Life in Culebrón

Escombreras in Cartagena Salt in Torrevieja When we got back to Culebrón on Friday there was a flyer in our letterbox; it started: "Our Cabezo de la Sal it is wanted to be filled with Brent Crude!!! it is intended to be transported from Cartagena harbour through a more-than 110km-km-long pipe to store it in the salt wells!!!" Cabezo de la Sal  is one of the local hills, well if 893 metres or 2,902 feet  high is a hill it is - that's some 624 feet shorter than Snowdon. I read, and wrote, about this last February but the whole project has come up again as a result of the recent election campaigns. Cabezo de la Sal is a mountain loaded with 500 million tons of salt of which about 120 million tons can be extracted with current technology. The salt is mined by digging a borehole and then forcing high pressure water down the hole to dissolve the rock salt. The resultant brine is sent, by pipeline, to the salt lagoons at Torrevieja where it is mixed with the sea wa...

I don't know about you but black is not a shade I associate with clean. Years of "Omo washes whiter than white" brainwashing I suppose. I bought the bar of soap in the photo last weekend and I was a little surprised when I opened the box this morning. It has a strange scent too, not really unpleasant but somehow not quite soap like.

Following the elections of 22 May today was the day for the new council to start its term of office in Pinoso. I went to the Town Hall to watch the noontime ceremony. The thirteen councillors were all there. First of all they swore an oath to be nice councillors. Some chose to place their hand on a thick gold and green book as they said their piece while others chose a thinner black book. I asked two people in the crowd what the books were but they didn't know. I presume one was a bible and the other a non religious legal text but I'm probably wrong. The five candidates for mayor, those are the people who headed up the electoral lists for their respective parties, where then asked whether they wished to maintain their nominations to be mayor. Two backed down (the ones who have done a deal with the victorious PSOE party) so there were just three nominees in the vote amongst the thirteen councillors. It all went to plan, three votes for the chap who was mayor until today, two...

Yesterday it was rock bands (do they still call them that?) and today it was a brass quartet in the wine cellars of one local wineries; Bodegas Carchelo over in Jumilla. Bit of a tour of the bodega, then a never-ending glass of wine whilst we listened to the quartet - who were seated amongst the wine barrels - doing their stuff. To be honest the verb listen probably isn't the right one as the audience was noticeably quieter during the breaks between tunes than they were whilst the quartet were playing. Concert over it was upstairs for a buffet of local delicacies with two more wines to try and then a gentle drive home. PS I hardly touched enough wine to taste it. Ni una gotita al volante.

There has been lots of press speculation about the King recently. A while ago he had some surgery. The doctors said they had removed a benign tumour but the cancer rumours persisted. The Palace said he was fine except that his hip and knee were a bit dodgy. Not unusual for a 73 year old, otherwise it was just the ailments of old age - "los achaques."  I thought that was an excellent word. It was a word I understood exactly. Working on the principle that you're never too old to rock we went to see four bands last night. The event was called Ciclo Pop. One of Maggie's ex colleagues is the lead singer for a band called Aardvark Asteroid and the rest of the line up included Fuzzy White Casters, Arizona Baby and Sexy Sadie. Obviously we were keen to support James and his band but I'd wanted to see Arizona Baby for quite a while as well. Two birds with one stone. Even better the venue was only an hour or so from home. It was a good venue, right in the middle of San...

I've mentioned before that Eduardo the cat likes to present us with little gifts . Sometimes they are still alive - that's why we had a blackbird in the living room a couple of weeks ago and sometimes all that remains are a few organs - kidneys and livers seem not to be his taste. This evening I popped outside for a smoke and there was Eddie doing a dance around this little chap. Tiny little snake; no idea what brand but, apparently unharmed. I shooed Edu inside, took a few snaps then scooped the snake up on a fly swat and released him in a bit of undergrowth. By the way, Culebrón, means big snake in Spanish as well as a soap opera so the village wasn't named for this tiny example.

José Pozo Madrid, a poet from the town of Tomelloso in Castilla la Mancha, won this year's  "Maxi Banegas" poetry competition organised by Pinoso Town Hall. We were at the local theatre last night to see him get his prize. The format of the evening was a recital of some arias from various operas and zarzuelas (a sort of Spanish light opera) performed by a tenor and soprano with piano accompaniment. The programme was six or seven songs, the prizegiving and then a few more songs. I'm pretty sure that at least one, if not both, of the performers were the same people we saw at an event called Lírica  a couple of years ago. It was an enjoyable evening. I wondered who Maxi Banegas was. I know that the local library is named in his or her honour (Maxi isn't a name I know so it doesn't necessarily suggest either male or female to me) but I had this vague notion that she was a teacher at the local school who gained some local fame as a poet. So I went in search ...

During the week our mate Geoff sent me a message asking if I knew why our grey plastic compost bin was melted and smouldering. He was in Culebrón and we were in Cartagena. I didn't. All I could presume was that the rotting vegetable matter had heated up inside the composter and produced some flamable gas. Hey bingo!, spontaneous combustion. There wasn't much left to look at when we got back. It must have produced a good deal of heat though as there is damage to the nearby fig, apple and plum trees.

Not the usual sort of entry. All over Spain the PSOE, the Labour Party equivalent, has been badly mauled. The political map of Spain has turned blue, the colour of the conservative PP. But not in Pinoso, well not at the most local level anyway. The PSOE seems to have gone from 2 to 5 seats and the local UCL seems to have had a bad day. I say seems to because the national news media that I've checked for the results has some mistakes that I'm aware of and so I've had to do a bit of interpretation. There were 5,299 potential voters in Pinoso of which 212 were not Spanish (a lot of those being Brits.) Turnout was just over 80% with 4.4% spoiled papers and 1.4% said that they were unhappy to vote for any of the candidates offered by handing in a blank vote. Party Councillors 2011 Votes 2011 Councillors 2007 Votes 2007 PSOE 5 1291 2 779 PP 3 1030 5 1355 PSD 2 691 1 507 UCL 2 689 4 1045 BLOC 1 477 1 354

I'm not sure and I can't find the details on the Internet but I'm more or less certain that every polling station notice I've ever seen in the UK has had the same print style - a heavy sans serif font. When we went to vote in Pinoso this morning I don't think there was any sort of notice ouside the polling station. We were only allowed to vote in the local, town hall, elections. We EU residents are disenfranchised at provincial level. Voting day is Sunday, not Thursday as in the UK. Ahh, yes, that's why we voted today! Spanish polling stations open from 9am to 8pm. In the UK I think normal hours are 7am to 10pm. In Spanish elections it is necessary to produce photographic proof of identity. In our case that meant our passport. In Spain the candidates stroll back and forth between the various polling stations saying hello to people. At the table where your eligibility to vote is checked and where you deposit your ballot there are three polling station s...