Megawatt hours and their smaller offspring

As I shaved I was listening to the radio, to the part they call a tertulia, that's the bit where pundits, usually journalists, talk about the latest news. They were talking about inflation and about electric prices. They had some boffin who knew all about the electric market. One little tidbit he dropped in at the end of his section was that every Spanish electric bill has a QR code which leads to a webpage maintained by some sort of Government quango, the "National Energy Commission". By using that code/website, you get a direct comparison between your last bill and the market in general. 

To explain it all properly would take pages and pages. It's quite complicated stuff, so I've kept this as short as my ponderous writing style will allow.

The Spanish electric market has two sorts of contracts for we household users. One is in the controlled market. The other is in the free market.

The controlled price varies from hour to hour. It's an almost incomprehensible pricing system; I certainly don't understand it. It's to do with supply and demand and with an auction between the big energy providers to decide on the price. There are only eight companies that offer contracts in the controlled Spanish market, they are the "Suppliers of Reference", and they are able to do so because they conform with certain government criteria. If you listen to the Spanish news and they tell you that today was the most expensive/least expensive day ever for electric prices, they are talking about this controlled price. If you buy a contract that uses the controlled price, you can never be sure whether your bill will be higher or lower even if you were to use the same amount of electricity under the same conditions.

Most people have a contract in the free market. "Anyone" can set up to sell electricity on to consumers in the free market. I presume it's more or less like that of any other business. If you're a supermarket, you buy your raw material, tomatoes say, from a producer, or their agent, at one price and sell them on to customers at a higher price. Normal capitalist economy stuff. Most supermarkets have tomatoes, the price varies from supermarket to supermarket and how they attract customers to buy them is up to each supplier. So with electricity, it's just the same. The companies that offer contracts to household users buy their electric off someone who generates it or from some intermediary, and then try to attract customers. How they package it up is how they sell their product. Most of the free market contracts have a fixed price for electric under certain conditions and for certain periods.

Electric bills in Spain have several elements. 

There's the power that you contract, the "potencia" - it's the thing measured in kilowatts. We have 3.54 kW. The more potencia you decide you need, the more you will pay each month. Often the cost of the potencia is lower at night and at weekends and more during the working day. 

Then there's the quantity of power that you use. The more power you use, the more you pay. That's why your partner/parent or children are always nagging you not to leave things on standby, to turn off lights, to raise the temperature on your fridge freezer, to buy a pressure cooker etc. etc. 

On top of this part of the bill, you pay a tiny, miserly, insignificant amount to the electric company to subsidise the bono social, which is the discounted price that is offered to people who might otherwise have problems paying their electric bill. Of course, you could see it as a subsidy to the electric companies, but let's keep clear of politics on subsidies and charity for the moment. 

The first subtotal on your electricity bill is made up of these three elements: power capacity, power used and the contribution to the bono social plus an electricity tax. I think this tax is to pay off a debt when the government subsidised the price of electric. I may be wrong. Maggie tells me I usually am.

The second part of your bill is made up of the "extras," which include renting the meter and things you may decide you need or not. One of the things we had on our free market, Iberdrola, bill was a sort of insurance against faults in the house wiring and for repair or replacement of certain white goods should they go phut. I'm sure that other suppliers have other extras.

Finally the subtotal for the energy/bono social/electricity tax is added to the subtotal for the extras and the whole lot then has IVA/VAT added to give us the total we will have to pay.

There have been lots of changes in the way that electricity is sold in Spain over the years. I don't think we had a choice of suppliers when we bought the house and if there was a choice of contracts I was unaware of that option. The company we contracted with was called Iberdrola and they simply renewed the contract each year. We were on the controlled price by default. When Putin started pounding the Ukraine the electricity price in the controlled market went crackers. Every day seemed to be a record high for the price of electric. We certainly noticed it in our bills. By now we were well aware that we had options and we asked Iberdrola what they could offer. I'd noticed, but not known why, the Iberdrola bill had, seamlessly and silently, transmuted into a Curenergia bill. Iberdrola sells in the free market while Curenergia is one of the Suppliers of Reference, selling in the controlled market. When Putin forced us onto the free market, we had to change suppliers to Iberdrola proper.

All of the free market contracts offer different pluses and minuses. The different contracts might offer electric at a fixed price every minute of the day or expensive electricity during certain hours balanced out by lower prices at other times. They may offer a fixed unit price over several years. Lots of them offer green electric though I wonder how anyone can determine where the electrons moving along the cables came from and as Spain seems to consider nuclear power to be as green as solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric there may be different ideas about definitions. There are often side offers; buy electric off Repsol, and they'll give you a discount at their petrol stations buy from someone else and they'll give you money off at the supermarket. 

So, back to where this blog started. Prompted by the radio tertulia I looked at the QR code which referenced lots of providers. From that I looked at some providers online, I talked to a couple of advisors one online and one face to face - both tried to sell me a contract with the same supplier. That supplier was not one of the ones that the National Energy Commission suggested as the best value. Amazingly, as if by magic, my Instagram and Facebook feeds also started to fill with adverts for energy suppliers - they must have some sort of sixth sense. It became obvious that changing from one contract to another was dead easy, and so I did.

Whether the decision was a good one or not, time will tell.

Saleing away

Let's presume you're in Spain and you want a t-shirt or a bikini or a pair of trainers or a new phone. Even with the upheavals in retailing there are still real physical shops where you can go. Most of them will have the majority of their stock on show for you to browse. Occasionally you might have to talk to someone, to get your size in shoes for instance, but most people can do most of their shopping in, Bershka or Carrefour or MediaMarkt and a whole lot more, without speaking. You might need to make some sort of grunting sounds at the till but that's all.

It was not always so. Not that long ago shopping in Spain required a conversation. There was a counter and behind it there was someone to ask for whatever you wanted. They showed you things that you may or may not want and may or may not like - it could all become quite complicated. Also shops were pretty specialised. When we first needed electric bulbs for our new house I went to an electrical shop but it turned out I needed an ironmonger. And where could I buy inner soles or shoelaces? Sometimes the answer was obvious, bread from a bread shop and drill bits from an ironmonger, but it wasn't always so simple. 

Nowadays if you don't know where to buy something you just go to a Chinese shop - they stock everything but, in the dim distant past the answer, if you were in a big town, was the department store Corte Inglés. That's where I bought those inner soles and that was where you could browse pullovers or swimming trunks without needing an extensive Spanish vocabulary. Corte Inglés was nearly magical. It had things that you needed and things you wanted. It welcomed the well off and the ordinary person and it was swish with smart and helpful salespeople. It was a Spanish institution. I'm not sure what sort of financial shape it's in now but a few years ago Corte Inglés closed lots of stores, axed lots of jobs and tried to catch up with Internet retailing and the modern world. Britons might see parallels with John Lewis.

In that same antediluvian period the sales, the time that shops sold off old stock at reduced prices, were a big event in Spain. The Winter sales started on 7 January, just after the King's holiday (think Boxing Day) and the Summer sales started at the end of June. There were always scenes on the telly of people camping outside the door of big shops, and by that I mean Corte Inglés, and making a mad dash for the washing machine being sold at the price of a transistor radio or the Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada frock at a knockdown price. There were sometimes squabbles over goods, there was always pushing and shoving and a race to be won to get that special bargain.

Even in our time here the sales were still something special. There was no Black Friday, Amazon didn't do Flash Offers, there weren't year round discounts and Outlet Shops were few and far between but there were the sales. I've spent many a frustrating hour in Corte Inglés sorting through the brand names like Gucci, Hugo Boss, Calvin Klein,Tommy Hilfiger looking through the jeans or shirts for something that wasn't only left in sizes for someone with a tiny waist or a barrel chest. Every now and then I'd find something, a real bargain, and it all became worthwhile.

This year the January started last Sunday. Shops in most of Spain are still, generally, closed on a Sunday but last Sunday they were allowed to be open. Maggie had been doing her online homework and she wanted something from Corte Inglés so we went down to Elche where our nearest store is. As we passed L'Aljub shopping centre cars were queuing back down the surrounding dual carriageways presumably full of people setting out to find that sale time bargain. Corte Inglés was busy too. I had to go a car park level down to find a space. But the sales don't have that sense and purpose they once had. Instead of the jumble sale like racks of mixed clothing with bargains to be found for the persistent and determined it's now whole ranges marked down with a 40% off price tag. Sometimes they don't even give the sale price, there is a sign to say that the 30%, 40% or 70% will be knocked off at the checkout. Nobody has gone through items marking them down. Someone has given the stock control software a nudge and, when the sales are over, that change can be un-nudged. At least it gave one young lad the opportunity to impress his father with his mental arithmetic skills as he worked out the final prices. 

Corte Inglés has never been a cheap shop. 40% off a Calvin Klein pullover originally priced at 119€ isn't a bad discount but that 71.40€ price tag is still more than four and a bit times the cost of a similar cotton pullover at Primark. For me at least there's no adventure in that sort of pricing. I can probably do an Internet trawl to find something as cheap. The fun was in the hunt.

I really am beginning to sound like my Uncle Harry and his stories of fish and chips for a tanner or taking a girl out for a night on the town for half a crown. I suppose it comes to us all.

The ITV

I don't think that British people taking their car for an MOT  (The UK safety inspection) fret too much about it. It's just another job to be done, like deworming the cat. It's exactly the same in Spain. There's a technical inspection, the ITV, for cars and almost anything else that rolls on the road from trailers and caravans to lorries and tractors. The main difference is that the test in Spain can only be done done at specialist centres. If nothing has changed, in the 20 years since I last took a car for an MOT in the UK,  then any approved garage, service centre or workshop can do the MOT test there.

So the Spanish process is simple enough. I'm going to talk about cars. Different vehicles are treated differently with different test periods and different rules but they all use the same test centres. It can be slightly intimidating to be doing the test on a car while running alongside a four metre high 44 ton artic in the next bay along.

For the first three full years a new car is considered to be good to go. No need for a test. On, or a bit before, the fourth birthday the car needs to be tested. After that the test is every couple of years until the car reaches ten and, from then on, every year. 

The process is simple too. You show the vehicle paperwork in the reception office, pay the appropriate fee. Diesel cars cost more than petrol cars, there are differences between cars with and without catalysers and the least expensive test is for electric cars. I paid 44.53€ for the test on my petrol car. The fee paid, you and the car get sent to a sort of assembly line. The process starts at one end of a big shed and the vehicle processes through the shed with everything getting checked as you go.

The first part is all very hands on. Lights, headlamp alignment, horn, windscreen wipers, squirters, seatbelts - anything that the tester person can check with the car standing still. Sometimes the testers are very thorough, buckling up the rear seat belts, checking the quality of the wiper blades, and other times the checking of the smaller things is pretty cursory. It may be different testers, it may different test stations or it may just be the idea that newer cars need less checking. I tend to the latter because I noticed that the same bloke who guided my car through the test was much more thorough with a battered 19 year old Ford Fiesta, that went through a couple of cars before me, than he was with my four year old Arona. With the car still at the very start of the shed there's the emissions and noise check. Again there are different rules for different ages of vehicles. My 1977 MGB GT went through despite the slight blue haze from the exhaust. With the initial checks done you start to move through the shed. The rolling road comes first, to check the brakes. Then to the pit where there's an under car inspection - brake lines, exhaust, suspension joints, general health, bodywork rot and a steering check which involves riving the steering wheel from side to side and some other stuff that I forget.

None of this is particularly tricky. It's a perfectly sensible process and despite the usual moans from my compatriots that the Spanish test is a joke, in comparison to the, obviously, infinitely superior, British test, it's a straightforward process for checking compliance with European construction and use rules.

The funny thing is that, despite what I said at the beginning, for we foreigners it is actually a bit of an event. I know plenty of people who pay a mechanic to take their cars through for them. I know of one test centre that offers to take the car through for we foreigners. I think that, once again, it's the language. Not always though - it is also simply that it's a process that's a bit alien. My car has automatic lights so, in four years I've hardly ever used the light switch. I had to check the handbook to see how to put on sidelights, how the the rear fog light worked etc. Language wise though I have no real problem with conversational Spanish and my car vocabulary is OK too. Even then, sitting in a car with the tester standing outside and saying - left blinker (or turn signal, or trafficator, or indicator), both, brakes, dip, front fog, rear fog etc. - there is forced to be a moment when you either miss what is said or don't have a clue what they mean. The testers have accents, they mumble, they have shortcuts, they presume you know the drill, they've already done this forty times today and they are not at all emotionally involved in the process. This time for instance the tester bloke was much more interested in talking to me about my 20 year old Tag Heuer watch, and the Omega Seamaster that had preceded it, than he was in commenting on the steering castor angle. He was waving the paperwork around, with or without the all important windscreen sticker, as he talked about the beauty of Bulova Accutron watches to the point that I felt I had to interrupt to ask if the car had passed its ITV.

Hi, I'm calling to sell you something

We all know about spam phone calls. We all have our methods for getting shut. At the end of the call we block the number but the baddies seem to have a limitless supply. Here in Spain we Brits have a ready made get out with the old "Me no speaky foreign strategy". If that doesn't work then rudeness, anger or simply putting the phone down will - at least till the next call. 

Since 2009 it's supposed to have been possible to stop these people pestering you by signing up to the Lista Robinson, the Robinson list. I did and it seems reasonably effective but I've heard that, for some call centres, the Robinson list is just another database to plunder. At the end of June 2023 new legislation came into force which is supposed to make it more difficult for these cold callers to keep on pestering us. The general consensus is that the legislation is so full of holes that it won't change anything. Oh, and by the way if you're registered as a business or as self employed the new legislation doesn't cover you. Business cold calling to business is considered legitimate.

The first reason the new legislation is likely to fail is that it doesn't apply if you have given your consent for companies to call you. Not many of us think we give consent but just how often do you read the fine print on that Internet contract or new phone app before you tick the little box? That's where the clause is that gives them permission to call us or even to sell our data on to a third party. And it's often Catch 22; if you don't give your consent then you can't have whatever service is on offer.

The second reason is that the new legislation allows the companies, which have your number, to call you when there is a legitimate interest. What exactly legitimate interest means depends on how much wiggle room a company thinks there is in the legislation. Security, for instance, is a legitimate interest. The company says that it needs to contact you because they are worried that, with a new scam, your account is at risk. So, your bank phones to say that you don't have a backup, just in case of a security breach, phone number. Oh, and while we're on the phone, talking about security, have you ever considered the advantages of our new super gold plus security plan?

But the biggest problem is that the legislation is Spanish and European, not worldwide. The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) tells Spanish firms it's illegal to use randomly generated phone numbers for cold calling. The AEPD says telemarketing companies are obliged to identify themselves, say that they are trying to sell you something and tell you you can ask to stop receiving calls if you ask. Calls must be recorded so that the recording can be used as proof that the call complied with the law. The fines for not following the protocol can be up to a couple of million euros. 

So if some advertiser makes a call from Spain and they don't follow the rules they can get into hot water. But Morocco, Ecuador (and lots of other countries) are not in the European Union. So, a Spanish firm hires a call centre, based in Ecuador or Uruguay, to make the calls on their behalf. Even if the phone number that's shown on your mobile looks like a Spanish one it's quite likely it's not. Nobody in Spain makes the call. The Spanish Consumers Association tried, in March 2022, to identify 210 cold call telephone numbers and they only tracked down about a third of them. It's difficult to chase someone for being naughty if you can't find them. 

Cold calling produces a lot of business. We're often a bit fed up with our current phone provider or we wonder if another electric contract wouldn't save us money. If we let the cold caller speak and the deal on the phone sounds good, well, why not? The companies realise that stopping cold calling, obeying the new legislation, could cause a big drop in profits.

The new rules say that the Spanish companies have to behave legally and so they do. The Spanish company signs a contract with, say, a Nicaraguan call centre which stresses that the Nicaraguans will comply with European and Spanish rules when making calls to Spain. The contract is signed in that "foreign" country and it clearly states that the call centre can only call people who have expressly consented to receive calls or where there is a legitimate concern. What doesn't go into the contract is that the call centre and the Spanish company agree, while they're having a cuba libre down the bar, that the call centre can call whoever they want.

Back in Spain, where nobody drinks cuba libres till late at night, Pedro or Pepe, Mariló or Susan complains to the AEPD about unsolicited calls. Maybe the case ends up in court. Let's pretend that this process happens almost instantly and doesn't drag on for years. The telephone company defends itself by showing the contract and saying how disappointed and cross it is with the overseas company for breaching its contract. The AEPD or the judge will not be able to do much to the phone company because any contracts that the phone companies have with the call centres say that they guarantee to only make legitimate calls. The judge can't do much about an Ecuadorian or Peruvian contract because they are outside their jurisdiction. And if the complaints keep coming and the judges begin to suspect some skulduggery then the phone company will throw their hands up in horror and break the call centre contract for not complying with the terms of the agreement. There are lots of call centres looking for business. There may be penalties for breaking contracts, there may even be fines within the EU but the profits will outweigh the losses and so it's more than likely that the system will go blithely on and you, and I, can expect those unwanted phone calls to pepper the day.

Cars as social outcasts

I'm sorry but I have to admit to enjoying Joyas sobre ruedas on the Discovery Channel - Wheeler dealers in its original. That interest explains why I asked after the hire car of a couple of friends visiting from the UK. The car had a late letter L registration - well under a year old - but it didn't have one of the emision badges or stickers on the windscreen. I mentioned this and, not surprisingly, our friends were completely in the dark about the badges. I explained. It's basically an emission thing. The idea is that electric cars, hybrids, newer petrol and diesel cars can get stickers whereas older petrol and diesel cars can't. The environmentally cleaner your motor and the fewer restrictions. The older and dirtier your car the sooner it will be forced off the road.

I remembered the badges conversation when we were in Altea town centre. "Ah look, there'll be a badge on this car", I said, but there wasn't. I walked down a row of at least 50 parked cars before I got to one with a sticker. I was truly surprised. My car has one and I just presumed that it was in the majority. In fact I recently had a conversation with a Spanish chap who was really sad that the new legislation meant that he was going to have to replace his much loved, nearly 500,000 kilometre, but still going strong, SEAT Cordoba for something newer. Hypothetically, from 1st January 2023, all towns with a population in excess of 50,000 have a low emissions zone (ZBE) in place. That's now a date that has passed. In practice only Madrid, Barcelona, Pontevedra and Zaragoza have complied with their legal obligations. A handful of other towns are nearly there and will implement this year but lots of places, Murcia Region and the Valencian Community for instance, have absolutely nothing planned.

The stickers are the basis for cars and vans entering these low emission zones. Bear in mind that there are lots of exceptions, lots of ifs, buts and maybes. The system gives a 0 sticker to the non polluting cars - electric vehicles and the like. Hybrids and gas propelled cars get an ECO sticker. Petrol engined cars after the beginning of 2006 and diesels built after September 2015 get a C sticker. Petrol cars from 2001 and diesels from 2006 get a B sticker. Older than that and you don't get a sticker. As I said lots of exceptions and lots of technical definitions. Look somewhere official if you need real detail.

There are 149 towns that have over 50,000 people in Spain. If this legislation had actually been implemented on time and you owned a nicely turned out, 2005, 2.7 litre diesel Jag S type you wouldn't be able to drive into them. Locally that would keep you out of Alcoy, Petrer, Orihuela, Torrevieja, San Vicente, Benidorm or even Molina de Segura never mind the obviously larger places like Alicante, Elche or Murcia.

The plans are in the hands of the local town halls so the what, where and how will vary from place to place. In Barcelona for instance the restrictions cover nearly all of the city but in Madrid it's just the very small area inside the M30 ring road. The idea is to use cameras to identify, and later fine, cars that enter the areas they shouldn't. Fines in Madrid and Barcelona are at about 200€ with discounts for early payment. These two cities give a clue to how other places will behave. The 0 cars enter and leave at will and street park if they can find somewhere. The B and C cars can enter but have to use designated car parks and even the ECO cars can only street park for a maximum of 2 hours. Residents currently get the right to enter the restricted areas with any old car but that right will be phased out over time. It's pretty easy to see the thinking behind this. If you're poor, with an old banger then you get the chop first. The better off, with a newer motor, get a reprieve for their combustion engines for a while but, until people abandon fossil fuel, the restrictions will bite harder and harder. 2030 is the first target date for real controls and by 2050 combustion engines will be a thing of the past. Indeed in the EU the plan is that new combustion engine vehicles will not be sold after 2035. 

It's probably true too that the idea of private car ownership is already a bit passé. Different ways of getting about urban areas for individuals and rethought schemes of planning and coordinating public and group transport for longer trips are on the way. Unless the sixth extinction event gets here first. Until then it's not difficult to get the stickers. You go to the Post Office with your Permiso de Circulacion for the vehicle in question and your ID for the owner of said vehicle - something like your TIE, DNI or, I suppose for non residents with cars parked here, their passport and NIE.

The impetus for this blog was my surprise at realising that so few cars have the sticker. It is not intended as a guide to the legislation. For good information go to a reputable source, like the DGT website or, for something in English, maybe the N332 Facebook page.

Routine

I try to be frugal with toilet paper. One sheet at a time if possible. It's not because I'm particularly mean, it's because toilet paper blocks up Spanish drains. I've never quite been able to bring myself to do that thing you are instructed to do so many times in Spanish "public" toilets, the ones in bars and the like, to put the soiled paper in the wastebasket. It just seems a bit too close to living in a cave and wearing skins.

That primness caught us out once though and we had to have the floor ripped up to clear the blockage. In order for that not to happen again I now go around our three bathrooms each week and tip buckets of water down the toilets, clean the hair from the plugholes and other routine things to avoid a reoccurence. When we have houseguests who use up a couple of toilet rolls in a weekend I'm hard pressed not to reprimand them sternly.

Our house is old but it's a bit like that bucket that has a new handle, a new bottom and a rewelded seam - there's not much of the original left. Almost everything has been rebuilt or altered while we've been here. We don't live in some sort of back to nature existence, we may have a cesspit and our electric supply may lack a bit of oomph, by British standards, but it's perfectly normal herabouts. Sometimes the low power needs to be taken into consideration. The pellet burner ignition system, for instance, seems to need all the power we have to set fire to the fuel so we have to remember not to boil the kettle until the pellets are aflame. Once it's lit though we can boil kettles, run tumble dryers and what not to our hearts content.

Obviously every house needs its routines. Cleaning out that pellet burner or changing the beds or doing the laundry are the sort of repetitive tasks that people do the world over but there are certain things that I do, on a regular basis, because of where and how we live.

For example I clean the leaves and other detritus from the drain in the back patio every month because one time, when the need to do so had never occurred to me, the torrential rain was too much for the semi choked drain and in minutes the yard turned into a paddling pool which lapped into our living room.

I check the water meter every week to make sure that we are using about the same amount and that the meter isn't spinning when we don't have any taps open. It hasn't happened to us but the stories of underground, unseen, tubing splitting and spilling water unchecked for weeks or months are legion. And the resulting water bills are eye watering. 

Whilst we're on pipes our water often used to freeze up when it got cold in Winter. The pipe runs along the side of a North facing wall so I put some foam insulation around the exposed pipe. That seemed to do the trick. No frozen water. But the plastic of the insulation didn't cope well with the weather and it soon split. So I added more insulation and then taped the whole lot up in the time honoured, WD40 or duct tap to fix everything, manner. Every month, I check that the foam and the tape are OK and I usually end up with a happy half hour balancing on a stepladder to rebandage the pipe. 

I'm not sure whether this falls into the same class. This may well be more like checking the tyre pressures and oil on the car or pruning the trees, raking up the leaves and hoeing out the invincible weeds. Just a routine. But our palm tree is under constant threat from the picudo rojo, a beetle type creature, that flies around looking for a place to lay eggs. Once the eggs hatch the larvae feast on palm trees. Every six weeks I strap on a backpack spraying kit and douse the tree.

I discovered a new routine just yesterday. We have a gas water heater for the showers. It started to cut out after a couple of minutes. Naked with soapy hair and freezing water is horrid. I was just about to call out the repair people when I realised that it only happened when I changed from tap to shower. The water here is hard. That's why I clean or change the inlet filters on the water supply every three months to keep the amount of limescale in the system down. If you don't clean out your kettle or use anti-lime tabs in your washing machine then you'll soon notice. Everything furs up. People are always having to change electric water heaters because the elements are, effectively, covered in stone. The problem in the shower was that when the water flow diminished some sort of safety mechanism cut in on the gas heater. All I had to do was clean out the shower head and the taps and it seems to have sorted the problem. I've put that job onto a four week cycle in my diary.

I don't remember doing anything of a like nature when I lived in the UK. Periodic jobs obviously but a routine to avoid potential problems, no.

Excessive moistness

I've mentioned before that the weather in Spain can be quite extreme. Sun, wind and rain can all be just a tad on the over the top side.

Actually I don't mind the sun at all. Here in Alicante province it always gets warm in July and August and the lower temperatures of May, June and September would still be a glorious British summer. In my opinion it's one of the delights of living here but Britons, Spaniards and probably Burundians seem to be constantly surprised that it's warm and several complain about it. True enough it can be destructive and it's not good when it's always sunny and it never rains and the reservoirs empty and the word drought is everywhere.

There's often a breeze in Culebrón, it can be a stiff breeze. We get those dust devils passing by quite frequently in summer - mini tornadoes. Suddenly a breeze springs up from nowhere, slams all the open doors shut, makes the windows rattle, sends dust everywhere and then is gone. But when it does blow it really blows. It actually quite scares me. We have some tall trees. I watch them creak in the wind and I wonder whether the roof would be strong enough to survive a tree toppling onto it.

I don't like the hail either. We get a fair bit of hail. It's something to do with hot air meeting cold air maybe with the sea temperature playing some part in that. I did read it up once but I'm old and I forget and I'm lazy so I'm not going to look again. Sometimes the hailstones are enormous and a few hundred grammes of ice doing 100 kph can do a fair bit of damage to the garden furniture that has survived the sun. And cars. And rooves. A child died this summer from a hailstone strike.

All of these phenomena get reported on the news and nowadays, because someone is always pointing their mobile phone at the right place at the right time, there are videos of tennis ball sized hailstones bouncing off cars, lightning flashes hitting football players and skyscrapers alike and of cars slip sliding in the snow. One of the staples though is floods. Spain has the sort of floods where it rains and rains and rivers overflow and places are flooded and Civil Protection launch rubber boats in the High Street. Much more frequently though we have floods where it rains for ten minutes depositing thousand and thousands of litres in no time at all so that drains can't cope, streets become rivers, stairs and rooves become waterfalls and cars float alongside skips down towards the sea. It looks spectacular on the news. You watch as the water comes gushing out of the windows of somebody's house or as cars float until they pile onto each other. Often a flood that affects one village will be light rain in one a few kilometres away. Microclimates in Spain are as common as tortilla de patatas.

Now we can be pretty smug about this. Those sort of floods are often to do with covering the land with tarmac and concrete. We live surrounded by soil. The road to our house is made of compacted earth. We're on a slope that seems to naturally guide the torrents past our land. Nonetheless the rain can cause problems. It finds the holes in the tin roof of the garage, it comes down the chimneys for the water heater or the cooker hood, it comes under the doors and if you've left a window open then mopping comes next - I lost a computer because the water came in through the open window. But there's a lot of difference between that and people squeegeeing 15cms of mud from their living room floor which is what we see on the telly time after time.

Yesterday we had a bit of a downpour. It lasted maybe 10 minutes. The rain took no notice of the metre overhang of the roof and the 30cm deep window casement and blew into the office so that Maggie had to retreat with her computer. I saw that the back patio was filling with water. I clean the drain every two weeks to make sure it's clear of leaves and stuff but the drain wasn't big enough and the water was soon 15cms deep and threatening to lap over steps and into rooms. I paddled out, took off the drain cover and the fight between water in and out became more equal. It took me a while to dry off though and opening the door to go out was enough to mean a fair bit of mopping up. Then the electric tripped. It turned out to be that the water blowing down the tube for the cooker hood had shorted the circuit. It's still wet enough to still be tripping (same word, different meaning) 24 hours later. But today the sun is shining so it will soon be dry.

And at t least I won't need to water the plants today.

The photo is from Pinoso but years ago. The video isn't from here. It's from all over Spain but it does give the idea.

The rural idyll

We all have our favourite words and expressions. One of my oft repeated phrases, when I'm saying where I live, in Spanish, to a Spaniard, is to say that I'm paleto and cateto. I thought these were two synonyms to describe country bumpkins. It turns out to be much more complex than that. And all I really wanted to say, with just a touch of humour, is that I live in the countryside.

As I write I'm sitting outside the front of our house. The birds are chirping and I can hear a tractor working somewhere up on the hillside. There are dogs barking, of course there are dogs barking!, thankfully in the distance. I can see three of our four cats in various shady spots. I can see roses and trees and lots of other greenery, including far too many weeds, and piles of fallen blossom from our neighbour's tree. Country life.

We country dwellers represent a small percentage of the total Spanish population. Exactly how small a percentage depends a bit on how you do your sums. Yecla isn't exactly a throbbing metropolis but it's not exactly thatched cottage either - is it rural or urban? Pinoso is less than an hour from a couple of cities of 200,000+ and the seventh largest city in Spain. On the other hand our nearest hospitals are half an hour distant. Even within Pinoso the access to services varies substantially from, say, a house in Bulevar to one in Lel. A figure that is definite is that 90% of the Spanish population lives in Madrid or on the coast.

Nonetheless we country folk can claim a different majority. Of the more than 8,000 municipalities here in Spain over 5,000 of them have fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. That means that nearby villages like Algueña or Salinas are a bit above average size for small municipalities and la Romana, with 2,300 inhabitants, is, well, big. About seven and a half million Spaniards, or about 16% of the population, live in rural towns - the definition being fewer than 30,000 inhabitants with a density of population below 100 people per square kilometre. That would include Jumilla but not Villena, Petrer or Yecla. Pinoso has a population of 8,478 and a density of 64 per km².

Lots of figures there but the principal point is that the population lives on the coast and in Madrid or in lots and lots of very small municipalities. 

Because we live in a small, rural, town our life is somewhat different to the majority of the population; the urban dwellers. Our lives are anachronistic because of lots of things. Examples might be that, generally, workers go home for the middy break, that lots of us have outside space, that the restaurants serve mainly Spanish cuisine, that agriculture is still an important part of the economy and that we see nothing strange in having to negotiate tractors as we drive home. It's also a place where it may be uncertain whether your house will have mains water and electric but you can be pretty sure that there won't be a traffic jam.

Of course Spanish cities aren't like that. There there are people delivering food on scooters, there are buses and taxis. Your house is probably a flat in a block and only the smallest blocks would house fewer people than a village like Culebrón. You'd expect to share the noise of other people living their lives - washing machines on spin, that click as the plug is pushed in, a bit of music or maybe the telly and, of course, those barking dogs. It's a life where if you don't have a designated parking space you will spend a few to several minutes of your day searching for one, where you will meet lots of other dog walkers, where the overflowing and disrespected rubbish bins, the stained pavements around lamp posts and graffiti are a part of the landscape and where youngsters play, and old people mutter, about the failings of the modern world in public spaces like playgrounds, parks and basketball courts.

Then again we're not really in "Deep Spain" either. The one where villages have a handful of inhabitants all of advanced years, the ones where there are adverts to attract young families with tasty offers of work or a business so long as they bring children to keep the village school open. The villages where, if you have a medical emergency, they will send a helicopter because, even in the countryside, in Spain at least, it's unacceptable to let people die because of the distance to the nearest hospital.

In the end it's all a bit of a trade off between peace and quiet and some space as against there being no arts centre or bar or shop, never mind shopping centre, or taxi or doctor or bank within striking distance of your front door. It's a choice that is conditioned by your mobility but it's not a place to forget the bread or the milk!

Yellow bins, green bins and more.

Rubbish collection in Spain is pretty standardised. There are big rubbish bins, of various types, scattered at strategic points in cities, towns, villages and the countryside. The bins are emptied to some organised schedule - usually every night in the cities and towns - less frequently in country areas. Householders take their rubbish to the bin. Pinoso town is a little unusual in that it has a door to door collection most nights. There are big recycling bins all over the place too - the ones in the photo are our nearest in Culebrón village centre - and there are Ecoparques where you can take those hard to get rid of things like engine oil. For bigger things, old sofas and the like, you phone either the town hall, or the company that collects the rubbish on behalf of the municipality, and they, usually, cart it away for free.

I'd half wondered about the subject of this blog, with it's not very Spanish content, when I changed the printer ink the other day. I took the old cartridges with me to town for recycling at the mobile ecoparque which parks up by the Spar shop, in the middle of town, most Wednesdays. There was a class of school children there squabbling over free, "ecologically friendly" bags that were being handed out as recompense for listening to some sort of recycling presentation. Consumption as a way of reducing consumption always strikes me as being like going to the January Sales to save money by buying something you'd not thought of buying till it was cheaper. Hey ho, maybe I'm just a bit curmudgeonly.

Then I got another prod. I was listening to the radio. The piece was on the exhibition about Neanderthals, called Ancestors, at the Archaeological Museum in Murcia, an exhibition we made the mistake of not going to when we were there the other day. Apparently Homo sapiens lived alongside an estimated eight now-extinct humanoid type species.

So now I'm wondering if I can blog something that links humanoid extinctions to recycling.  Does it surprise you that sometimes people don't follow my conversational twists and turns - especially when I try it in Spanish?!

So we have three capazos just outside our house.  Capazos, are those big, bendy, rubber buckets. We use them as the staging post for things on their way to the recycling bins. Of the three one is for cartons, tins, wrappings and aerosols; that's to go to the yellow bin. The glass goes in the green bins and paper and card goes into the blue bin. We don't have the brown, organic waste, bins in Pinoso area.

Household recycling isn't big in Spain. I think that about one third of urban waste is recycled which is very low by European standards. We try to be good and recycle as we're asked but, to be honest, I think it's all a bit of a con. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for sensible recycling, and re-using, but I do think that if the manufacturers were less interested in reducing transport costs or how their products will display at the point of sale then a good percentage of the recycling would be completely unnecessary. When this comes up in conversation people usually remember taking pop bottles back for the deposit or the doorstep milk deliveries. I don't actually know how these things pan out if you take everything into account. Is it really better, when you consider manufacturing, transport, energy, materials and everything else, to deliver milk door to door or for us to go and get it from a shop in a vaguely recyclable container? It's not the sort of information that I have to hand. I'm sure you've had a similar conversation in the bar about whether electric cars and their toxic batteries are a good idea.

The reason I think recycling (and electric cars and lots more) may well be a smokescreen is that we live in a world where the overriding concern is making money. Nearly everything that goes on in the world is about rich people getting richer. I mean how did someone persuade us that all of these tiny efforts are about "Saving the Planet?". I'm pretty sure that, in the end, the planet will be fine. I don't think we - humankind that is -  will. In fact I'm sure our selfishness and greed will continue to cause the death of lots and lots of species and make even more of a mess of the planet. In relation to the life of the planet though our effect will be very short term. When we've taken out billions more animals and birds and insects in every conceivable way, from destroying the places they live and the food they eat through to strangling them with the plastic rings from six packs, then we'll do something similar to ourselves.  It may be that we will finally unleash our nuclear arsenal or we may just die coughing in a toxic atmosphere or buried under mounds of plastic. Nonetheless, do as we will, the planet will shrug us off and go on for quite a while yet. It will be different world, just as the world that the trilobites or ammonites or even the first jellyfish and sharks knew was a bit different. No dinosaur ever saw a car, a rubbish dump or an energy saving light bulb. The graptolites didn't need an environmental strategy and they never got together, in an as yet unbuilt and unnamed Paris or Kyoto, to lie to each other about what they weren't going to do. That's because graptolites didn't really do a lot of damage. People do a lot of damage but, until there is some sort of astronomical event that does for the Earth, swallowed by the ever expanding local star or something, the world will keep on turning and some sort of lifeforms will wander the land and oceans. 

So, back from the gigantic to the insignificant. Pinoso Town Hall, like so many others has started a composting scheme. The principal reason the Town Hall got in on the scheme is because it will help reduce their bill with the waste processing plant in Villena. It's easy enough to give the scheme a bit of an environmental spin though and, being quite gullible, I was quick to get involved. In return for going to a two hour talk they gave me a composting kit which had lots of gadgets but where the key parts were a bin for the kitchen, to throw the kitchen waste in, and a big composting bin for the garden. The melon rind and tea bags and all the gubbins from the kitchen get mixed in with the garden cuttings in the composter. The stuff doesn't have to be transported anywhere and Maggie already has plans for the compost to be used on a vegetable patch.

It's too late for the Golden Toad or the Passenger Pigeon and it's a bit unlikely that the composter will save the Javan Rhinoceros or the Red Tuna but I suppose it's not doing any harm either.

Skating on thin ice

I'm going to tell you some things that I think Spaniards think about the British. You may notice the teensy weensy little flaw here. Actually though, when I say what Spanish people think I should change that to what several Spaniards have said to me, over the years, about Britain and the British. So my Englishness is not, really, a handicap. When I say Britain and the British, I actually mean England and the English. Occasionally the Scots get a mention, because of the supposed similarity to the Catalans and because Mel Gibson, like all Scottish men, wore a skirt. No Spaniard I've met has ever voiced their opinion about the Welsh or the Northern Irish. 

Lots of Spaniards think that we are the only country in the world that drives on the other side of the road. This belief is usually mixed with an undertone that suggests we English are a bit full of ourselves. After all, don't we use different measures for length and weight too? I know, as do you, that there are about 70 or so countries that do the same, road-wise, from biggish places like South Africa and Malaysia to small places like Belize. Faced with this reality, those Spaniards who know, point out that this is a probably a remnant of our thirst for Empire. Again, I often get a whiff of Spanish mistrust of British cockiness. They really want to remind me about Blas de Lezo.

Lots of Spaniards think that British food is terrible. The only typical English dish that most Spaniards know is Fish and Chips. You and I may think that Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding is well known, but it isn't. My comeback to any Spaniard who started on this journey used to be a list of lots of other traditional British dishes from Shepherd's Pie and Bubble and Squeak to Bangers and Mash or Steak and Kidney Pie. Later I changed tack. I would argue that, whilst pizza may be Italian in origin, it is now a world food. The list of pizzas available from a Spanish pizzeria is quite different to the list of pizzas available in a Nepalese or Neapolitan pizzeria. Following the same logic, I would point out the breadth of dishes, and restaurants, that litter the British landscape. We Britons have plundered the world's cuisine. We feed our children Mexican or Japanese without blinking. We have taken dishes from across the world and made them our own. British Chilli con Carne, Spaghetti Bolognese, Red Thai Curry, Chicken Tikka Masala and so on have very little in common with the original source dish (if there is one) but those dishes are now as British as The Elizabeth Tower and Big Ben. Anyway, what are we comparing? Half the world eats chicken and chips or steamed mussels.

Spaniards think that the UK has a terrible climate. They're probably right. I was in the UK for the first time for ages a little while ago and the greyness of the light was a bit of a shock to me. Mind you the Spanish seem to forget that Asturias and the Basque Country, in fact much of Spain, is hardly sun baked in Autumn and Winter and until the Mediterranean builders learn about cavity wall insulation, insulation in general, doors that fit and effective heating systems, the winter in the Med, inside at least, is always going to be less pleasant than winter indoors in the UK. 

Spaniards think that most British tourists are drunken louts keen to jump off balconies and be sick in the streets of Magaluf. Unfortunately, there's more than a seed of truth in that. The cultured Brit in Toledo, there to see the Velázquez, and the placidly normal family holidaying in Torremolinos, aren't so noticeable whilst the dildo wielding fat bloke in San Antonio is. Even more so now that socks with sandals and Bri-Nylon shirts have disappeared from most wardrobes.

This last one I would have forgotten about if it hadn't been for my barber. I was complaining about the skyrocketing price of electric and fuel in general. His response was that electric prices would hardly worry such a rich bunch as we old, retired Britons with our high pensions and massive accumulated wealth. It reminded me of our early years here when there were lots of stories of Spanish families being amazed that they were able to unload their inherited, white elephant, big, old, country house, miles from anywhere and without services, to Britons who ne'er raised an eyebrow at the plucked from the air, mickey take, of a price. Fortunately for us, post Brexit, it's the Belgians and the Dutch who have inherited that branding.

Hot water

One of my first ever brushes with Spanish rules and regulations was when I decided that we needed a second butane bottle for the heater in the flat we were renting in Santa Pola. What now seems eminently sensible - that before you can start using bottled gas in your home somebody needs to check that the installation is safe - seemed very Orwellian back then. A future with a boot stamping on a human face - forever. All I wanted was to buy a gas bottle and they wanted to see ID, they wanted me to prove where I lived, they wanted me to sign a contract and they wanted a technician to visit to make sure it was all safe. Having lived here a long time now and having seen the news stories of blocks of flats destroyed with dodgy gas installations and having heard how insurance companies love to avoid paying out if you can't show proof of a current five year check or even if the rubber pipes are past their sell by date, then I am very happy to do as I should. Anyway, there was a bit of a loophole in the system, whilst Repsol, the orange bottle suppliers, wouldn't give me a contract without seeing the installation, the Cepsa people, who provide silver bottles, made me show ID and the like but gave me the bottle simply by signing the contract. It's such a long time ago that I forget the detail of why and how they justified the difference.

Living in the countryside has lots of advantages, less coming and going, less noise and a bit of outside space. It also has disadvantages. The main one is that it's a fair distance to the shops and suchlike but it has less obvious drawbacks like relatively slow Internet and a miserable electric supply of just 3.45kw. We realised, right from the start, that if we didn't want circuit breakers popping all the time then we should use non electrical appliances when good, non electrical alternatives were available. A gas hob for instance and a gas water heater. We also have butane heaters peppered through the house.

I've never doubted that the gas water heater was a good call. Well sort of. Gas heaters have a huge advantage that they just go on and on producing hot water. They are not like an electric immersion with a certain capacity. How many times have you had to wait for the water to heat after your mum, dad, sister, brother or a person from a non nuclear or non heterosexual family, one that doesn't perpetuate outdated stereotypes, has used up all the hot water with their environmentally unfriendly long showers? Not a problem with a gas heater - so long as there's gas and water it will produce endless hot water. 

Originally our gas water heater provided the water to our bathrooms and kitchen though sometime last year we got an under sink electric water heater for the kitchen because the wait for the hot water to arrive there, at the end of a long run, just got silly. The truth is that we have had a lot of trouble with the gas heaters. We've had two heaters now and, as I type, I can hear the plumber cursing as he drills through the 60cm thick wall to fit the inlet/exhaust pipe for number three! Just like the regular checking of the installation you have to use a registered fitter, at least legally, to fit any fixed gas appliance like water heaters or cookers. 

One of the reasons the heaters fail is all the limescale around here. The water is really hard and furs up the heater elements of electric water heaters and blocks the tubes in gas models. Over the years our first gas heater became less and less efficient. We'd get a plumber in, they'd clean everything out and we'd get back to a slightly less efficient normal. Eventually the services were making no difference and a luke warm shower on a miserable January morning is not a good way to start the day. So we bought heater number two. It was fine at first but then it started to have the same problems as the model it had replaced. We went through the same routine of getting it cleaned and fettled. We also had a problem with the electronic gadgetry which is supposed to deal with the ignition and temperature control. Local plumbers can't get the parts for the water heaters, so it has to be the official service people for spares. Given that the majority of brands have their service centres in and around Alicante they charge a big call-out fee and only venture into the rural wilds once each week. 

Last Sunday afternoon the water heater stopped firing up. It may be that it's just silted up but I suspect it's the electronics again and perming the reduced performance with the big call-out fee we went for heater number three. Sime brand this time, Italian I understand rather than the French Leclerc or the German Junkers that we've had before. We shall see.

Nights on a white charger

I was in town this morning, on Bulevar, drinking coffee and reading a really interesting book about doors. A car stopped, the driver jumped out and went into the paper shop to get a newspaper. While he was parked, in the middle of the one way street, a van came up behind and had to wait. When the paper purchaser came out of the shop the van driver shouted to him "You couldn't do that in Madrid".  And it's true

Nobody would describe Pinoso, or even Culebrón, as "Deep Spain", la España profunda. That's the Spain that's empty, without services, left behind by the modern world. No mobile network, no health services locally, no Internet access, no shops. But lots of Spain is like that; nearly empty. There are hundreds of villages that only have a few inhabitants, usually older people, and there are even villages that are totally abandoned apart from, maybe, occasional weekend and summer occupants. There's a whole movement about la España vaciada, empty or emptied Spain. Pinoso is very rural, very traditional, but it has plenty of shops and businesses and even a bit of social life. Young people say it's a bit boring but I remember that Peterborough was voted the crappiest town in the UK by young people a few years ago so we can't take much notice of them can we? And, if Pinoso is rural then Culebrón is much more so.

We once looked at a house in Huntingdon with a view to buying. It was one of those big pre war villas with a really nice, mature, fenced in garden. Inside it was original. The wiring for the lights was bell wire tacked onto the wall. There were 5 amp and a few 15 amp round pin plugs. Original wiring. The house was above our budget anyway and we knew that a full rewire, and the rest, would just be so expensive. Every time we passed that house, modernised by its new owners, I wished we'd been rich enough to buy it.

I never really thought about the electric installation in the UK as I moved from house to house. I still have no idea what sort of circuit breakers/fuses most places have but I know that they never popped unless something went seriously wrong. Here in Spain it's something to be aware of as you buy or rent a house or flat. You might have a contract for 5.5kw for instance. In theory this means that the fuses might pop with just a tumble dryer, the oven and an aircon unit on. In practice the circuit breakers are quite elastic and you could probably draw about 11kw before they plunge you into darkness. Here in Culebrón, for years, we got by with 2.2kw because the infrastructure wasn't up to supplying much more and even now we only have 3.45kw. It doesn't really cause us much of a problem except on cold winter mornings when it's easy to get over enthusiastic with fan heaters, toasters, kettles and microwaves.

At the start of next month all the electric bills in Spain will be changed to reflect a new three tier pricing system based on the time of day. In the parlance there will be peaks, troughs and plains. Rather unsurprisingly the most expensive electricity is when demand is highest and the least expensive is in the dead of night and also on national holidays and at weekends. For those of us on a controlled price type contract this will be reflected directly in the bill. We'll be able to see how much we were charged in each time zone. The idea is that we will change our habits to save money and consequently be a bit greener. How the companies that sell power in the free market pass on the new pricing structure will, presumably, be reflected in each customer's contract.

The interesting thing about this new three time zone controlled contract is that it also allows for two different levels of supply. For instance if you have a power supply of 10kw you may decide that in the troughs you could get by with 5kw. In our case the contracted power is so pathetic that we'd be popping fuses left right and centre, particularly over the weekends and on those bank holidays, but if we lived in a less rural place with a decent supply, it might be worth considering dropping the contracted power supply overnight. As you may expect the price for a lower rated supply is less than for a higher rated supply. The example that is always quoted is for the people with electric cars. Charge up overnight on doubly cheaply rated electric.

I rather suspect in our case that the new three tier system will make our electric bills just a tad more expensive than the current two tier system we're on. It might also mean that I have to stay up a bit later to run the washing machine from midnight and the tumble dryer at the end of the wash cycle or maybe I can get Alexa to do it for me.

Electricity bills and borrascas

Here they are called Borrascas, I'm not sure what they are in English but something like storms or maybe Atlantic Lows. The storms that come in from the Atlantic and nowadays, just like hurricanes, have alternating and alphabetically arranged female and male names - Ana and Bertie, Charlotte and Derek. A little over a week ago Filomena, brought lots of snow which caused problems all over central Spain, particularly in Madrid, and low temperatures everywhere.

When it gets cold, and more so when it gets hot, Spain uses more electric. This is not a great surprise. The nuclear power stations never go offline but all the other forms of electricity generation have ups and downs. You can't pull so much from wind turbines if there is no wind, the solar panels don't work so well at night and even the hydroelectric stations are affected by droughts and rainstorms. When all else fails the gas and oil fired power stations are brought on line. The power generated from these fossil fuel plants is the most expensive to produce. Through some complicated mathematical formula a Spanish Government agency calculates the cost of generating each individual unit of electric at any given time. This fixed price is based on the most expensive generating capacity in use. So when the demand is so high that the gas and oil burning power stations are fired up the price goes up to match. This fixed price affects the bills of ordinary consumers. More precisely it affects the price of users in the regulated market because Spain has two sorts of domestic electric contracts: the regulated market and the free market

The energy market in Spain was liberalised years ago. When it first happened I looked around a bit at different providers and I couldn't see any advantages in changing. With the passing years, that situation has changed and I should have shopped around but inertia and I have always seen eye to eye. 

We don't get cold callers in Culebrón, actually that's not true, a couple of Witnesses turned up in 2005 and occasionally the melon man blows his horn outside the gate but, in general, peace reigns. I hear it's not the same in the big cities with an endless procession of smooth talking salespeople bearing electric and gas contracts pounding on people's doors. It's not something the telephone sales people try to sell us either.

Every now and again the price of electricity gets media coverage. Last week we apparently reached the highest price ever. The kerfuffle in the media made me curious and I had a look to see how it was all organised and what sort of contract we had.

Although the devil's in the detail there are, fundamentally, just two options for those properties with a supply of less than 10kw. The regulated tariff and the free market tariff. The regulated tariff uses prices per unit of electricity set by the government. This is the one that gets the media mention. This is the tariff that we have. If you're in Spain and you have this sort of contract your will have the letters PVPC somewhere on your contract or, if it's written in English, VPSC. It's Precio Voluntario al Pequeño Consumidor for those who are interested.

The second tariff, the free market tariff, is the alternative and it's available everywhere from over 270 providers. What the contracts offer, how much they cost and what they include and exclude is only limited by the ingenuity of the contract writer. Potential customers compare the various offers and sign on the dotted line for whichever option they think is best. My guess is that the permutations between the fixed costs, the unit price, inclusion of service contracts and other factors are almost boundless. This is where the price comparison websites must come into their own. If you need a supply of more than 10kw this is the only option available to you.

The regulated tariff, the one affected by the official government price, is only available from the eight power companies which are called Comercializadores de Referencia which, sort of, translates as the Reference Marketers. In the regulated tariff contracts the fixed or standing charges and the per unit price are separate. There are three options or modalities about how the units of power are offered and charged. Option one is that the charge is the same at any time of the day or night, option two is that the day is divided into two twelve hour periods with a higher and a lower price for each period and the last option is that the day is divided into three eight hour slots with three different prices per unit at the different times - the last one is particularly useful for people with electric cars to charge.

The Comercializadores de Referencia can also offer a fixed price annual tariff. In that case they tell you how much each kilowatt will cost during a calendar year and you sign up (or not) knowing that will be the price without being subject to the ups and downs of the market.

With trying to work out how our regulated bill was put together I read the bill properly for more or less the first time ever. Generally I just look at how much and when I have to pay. We get our electric from Curenergía which is a part of Iberdrola and I realised that they had already done most of the donkey work for me in the small print at the bottom of the bill. They do an analysis which gives comparisons between how much you have paid with your current modality and how much you would have paid under one of the other modalities. I still couldn't be bothered to go hunting around for the best deal on the free market but I did realise that simply by going to the sort of bill where the prices are different for each twelve hour period we could save maybe 100€ a year and I could do that online in a few minutes.

So I did.

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The photo by the way is from back in 2010 when I taught English to people who worked at this gas fired power station in Cartagena. The plant was later bought by Gas de France. I remember being told that the whole plant had been on standby for a whole year, not used at all, and that if they were needed it took a few days to bring the plant online.

This is where we live

I was doing the Spanish conversation thing with Ana, via Skype. We were talking about Culebrón. I could see she had the wrong idea. I wondered if I'd ever written about the place we live in a general sense. I didn't bother to check in case I had. No point in wasting an idea no matter how moderate.

We're in the province of Alicante one of the three that make up the Valencian Community. Benidorm is in Alicante to help you locate yourself. Alicante City, our provincial capital, is about 50 minutes away.  Our municipality, Pinoso, is well inland, the last town in Alicante before crossing over the border into the Region of Murcia. Pinoso is nothing like Benidorm. 

If you turn left on the main road that runs close to our house you can reach Pinoso town centre in about five minutes, ten minutes and you'll be in the Region of Murcia. Turn right instead and, within fifteen minutes you'll be in Monóvar town centre. Ten more minutes in the distance from Monóvar you can see Elda/Petrer. Elda and Petrer are two different towns but, in places, one side of the street is in Petrer and the other in Elda. In Petrer or Elda there is a hospital, a hypermarket, cinemas, train station, fast food joints, castles and the Madrid Alicante motorway.

Pinoso is our local town. It's where we go to get cash from the bank machine, see a doctor, stock up on food, get a beer or go to a restaurant. There is a good sports centre, there are gyms and a library and a cultural centre and a theatre and a cemetery and a market hall and so on. It's a remarkably long so on given that, size wise, Pinoso is really no more than a village. It's to do with money. Although there's a lot of worry at the moment about the tumbling income from the marble quarry Pinoso has, within it's boundary, a huge marble quarry which has produced shedloads of cash for ages. I seem to remember that when building was booming the quarry was producing more than 6 million euros a year for the town coffers via a local extraction fee. Income was about 4½ million in 2018. A couple of months ago when I went to hear the sob story about how the town is on its uppers the predictions for income this year were only around 2 million. Goodness knows how Covid will affect that.  Very soon, unless they start to cut services, local taxes will have to increase drastically.

Outside the town centre Pinoso has a municipal area that takes in a fair bit of countryside. The countryside is peppered with vineyards, olive and almond trees; arable land. Pinoso's geographical limits stretch to the border of three municipalities in Murcia and, in our direction, to the municipality of Monóvar. Within Pinoso's boundaries there are lots of small villages. Those villages are called pedanias. By name they are: El Rodriguillo, Cases del Pi, La Caballusa, Casas de Ibáñez, Paredón, Lel, Ubeda, Culebrón, Encebras and Tres Fuentes. There are also a number of other clusters of houses, which are called parajes on the Pinoso Town Hall website. Those very small settlements, sometime little other than a wide spot in the road, are El Faldar, El Sequé, Venta del Terrós and Monte Cabezo. There must be some legal difference between peadanias and parejes because I'd guess that El Faldar probably has more houses than Cases del Pi.

Most of the pedanias have a mix of dirt and tarmac roads in the village centre. Individual houses are scattered around the outskirts of the pedanias. Quite a lot of these villages have restaurants cum bars, they all have a chapel and a social centre though neither is usually open. I don't think any of them have shops though Paredón has a British run restaurant, caravan park type complex which offers other services and that may include some British food products. We once went looking for a bakery in Casas Ibáñez which we didn't find but which people assure me exists. I'm sure that, in the past, the pedanias had bakeries and grocers but now everyone has an Audi Q7 instead.

We live in Culebrón which you probably surmised from the blog title. I wouldn't like to hazard a guess at how many people live in Culebrón. The official number is around 100 and I can quickly count at least twenty, maybe 25 households that stay here all year round so that's probably about right. In summer there will be a lot more because people think that the countryside is cooler than the town.  The main road down to Elda/Petrer used to snake through the houses in the village but a little before we moved to Spain a new road was built which divided the village into two distinct and unequal halves. The bit we're in has fewer of the limited services that Culebrón offers - like tarmac, street lighting, drains, basketball court, recycling bins, the social centre- than the other half. On our side of the road there's a farm, a bunch of houses, lots of crops and some dirt tracks. 

Most of the houses on our side of the road are in terraces, maybe only three houses but terraces none the less. So we have neighbours but we also have, what, by British standards would be, a big garden. The house is house like. It has a double pitched roof, mains electric and mains water though we are not connected to the drains. There is no mains gas but our Wi-Fi is an acceptable 20Mb.

The house itself is probably a couple of hundred years old though as there was no proper land registry in the area till 1987 nobody really knows. At one time it was two tiny terraced houses but they'd been knocked into one by the time we bought it. When we had to change the roof a few years ago the house got a bit of an exterior facelift so it doesn't look particularly old. The walls are thick which keeps the house cool in the summer and freezing in the winter. Nowadays though with pellet burners and gas heaters and hot/cold air-con we can keep the living areas warm when we're in them. It's still a bit nippy, read bloody freezing, first thing in the morning. 

It's absolutely true that Alicante has a brilliant climate, it's no lie that we get 300 sunny days a year but when the sun goes down, when you're inside or when you're in the shade it can be very cold. Sit inside an unheated building when it's sunny, clear and 18ºC outside and, after a while your fingers, hands, nose and ears will go numb. The buildings have almost no insulation, we have tiled floors and there are no curtains at the windows. Add in that we're at 600 metres (nearly 2,000 feet) which means we get lower temperatures than someone on the coast. As I read just the other day where I live it's summer by day and winter by night.

So there you go Ana. A bit of English for you to read!

Watery stuff

Artemio is a heavy set bloke who works for Pinoso Town Hall. Usually he has a big cigar clamped between his teeth. I'd prefer not to commit to giving him an age. He drives a Jeep which, he says, is much better than the Land Rover he used to have but, as you can see from the snap alongside, the Land Rover is still with the team. Artemio's  voice is raspy and, until the second or third sentence, when I tune in, I find him really difficult to understand. Artemio is the bloke you call if there is a water leak out in the street, or in our case, on the track. It's a 24 hour a day service. Should you ever need it the number is 656978410. If the leak is on the domestic side of the water meter then you need a plumber but if the leak is on the other side of the meter you call Artemio. Or rather you call his number. He's in charge of the team and he's not always the person who turns up.

Most people expect that when they click the switch on the wall the electric light will come on and when they open the tap water will come out. In rural Spain that's not always the case. I suppose in rural Scotland it could well be the same. If you live a long way from power lines or water pipes then you're on your own. We have mains water and mains electric but not everyone in the countryside has. People have water storage tanks which have to be filled up from time to time by tanker lorry and lots of houses run off solar power either for environmental reasons or because they have no economic option.

Piped water around here comes as two variants. The stuff we have is drinking tap water. It comes filtered and treated. There is another network of water supply organised locally by S.A.T. Aguas de Pinoso, la Sociedad Agraria de Transformación. That network is designed for crop irrigation but, because it runs in places where the drinking water network doesn't some people use it as their primary water source. I think that it is basically filtered but I don't think it's suitable for drinking. That said I've made tea with it presuming that the boiled water would be safe. I wrote that section without checking the detail. I think it's correct but if it isn't I apologise now.

So, the last time I called Artemio was because I'd cut through a thinnish water pipe when I was hacking out weeds alongside our track. It turned out that it was a pipe our neighbour had laid himself to water his almond trees so I had to ring Artemio back and cancel. The time before that it was the public water supply and the water bubbling up through the soil was in the same place that it has bubbled up time and time again. "It's 30 year old pipe," said Artemio, "what do you expect? It goes time after time and we patch it up time after time too".

Interesting that about the pipe. We had a leak on our side of the water meter the other day. We got the original leak fixed and then the pipe, which is sort of semi rigid rubber, not quite the Durapipe type but not as flexible as hosepipe, sprang a pinhole leak. When I tried a temporary repair with some potty putty type epoxy resin the pipe sprang another leak. When the plumber finally got around to visiting he said that the pipe lasts for so long and then starts to fail; as if it had a sell by date. He also said that the piping which had failed, the stuff he was replacing, was thin walled agricultural pipe rather than the thicker walled domestic supply pipe. From the outside they would look identical if it were not for the blue pinstripe on the domestic stuff. He thought that we may have the thinner walled pipe from the meter to the stopcock in the house. He cheerily suggested that if it were beginning to go it may have reached the end of it's useful life. "Keep an eye on your meter." he said. 

I do check the water meter every week. I've heard far too many stories about unrecognised leaks leading to huge bills. I also pondered the pleasures of house ownership.

These things are sent to try us: two

If you need to go to a bank in Spain think about it taking a good part of your morning. You may be lucky. Correct desk. Person not at breakfast. No wait. No complications. I'm sure it will happen one day but even when it's been a relatively problem free run it has seldom taken me less than twenty to thirty minutes. It doesn't matter where it is, as soon as there's a physical or virtual queue it's going to take time.

Obviously the Post Office falls into this category. Yesterday I had a package to post. I went to the Post Office. Because the number of people who can be inside the office is limited the queue was in the street. I stayed for a while but after 20 minutes nobody had gone in and nobody had come out. My mask was getting tacky; I gave up. I popped back twice more in the next two hours. The queue was going nowhere. The main man in our post office isn't the sort of person to get flustered. He doesn't hurry. I thought I may be able to sidestep the queue and went to get the price from a private carrier but 20€ to send a 1 kilo packet seemed a bit steep. 

I went back to the Post office before 9am this morning when I reckoned there wouldn't be much of a queue. I was right; there was just one person in front of me. I was in and out in about 25 minutes.

Actually whilst I was there I got one of the DGT (Transport Directorate) stickers for Maggie's car. There are four stickers related to emissions - one for things like electric cars, another for the hybrids and then a couple more for modern and modernish diesels and petrol engined cars. The stickers come with new cars but Maggie's Ford Fiesta didn't have one. They are used in some cities as a way of identifying cars that are welcome or not welcome under certain conditions and in certain areas. You can get the stickers online but you can also get them at the Post Office and as I'd anticipated there would be no queue I'd taken the vehicle paperwork. I handed over the 5€ fee and came out with one of the C stickers as well as having left the parcel to their tender care.

Routine

Despite knowing that there are a bunch of men knocking things down and building things up outside our living room window it's amazing how many times we've gone to open the door to a building that no longer exists to get the vacuum cleaner! We're a bit unsettled and, probably because of that, things seem to be coming in clumps.

The demolition denied us hot water and laundry facilities but, thanks to the generosity of a couple of friends, we can now shower and launder. We also had a problem with Maggie's car and it's off the road. There again, someone stepped up and loaned us a motor for a bit.

In amongst the general upheaval the heating in our house packed up. It turned out to be a blocked chimney starving the burner of air which is what Maggie had suggested it might be right from the get go! Once the fitter had the burner working again we needed to get a chimney sweep. The bloke who came didn't sound like Dick Van Dyke nor did he have any small boys to send up the chimney. He did have big vacuum cleaners and brushes that were turned by an electric drill. He also had very sooty hands so I presume I can expect nothing but good luck after shaking one of them. He was English. I thought it was an intelligent choice of self employment in an area where there are still lots of open fires, wood burners and pellet stoves.

A couple of hours before the sweep we had a tanker truck come to suck out the liquids and solids from our cesspit. The builders had complained that they were paddling in fetid pools as they dug foundations. The tanker driver made me feel very inadequate. "Your cesspit is tiny, made from concrete," he said, "only two thousand litres." It sounded like a personal failing. He also suggested that instead of calling him so often we should get a small pump and pump out the nutrient rich liquid ourselves to spread around the garden. That way we'd have to call him only when the tank was more slurry than liquid. We will take it under advisement.

A bit later, the same afternoon, the carpenter who is making a glass panelled sliding door for us popped around to pick up some bits and bats. Apparently the door is nearly ready and, when it is, the building work will move inside.

This morning the builders arrived surprisingly early. I needed to get dressed in double quick time to move the cars from the drive as they get in their way. As I was doing that a big cement mixer truck appeared and threaded its way up the very narrow track alongside our house.

I like to believe that I'm still quite active but the truth is that I will be pleased when I can go back to getting up, having a shower, eating breakfast and doing a bit of reading before a routine day kicks off. We old people, at least this old person, like stability and routine.