Life in Culebrón

There are lots of Western Europeans, other than Spaniards, in Pinoso. In fact there seem, without knowing the figures, to be more and more. Belgian and Dutch voices are much more evident now than they were a little while ago and there is a good smattering of German and French in the supermarket too. Obviously enough there are other nationalities hoping to carve out a better life and, recently, there has been an influx of Ukrainians but those people have different stories. The Belgians, Germans and Swedes are here, generally, by choice. They may or may not be resident. Signed up Europeans, not the ones who rant about secure borders, have rights in Spain. They can come and go more or less at will, so determining who is and who isn't resident can be quite tricky. As it used to be with Britons. A question I have been asked lots of times by Spaniards is why so many Britons choose to live in Pinoso. I've never been able to think of a good response. I can't now.  Part of it must b...

Even in the analogue days, when a newspaper was something you held in your hands, it always seemed like a lot of work to read one. Nowadays I have a newsreader application that collects news from the Internet. It's not as though I'm a glutton for punishment or anything, I only have three feeds: one for local news, a second for serious news and a third that's a bit more frivolous with the sort of stuff that happens on Twitter or Instagram. Nonetheless the number of articles that turn up each day is simply overwhelming. A podcaster I listen to, in English, promises to summarise all the Spanish news for me so that I don't need to bother. That's not really true but the podcast does, at least, unpack stories where the detail has often escaped me. Last week, as an extra, the podcast did a bit of background on some of the major Spanish newspapers and the rest of this blog is my recap of that El País is still the biggest selling (however that is now counted) newspaper in ...

I've done Chiruca here before. My advanced years mean that I forget where or when I first heard, or read, the word but someone, on the telly, on the radio, on Twitter, used the word in a phrase. I had no idea what it meant so I asked WordReference and the Diccionario de la Lengua Española and they knew. It turned out to be a brand of walking boots; well, famous as walking boots but nowadays they make all sorts of walking footwear. So exactly the same idea as when, in the 1980s, I might have said that I had some new Docs or that I was going to get a Barbour or a Burberry (boots, waxed coat or mac(kintosh)). In fact everyone, well I suppose it's everywhere, does this. I watch American films where they say Band Aid and Scotch tape instead of Elastoplast and Sellotape. Unless I'm mistaken Addison Lee is the UK generic for a cars that aren't taxis but are - Cabify here I suppose. Bubble wrap or taser are both trade names too. The Spanish ones can be useful. One of my favouri...

Pinoso has lots of community websites. The English language one I tend to look at most often is a Facebook page called Pinoso Community. People use it for a whole range of things from lost dogs and questions about where to find services to checking to see if anyone else is having trouble with their Internet provider or power supply. The other day someone, on that page, commented on the price of fuel in the local filling stations. They weren't really complaining about the high price of petrol but more about the price fluctuations between different garages and even in the same filling station. I thought it might be an interesting blog - why and how the price varies. As I started to investigate I found the information both complicated and contradictory. In fact I decided that to do it properly would be both boring and long. That didn't stop me though. So, if you continue, expect boring and long. And sometimes, simply because of the complexity, I've oversimplified. There is als...

I'm not such a big fan of wine. It's not that I don't drink it but I'd nearly always go for other sorts of booze first. Maggie, my partner, on the other hand, is a bit of an enthusiast. One of the things she often does is to take our visitors on one of the bodega tours. Indeed, years ago, she used to organise tours for tourists as a business venture so we got to know nearly all of the bodegas in Jumilla and Yecla and a good number of the bodegas close to Pinoso that allow visits. Jumilla, Yecla and Alicante all produce wines that have Denominación de Origen Protegida (protected designation of origin) as well as wines more suited to drain unblocking or unarmed combat. Lots of the stuff that isn't D.O.P. is shipped to other countries, particularly France, where it is mixed with local wine and then sold as being from that country. The unloved wine is the sort of wine that you would use for things where any old wine will do - preserving fruits, cooking, turning into vin...

I've mentioned before that the weather in Spain can be quite extreme. Sun, wind and rain can all be just a tad on the over the top side. Actually I don't mind the sun at all. Here in Alicante province it always gets warm in July and August and the lower temperatures of May, June and September would still be a glorious British summer. In my opinion it's one of the delights of living here but Britons, Spaniards and probably Burundians seem to be constantly surprised that it's warm and several complain about it. True enough it can be destructive and it's not good when it's always sunny and it never rains and the reservoirs empty and the word drought is everywhere. There's often a breeze in Culebrón, it can be a stiff breeze. We get those dust devils passing by quite frequently in summer - mini tornadoes. Suddenly a breeze springs up from nowhere, slams all the open doors shut, makes the windows rattle, sends dust everywhere and then is gone. But when it does bl...

Have you ever noticed how things can be difficult to find in Spanish supermarkets? It seems to me that these Spanish shops arrange their products to a logic that I didn't share and I've had to learn.  Imagine I want peanut butter. My Britishness tells me to look for it with the jam or honey but my recent experience tells me to look for it near the chocolate bars, near the Nutella. Peanut butter isn't a good example because peanut butter is about as Spanish as celebrations on the 4th of July. Nonetheless, the next time you're in a Spanish supermarket, provided you're not Spanish, look around and I'm sure you'll find things that don't quite mesh with your idea of where they should, logically, be. Why aren't the crackers with the pitta and other bread substitutes? Why is the juice distant from the pop? Why are the kitchen and toilet rolls not alongside the cleaning products? In Pinoso we have quite a few supermarkets and each one of them has a differen...

There's an ad on the Spanish telly for erectile dysfunction. I see it when I watch the local version of Wheel of Fortune. Maybe it's a reflection of the age of the early afternoon TV audience. The person who tells us about the product wears a white coat, a doctor's coat. He has a beard, a bit of a paunch and specs. He's white. He looks like the sort of doctor your average white Spanish, set in his ways, male with an erectile dysfunction might trust. It's the white coat though. The uniform of the trade. You'll see uniforms everywhere in Spain from Mercadona to Civil Protection. We popped in to Bar Mucho for a beer the other day. We went in minutes after it had opened. We were the first customers of the day and the young Spanish server was cleaning down tables. The music in the background was reggaeton or reguetón - Spanish language music. Normally the background music in Bar Mucho is international English language stuff. I've heard or read various pieces abou...

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...