The candidates

We have five parties fielding candidates in the local election. The five people who lead each group went out for a bit of a meal together as a sort of joint press conference. From left to right (not politically) Ramón, José Maria, Elisa, Vicente and Juan Carlos. Each party fields 13 candidates so that's 65 people or close to 1 in every 100 residents of the town standing for election.

The woman in the waistcoat decided not to stand.

Calling the meeting to order

I bumped into a pal who just happens to be the Socialist candidate for Mayor. She told me, conversationally, that she was holding a meeting at my local village hall that evening. No posters, no newsletters, nothing in the local paper, no note from the neighbourhood association - just chance that I got there. I never know how it is that everyone else seems to know.

The meeting started at 8.30 so I was obviously the first person there (other than the keyholder) when I arrived at 8.40. The meeting got under way at around 9.20.

The prospective mayor and five of the pospective socialist councillors sat facing the 25 or so people in the audience - about a third of the village's population. Eli, the candidate, seemed to know the name of everyone in the room. In fact everyone knew everyone.

Good presentation; the chap who would deal with the economy told us how reliant the town was on the income from our marble quarry, the woman with the health portfolio talked about new care in the community laws etc. Interesting stuff, clearly expressed, easy for me to follow and with occasional interjections or clarifying questions from the floor.

Then we got onto the Plan General approved by the current town council, which details building and planning. This is stuff close to peoples' hearts because the distinction between whether your land and house is classed as rural or urban, detailed in the plan, drastically alters both their value and what services have to be provided. Suddenly the order of the meeting collapsed. At one point each of the "top table" was speaking to at least one person and two had two conversations on the go simultaneously. There was a bit of an attempt to regain some structure but nobody's heart was in it. Then someone fastened a cigarette between their lips, someone else did the same and miraculously, the meeting was over.

Resident

Spaniards have to carry ID at all times. They have a little card that has their photo and a scanned version of their fingerprint.

Foreigners, like us, living in Spain have an ID number. Its format differs slightly from the one for Spaniards. It's called an NIE.

Getting the NIE number is dead easy, a bit of form filling and a queue. The next step, once you've been in Spain for at least 6 months is to get "resident" status. There are legal implications but basically for most Brits it means they get an ID card, which everyone calls a residencia, that looks just like the card Spaniards carry. It is recognised everywhere for guaranteeing credit cards, receiving registered mail etc.

Maggie and I tried to get a residencia last summer and we were turned away being told there was no need for us to have one. As EU citizens the NIE gave us everything we needed. Unfortunately as the NIE is just a piece of paper, without a photo, it doesn't serve as a form of identification so we had to continue to carry our passports around. The last time I looked it cost 121€ to get another passport if it were lost or stolen.

So we paid a solicitor to start the process of getting us a residencia. Comfirmation of our status as resident came last October but my appointment to get my fingerprints done to produce my photo ID card was today.

I dutifully went and queued for five hours to get the card. It's a long and boring story but the gist of it is that some interfering European Rights types have made Spain stop it's discriminatory practice of dealing with other EU nationals differently to Spaniards. So they no longer issue little cards (what the three other Brits around me in the queue and I all wanted) and have replaced it with another sheet of paper which proves our resident status but is valueless as a form of identification. The new system started just this month so we missed our cards by ten days.

Voting card

Our voting cards turned up yesterday. Not a big event in itself but, in Democracies, voting is an essential part of having your say. Nice to know we really will be involved.

The Mayor

The meeting between the Mayor and the Brits finally happened. In fact he turned up with at least half of the list of prospective councillors. The best part was the beginning; we were given an electronic calculator and an electronic thermometer both bearing the Partido Popular logo. From then on in it was all downhill.

A long winded complaint about the lack of town centre parking on the one day of the year when there is a big event in town. A marathon moan about the lack of facilities for stray dogs in Pinoso. One chap held the floor for at least fifteen minutes about his particular problem with his health card. It went on. The Mayor smoked a lot, the tanslator tried hard but buckled under the stress of rabbiting, idiomatic English.

I was dead sensible of course (well it is my Blog) and I asked a straightforward question about the plans for the drainage system in our village and got a straightforward and concise reply.

We didn't see the end. Maggie could bear it no more.

Monforte del Cid

Every year students and teachers from the Adult Education Colleges in our area get together for a bit of a celebration. Each of the participating towns takes it in turn to host the event and this year it was the turn of Monforte del Cid.

Twenty of us doing courses in Pinoso went to do our bit for intercollegiate solidarity.

First thing, naturally, was a bit of something to eat and drink just in case the 30km journey had worn us out. The food was set out on long tables in the town square. Next on the agenda was a tour of the town. Our group was guided by a young person from the host college. I think our original guide may have been on a basic skills course as a young woman had to take over the reading of his prepared notes when anything with more than two syllables caused him real problems. We saw museums, music schools, churches, old cemetries, the headquarters of various of the Moors and Christians groups and the Town Hall. We were all flagging by now so the upholstered seats in the town auditorium, where we were given an offical welcome, heard a "humorous" monologue and were presented with a book showcasing the work of Adult Ed students, was very welcome.


The main event of the day though was troughing down for lunch in the garden of the Sports Centre. Unfortunately Monforte produces a lot of different alcoholic beverages and we had to sample them all to avoid any sort of inter district rivalry.

A thoroughly enjoyable day.

Political meetings

This evening I went to the meeting organised by the Partido Popular to woo the British vote in Pinoso. That's the one mentioned in the Elections and Information post of April 24. Unfortunately the PP's candidate didn't show up. The people who owned the venue sort of expected him but then again they weren't quite sure whether he was coming or not.

Now there's a vote winning tactic!

Life is just a bowl of cherries

May Day, a public holiday. How did we pass our time? A cultural odyssey, a relaxing meal, a boozy day in the pub or a trip to the seaside? No, we went to the opening of the new "English" supermarket, bar and Internet cafe in Pinoso. Majorettes marched to the tune of the British Grenadiers, a chap with a shaved head and an ear ring sang to a sort of karaoke backing track and we nattered with lots of other Brits about the quality of the free sausage rolls.

Going offline

Ya.com phoned us up at the end of February. Would we like a cheaper, faster ADSL connection? We signed up. A couple of days later our current Internet provider, Iberdrola, told us they were going to stop all Internet services at the end of April. What a happy coincidence.

Despite their contract being full of guarantees about speedy installation etc. Ya.com have still failed to hook us up to their system. And April has passed. Iberdrola haven't turned us off yet but I expect to be offline soon - and for a while.

Distinctly odd

My old mate Jaime had his 50th birthday party last Saturday and Maggie and I were invited. The party was in the flat that Jaime shares with his ex girlfriend Pepa in Betera just north of Valencia city.

There were about a dozen people at the party. It started ordinarily enough. People were coming in from all over Spain and most of them had to be picked up from a bus or train station so it took a while before we were all assembled. Most turned up with a bottle in their hand or a gift for Jaime. Plenty of hugs and handshaking. But this is when it started to differ from any party I've ever been to.

Pepa was masterminding the do. She'd sorted the food, the cake, the drinks etc. but, as people settled in they weren't offered a drink, either soft or otherwise. As people stood or sat around chatting there was no music. The food was rolled out and people filled their cardboard plates but the group stayed close to the table - none of that retreating to your favourite perch with a plate stacked high with twiglets and sausage rolls. Wine was poured into our paper cups but when we stopped eating both the food and drink were whisked away. There was no all night nibbling allowed. No more drink was offered and the Spaniards seemed happy to sit there without food, without drink and without music. No thought of dancing, no drunken mates to be helped.

There was a birthday cake, in fact there were two, one from the current girlfriend and one from Pepa. A tense moment. We got a glass of bubbly to lubricate "Happy Birthday" but most of the guests took a swig and then abandoned the rest. That too was tidied away once it had served its purpose. We were offered coffee but not as the signal to find our coats and hats, rather as the customary end to a meal.

Maybe three hours later, after a heated discussion on the abuse of maternity rights and the state of the Nation's youth followed by a quick foot massage the party was suddenly over. Everyone who was going got ready to leave, those of us who were staying began to unpack our jim jams.

Actually by now I wasn't much to do with the party. Unable to keep up with the language I'd been quick enough to down several of those glasses of fake champagne before they disappeared into hyperspace and then I helped myself to a bottle of Scotch and settled into the comfy chair in the corner.

Elections and Information

I'm quite excited by all the electioneering that's going on around me for the local and municipal elections on 27 May. Nonetheless, for one reason or another, I've only got to one public meeting so far.

On Saturday, a friend told me he'd heard the present Mayor was going to hold a meeting, with an English translator, sometime this week.

Whether I agree with this chaps politics or not I was impressed by the initiative and the idea. I thought it would be good to go. To support the idea, to show "we" are interested etc. The problem is finding out where and when it is. No posters, no information in the Town Hall, the Party's office is locked fast (four weeks before polling day!), their phone goes unanswered and they haven't answered my email.