sometimes you get both as part of the package. Despite being so ubiquitous it's an unusual style of Spanish meal because each individual orders separately and eats separately. So often, when eating in Spain, the food is ordered to be shared.

There used to be legislation about menus but the Guardian article told me that was changed in 2010 so here are a few of the little tricks and ruses to look out for.

The most common trick, especially for tourists, is that they are drawn in by the fixed price menú advertised on a chalk board or similar outside the restaurant. Once seated the tourists are handed a carta, the a la carte menu. They're a bit unsure if they read the board correctly, it's difficult to ask and so they order from the menu and end up paying more. Usually it's a bit of a con. If you ask for the menú they'll tell you what it is though it may well not be written down anywhere except on that board outside. Sometimes the fact that they don't offer you a menú is not the restaurant being tricky. As I said most fixed meals are available at lunchtime on workdays. Britons often think of the principal meal as being the evening meal. If you turn out in the evening there is unlikely to be a fixed meal available but the advert for the lunchtime meal may still be there. The same at the weekends or on Bank Holidays.

Another of the standard tourist area dodges is to charge for things that are usually included - like the drinks, the bread or the salad. The server puts them on the table, you eat them and they turn up on the bill. If you read the the menú information it will be there; if the menú listing doesn't mention drinks (bebidas) or bread (pan) then expect to pay extra for them. Even when you know the extras are coming it can sometimes be a nasty surprise. We went in a place opposite the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. We knew the drinks would be extra, we knew that it didn't include the coffee or pudding but it was still a good price for such a tourist mecca and the place looked nice enough. They charged me 6€ for a bottle of beer.

Most menus are not haute cuisine. A pal used to describe the menú choice as chop and chips. Plain and filling would be a kinder description though, every now and again, a menú can be surprisingly good. Even today, around here, there are, very occasionally, dead cheap but perfectly good menus available at around 7€. The majority are in the 9€ to 12€ range. There is often a second group of slightly better looking menus in some eateries  - maybe 15€ to 18€. If the restaurant does offer a fixed menú on Saturday or Sunday expect the prices to be higher; the 12€ menú becoming 15€ and the 15€ menú becoming 20€. Obviously there are price differences with geography. If you're in Benalmadena or Benidorm then the food is likely to be cheaper than in Barcelona or Bilbao.

Still a good way to kill the couple of hours when the streets are deserted.

Pulpí is not a pet octopus

Have you seen those geode things at the craft markets? They look a lot like a pebble on the outside but inside they're (sort of) hollow with lots of crystals growing into the space.

The crystals that form inside a geode can be all sorts of minerals. I checked on eBay and I could have bought geodes lined with prasiolite, celestine, calcite, pyrite, barytes or chalcedony though far and away the most common is amethyst, the purple coloured quartz.

A couple of weeks ago we went to see a geode in the now abandoned Mina Rica, Rich Mine, which is in the municipality of Pulpí just on the border between Murcia and Almeria. Between 1840 and 1960 the mine produced iron, lead and a little silver.

This geode is 60 metres underground and it's a little larger than most. In fact it's 8 metres long and just a bit short of 2 metres wide and high. Eight metres is more or less the length of the old London Routemaster RM buses. Inside there are selenite crystals (gypsum to you and me) which are almost transparent. The boast is that you can read a book through the clearest. Most of the crystals are about half a metre but the biggest is over 2 metres long. They are not the largest crystals ever found, that honour belongs to other selenite crystals discovered in an underground cave in Mexico. Those crystals were some 980 metres deep and the space they were in was really hot, too hot for people to bear for more than a few minutes. There was no chance that the cave could be preserved or opened to visitors so it was re-flooded. So Pulpí has the largest crystals that can be visited.

Getting to see the Pulpí crystals required a pre booked appointment and a payment of 22€ per person. For that we got to stroll through the old mine and to have a quick look see inside the geode which we did one at a time; left foot on the rock there, balance on that foot, twist your head to the left and there you are. The guide turned on the lights when you were in place and it was impressive. I stayed longer than most but even then that was probably only around 20 seconds of viewing time.

Oh, and just in case you're wondering the Spanish word for octopus is pulpo - Pulpí, pulpo. How droll.

In the Garden of Earthly Delights

El Jardin de la Seda. The Silk Garden, is an unremarkable public green space in Murcia. It has quite a lot of standard model ducks and some of those red faced Muscovy jobs. Joggers and walkers, some in track suits and others disguised in ordinary street clothes, do their stuff. Dog walkers with dogs large and small, some of them keen on battle. There's even the tall chimney left over from the silk factory that gives its name to the garden.

It had been raining. In fact half an hour before we got there it had been pelting down and we had been forced to seek shelter from the storm in a handy bar in the Plaza Circular. I'd even maintained a WhatsApp conversation with Victor, our potential guide, as to whether the walk would go ahead. It's been raining on and off for a couple of weeks now. Last week I posted a photo of a dismal beer festival spoiled by the rain. An old friend in Cambridge saw the photo and commented; "I have made friends with a Spanish woman who now lives in the UK and she says that sometimes in Spain, people don't take their children to school if its raining!" That's why I thought to check with Victor.

Simple idea. This bloke has a company and a doctorate in something botany related. He organises guided tours here and there to look at plants and trees and whatever else botanists are interested in. He's organised a series of walks around various of the green spaces in Murcia and we booked in for the one yesterday evening. It was very good; from ancient palm trees which lived alongside dinosaurs to how to spot sweet and bitter acorns from the shape of the small oak tree, called an encina, typical of large areas of Spain. Oh, and the next time we see a bougainvillea together you'll be amazed by my little known fact about their flowers. The price of the walk was novel too. The Reverse Ticket Office; pay what you think the walk is worth. A real shame that there were only three of us.

With Nevil Shute and Chris Rea

On the beach that is.

Maggie's Mitsu is nine years old but Miitsubishi Spain phoned us about getting a software update. I suspect that they have come across some sort of fault but when I asked they said it was nothing more than customer support. Anyway we agreed to get it done at a dealer in San Juan which is the next coastal town along from Alicante city.

So we were at the beach. Now I don't care much for the beach. I'm obese so taking off most of my clothes and displaying myself for all and sundry to see in a public place is not something I do willingly. Add to that the fact that beaches are often made of sand. Sand is a powdery substance but the individual grains are usually hard quartz. This sand not only gets into your sandwiches and your hair it sneaks into every nook and crevice of your body no matter how intimate. I was eating sand all the way home. I generally keep out of the water too. I quite like water but as I wear contact lenses I always fear that they will be swept away to sea. Anyway what do you do about the bag with your wallet and mobile phone? Like shrouds there are no pockets in swimwear - well no waterproof ones at least.

Going to the beach though is a Spanish passion. I don't think that Spaniards behave particularly differently on the beach to us or the Germans or anyone else. There are the young ones who turn up with the minimum of equipment - towels, suncream, a book and the mobile phone and the three generational family groups who arrive with a veritable encampment - chairs, sunshades, windbreaks, beach games and an epicurean feast packed into coolboxes. Fat, old men and women queue up early in the morning on the busy beaches waiting for the beach cleaners to finish their work. At the off they head for the waterline and set up chairs and sunshades to bag their spot, which the families will later occupy, before heading back to their summer digs for a leisurely breakfast. Towels and Germans spring to mind.

If we are away from home and we tell Spaniards that we live in Alicante they always presume we live on the coast. They will congratulate us on the quality of the Costa Blanca beaches. Ask my students where they went over the weekend and the answer is to the beach. Question the families of Alicante or Murcia as to whether they have a summer house at the beach and the answer will almost certainly be that someone in their family does. Turn on the TV and go channel hopping and you will find a programme where people are being interviewed about their beach experiences.

The tourist figures are up for Spain. Once again it's tourism that's the motor for the economy. Where are those tourists heading - the landscapes of Galicia and Aragon, the marvellous Andalucian or Salmantino cities? No, they're headed for the beaches of Catalunya, Andalucia and the Islands. The Sunday supplements may be full of the voguish delights of rural tourism but it's on the beaches where it's standing room only.

Maxi Banegas

Pinoso is definitely going all out for the tourist trade. Back in February we got the new street furniture and today we got the Maxi Banegas route. Veritably a seething cauldron of tourist activity.

But who, you ask yourself, is Maxi Banegas? Well, a couple of years ago, I asked that same question and I drew a blank. But tonight I got a clear answer.

Maximina Banegas Carbonell was born on September 15th, 1923. She grew up in her father's barber's shop at Monóvar street, in a warm and family atmosphere, humble but educated, surrounded by books and newspapers, ideal for Maxi's formation and imagination.

Her family's sacrifice and her desire for bettering herself, in spite of the difficult times during and after the Civil War, bore fruit on September 29th, 1951, when she graduated as a Primary School Teacher. She taught in Bacares (Almería), Monóvar, different municipal districts from Pinoso, and finally at San Antón School, where she stayed until her retirement in 1999.

Her nearly 40 years of teaching career left an imprint on the people from Pinoso. As a sign of this, the 'Maxi Banegas' Poetry Contest was created in 1997, currently nationwide. Moreover, in May 1999, Pinoso's Public Library was given her name, and a year later this garden was dedicated to her.

She died on March 27th, 2002, after spending her whole life next to her beloved sister Conchi. Her teaching and her poetry were her legacy.

During her life she wrote eloquent lines, some of which are compiled in her book ‘Entre Pinares’ (Among the Pine Trees) (1999). In her poetry predominates sincerity and the simplicity of her figures, personal feelings and everyday characters from our village, remembering its festivities and devotions, the landscape, her dreams and hopes, which reflect the woman and the teacher.

So now you know as much about Maxi Banegas as I do.

The route, which I went to see opened this evening, is marked by a series of lecterns which explain details of various spots in Pinoso. Each stop also features a few lines of Maxi's poetry about the place. There were seven stops along the route. Each lectern carries a QR code so, if your phone has the right app, you not only get the information in Castillian, Valenciano and English but also the route shown on Google maps so you can't get lost. Pretty go ahead I thought. The text above is the English page for the board in the Maxi Banegas garden.

I'm sure the busloads of tourists will be with us very shortly.