Life in Culebrón

The first time we went to Villena was in 2006, a few days before Christmas. We were just about to leave when we bumped into a lot of carolers crossing the road. We followed them to a spot outside a chemist where they gave a little concert. It was lovely. I've had a bit of a soft spot for Villena ever since. Sometime later, goodness knows when, we were by the Town Hall in Villena, next to the Iglesia Arciprestal de Santiago, the main church, just beside the Town Hall and Tourist Office. A woman came over and asked us if we were tourists. We were Brits and that was tourist enough for her. She took us in the church. She told us how the spiral columns were very uncommon in other churches. She told us how the patron saint of Villena and the church in Villena had been set on fire in the Spanish Civil War. When we'd done there she took us to see the Villena Treasure - 90 pieces of 3,000 year old solid gold objects, bowls, bracelets, necklaces and the like, weighing in at nine kilos.  ...

My first post in this blog, Life in Culerbrón, was on January 5th 2006. The first entry was about me having drunk too much brandy (the more things change the more they stay the same) and the second entry was about stonework falling through our ceiling. The entries are a day apart and neither is long; the first is just three lines and the second about fifteen. The idea of the blog then was simple. We were reasonably new to Spain; we'd been resident about fifteen months and we'd lived in the house in Culebrón for around eight or nine months. Blogging was relatively new and I didn't know what a blog was. Nowadays I don't know why I'd want to load videos to TikTok. The difference is that I started to blog, and I've kept going, whereas I've only ever tikked, or tokked, to see how it works. It was relatively easy to write the blog in the early days. Something new was happening to me all the time and I just wrote about that something. For instance in those last few...

Spain is, in essence, like the rest of Western Europe. Lots of freedoms, well organised and safe. That doesn't mean it's hard to find things to complain about. People complain in France, in Norway and in the UK. It's dead easy to moan about Spain. On the macro scale watching the continual bickering and backbiting of national level politicians or the point scoring over laws that only paid up members of the KKK could be against in essence (anti rape or protecting animals) is so wearing. On the micro level small, everyday, things like the outrageous banking charges or the scandalous unreliability of official websites seems depressingly inevitable. On a day to day level though I keep running into tiny things that make me grin from ear to ear. So, this week a bit of positivity and, with a bit of luck, a bit shorter too. A Sunday morning, nothing planned, my partner busy with something in the house, too busy to come out to play. I popped over to have a look at the cypress tree ma...

I've been trying to learn Spanish since Methuselah was a lad. I remember being well pleased when clay tablets gave way to parchment and quills. Alright, not quite that long ago but it really was a textbook with cassettes and Sunday morning programmes on BBC2. In my case the catalyst was a trip to Barcelona. At Victoria coach station I bought a ticket for the first bus going to somewhere warm. It was nearly Greece. Barcelona was great. There was no doubt that I was going back. When I had trouble getting a beer in Tarragona my task was clear. My partner of the time thought my plan to learn Spanish was a stupid whim. Back in Blighty, at our local bookshop, she steered me towards the cheapest Spanish textbook; the cheaper the book the less money wasted. She was very surprised when I signed up for evening classes and astounded when I went back after Christmas. I didn't really learn much Spanish in the classes but I learned a lot of Spanish because of them. I think the classes were a...

Shortly after moving into a new flat some pals got an email from one of their neighbours. They ran it through Google translate but, even then, they didn't quite understand. It seemed that the neighbour was asking them to put 100€ into a bank account and they didn't see why. They asked me and I happened to know what it was. The note was from the President of the neighbour's association to say that the building's current account only had 34€ left and that each flat needed to chip in 100€ to top up the fund. Each building, generally blocks of flats, where there are private dwellings and shared areas - like the entrance way and the stairs - has, I think by law, to have a community of owners. In my friend's building it seems they've opted for a kitty system instead of a regular fixed charge. The money is used for the upkeep of the common areas - things like maintaining the fire extinguishers and lift or lighting the hallways and stairs. When I bought my first car I k...

This last weekend we popped over to Murcia to see las Cuadrillas in Barranda. The event is principally a folk music event with bands on every street corner but there's also a big street market. We were looking for breakfast and there was a stall in the market selling migas. Now migas come in all sorts of shapes and sizes but the ones in Barranda seem to be fried flour and water crumbs with lots of sausages and vegetables mixed in. Because it's broad bean season the beans were offered as garnish; migas con habas. Migas are nice but the stall also advertised Spanish, run of the mill, sandwiches or bocadillos which use the bread we Brits call French sticks. The migas were still being prepared so we were able to queue jump by asking for a couple of the sandwiches. The man serving on asked what we wanted to drink. Tea, the drink of Gods, wasn't an option, in fact options were few and far between. The question was really, "Do you want a red wine?" So we breakfasted on ...

I'm sorry but I have to admit to enjoying Joyas sobre ruedas on the Discovery Channel - Wheeler dealers in its original. That interest explains why I asked after the hire car of a couple of friends visiting from the UK. The car had a late letter L registration - well under a year old - but it didn't have one of the emision badges or stickers on the windscreen. I mentioned this and, not surprisingly, our friends were completely in the dark about the badges. I explained. It's basically an emission thing. The idea is that electric cars, hybrids, newer petrol and diesel cars can get stickers whereas older petrol and diesel cars can't. The environmentally cleaner your motor and the fewer restrictions. The older and dirtier your car the sooner it will be forced off the road. I remembered the badges conversation when we were in Altea town centre. "Ah look, there'll be a badge on this car", I said, but there wasn't. I walked down a row of at least 50 parked ca...

I try to be frugal with toilet paper. One sheet at a time if possible. It's not because I'm particularly mean, it's because toilet paper blocks up Spanish drains. I've never quite been able to bring myself to do that thing you are instructed to do so many times in Spanish "public" toilets, the ones in bars and the like, to put the soiled paper in the wastebasket. It just seems a bit too close to living in a cave and wearing skins. That primness caught us out once though and we had to have the floor ripped up to clear the blockage. In order for that not to happen again I now go around our three bathrooms each week and tip buckets of water down the toilets, clean the hair from the plugholes and other routine things to avoid a reoccurence. When we have houseguests who use up a couple of toilet rolls in a weekend I'm hard pressed not to reprimand them sternly. Our house is old but it's a bit like that bucket that has a new handle, a new bottom and a reweld...

When Spanish people ask me what I like most about Spain I say the anarchy. Then I have to backtrack because the word has more history and more significance in Spanish than it does in English. I should say something like the informality, a touch of rebelliousness, the remarkability of some fiestas and the way that after a family meal in a Spanish restaurant the proverbial bomb dropping would make no noticeable difference nor would it stop the kids playing tag around the tables. There are lots of other things I like too but it's a good starter. When Spanish people ask me what I like least about Spain I say the cold. They think I'm joking. I explain that in the UK it might be cold outside in winter, and dark, but that inside it would be nice and warm. It's not true of most of Spain but here in Alicante, where insulation is practically non existent, where tiles and ornamental stone are everywhere and where central heating is almost unknown then wearing outdoor clothing inside i...

Bétera, near Valencia, mid August, years ago. Our friends had taken us to join the crowd in the main street. We didn't quite know why. They weren't explaining and our Spanish wasn't up to asking. When the fireworks, hung from overhead lines, started to go off and shower the crowd with sparks and flame we knew what to do though. We retreated before the wall of fire. The end of the street was sealed, there was nowhere to go; hundreds of us cowered, cheek by jowl, knowing, or at least trusting, that the flames and sparks wouldn't reach us. And sputter out they did.  The next night we went back to the same place to join in the fiesta. We noticed there were no parked cars and that all the windows were boarded up. As midnight approached our friends herded us back to the car and abandoned the town centre. We didn't know why. We found out though. After midnight gangs of young people wearing overalls and crash helmets, and with at least one fire extinguisher per group, just ...