Life in Culebrón

Driving licences are a regular bar conversation topic amongst expats in Spain. One line runs something like "We're European citizens, we have a European driving licence, we're entitled to drive." At the other end of the spectrum there's the "We're resident here so we have to change our licences for Spanish ones." Actually it's somewhere in between. Once you're resident there's a time limit on using the UK licence unless you register it with the Spanish authorities. It's easier and a bit cheaper to simply exchange. No need for another test or anything and for the first licence at least you don't have to do the medical. At the beginning of July I took my licence to the local driving school, filled in a bundle of forms and handed over 75€ so that the chap from the driving school would do all the legwork for me. I could have popped down to Alicante, stood in a couple of long queues and done it myself but I chose the lazier, ...

We're having a very British weekend in Culebrón. We've just had lunch at a new bar restaurante run by Britons on the outskirts of Pinoso. It's now called Rafael's and it's using the building that once traded as RústicOriginal. I used to work for Rustic three or four years ago. It was strange to be back in the building that was so familiar and yet so different. The place looked good, the staff were very welcoming, the Spanish translation of the, all British, menu read pretty well and the food was tasty, well presented and reasonably priced. All in all it was a very acceptable if not outstanding meal. In the UK, when I lived there, I used to often eat in those chain pubs. I'd read the menu and think that the "freshly caught North Sea cod covered with organic wheat batter and accompanied by rough cut, blanched and deep fried potatoes," sounded good. I was surprised when I got fish and chips. In Spain menus tend to be straight forward, at least in the ...

Culebrón, the name of our village, probably derives from the word culebra meaning snake. Add the -on ending to a word in Spanish and it often gives the idea of big or oversized. Big snake then. Maybe the village achieved fame because of a big snake? Culebrón is also the Spanish word for a soap opera presumably because the story goes on and on. When we tell Spaniards, who don't know the village, that we we live in Culebrón they usually think we've mispronounced the word but, when we persist, they laugh. What a strange thing to call a village they say. There is another village just up the road called Paredón. Like Culebrón it's part of the municipality of Pinoso. Paredón means the place where people are executed by firing squad. Spaniards from outside the area think it's an even stranger name for a village than Culebrón. My mum lives in St Ives in Cambridgeshire. She posted this photo on Facebook of their August Bank Holiday fete at the vicarage. Pinoso has an act...

Spain has a proud record on organ donations. Although donations fell a little in 2010 (1502 donors and 3,770 transplants) from the all time record of 1605 donors in 2009 Spain still tops the Worldwide list of donors and donations. Based on the donations per million inhabitants it's Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, The United States, France, Austria and Italy. Their main methodology here seems to be to talk to families after someone has died rather than to rely on donor registers. Nonetheless, there is a donor register and I signed up for it on the Internet last week. That's why I'm telling you this as my donor card arrived today. The card has no legal validity, it just indicates to my family that if there is any part of my poor and degraded body that may be useful to someone else I'd like them to have it. Just one thing: please get someone to check that I'm dead first! So now you know

There was a haze of steam vapour. The drops of water coalesced into little rivulets and ran down the mirror. Something was different I'd just finished my morning shower and I realised that, for the first time in a couple of months, the temperature difference between shower water and environment was enough for to produce condensation. A tangible change. There was a storm last night; big fat raindrops then a torrential downpour that bounced and shouted for a while. That's not the difference; that's not the change. The difference is the calendar. When Spaniards talk of the summer they seem to mean July and August. There appears to be an almost magical relationship here, at least in my mind, between the date and the weather. It will be September on Thursday - summer will be gone. To put my money where my keyboard is I predict now that the next big change will be on 1 November. Mark it in your diary now and hold me to account. Expect me to complain how autumn has sudde...

There is a huge ironmongers shop in Villena, a town close to us in Alicante, and being the hosts with the mosts that we are, that is where we were taking our houseguests. What man could resist three, or it may be four, floors of tools, fastenings, machinery and gadgets? We thought we may even have a meal in their canteen afterwards. Our plan was foiled when the place was closed. Never mind. We did get to see the town Archaeological Museum. In 1963 a couple of workmen in Villena, found a bracelet in the gravel they were spreading. The foreman hung the bracelet up on the wall so that whoever had dropped it could reclaim it. A bit later one of the workers thought they might just pop it around to the local jeweller to see if it was worth anything. As it was made of half a kilo of 24 carat gold it did have a certain value but the jeweller thought there was something odd about it and suggested showing it to a local archaeologist. In turn this chap recognised it as being 3,000 years ol...

This isn't about Culebrón or our life here.  I wrote it for the TIM magazine and it was published earlier this month. I just thought I'd save it here too. It's long. El Valle de los Caídos is a huge mausoleum and basilica church carved into solid granite and topped off with an enormous cross in the Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. It was built, on the orders of Franco, between 1940 and 1959 with money from the National Lottery. The work was done by as many as 200,000 Republican prisoners of war according to some sources and as few as 2,470 according to others. The prisoners were able to gain remission on their sentences by working on the construction. Some sources suggest the workers were reasonably paid whilst others charge slave labour. The supposed number who died during the building of the the complex varies from 14 to 27,000, depending on whether the source is pro Franco or pro Republican. The monument was consecrated by Pope John XXIII...

We had some Spanish pals here yesterday. Thinking about it this may be only the second time that we've had Spanish guests in the house. It doesn't say much for our integration. Maggie pointed out we don't have many people around at all. That doesn't say much for our friendliness. The food didn't go down too well. The conversation was a bit forced at times and our Spanish may well have been quite comical but it was still a nice day. One of our topics of conversation was about families. That led to kissing. Not the physical act, a conversation about it. When I left the UK people never ended their conversations with family or close friends with "I love you" indeed for the most part I was able to avoid any of that false and ritualised sentimentality. I very seldom hugged the people I met. For colleagues and new acquaintances a firm handshake served very well. For old and dear friends words of greeting sufficed. I approve of handshaking, an ancient and ap...

In summer, with all the politicians on holiday, the magazine type radio programmes fill their time with anything they can. I was just listening to Radio Nacional, the equivalent of BBC Radio 4, to a programme called On Days Like Today , and they were talking about collecting cigarette, tea, bubble gum and similar cards. I had a story so I logged on to Facebook and posted my story on their wall. I did it in English first, for speed, because it had taken me a while to sort out how to send them a message and they'd been running the item for several minutes. Then I did it again in my form of Spanish. They read it out as I was re-reading my post to check the grammar - and they basically used my Spanish. The story, by the way, was that I collected the Beatles Yellow Submarine cards when I was a lad. When we came here in 2004 they were one of the things to be cleared out. We had a go at selling them on eBay. I remember I put a reserve on them of £5 and they sold for several hundre...

Once upon a time we lived in Ciudad Rodrigo in the province of Salamanca more or less on the border with Portugal. It was a lovely spot but it was a long way from home and, to be honest, it was a long way from anywhere. Our nearest hypermarket was about 120kms away in Salamanca City and the nearest Mini dealer was in Portugal. At the time I commented on the difficulty of buying a book in a bookshop in Spain. Since then I have bought and read quite a few books in Spanish and I usually have a list of books that I want to read; I am catching up on a culture after all. The routine now, when I go into a bookshop, is to have a quick look where I think the book may be, and then, when it isn't, summon up my courage and ask. I wanted to take a couple of books on holiday. I'd heard a programme on the radio about an author called Carmen Laforet and one of hers sounded good. We were going to an area in Spain called the Alcarria and there was another book, written in the 1940s ...