Life in Culebrón

I was born in West Yorkshire. I remember, as a callow youth, struggling through the gorse and heather on Keighley Moor, after my first ever visit to the Bronte's home village as a qualified driver, looking for cup and ring marks. I found some. I thought they were deadly boring to look at. I was profoundly impressed that they were there though. A continuity with the past. Imagine, someone, in their idle moments, a few thousand years ago, had chosen to leave their mark in the stone. If there had been mobile phones there might have been neither cups nor rings. We've got something similar, more impressive actually, on La Centenera Hill - the stone carvings the petroglyphs - here in Pinoso. Out at Monte Arabí near Yecla there are more. We humans, be we Tykes, Pinoseros and Yeclanos seem to want to mark our passing. My own initials are carved in the, "it's a school tradition don't you know", stone bench alongside the playing fields of my old grammar school - CJT 196...

We did a bit of a circular tour last week. Up to Albacete, across to Cuenca and back through Teruel before coming home.  Along the way we  visited the winery in Fuentealbilla, run by the Iniesta family, (Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup), we looked at the huge 3rd Century AD Roman Mosaic in the tiny village of Noheda and we stayed in Albarracín which has city status even though it's smaller than either Algueña or Salinas. We even visited some old pals in Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel. I often think Spanish written information is patchy or poor. I wonder why there is no list of the tapas on offer or why the office doesn't show opening times. I have theories; those theories go from the link between information and power to high levels of illiteracy in the Franco years to the much less fanciful idea that Spaniards simply prefer to talk to a person. There's no doubt that written information here is much better, and more common, than in once...

I'm trying to get in as many events and fiestas and ferias as I can before the stroke or the fit leaves me stranded in Culebrón, before cataracts blur my vision or before my knee finally gives way. My partner, Maggie, isn't convinced that it's a sound strategy. Maybe she's Virgo; I hear they're sceptical. July and August in Spain are just loaded with things to do. There aren't that many weekends in two months and everywhere wants to shoehorn their event in. I've seen so many mascletás, so many Virgins carried on the backs of so many humble believers, so many men with big pot bellies, fake beards and 15cm cigars striding out that even romerias, firework displays and Moros y Cristianos are losing out to staying home with a can of Estrella and a good book. Last week though we did stray from home. We went to Aledo down in Murcia, close to Totana. I'd never been to Aledo before but somehow I'd learned that they had a bit of an event where they light the o...

I'm not particularly good with people. I'm not particularly outgoing. I'm terrible at remembering faces (well whole bodies come to that) and I can forget names within a couple of sentences of being introduced. The opening phrases of a greeting are usually banal, sometimes surreal and occasionally bizarre. Greetings take me by surprise. It would probably be better if I stayed at home with a good book. The other day some people that I do recognise on the streets, members of a Spanish family, had one of the older members die. I didn't know what the form was so I didn't do anything. I wondered about going to the tanatorio, I wondered about the mass but a mix of embarrassment, fear of speaking Spanish and my general diffidence meant that I did nothing. As ill luck would have it I bumped into one of the family a few days later. She greeted me, we did the two cheeks kissing, I failed to understand what she'd said to me, I failed to pass on my condolences and as she wal...

Now you may have noticed the Clubs dotted all over Spain. We passed one near Cabo Roig the other day. It was that which made me think of this post. The clubs tend to be on the outskirts of towns but not all are.  I often think we immigrant Britons are divided into two camps - those who think Spain is brilliant and those who think it's a nightmare full of outdated systems and indolent people. With my rose tinted glasses firmly in place I thought for years that these out of town clubs were the result of careful urban planning. Noisy clubs, I was thinking dance type clubs, well away from people who wanted to get an early night. In the time before Google maps, before Booking.com when things were still priced in pesetas and you were pleasantly surprised to find that your hostal bedroom had a washbasin, we were wandering around Southern Spain in a hired car. Our holiday plan was pretty simple really. We drove around gawking at stuff and when it began to get to evening we stopped outside ...

The fiestas in Pinoso are just about to kick off. As a fully accredited member of the I don't approve of taunting animals and I've just had my hernia fixed besides which my knee is playing up, club, it's a bit unlikely that I'll be taking full advantage of the real partying that the fiestas have to offer. I will wander the stalls, I will eat out, I will see a band or two, I will look at the fair, I'll grin at the ofrenda and laugh at the whacky racers but I'm not going to be there for the incredibly loud music at five in the morning nor will I be running around after the bullocks and it's for sure that nobody is going to be invite me to join their peña to drink cheap alcohol or abuse other substances beside some parked car pumping out music when all sane folk have taken their contact lenses out for the night. Even if I join my age peers to see the equally compromised one (or two) hit wonder from the 1970s I won't know the songs. It won't stop me havi...

I saw something about the fiestas in Cañadas de Don Ciro this last weekend. Now Don Ciro really is no more than a wide spot on a very rural road but they have fiestas. It reminded me that I hadn't written anything about our own local fiesta which was a couple of weekends ago now.  The Culebrón fiesta is one of a series for the outlying villages which are part the Pinoso municipality. The first village fiesta takes place in late Spring and they go on through the Summer with the villages taking it in turns to have a weekend of festivities. The fiestas are not usually particularly exciting or expansive but they are deeply ingrained in local culture and they offer the villagers a break from the routine with a chance to have a bit of a natter with friends, family and neighbours against the backdrop of some planned activities. There are usually two key themes. One is religious. Nearly all the fiestas are tied in to the patron saint for the village. The saintly effigies usually get an out...

I drove over to Novelda yesterday to see La bajada de la Virgen. I'd never seen this particular procession and I'm always up for a good romería. The idea of a romería is that a saint, well the carved statue that represents a saint, is moved from one place to another in a procession - usually from some sort of chapel to a parish church or vice versa. Normally the saints are carried on the shoulders of the faithful using a stretcher like base but not always, in la Palma for instance the saint rides in a cart. There are all sort of variations. The shrine where this particular saint, Mary Magdalene, came from is on la Mola Hill so she was brought down; bajada implies coming down, subida is when the saint goes up the hill. The style of a romería can vary, some are pretty large scale like San Pancrecio in Sax, San Isidro in Salinas or the Virgen de la Nieves between Aspe and Hondón de la Nieves. Several are much smaller scale including very local ones like moving the Virgen de la Asu...

You may have noticed it has been quite warm in Spain for a while now. As I write, the word heatwave is on lots of people's lips; French lips, British lips, Portuguese lips and more. Spain is on fire too but we touched on that a couple of weeks ago. While it's a bit unusual to have such high temperatures in Paris or London it's not that unusual in Madrid or Culebrón. It seems pretty obvious to the casual observer that odd weather events are becoming more and more frequent. The weather's gone mad or, as we say in these here parts, el tiempo ha vuelto loco. Maybe we drove it mad. Those of us who live in Spain walk down the shady side of the street, look for the tables in the shade and often choose to eat inside a restaurant. We prefer to be coddled by the aircon, rather than go hand to hand with swarms of pesky and hungry flies under the sunshades on the terrace. It sometimes seems to me that Spaniards can take this to quite extreme lengths. Go on a coach and they will ins...

It's Sanfermines up in Pamplona at the moment. You know the thing, white clothes, red neckerchiefs, running with bulls - the Hemingway book. I often listen to the 8 am news on the radio and, for the past few days, today was the last, they've been doing a live broadcast of the bull running. It only lasts a bit over a couple of minutes so it doesn't interfere too much with the real news. Once upon a time I lived in Ciudad Rodrigo. There too, but at Carnaval time, they have an encierro. The bulls run through the streets, lined with very solid, railway sleeper type, fences to the town square. Encierro means locking up so, when they get to the square, they are penned up. The bulls are led along the route by mansos, bulls but not fighting bulls. Manso means something like docile but a five to six hundred kilos of bull isn't my idea of something cuddly. The idea is that these mansos have done the route before so they lead the fighting bulls to their destination. We'd watch...