I forget
where we were but they offered Contessa as afters. The Vienetta of my
youth, fancy, if industrial, ice cream cake. There was tiramisu as
well. Not many years ago all the puddings on offer in an everyday
Spanish restaurant would be crème caramel, ice cream and seasonal
fruit. Now you can get chemically flavoured cheesecake and deep
frozen profiteroles and suchlike almost everywhere. An example of
reasonably recent change.
Last
Saturday evening I wasn't sure whether to go and see some flamenco in
Villena or go to Jumilla for the Night of the Museums. I like Jumilla
but we've done their museums a few times. I was drawn towards the
flamenco. It's ages since we've seen a couple of old fat blokes
wailing or listened to anyone turn clapping into a fine instrument.
The trouble was the information I could garner from the web about
Villena wasn't complete. I had a time, a place and a title. No
description; Art and Flamenco could have been a learned discourse as
easily as a night of sweat and guitars. A few years ago not being
able to find any information on the Internet would have been dead
usual. I'd have risked it but, as I got to the decisive junction, I
turned the car towards the certainty of Jumilla. Until very recently
Spaniards were not big on sharing information. The working
hypothesis, born as so many things still are in Spain, of forty years
of life under a dictatorship, was that what you knew may be to your
advantage - so best to keep it quiet. But, nowadays, lots of
information is reasonably accessible and that's a big change.
I'm not
sure how much of the Catalonia news gets outside of Spain. I would
guess that there are sporadic bursts as someone goes to a Belgian,
German or Swiss court or when some President is nearly sworn in. The
gang of politicians who have the upper hand in Cataluña at the
moment are a bunch of pig headed, short sighted, single track
thinking fools. The President of Spain, who represents the opposing
side for those Catalan politicians, is also a fool, a plodding,
vindictive, uninspired fool. There is only one way out of this, the
two sides have to talk to each other. The trouble is that both sides
only understand playground type rules - "I'll take my bat home"
or "I'll get my big brother on to you". It's going to take
ages for their feeble minds to come up with anything workable. Mind you I think Spanish
history is peppered with examples of Spaniards being unwilling or
unable to talk to each other. Co-operation is, in my opinion, not a
big thing in Spain.
On a much
lighter note, well away from the politics of a repressive regime or
two, I don't care for the run up to Christmas. This is because Maggie watches
a series of TV shows that shape our weekends. There is the X Factor,
the one with the audience reduced to a baying pack of hyenas, which I
heartily dislike, and there's also the dancing one which I don't find
offensive but which isn't my idea of fun. I'm not sure when MasterChef is
on but she likes that too. It's not a programme I particularly care
for but I have nothing against it either except that it cuts across
the start time for prime time telly which means we miss the first
thirty minutes of any film on Spanish TV. Nowadays of course the
format for TV programmes is a saleable item. There are Spanish
versions of Come Dine With Me, First Dates, Britain's Got Talent, The
Voice, Kitchen Nightmares, Big Brother, The X factor, MasterChef and
Strictly amongst others. Now if Maggie likes
MasterChef and if I want to watch Spanish telly you'd think that we'd
have a televisual winner with the Spanish versions. The problem is
that the programmes are presented differently. Strictly or Bailando
con las estrellas as it's called here, only started last week. We
gave it a go. We watched for a while. Maggie complained that the
format wasn't as good as the British version but she'd probably have
put up with that if the programme hadn't started at 10.30pm and gone on
till 12.45am - two and a quarter hours. MasterChef does something
similar on Sunday evenings - hours and hours long.
I could go
on but it's probably best that I don't as I'm over 700 words. Way
past the attention span of most people. A bit like Spanish TV!
