Life in Culebrón

In 2004 Spanish bookshops were intimidating places. Berlin Wall like there was nearly always a counter and the books were behind it. They were protected by someone, invariably older, invariably stern, Dickensian even - villainous Dickensian. There were shelves too, sometimes in the Allied Zone, but without apparent order. Lots of the shops were dark and dusty with piles of books. The organisation of the books was a secret known only to that formidable bookshop employee. As well as looking sinister the person behind the counter spoke Spanish. Another big hurdle. But I'd decided early on in my Spanish adventure that reading in Spanish was a good way to tackle the language so these obstacles had to be overcome. After a couple of bad buys, panicked into buying some Spanish classic with impenetrable prose, I decided to try something I'd already read in English. I'd been told that translated books were often easier to read. Hemingway, and his short sentences seemed like a good p...

I don't know the names of all my cousins. It's not that there are hordes of them nor are we are sworn enemies. I've just never bothered much with them and they've never bothered with me. I'm sure we'd get on fine if we met. To make one of those sweeping, and sometimes inaccurate, generalisations Spaniards aren't like that. Here families are super important. Many Spanish people talk to, and visit, their families all the time. Families do things as families and the idea of family stretches the length of even the most diluted bloodline.  If Spanish families, nuclear families, are going somewhere to do something then it's very normal for the whole family to go. None of this parking the kids with a babysitter while the adults don their glad rags. I was reminded of this a couple of times during this month. I went to Aspe to see four bands in a long evening, a mini festival, that the organisers call Aspesuena. I'd gone, particularly, to see a band called Sh...

I just got a scary looking email. It was full of number codes and it came from the Government of Spain. My first thought was that it was a fine, the second that it was a scam. In fact it was from SUMA, the local tax collection agency, to tell me that a couple of new household bills were waiting for me on their website. Official Spanish is laced with over complicated and little used words. They really do need to start using plain, everyday language. Britons living in Spain often complain about Spanish tax. I can't actually find anything on the internet that directly compares the average tax burden between countries. I suppose, in the end, there are so many variables, from obvious taxes like income tax and VAT/IVA through to the sugar tax on soft drinks, that it's almost impossible to calculate. What there are are official figures, at country level, about how much tax revenues represent, as a percentage of the total budget. For instance in the UK taxes represent 35.5% of the tota...

We all know about spam phone calls. We all have our methods for getting shut. At the end of the call we block the number but the baddies seem to have a limitless supply. Here in Spain we Brits have a ready made get out with the old "Me no speaky foreign strategy". If that doesn't work then rudeness, anger or simply putting the phone down will - at least till the next call.  Since 2009 it's supposed to have been possible to stop these people pestering you by signing up to the Lista Robinson , the Robinson list. I did and it seems reasonably effective but I've heard that, for some call centres, the Robinson list is just another database to plunder. At the end of June 2023 new legislation came into force which is supposed to make it more difficult for these cold callers to keep on pestering us. The general consensus is that the legislation is so full of holes that it won't change anything. Oh, and by the way if you're registered as a business or as self emplo...

It's been sunny and hot for a few days now. Everyone, everywhere is complaining. I'm surprised too. Imagine, hot in Spain, and in August. I was just bringing in some washing. Five or six pegs crumbled in my hands. The plastic just gives up the ghost when faced with day after day of bright sunlight and heat. That's why Spaniards park their cars in the shade. If not expect the paint to peel off the bodywork and the headlight lenses to go cloudy in time. Oh, and expect singed skin and lots of oohing! and aahing! getting into the car. Garden furniture doesn't have a chance. The chairs that have the nylon seats and metal frames have proved to outlast the nice rattan designs, the good looking wooden furniture and even the very basic, very cheap, plastic, stacking chairs. Even then, eventually, the thread fails. You realise it's happening when you hear a faint ripping sound and your bottom begins to sink earthward though, usually, fortunately, there is time to save your dr...

Summer is an interesting time in Spain. When the sun shines the country slows. In August the country treads water. It's not as true as it once was and it's never been 100% true but it's true enough for a blog. The first to prepare for the Spanish summer, which lasts from 1 July to 31 August, are the TV advertisers. From the beginning of June happy groups of friends and families will begin to appear on TV screens, sitting around big tables in the garden eating paella or pizza and drinking beer. Most of the rest of Spain begins to prepare for Summer around San Juan, June 23. Those who have a beachside or country property start to ackle it up for the summer. It's amazing how many people have access to a country home or a seaside flat. In both cases the trick is inheritance. The money from the sale of Grandma's house made the flat affordable. The other option is that Grandma's house is where the family now spends Summer. The house gives the family roots, they may li...

Last Saturday evening, we went over to Yecla to see a pre-selection concert for the Cante de las Minas flamenco competition which takes place in La Unión, near Cartagena. La Unión, the town, has a strong tradition of Flamenco, the music more usually associated with gypsies and Andalucia. The link came about because La Unión, which mined lead and silver in Roman times, had a resurgence of mining activity in the mid-nineteenth century. With the liberalisation of certain laws and particularly with new technologies, the mines became potentially profitable for the first time in centuries. The mining industry needed workers. Starving peasants from Andalucia, particularly from Almeria province, saw the opportunity to escape the misery they were living in. They should have known better. Poor people always get it in the neck. They simply replaced the misery inflicted on them by the rich and uncaring farmers of Andalucia for more misery and hardship inflicted on them by rich and uncaring mine ow...

We went to see Monte de la Sal, one of the local choir, music, and dance groups, doing its annual Cançons a la fresca, canciones a la fresca - something like songs in the cool of the evening. They usually do two concerts with that title in July of each year. In the first, the full choir sings popular tunes. The choir dresses in black and white. In the second concert the focus is on traditional dance with the musicians, singers and dancers all wearing traditional clothing. We've seen them in action several times over the years. My favourite performance, in all these years, was one the group did outside the Cultural centre a few years ago. The dancers took to the stage in their (period) underwear and explained their clothing as they added layers: petticoats, corsets, stockings, and eventually the skirts and blouses. The solitary man who dances with the group wasn't there that year! It's a lovely event. Sometimes the singers don't quite hit the note or th person presenting...

From trunk roads, main roads, and motorways, through to the tarmac ribbons in the countryside, the different sorts and standards of roads in Spain are owned and looked after by different levels of government. Most of the roads operated by the national government are the ones that cross provincial and regional boundaries. This includes both motorways and conventional roads. The motorways are divided into two types: autovías and autopistas. There are technical differences between the two types of road (such as the style of junctions, width of carriageways, design speed, and the like), for most Spaniards, autovía is the all-purpose word for motorways, and they reserve autopista for toll motorways. For Brits the distinction might be that autopistas are motorways and autovias are major dual carriageways. Both types have a median separating the carriageways and at least two carriageways in either direction and the generic speed limit of 120 km/h. The signs, direction signs, kilometre posts, ...

In the Plaza del Sol, in Madrid, capital of Spain more frequently than not since 1561, there is a plaque set in the pavement marked as Kilometre Zero. If Google Maps tells you that it's 395 km to Madrid, that's the point it's measuring to. As a local aside there's a similar point in Murcia in the street called Platería. There are a series of arterial roads that radiate from Madrid. The arterial roads have numbers prefaced by the letter N for Nacional/National. The six radial roads were given Roman numeral names, NI, NII, etc. As examples, the NIII goes to Valencia from Madrid. The NIV goes from Madrid to Seville and on to Cádiz. The effect is that Spain is divided up, cake-like, into slices or segments. Any main road, any national road, in the slice between the NIII and NIV, in a clockwise direction, will have a number that starts with N3. The NV goes to Badajoz from Madrid. Any road clockwise of the NIV but before the NV will have a name in the style of N420. Lots of u...