Coo-ee, coo-ee, Mr Shifter, Light refreshment?

The advert that featured the line Coo-ee Mr Shifter was broadcast in 1971. In the Seventies PG, the tea people, not only abused their plantation workers (allegedly) they also abused animals. Chimps dressed in clothes mimicked human actions in a series of TV adverts. Mr Shifter was a piano mover. The idea of workers, workmen, having tea breaks and being offered tea by the home owners where they are working is a part of British culture.

There is a frost on the ground outside our house today as I type. We have two blokes, José Miguel and Manuel his brother, tearing up the old concrete and laying a path between front and back gardens and building a patio.

They started work yesterday. It was cold then too. Maggie asked if they wanted a cup of tea, or as they're continentals, a cup of  coffee. They politely turned it down and waved a bottle of water at her as though that were a suitable alternative.

When I was a Mr Shifter in the furniture shop here and I delivered stuff to British houses a drink - hot or cold depending on the season - was always the first offer. In Spanish houses it wasn't unusual to be given a drink but it was always at the end of the job as the sweat dripped from me. Water was the normal  offer with beer coming a close second. The purpose was different though. In Spain it is for practical reasons - like thirst. For we Britons it is a social custom too.

Driving home

I work in Fortuna. I live in Culebrón - you my have worked that out from the blog title. It's a drive of only 37km and it's not that interesting. But blogs need feeding no matter how mundane the subject matter.

When I leave work, just after eight, it's dark. This will surprise no-one living in the Northern Hemisphere. Fortuna has Christmas lights. Not bad for such a small place on a tight, building bubble hit, budget. The traffic in Fortuna is pretty mad for a village of just under 10,000 population. Cars and vans, or at least their drivers, behave in erratic and unfathomable ways. I'm always relieved when the car and I clear the last set of traffic lights and drive out of the built up area still in one piece.

Sometimes, just by the lights, the Barinas bus, which comes up from Murcia, is pulling out as I get to the stop. We are going to share the route for a few kilometres. Why there is a bus from Murcia to Barinas (population 946) escapes me.

Baños de Fortuna is the first population after Fortuna, it "belongs" to Fortuna. It has a thermal spring, Victorian style hotels and a modern housing estate full of us foreigners. The street lighting peters out just after Baños. The landscape is pretty barren anyway, desert landforms, a bit lunar even. It's a steady climb up to Salado Alto on a road with an 80 kph limit which nobody sticks to. There are a couple of bars and restaurants in Salado. The posher one isn't open in the evening but the bar is. As I pass I often think that the clientele, who stand out in the lit interior Edward Hopper like, look like Brits. Maybe we have a little outpost there.

More of a climb, quite a steep climb, on a road that snakes to just the right degree to be able to enjoy cutting the apexes of the curves. Soon after cresting the top of the climb there is the Repsol garage on the left just by the junction where the bus will turn right to Barinas. The petrol station is pretty brightly lit but the light always seems a bit feeble set amidst the blackness of the Murcian countryside. There's a bar by the side of the petrol station too. They do a set meal at lunchtime for either 6€ or 7€.

Bit of level running, sharp right hander and climbing again up towards Algorrobo which means Carob tree. It's one of those roads with three lanes so that you can overtake the heavy heaving lorries. To be honest with the amount of traffic that there is on the RM 422 road it's hardly ever necessary.

We're on the level for a while now. In fact I think there's even a touch of downhill just before some incredibly bright street lights and a signpost which says that the single row of houses is called Los Fernandos. Still on the level but then a bit of a hill with Cañada de la Leña off to the right (Firewood Drove) and Cañada del Trigo (Wheat Drove) to the left. On the Trigo turn there's a cement works or gravel processing plant that paints the nearby landscape with dust and shines out in the dark.

Over to the right we can make out the huge lighting rigs that illuminate the largest open cast quarry in Europe at Monte Coto. We're still in Murcia but the quarry is in Alicante. Sometimes when the cloud is low it can look quite demonic. The road is flat and level again before one more hill that crests out by the Volver Bodega. We've just crossed into Alicante and the RM 422 has become the CV 836. The letters show they are regional roads - CV for the Valencian Community and RM for the Region of Murcia

The road drops down from the bodega towards Rodriguillo, one of the villages that makes up Pinoso. A quick zigzag to go through a couple of roundabouts and out past the garden centre and up the slope into Pinoso. Pass the cemetery and now we're in Pinoso proper. 50 kph speed restriction with the Co-operative bodega to the left and the marble and wine museum, tourist office and sports centre to the right. Into town with some splendid Christmas decorations twinkling away for now. There's a new bar to the right too - it opened about a week ago. It's owned by a German chap.

Only a right on the Badén and then out on the Monóvar road to get to our house in Culebrón. Fortuna is at 198 metres above sea level and Pinoso is at 474 so we've only climbed 276 metres or 905 feet but it's usually good for knocking off around 3ºC from the temperature. The car is nice and warm but it's not so warm as I step into the fresh air to open the gate. Good to be home though. Time to get the kettle on.

Choose your weapon

Well over thirty years ago, closer to forty, I had a job working in the Lake District doing things like building dry stone walls, getting rid of invasive species in woodland and building paths. It was a job creation scheme so we eschewed machinery. Why use a JCB to dig a ditch - better to employ twenty lads with shovels. We had chain saws but I didn't like them. I didn't like the way they jumped in the air at start up or bounced against the wood as you began. Visions of severed limbs danced before my eyes. Better a big axe or a sledge hammer. For some reason a vision of my foot cleaved asunder must be beyond my imagination. I've continued to prefer hand tools. In fact I didn't buy an electric drill (though I've borrowed several) until about two years ago. 

In inland Alicante it gets cold. I've mentioned this before, several times before.  Indeed it is one of our main concerns from December to April. Keeping warm inside. Outside is fine. Pleasant. Inside though it's Hell's freezer.

Rural Spain in winter smells of woodsmoke. Nearly everyone in the countryside has a fireplace though I'm always amazed at the number of Spaniards who seem not to notice that it's freezing and sit around in completely unheated homes apparently out of choice. And in those fireplaces we burn wood. Some houses have open fires and some have wood burners, the ones with doors, the cast iron ones being better than the sheet steel ones. Maybe better heeled residents have the upmarket pellet burners.

We have a woodburner but it had to be small to fit into the fireplace we inherited and we didn't upgrade to a larger model when we got a new fireplace and chimney to complement our new roof. The stove heats the living room nicely but it will only take shortish bits of wood which means that any wood that goes in it has to be the right sort of length and girth. Wood never comes in stove sized chunks even when we pay good money to buy some from a supplier. Some is OK but the majority needs sawing, hacking or smashing to size.

I used an axe when we first got here. This involved a lot of protective clothing as wood splinters and flying bits of wood attempted to gouge out my eyes. I spent the winter covered in bruises lots of them on my forehead. I broke two axes before I decided this was a complete waste of time and went back to calor gas type heaters running off gas bottles. But for some reason this year a small pile of wood that we had at the back of the house attracted Maggie's attention and we had a fire in the woodburner. That supply didn't last long so I cut up lots of other bits of wood that we had around. Old bed bases, wooden palettes. The detritus of country living. But then there were only quite hefty logs left.

In the local ironmongers we asked about hatchets and axes and we were directed to a large sledge hammer with a blade on one side. Brilliant for opening (i.e. splitting) logs said the shop owner. He was a liar. I asked later, in another shop, about an axe but 50€ seemed a bit steep especially as I'd had trouble with the handles breaking in the past so I didn't buy one. The sledge hammer bounced off the logs. Wedges said our pals as we talked wood cutting over Saturday morning coffee. The huge car boot sale organised by the TIM magazine over at Salinas on Sunday provided me with two steel wedges in return for a wedge of cash. Cutting wood seems to be an expensive business.

The wedges and sledge hammer work well. I may well break my back splitting the logs or have a heart attack with the effort but at least I've not been reduced to buying one of those nasty chain saws or even worse ordering some ready cut stuff from the "leña man."

Centro de interpretación Casa del Mármol y del Vino

It was, I think, called the Wine Resource Centre - well it wasn't because it's name was in Valenciá - but now it is called Centro de Interpretación Casa del Marmól y del Vino - The Sociocultural Institution for the Interpretation of Marble and Wine. Casa doesn't translate easily in this context. Even then you think they could have worked on something snappier. Perhaps the reason they haven't got around to giving the exhibit a new sign is that they are going to need quite a big board to fit all those words on. The idea had been talked about for quite a long time but the actual implementation seemed to happen with remarkable speed. Perhaps funding had to be spent to a timetable or somesuch. Perhaps that's why there is no sign.

The idea of a celebration of wine and marble is a perfectly reasonable thing to do in Pinoso where the two are big economic activities. Marble is the biggest moneyspinner in the town by far because of the huge open cast quarry. It's owned by Pinoso but generally hidden from view behind Monte Coto mountain. It's the village on the other side of the hill that gets the blighted view, the noise and the dust in return for very little economic benefit. Wine of course has been important in the area for centuries. We try to reflect that importance in our own house.

With funding from Levantina, one of the big stone companies that quarries the marble, and a bit more from Pinoso Town Hall for the wine exhibits we now have the Interpretstion Centre in this building that used to be used for occasional exhibitions, book launches and lots of meetings.

The new venture opened last week but we took until today to get there. The man who looks after the building showed us around the whole thing. It's not that big to be brutally honest and, even if you took the time to read all the information presented in Castillian, Valencian and very acceptable English, you could probably do it in twenty minutes  Our guide made it a much lengthier affair but we also got a lot more information and probably someone else to say hello to as we walk around the town.

My personal favourite was the video that went with the wine exhibition. It showed a family out picking the grapes and loading them into the trailer behind a tractor. Not a lot of rush about the process. Time to stop to eat and to drink wine from a wineskin whilst the background music provided the right sort of mood. It reminded me of the film that goes with Video Games by Lana del Rey if you know it. In the marble exhibits the quotes from locals were what I liked best - such as the advice from a mother to her children - if you hear the sound of the charges being set you go and hide!

Nice little addition to what Pinoso has to offer. I hope it attracts a few more visitors. There was nobody else to look around with us today and I guessed we had been the only visitors all morning. Mind you it will probably help when they get a sign. At the moment, only we locals know it's there.

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Para abrir una cantera hasta la década de los cincuenta era necesario un cabrestante, cable, dos grapas, ocho o diez picos, dos mazas, diez o doce cuñas con sus flejes y, muy importante una escuadra para que el bloque estuviera a escuadra y poco a poco se iba comprando otros.

Rather reassuring

It's not Christmas in Spain yet. Not by a long chalk. No lights or trees in the streets. But today, in our house, it suddenly became Christmastime. True we've done a couple of subtle things before today but not so as you'd notice. We bought our lottery tickets for el Gordo Christmas lottery, we finished our Christmas cards in the last couple of days and I bought some more figures for our nativity scene a while ago.

This nativity thing is a personal sort of crusade. A couple of years ago I spent a fair bit of cash on some hand crafted figures for our Belén. The idea was to be a little Spanish and start adding to the nativity scene every year. The marginalised poor in the shepherds one year then the kings to represent the different continents, the wealthy and so on. It didn't go to plan because Christmas was cancelled last year by Maggie's absence in Qatar and our consequent meeting in Sri Lanka. It wasn't worth putting up the tree or the lights in Culebrón  as I avoided the perishing cold of interior Alicante for the much milder climate of La Unión. No tree, no lights, no Christmas food and no new figures. This year though Christmas is on so I got down to the Regional Artisan Centre in Murcia city and handed over 90€ for some kings. Poor people, the shepherds, are good but you never go wrong buying the rich.

The cards were interesting, Well sort of dully interesting. We bought some charity cards from Corte Inglés when we were in Murcia weeks ago but we needed more. Not many cards to be had in Pinoso but one of the local tobacconists had two packets. There were maybe fifty cards and we bought thirty of them. The shop owners were amazed. We explained about the old tradition of sending cards to people we hadn't spoken to for years, about sending cards to addresses that we were pretty sure were no longer correct and about sending cards to people who may well be dead. Nice tradition though - with a different quality to Facebook or email. I love getting cards.

But today we buckled down. It was wreath on the door, Chinese shop Westward leading star with a comet like tail of flashing LEDs fastened to the outside of the house and the tree. 

The tree we got in Huntingdon from Woolworths maybe sixteen or seventeen years ago now. It was bought to grow old along with us. Every time we drag it out of the scruffy box and attach the same wesleybobs (glass baubles to you unless you're old and from West Yorkshire) I always think what a good choice it was. Bit of a change with the tree this year through. We had to change its location because of some furniture changes since Christmas 2012. I took the change in my stride though because I was buoyed up by the inevitability of it all. A nice fino sherry to start then whisky (though I can no longer afford a decent Islay and have to do with blended) helped the process along. Nat King Cole roasting chestnuts on an open fire then a choir from Kings. Como siempre - as always. 

It had been the same outside. There were a series of hooks for the lights, the string on the wreath was the right length to hang it dead centre and the correct height on the door. In truth I'm not a big fan of Christmas. Lot of fuss about nothing in my humble but I do find, as my remaining time shortens, that whereas, in the past, I disliked the annual sameness of the process I now value at least one part of the inevitability of it all. And that part was today.

Secret Wine Spain

Maggie likes wine. It's no secret. She likes a good Rioja and she likes Ribera del Duero too. But Maggie thinks it's very unfair that so few people recognise the quality of some of our local wine particularly the product from the Jumilla wine region.

Jumilla shares a border with Pinoso so it's very local. We also share a border with Yecla which has a separate quality mark for its wine and, of course, we are in Alicante which produces some excellent wine too. We even have a small bodega in Culebrón village. There are lots of bodegas to visit but some tours and some wine are better than others.

Maggie likes to eat out. She can wax lyrical about some of the local food though she can also be disparaging about the chop and chips menus of so many places. You have to know where to go she says. You need local knowledge.

Maggie says that we have some breathtaking scenery around here. I can't disagree. Sometimes just driving up from La Romana or over to Yecla I just break into a big grin as I watch the landscapes pass. Staying here can be a treat but knowing where is more difficult.

So Maggie had an idea. Maybe she could help people to appreciate our local wine, our local food and our local scenery. So Secret Wine Spain was born. It's a work still in progress as Maggie comes to grips with marketing, website building and blogging but if you fancy a tailor made wine tour in Murcia or Alicante then Maggie's your woman.

Food collection

One of those Christmassy things I do is to buy whatever it is that the "A toy, a dream" - Un juguete una ilusión campaign is selling. For years now it's been a biro but when we first got here I remember it was a spinning top. The idea is you pay over the odds for the thing and the extra money gets turned into toys. In the first place those toys were shipped to poor children in South America and Africa - you know the sort of countries, the ones with names you just about recognise but you'd be hard pressed to point at on a blank map. Places like Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Burkina Faso, the Dominican Republic or Guatemala. Last year, for the first time, toys were also handed out, via the Red Cross, to children in Spain.

The headline is that one of every five people living in Spain lives in the shadow of poverty - in poverty or at risk of poverty. Now I have no idea how somebody has decided what poverty is. Is it getting fewer than so many calories to eat or not having a Play Station? I'm even less convinced about the "at risk" label. I always wondered if people at risk of offending included me. After all it's almost certain that when I take my car out I'll break one or more traffic rules, I will offend, even if only briefly. I'm not, though, a harbinger of the ultimate breakdown of the established order.

Whatever the definition is, however sociologists and politicians argue it and whatever your average bigot says I do know that I see a lot of people digging about with sticks in the rubbish containers in the streets, I know I see people with cart loads of waste cardboard on trailers on the back of their bikes to weigh in and I do know that the stories of ordinary people losing their homes and going hungry are everywhere.

There was an article on the news about the food banks. They collect food from individuals, from producers, from retailers, from supporters of every shape, size and hue. The food is channeled through NGOs to people who need it through food parcels, community canteens and the like.

Maggie noticed the news item. To me it was old news. I gave a lot of rice, pasta, oil and canned stuff away last year - even my pal Carlos tried collecting food in the place he worked. So it was like buying the pen for the toys. Normal. I thought about it though. Maggie was away in Qatar last Christmas so to her it was a new phenomenon in Spain. This is not collecting food principally for homeless people or those living in shelters but for the ordinary working man and woman. Your everyday Joe fallen on hard times with no job, with an inflated mortgage from the building boom, whose dole payments have run out, where the family members who were providing informal support now find themselves hard pressed too after losing their own jobs or with the parental savings exhausted.

So we were in the Mercadona supermarket. There were people there wearing waistcoats to identify them as volunteers collecting food. They were sorting the food into big containers - oil in this one, canned goods here etc. The containers were on palettes. An industrial scale operation. They had plastic bags to hand out for shoppers to collect the stuff in. Our bag was ripped and as Maggie paid the bill I cradled it over to the collectors. Maggie was cross with me. She'd paid but I had handed the goods over.

It would be better if people weren't poor. It would be better if the state looked after its people but in the meantime volunteers in supermarkets it is.

Nothing in particular

It's raining. It's rained quite a lot in the last couple of weeks. We've forgotten all about the drought which lasted from last winter through to a few weeks ago. Usually, though not today, it rains overnight which is very civilised. I can't pretend that it's warm but it isn't cold either - at least not outside. Generally we're into the mid to high teens during the day but with sun and blue skies so it feels pleasantly warm. Overnight we're down at 7ºC or 8ºC maybe. I expect it will turn cold in December, it usually does. The pile of leaves that have just started to clog our drive suggest that Autumn has finally arrived. And its getting dark just after six in the afternoon. Considering it will start to get lighter again just before Christmas that's not too bad. So outside, in the fresh air everything is as it should be. Inside the house of course it's miserable. On the front page of today's Alicante paper there's a headline which says that nearly half of the houses in Alicante province lack any form of insulation against sound, heat or cold. This statistical information is tied in to the introduction of energy efficiency certificates for dwellings a while ago. In our house the little windows, designed to keep out the beating sun of summer make our rooms dismal in winter and the uninsulated house with tiled floors, painted walls and badly fitting doors make it exactly the opposite of cosy. With the log burner alight the living room has been lovely and warm but all the adjoining rooms have a cold, musty feel. Getting into bed is quite unpleasant until you stop shivering.

In the news, corruption stories are everywhere. The health minister resigned this week. She was mentioned by a judge as being the direct recipient of goods bought with her husband's dodgy money. I heard lots of comments that it was like making the poor thing resign for having eaten poached game when she didn't know it was poached. Hmm. The same judge said the ruling PP or Conservative party had benefitted directly from dodgy funding but the health minister's boss, the national president, forgot about that when he stood up in parliament and said that corruption was not endemic. The last three PP party treasurers have all been in court, one is on remand and that one has accused the current president of taking illegal payments. I wouldn't like to give the idea that only the PP have their fingers in the till. Certainly on percentages they come out top but, down in Andalucia, there's a huge corruption deal about suspect redundancy notices which implicates two past PSOE or Socialist party presidents. And the independents don't want to miss out either. In Cataluña an almost mythical ex leader turns out to have a stash in Andorra and there was a case of illegal party funding a while ago that another key political figure somehow seemed to sidestep.

Back to our national president; he's a very strange president. Earlier this month a couple of million Catalans turned out for an illegal referendum on independence - the national president generally ignored that and sent something akin to the Crown Prosecution Service (if it's still called that) after the regional president for running an illegal poll. So much easier than arranging to talk about it. He's behaving the way I do when I need to talk to someone in Spanish on the phone. Anything to avoid a difficult conversation.

There are close on 2000 politicians currently charged with some level of corruption yet none of the promised anti corruption legislation has got past the committee stage. The politicians don't go easily either. None of them behave like people convicted of crimes. No sackcloth and ashes. Most of them spin out the process for ever with iffy legal arguments and expensive lawyers. The few who have been locked up argue about which prison they'd like. An ex president of one of the regions was in the sort of prison regime where you go home for the weekends and only put on your stripey suit every now and again. When people found out they got a bit indignant so a judge decided to withdraw those privileges. The ex politician appealed the decision. Another ex regional president who has been sentenced to four years in chokey still has body guards and an official looking car and has been asking the Central Government for a pardon - a real live get out of gaol for free card.

Yesterday I got a text message from the General Treasury of the Social Security on my phone to tell me that my petition to become a self employed person had been approved. In the past I've complained about the difficulties that people face who want to set up their own business here. People needed to have a hefty amount of cash behind them in the bank or at least some heavyweight backers willing to cough up if the business went pear shaped. Social security payments were high too with even the smallest business subject to a 260€ minimum payment from the first day of trading and before any tax committment. Anyway, for my new job, my new boss suggested that I should be self employed. This only made sense because now there is a sort of reduced charge sliding scale social security payment scheme starting at around 53€ for the first 6 months and then going 130€, 180€ and finally 260€ after two years. I thought it sounded like a good scheme. An incentive to get people to register and run legal businesses from the start rather than to start illegally and register only when the profits justified it. Nonetheless in my case I thought it sounded a bit flaky and there were plenty of disadvantages as well as advantages but the accountant told me that at least it was all legit. He did all the work. All I had to do was to sign on the dole and hand over some basic ID documentation and he did the rest. Then a text message. Nearly as strange as our president.

Care in the community

There is a district of Pinoso called Santa Catalina and today is Santa Catalina's day, Well it's today if you use the Byzantine calendar or tomorrow if you're on the Latin calendar. So Saint Catherine. The day is celebrated here by lighting bonfires in the street and having an associated "picnic". An efigy of the Saint also starts doing the rounds of people's homes.

When we first moved to Pinoso I went to have a look at the bonfires. Unlike this evening, when it was a very pleasant 13ºC, it was cold back in 2005 and I wore a big black overcoat with gloves and a scarf. Unlike tonight Maggie wasn't with me. I was alone.

A couple of years later I was working at a furniture shop and a new co-worker turned up. She recognised me as the man with the long coat and she told me a story. The people who lived in Santa Catalina didn't trust me. I looked shifty. Maybe their children weren't safe with me around. As I strolled amongst the bonfires a person from one group would keep an eye on me. After a couple of hundred metres at most they would pass the task to the next group and so on. Wherever I went I was being watched until I got in my car and drove away.

Tonight we were offered a bit of something to eat as we strolled around. Much better.

Losing my grip

Manuel looks like an ordinary bloke. He lives in a normal sort of flat in a normal looking working class district of Madrid. His local bar is a few minutes walk from his front door. Times are tough in Spain. A few days before when Antonio, the bar owner, asked Manu if he wanted his usual lottery ticket for the Christmas draw he put it off. He didn't really have the 20€ for the tenth part of a ticket. Now it's the day of the draw. In the bar everyone is celebrating. The bar's number has come up and all the locals are richer. Manuel's wife urges her husband to go to the bar, to congratulate everyone. What's done is done. No good brooding on what might have been. Manuel wraps up against the cold, goes to the bar and pushes through the happy crowd to congratulate Antonio on his luck. Manuel turns down a glass of bubbly and asks for his usual coffee. Job done and in no mood to join in the jollity Manuel asks for the bill. The surprise is that the bill is twenty one euros for the one euro coffee. Antonio kept back a twenty euro ticket for his friend - just in case.

Standing by your pals is what you do in tough times. The annual Christmas advert for the state lottery. A message about not losing hope and about sharing. To be honest I hadn't noticed the ad on the telly because advert time is tea making, toilet or email check time. It was Maggie who pointed it out to me. In turn she'd been told about the advert by her intercambio - the person she does half an hour of English in return for half an hour of Spanish with. I searched it out on YouTube to have a look.

Last year the lottery ad featured a handful of singers and was roundly pilloried and parodied. I had a conversation about it with several of my adult students and with my two intercambios of the time. This year there was a bit of the Manuel Antonio ad that I couldn't make out and I was reduced to messaging one of my Cartagena friends for help with the wording.

It's easy enough to keep up to date in a media way with what's happening here but there is a second sort of news - the stuff that people talk about down the pub or send WhatsApp messages about. Until coming back to Culebrón I'd had access to those conversations through workmates, intercambios and students. Things have changed with my new job. Technically it isn't even a job, I'm now self employed and I sell my services to the language school. That aside the real change has been in the profile of the students. Most are now children or teenagers and only one group of adults has sufficient English to maintain an ordinary conversation. Of the two people I normally work alongside one is as English as me and the other is a teenager herself. Keeping up with the informal news has become a little more difficult.

Half Marathon

Whenever I feel the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away. I always  thought the quote was Chesterton's but apparently most people think it was Twain. In all probability it was Paul Terry, founder of Terrytoons. Whoever first said it I've always thought that it embodied a fundamental truth.

There was a Half Marathon in Pinoso today. To be honest it was a bit of a push for me to get there for the ten o clock start. Sunday morning lie in and all that. Once in town I had a bit of difficulty finding the runners. They didn't seem to be where I expected them to be and the town looked strangely empty with several of the main streets cleared of parked cars. 

There were though people, lots of people, walking along the Badén and most of them were wearing fluorescent clothing. I presumed they had some relationship to the race so I followed them for a while. Then I changed my mind and went to where I thought the start was. I was just in time to bump into hundreds of people sprinting down Paseo de la Constitución. You wouldn't think it was easy to hide 500 runners in a small town would you?

There wasn't much to it as an event. People running or walking wearing shorts and vests and all those brightly coloured sports clothes. Lots of them grasped bottles of water. I took a few snaps. I walked round. One thing that struck me about the event was the camaraderie. There were people on the side of the road cheering the runners and walkers on. "You can do it," "Nearly there," "You're doing brilliantly,"  etc., etc. There were the friends running together urging each other to go faster or just to keep going. Then there were the people who had partnered up for the bulk of the distance but who became deadly rivals as they sprinted the last few metres to the finish only to be reunited by a big grin, a pat on the back or a handshake on the other side of the inflatable finishing post. 

I took a liking to the official whose job it was to separate the runners continuing on the half marathon from those finishing the 10 km race. "Straight on for the half marathon, last lap - turn here, turn here for the 10km finish - you're almost there." But alongside the official message, the essential information, there was a little extra for nearly all the runners - some form of personal encouragement. And he seemed to know at least half of the runners personally. "You're flying Enrique," "Looking good Carmen," "Chin up José." A good man for the job I thought.

Small Spanish towns are good at community stuff. People know each other, people say hello, people have time for others but I rather suspect that Mr Terry and I may have missed at least one of the benefits of exercise.