Life in Culebrón

Would I lie? The knife stall. The fair and fiesta in Pinoso runs from the 1st of August for nine or ten days. When I suggested that the event was getting quieter each year and perhaps, not so important in the lives of Pinoseros as it once was a young woman, born in the UK but bred in Spain, was quick to reprimand me for my disloyalty in a "Go Home Limey!" sort of way. Officially the fair and fiesta aren't yet underway. The official opening, the pregon, a sort of opening speech, will happen on Monday evening. But, weekends are weekends, and last night the stalls and fairground rides were in full swing. The town's equivalent of running with the bulls, a sort of chase and be chased by a small terrified bullock around some waste ground, took place for the first time this year, or at least I understand it did, fortunately for both my boredom and cruel stupidity tolerance thresholds I wasn't there. Later the new Carnival Queens and their entourages were ...

Regular readers (as if!) will remember that the Socialists, who currently control the National Government, got a drubbing in the recent local elections  - well with the exception of Pinoso where the Socialists wrested control of the Pinoso Town Council from a right of centre coalition. Today the current President, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero announced that his Government will not complete its full term and that there will be General Elections on the 20th of November of this year. Zapatero won't be standing. The Socialist candidate is a bloke called Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. The chap likely to head up the next government is a Conservative called Mariano Rajoy. One of my original plans when I first came to Spain was to get involved in local politics. I reckoned I'd join a party, do my bit of pamphleteering, meet a few people in the process and, with my perfect Spanish, soon get myself elected as a councillor. Something went wrong somewhere. I baulked at paying the membersh...

On the track that runs besides our house there is a big green dustbin. As in all Spain there is no door to door rubbish collection in Culebrón. We take our rubbish to the nearest container and the bin lorries come and empty them. In towns there is a daily collection often in the dead of night but in sunny Culebrón the lorry comes around two in the afternoon twice a week. Today was the one of those days - the other is Monday. Effective little service.

Since we've been back in Culebrón I've been pestering the planning department at the Town Hall for the licence - the final bit of paper - related to our roof collapsing all those years ago. I called again this morning, still no licence but the chap promised to ring when the paperwork was finally signed off. He did. I was surprised, nobody ever rings back. Fifteen minutes later, I was in his office to collect it. "Excellent," I said, "What about all the other paperwork?" "What paperwork?" said he. "I've no idea but we left a bundle of the stuff when we started this process all those years ago. I have no idea what papers we left with you and what I should get back but there was a file full of the stuff stamped and sealed and I suppose we should have at least some of it." He had no idea what I wanted, I had no idea what I was asking for and none of the other town hall people who have been involved in this tortuous process were ...

Friday evening. With this solemn act I now declare the 2011 Culebrón Fiesta open. Thus saying Inma popped a couple of ice cubes into a plastic glass ready for the vermouth. Inma is our "mayoress" and it was fiesta weekend. Blow the ceremony - on with the party. Drinking vermouth, a traditional local drink, was the kick off. The event was a bit of a damp squib because it rained. Rain in July in Spain. Mind you María Luisa kept us entertained. Next we had the big race. Saturday morning. Five and a half kilometres of either walking or running. Two separate starts half an hour apart but the first runner home was only seconds behind the first walker. There was a little lad walking home swinging his hips, like someone from a "Carry On" film, apparently in second place but as soon as he crossed the line the judges disqualified him; they said he'd run. It was odd, hundreds of people there but hardly any of the usual suspects from the village. Gachamigas are poor p...

The chap from the council came, as arranged, to check that our house is fit to live in as a result of the roof repair. We have been waiting for someone to "sign off" on the repairs for quite a while now. He looked around and then told us "no." We have a gas hob in the kitchen and there is no air vent in the room apart from the rather large gap under the door and the cooker hood. "Drill some holes through your door, pop a plate over it and come and see me again," he said. I went to borrow a drill from our neighbour but, like a true pal, he came and did the job for us. Back to the planning office tomorrow morning then.

We live a couple of hundred of metres off a tarmac road. It's a dirt track running to our front gate. Every time there is a torrential downpour, and they are not infrequent in sunny Culebrón, the water digs canyons into the track. Potentially suspension breaking gullies. Today there was some rumbling down the track and there was a corporation digger regrading the track. The lad on the corner said that they're doing it because it's fiesta time in the village this weekend and they're sprucing the place up a bit.

In the olden days fields in Alicante were irrigated by flooding them with water. Tanks, depositos, were dotted all over the countryside to collect rainwater and some were filled by pumping water from wells. We have a deposito in our garden but, long before we got here, the former owners had painted the inside with that turquoise blue paint and turned it into a splash pool. Bigger than a paddling pool but much less grand than a swimming pool. Some 5575 gallons or 22.3 cubic metres of water. Most summers we've filled it up but, being basically a big bucket, it soon started to fill with leaves and dust. Maggie wanted something better and when the legislation changed to say that people should not pour gallons of water into depositos which could not be recycled we no longer had the choice. This summer Maggie finally did something. We had someone install a pump and filter. As luck would have it one of the inlet or outlet junctions at the very bottom of the pool isn't watertight...

20€ a year to join the Village Association. A bargain. Subsidised meals, sometimes a trip and the always enjoyable AGM where nothing gets done and nothing is resolved. This is the best though. The meal the weekend before the Fiesta. The food is sometimes good and sometimes ordinary. Sometimes I feel to be a part of what's going on and sometimes I feel like an outsider. But whatever happens, for me, it is the quintessential image of summer in the village. Much more intimate than the Fiestas, so much more Spanish than the November meal The neighbours are there. It's warm. The lights are strung up from the village hall. There is hubbub as everyone talks and laughs and drinks and eats and comes and goes. A little oasis of people enveloped by the dark summer evening. Even when I don't enjoy it I appreciate it and last night I did both.

According to three people I've spoken to this week Murcia is now the seventh largest city in Spain. That's not what it says on Wikipedia or almost any other Internet source I can find (9th or 10th) but it's nice to know that Murcianos are proud enough of their city to want to bump it up the league a couple of spots. Culebrón is 58.6kms from Murcia yet I don't really know the city that well. I've seen the Cathedral scores of times, visited a few museums etc. but I still let the Tom Tom guide me in and I pay to park. So, when I decided to book up a weeks worth of residential Spanish course Murcia seemed like a good choice. Near enough to be cheap travelling and yet still largely undiscovered, by me at least. The plan was a school with five lessons a day of Spanish tuition and also to stay with a Spanish host family for a week. I had this vague notion of me sitting, Homer like, on the couch, bottle of beer in hand as the host family and I guffawed along with some...