Life in Culebrón

The fail-safe method to determine if the UK is in a state of emergency is the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme. If it fails to broadcast, as scheduled, three days in a row you'll need to fill the bath with water. At least that's what my brother told me. I don't think Spanish radio is quite as potent a force in everyday life as it is in the UK but it still has plenty of listeners. I'm one of them. This week radio has been in the news because the state broadcaster, RNE , which first broadcast from Salamanca as a propaganda arm of the Francoist forces in the Spanish Civil War, celebrated its 75th anniversary. I tend to listen to Radio 5 which is the news channel of the state broadcaster but I also listen to both their speech channel, Radio Nacional and Radio 3 their music channel.  There are plenty of good talk radio stations though they aren't shy about having a political view. SER, Onda Cero and Punto Radio are some of the bigger national broadcasters. T...

Until I moved to Spain I associated Calor Gas heaters with caravans. Caravans at Filey Brigg to be precise. Here, in the countryside at least, everyone has a gas heater to help combat the intense cold in our uninsulated houses. We own three. The heaters push out around 3kw of heat and one 15€ bottle of gas lasts around 60 hours which makes them a cheaper form of heating than electric. We don't have our bottles delivered though so having to collect them is a bit of a pain. The other day a friend was talking about having replaced a heater. He feared that it was on the point of blowing up his house. They have a bit of a reputation for doing that. Well either blowing you up or asphyxiating you. It acted as a reminder. I know that the bright orange rubber tubes that connect the gas bottle to the heater have a "sell by" date on them. I checked. Whoops! The oldest one we had said March 2010 and even the most moodern bit of piping (on the gas cooker) was six months out of dat...

As we left Cartagena for Culebrón yesterday evening the Three Wise Men, the Three Magician Kings to Spaniards, were doing their rounds and delivering coal to bad boys and girls or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 or Zombie Dolls to the good ones. We'd seen them. Not the bad children and Zombie Dolls; the Kings. There had been a big procession through the streets in the evening and, all day, they'd been holding court in the old Town Hall in the middle of town. The atmosphere in the town was amazing. The last minute shoppers were out in hordes buying their Christmas gifts, the hundreds of balloon sellers and other street vendors. The burble of noise coming from the street cafés. Very nice. In Culebrón all was quiet. We settled down in front of the telly with a cup of tea. My ration of hearing spoken Spanish is quite limited. Maggie isn't a big fan of talk radio and generally we watch English language programmes even on Spanish TV when we're together. That's one of...

Els Enfarinats means covered with flour in Valenciano. Ibi is an inland Alicantino town. Each 28th December, the local equivalent to All Fools Day, there is a takeover of local government in the town  by the fourteen els enfarinats. Their battle cry is "New Justice" and that's what they set about imposing on the town. One is the mayor, one the sheriff, one the prosecutor, one the town clerk etc. But it doesn't go smoothly. The old town authorities don't give up easily and there is a pitched battle in the Church Square. It's a battle fought with eggs, flour, talc and 12,000 jumping jacks. The floury folk win out and they then go around the town raising funds. They check that local shops are using the correct weights and measures - their's - and when they aren't the shops are heavily fined. Punsihment for those who decide not to pay is jail or maybe an eggy and floury punishment. But by 5pm all they can think about is dancing and the new Government...

Ventura popped by the flat in Cartagena. He left lots of oranges, grapefruit and what not from his pal's citrus grove. "You'll need the lemons for the prawns," he said. I was at work today though I have next week off. Lots of my students wished me a Merry Christmas before saying they'd see me next week. They will be working and whilst they weren't exactly surprised that I won't be they didn't take it for granted that I'd be off. Christmas is just another holiday here not the huge event that it is in the UK. My boss suggested to me that I should theme this week's out of office lessons around Christmas. I tried but there was a cultural mis match. Talking about Slade and Wizard songs, office Christmas parties, the Christmas Day James Bond film or Christmas tree lights has been an uphill struggle. Quite rightly Slade and Wizard are unknown here but so are the wine in paper cup and photocopier incident office Christmas parties. White Chris...

Movistar is a big phone company here - they have both fixed and mobile services. Their customer service number is 1004. Last week 1004 called me repeatedly but I missed or ignored every call. Sunday: a Sunday as it should be where I didn't get around to putting my contact lenses in till late evening and where I avoided proper work all day. I was too lazy even to clean the bath or hoover the floor. On the telly I watched one of those films where the busy executive realises the error of their ways at Christmas. The World becomes a better place. In between the Christmas stories I watched the ads. Something I rarely do. The Movistar people seemed to have a good offer on for those of us who have both their fixed and mobile phone packages. There were two offers and the website suggested we were eligible for both. But the Software said no to one offer. Odd that. I could have sworn we were paying for a 3Mb package but apparently not. I didn't fret. Even the poorer of the two ...

When we were at the village meal the other day the wine that came around the tables was from the local Culebrón bodega. It was different though; new wine varieties, new labels and a different, more modern, bottle design. Just to show how modern the white wine came in a blue bottle. I only tried the two reds, the Shiraz and the Merlot, but I enjoyed them both. The thing that caught my eye most though was that on the label, most of which was in English, the wine maker of the family, Roberto, had been renamed. Wines by Robert Brotons it said. Foolishly, at the time, I forgot to take a picture of the wine which meant I had to pop back to the bodega the next weekend to buy a bottle for the pack shot. So, in the original picture, from the event, on the left, you can just see one of the new blue coloured wine bottles in amongst the sparkling Galician ciders and Catalan wines. Fear not - the orange stuff is Fanta. The picture on the right is from the weekend after the meal.

The Junta Directiva I haven't commented on the Neighbourhood Association meal for a couple of years so I will this time around. To be honest I could simply repeat most of the text on the link above down to the menu except that there were no lupin seeds this year. It's not quite true, there were a couple of things that I noticed as different. I had an interesting conversation with the President of the Association, not in its content but in the fact that it took place at all. The last time we spoke for more than 30 seconds she commented that, unlike my wife, I couldn't speak Spanish and that I should be ashamed of myself. This time she was at pains to compliment me on the way that I expressed myself and was able to string an argument together (we were talking politics.) I liked that. I like compliments about my Spanish. Another thing was that I needed to open a bottle of beer and I went in search of a bottle opener. The abnormal thing there was that I felt per...

The Santa Catalina district of Pinoso is probably the most "Spanish" part of the town. To we Brits she's Saint Catherine, the one that the spinning fireworks are named for. Not surprisingly the neighbourhood that bears her name celebrates her feast day and, over the years, the festival has become quite a big event in the town. The feast day proper centres on hogueras or bonfires that are set up on nearly every street corner. I've mentioned Sana Catalina in not one , or two but three blog entries over the past five years. We missed the bonfires this time because we were out of town. A new departure for the fiesta this year is that there is a Mediaeval Market. We've just been up there to have a nose. It was pretty quiet to be honest. The stallholders were blaming the football and the cold in equal measure. I'm with the ones who thought it was too cold to venture out. The temperature difference between Culebrón, 600m above sea level, and coastal Cartagena...

Not my usual sort of post but the local on line newspaper - El Eco de Pinoso - reported that there are 860 people out of work in Pinoso at the moment. How many people live in Pinoso is a moot point but the official statistical office says it's 7909. So 10.87% of the total population is out of work. Take away the number of people below 16 (1397) and the number above 65 (1325) and the working age population  is 5187. That would bring the jobless percentage up to 16.58%