Holidays on the State

The food tasted horrid. It may really have been horrid but I think it was probably right enough given that it was mass catering. My recentish bouts of radio and chemotherapy have mashed up my taste buds and almost everything tastes odd. In fact until a couple of weeks ago I hadn't tried eating, by putting anything in my mouth, for a bit over three months but, when the oncologist said there was no sign of cancer, it seemed about time to stop messing around and get back to normal. I'm still taking most of my sustenance through a stomach tube though. Whether the food was foul or not it came as part of the package and so, come hell or high water, I was definitely going to force some of it down my gullet. Anyway I'd also promised the nutritionist I'd try. 

Mealtimes, not eating much, I had the opportunity to look around at my fellow travellers. I felt for the few young people who had, mistakenly, booked into the hotel. It was full of holidaying pensioners. Most of us were overweight and a bit doddery. Many of us were rude or at least a bit selfish and unthinking. I'd watch as someone stopped to chat blocking up the narrow aisles between the tables, I'd watch as someone hogged the coffee machine to make just the right mix of coffee and hot milk in blissful ignorance of the ever extending queue behind them. The coffee had, after all to be just right, the wife had been sent for the coffee, the husband expected it just so and the little woman knew her place (presumably at some subservient time during the last century). At least we were the walking wounded, the ones who are still upright. Ah, the delights of old age.

We've just done one of the IMSERSO (Instituto de Mayores y Servicios Sociales) holidays. Eight days away in a hotel in Roquetas del Mar on the Almeria coast for 228.93€ per person. That includes the coach from Alicante to Roquetas, full board and travel insurance including private health cover. The hotel we stayed at was the Hotel Bahia Serena - one of those enormous four star coastal hotels with pools and gyms and entertainment. The photo is of the interior patio of the hotel. 

The Imserso holidays are, essentially, subsidised holidays for pensioners resident in Spain who are enrolled in the Social Security System - there are other groups of people who are eligible too. If you qualify, but your partner doesn't, because they are too young for the scheme, they can also go along. I thought that to be eligible you had to have a Spanish State Pension but English speakers on the same bus as us to Roquetas assured me that wasn't the case. The people we talked to had registered through a travel agent and then used the same travel agent to book them the holidays. Each year there is a period to register and later there is a period to book the holidays. For this season I think that people can register on the scheme through till May (registration opened in November) but the periods seem to change so it's worth checking the Imserso website for up to date information. There is also information there about who qualifies with a points system based on age, income, levels of ability and the like. If you register now it is unlikely that you will be able to book a holiday this season but your eligibility will roll over into the 2025/2026 season.

There are lots of destinations to choose from divided into three categories - coastal holidays, island holidays and short breaks. In our first year of registration we were not able to book the island holidays. I had to wait till the second year. I'm not sure if that's because I didn't have enough points or if it's a general rule for all participants. The main group, the coastal holidays, are along the Mediterranean coast from Cataluña down through Valencia, Murcia and onto Andalucia. There is always a scramble to book up as the new season opens in Autumn. I booked us up online and didn't worry too much about the race to get to the islands. Once we'd found a place that looked OK we considered the job done. There are plenty of people who are hardened Imsersoers. When the booking period opens they hover by their computers with their options well researched. They target what they consider the best deals in the best hotels in the best locations and book multiple holidays. The next time you need Taylor Swift tickets they may be available as subcontractors!

The principal idea behind the scheme is that it helps to maintain the wellbeing of older people who get to relax, to see a bit of Spain and to decrease their potential isolation by mixing with other pensioners in the participating hotels. Philosophy aside it's also a scheme that supports the tourist industry by offering a steady flow of clients in the low season. I think how it works is that the Government guarantees a certain price, for their services, to the airlines, coach firms, hotels etc. Whether the providers sign up or not is a choice for them and their accountants. If, for instance, a hotel decides that there is enough money in the offer they can keep open without having to temporarily lay off staff. 

This was our second Imserso holiday. Last year we went to Cataluña in May when the resort was back in business for the summer but this time, with going in January, the part of Roquetas where the hotel is was, more or less, closed down for the winter and it was a bit desolate. 

I don't remember it as being a particularly difficult process to sign up though going through a travel agent sounds as if it would have been easier. I suppose that, like the hotels, certain travel agents deal with Imserso holidays and others don't. To be honest, I've forgotten a lot of the detail about exactly how I signed up and applied the first time. Nonetheless, like all bureaucratic processes, I'm sure there are slight changes from year to year. That being the case don't take my word for any of this and have a look at the Imserso website if you want to know the truth.

And nobody wears Prada

I was hanging around in the Corte inglés in Alicante the other day. Corte Inglés is a big department store. Like all traditional retailers Corte Inglés has been having a hard time recently but they're still something of a Spanish institution. Anyway, Father Ted like, I, inadvertently, wandered into the women's underwear section. As I averted my eyes, I found myself gazing at small section dedicated to "traditional" clothes from Alicante. I was rather taken with the silk brocade waistcoats but not so much with the 190€ price tag on most of them.

I've often wondered where people get their "traditional" clothes from so Corte Inglés was a bit of a surprise. Maybe all the branches in Provincial Capitals have a "traditional" section. I've asked of course and been variously told that some of the clothes are hired, that there are family heirlooms, that lots are made in family, that there are people who make a living by supplying the clothes and, from time to time, I do see the costumes in shop windows. There used to be a shop in Pinoso, in Plaza Colón, opposite the market that sold fiesta clothes. Down in Murcia, for the Bando de la Huerta celebrations, they move so much "traditional" clothing that you can buy it in the supermarkets.

I've said in the past that the idea of "traditional" dress seems a bit strange to me. (I'm going to give up on the inverted commas now but remember they're there). Who is it who chooses? Who stopped the clock in the 18th or 19th century? Why isn't traditional something from 1945 or 1967 or 2023? And if it were would traditional be what people wear to the office, to a wedding or to do sport?

Probably around 2006 our village, Culebrón, prepared a float for the big parade that is a part of the Pinoso fiesta in August. Culebrón had been promised drains by the PP administration of the time but they were not forthcoming. The float's main feature was an oversized toilet. We were told to try to wear something traditional to accompany the float and that the traditional dress for Culebrón was striped grey trousers or skirt topped off with a white shirt. We did our best.

There's another event in Pinoso which celebrates the liberation of Pinoso from the shackles of Monóvar in 1826. The celebration, called Villazgo, takes place in February. For years it was a great event, nowadays in cash strapped Pinoso it's a pathetic affair held in a car park. I used to buy a newspaper most mornings from a shop called Juanjo and I liked to try and chat to the owner as a way of practising my Spanish. We got talking about Villazgo and Juanjo told me about the typical and traditional form of clothing for men in Pinoso before selling me a sort of smock. Very simple, a big baggy black shirt to be worn with a blue and white neckerchief. He wasn't telling fibs, I know from years and years of experience that it's one of the most common men's outfits for Villazgo. Mine is still unworn. I have never been one for fancy dress and I always think I'd feel like a bit of a fake dressing up as a Spaniard - I was born in Huddersfield after all where cloth caps and clogs might have been more appropriate.

There are several events in Pinoso when people wear something that is called traditional. I often wonder if it's traditional in the way that blokes with bells on their clothes doing clodhopping type dances with clashing sticks on various village greens in England in the guise of Morris dancers or Mummers are, apparently, a part of my heritage. Those Pinoso events include Villazgo. Easter is another. There's a day in the Holy Week celebrations when women process through the streets wearing peinetas and mantillas. You know the sort of thing. Think of a, supposedly, Spanish woman in a 1950s Hollywood film, wearing something that isn't the flouncy fiesta frock. She'll have a high comb stuck into her raven coloured hair to support a very fine lace scarf that hangs around the side of her face and down her back. For most of the time though when the women in Pinoso don traditional dress they'll wear a pleated skirt, called a refajo, which is a huge circle of cloth with a circular, elasticated(?), hole for their waist pleated over and over again and usually in green, red and tonal stripes. It's the sort of skirt that the "carnival queens" wear during the Pinoso fiestas in August but it's also the skirt for the folk dancers.

Another event in the August Fiesta is the ofrenda, the flower offering. People set off from a district called Santa Catalina and parade through the streets to the Parish Church. It's one of my favourite events. The participants smile sufficiently to light up a large city. People from all over the area, even over the border into Murcia, are invited to the ofrenda and the range of traditional clothes is impressive. The contingent from Culebrón always wear those grey trousers or skirts we were told about in our toilet training days. There are blokes in velvet knee breeches and Cordoba style hats, there are women from Alicante dressed in huge silky skirts supported on some sort of scaffolding so typical of the city's San Juan fiesta. As we're in Valencia region it's very difficult not to be aware of the Fallas Fiesta which takes place in March in Valencia City (there are other fallas in other towns too) and even I can tell that there are big differences, as well as seeming similarities, between the women's outfits from Valencia and Alicante. I can't actually remember if either Alicante or Valencia features the breast enhancing bodices but they are also a big part of the ofrenda. To their credit several of our town councillors make a real effort with some splendid traditional clothes in several of these events. Indeed I was thinking of a couple of the waistcoats sported by our current mayor when I was in Corte Inglés.

Mention of the Fallas reminded me of a conversation I had with a friend who was born in Valencia city. She complained that, during the dictatorship, the traditional dress had been discouraged and a sort of Francoist revision of traditional was put in place. I have no idea what the changes were - maybe fewer push up corsets - but she got very hot under the collar about it. She also told me how much her sister had spent on a dress for a recent edition of Fallas - again I forget how much but it made me blanche at the time.

Anyway. So I thought, there's a blog here about the differences that there are between traditional Pinoso and, similar but different, in Monóvar (next town down the road) or Yecla (across the frontier into Murcia). In fact someone told me that the stripes on the refajo skirts are horizontal, as against vertical, in one or the other. I was lying in bed thinking about it. I decided that books, as against the Internet, would probably be a good source of information. 

I went to the library where Clara, the librarian/archivist was extremely generous with her time (and forgiving of my Spanish) as she told me about the local traditional clothes. Basically what she said was that traditional was a load of tosh. That the clothes worn came from a range of periods and the differences between an outfit in one place and another was that one town was doing the equivalent of featuring the 1960s mini skirt whilst another had chosen to highlight the 1970s catsuit (not literally you understand but figuratively) or that two towns had chosen the same basic period but one was stressing Sunday best while the other had gone with working in the fields. Add in a bit of similarity, or variety, because of the seasonal nature of the clothes, the climate they were designed for, the materials they were made of, whether the clothes were made by Balenciaga for a rich landowner or came from Stradivarius for a factory worker and lots of other sensible and obvious factors.

It was a very informative session and I borrowed a couple of books and got to see several reference books with old pictures of the area (sometimes with Clara pointing out her mum or grandma in some grainy B&W photo) but it didn't help me write the definitive guide to traditional dress in Pinoso. Maybe when I've read the books!

Fun for this year

There are lot of strange fiestas in Spain. Every now and then I'll see some article or read a report about this or that event where everyone throws paint at a man dressed as a clown/harlequin for either attempting to steal/failing to steal a religious icon in Guadix and Baeza (Cascamorras), where a man, also dressed as a clown/harlequin, jumps over babies each Corpus Christi in Castrillo de Murcia, in Burgos (El Colacho), where devils capture saints with the intention of burning then to death if they are not sidetracked into climbing onto the balconies of fair maidens with rape in their minds (La Santantonà in Forcall), where six open coffins, with live occupants, are paraded around a church and its cemetery to musical accompaniment in Las Nieves, Galicia (Fiesta de Santa Marta de Ribarteme) or where giant puppets, skeletons and knights Templar parade through the torchlit streets of Soria (Las Ánimas). Once upon a time any list of odd festivals would include the takeover of the town of Ibi and the resulting egg, flour and firework fight (els Farinats) but Health and Safety has turned that into a shadow of its former self.  There are tens if not hundreds more but even I can recognise when a list is getting too long.

Nonetheless, if I come across some fiesta that sounds promising, even if it's kilometres away, I'll log it away in my diary with a note to myself to check out the dates and details closer to the time. My hope is that there'll be something a bit different to take snaps of. The trouble is that I've done most within spitting distance and there is a certain reluctance on behalf of my long suffering partner to spend a fortune on a couple of nights away to see the symbolic bear hunt at La Vijanera in Silió in Cantabria or to see people rafting down the river in Nargó in Lleida. Anyway the years are taking their toll and I'm getting too old or too lazy to drive off to the far corners of Spain to fight crowds of young men to get an out of focus photo of some pagan ritual hijacked by the Catholic Church.

January is a good time for fiestas. Lots of the San Antón festivals are pretty lively and usually involve animals and/or fire. One I went to last year in Vilanova d'Alcolea was a real hoot. It was described as a perfect symbiosis between animals and fire and there was mention of a procession, with horses, passing through all the town's streets, jumping over bonfires along the route. What the description didn't say was that those horses drove the crowd before them in narrow streets ablaze with brushwood in a scene as infernal as any ever envisioned in a doom painting with souls cast into the fiery pit of Hell. At one point I was quite convinced I was going to die in flames. Quite a few of the local San Antón events are much gentler though.

Anyway my diary said I should check an event in Piornal. I had no idea where Piornal was though it turns out that it's in Extremadura, in Caceres, which is a long way from Culebrón. I didn't know what it was about, nor when it was, it's on January 19th and 20th this year and as I'm already booked up for those dates I thought I'd let you know so you could pop over there yourself and maybe get involved if you fancied it.

The fiesta is called Jarramplas and it represents the punishment of a cattle thief who is being driven out of the village. Jarramplas is the name of the character, a man dressed in a coat covered in multi-coloured ribbons, so that he looks like he's wearing one of those rag carpets that were still common in my youth. He wears a conical full face mask with a big nose and two horns sprout from the mask. He parades through the town beating a small drum and people throw things at him; in the past it was any old vegetable but, nowadays, they pelt him with turnips, well small root vegetable called nabos actually. No doubt thanks to the nanny state the 21st Century costume conceals a steel armour undergarment to ensure that Jarramplas isn't killed. You'd think they'd have trouble finding people to take on the role but there are, apparently, enough people willing to brave the volleys of turnips till 2048. Obviously, being Spain, there's a saint, Sebastian, linked to this festival and as well as turnip heaving there are lots of other events in the two days from Saint dressing and foot kissing to a communal meal of migas (we are in Extremadura after all).

No, seriously, Spain really is full of colourful and interesting fiestas and it doesn't take much hunting to find something well worth gawping at. Nearly all the local town halls have Facebook pages where they publicise their fiestas. Now I'm feeling a bit better I'm going to get back into it and see if I can't find something new and fun to point my camera at.

Last year's weather, and some context

The local Medios de Counicación recently published Capito's analysis of the annual data from the weather station in Pinoso for 2024. It's in Valenciano, so I may have got some things wrong. I missed out a couple of details on purpose. I may have missed others by mistake. 

Capi Gonzálvez Poveda, Capito, taught in Pinoso for years and he still runs the local weather stations one of which forms part of the AEMET, the National Weather Service's, network.

So, the maximum temperature was 41°C on 3 July, and the minimum was -2.5°C on 21 December. 

We received 256 litres of rain during the year,  the rainiest day was 11 June, with 41 litres. 

The windiest day was 8 June, when the wind blew at 75 km/h. 

The day with the highest minimum temperature was 16 July, when the temperature didn't drop below 23°C. 

The day with the lowest maximum temperature was 11 December, when the temperature didn't exceed 9.5°C.

There was rain on 55 days, it dropped below freezing on 20 days, there were 29 misty days, no days with hail, and no days with snow; there were thunderstorms on 5 days. 

It was sunny and clear on 152 days, sunny with some cloud on 163 days, cloudy on 42 days, and overcast on 9 days.

They also printed the composite analysis for the 32 years from 1990 to 2021, so here are a few figures for comparison:

The maximum temperature was 44°C on 10 August 2012; the minimum was -11°C on 29 January 2006.

The day with the highest minimum temperature was 18 July 2005, when the temperature didn't drop below 25°C.

The day with the lowest maximum temperature was 28 January 2006, when the temperature didn't exceed 0°C.

Over the 32 years, the averages were rainy on 52 days, sunny and clear on 181 days, sunny with some cloud on 114 days, cloudy on 48 days, and overcast on 22 days.

The same old chestnut

Sometimes I think my Spanish is OK. Other times, I despair. Most of the time, when I have a longer session speaking Spanish, despair is the overriding sensation. 

Right at the beginning, it was verb tables, pronunciation, grammar, trying to understand the structure and learning vocabulary. Even today I try to find a few minutes a day to read through my vocabulary books. Every now and again, as I stumble over some verb tense in a real-world conversation, I go back and have a bit of a read through those verb tables or something on object and subject pronouns because I seem to be a little confused. It amazes me how difficult it is to retain some of the basic grammar, learned vocabulary or phrases after all these years.

My Spanish is miles better than it was when I got here, but it's still terribly pidgin. The only place where I still can fall completely apart is on the phone; but even there I generally manage to scrape through nowadays. In general, in a normal sort of conversation, I do fine. I've had no trouble at all dealing with my cancer treatment and my stays in hospital in Spanish. If someone tries to speak to me in broken English—as they do from time to time—I just plough on in Spanish; giving way simply confirms my inability. Only if the Spaniard I'm talking to turns out to be a fluent English speaker, and very few are, do I yield and speak English.

I went to have a natter with my pal Jesús last week. It was the first time for quite a while and we've been on and off for years now. The original idea was that we'd do a bit of an exchange; an intercambio. We'd talk for a while in English and for a while in Castilian. To be honest, Jesús has never shown much aptitude for English; he finds the sounds almost impossible to imitate, and I don't think it was ever a serious proposition, but we've continued to meet over a coffee for ages now. There have been plenty of missed sessions, and, with being ill recently, I'd more or less given up. When we met this time we spoke not a word of English. We nattered about everything from politics to the cost of the bus fare up to Barcelona. I'm very happy that I can do that, hold a conversation in another language, but to be honest, after 20 years here, I should be able to. I was also, as always, appalled at the deficiencies in my control of the language. As I pound out a spurious version of Spanish I can hear the half-formed sentences, the wrong vocabulary, the mispronunciation and stumbling over certain words, the repeated errors and the strange phrasing.

Recently I've gone back to taking some online classes after a hiatus of a few months. To call them classes is a misnomer. I haven't done a Spanish class for maybe twelve or thirteen years now but I've never stopped slogging away at trying to improve. For instance I've read 45 books this year and thirty-six of them have been in Spanish. I still listen to the Notes in Spanish podcasts/videos and have a few radio programmes which I listen to as catch-up podcasts that cover everything from an "on this day" history programme to an arts magazine and a series of historical, political and topical documentaries. I listen to morning news programme on the radio and it's unusual for us to miss at least one of the TV news bulletins either at 3pm or 9pm. There's more: Spanish is all around us and if it's simply listening to Spanish music or seeing Spanish-language films at the cinema then I'll do that too.

I do a couple of things online too. I use a platform called italki. The basic idea is that I connect with someone via a video call and pay them to talk to me in Spanish. I like to persuade myself that real conversations are my best chance of improving because they are realistic and jump from topic to topic with lots of asides thrown in. Quite unlike those fake sessions about the environment or eating out so beloved by language tutors. I like the online sessions (italki just happens to be the one I bumped into) because it's both impersonal and personal at the same time. I often feel like I'm getting to know a lot about the tutors; they will express political leanings; they will tell you about their family, about things they've done and places they've been but, at the same time, they are just figures on a screen.

The online system makes it very easy to use them for my own ends. Unlike a class where you pay for twelve sessions on a Tuesday at 7:30 in the evening (or whatever), I pay for the sessions as I please and I can shop around for what I consider to be a good price per hour. I try a new tutor; if they're racist, if we don't click, if they talk too much, if I don't like their style or if they want to follow notes or introduce exercises—I simply don't buy another session off them. If I want to change the time or day from this week to next week, I usually can so they have to fit around my schedule rather than me around theirs. It's the same with holidays and the like; if I want to go to the theatre and they only have slots that clash with my theatre visit I forget about them for that week. I don't have to drive anywhere and if the session starts at half past I don't need to think about it till twenty five past. The tutors might have all the disadvantages of the gig economy but not me. I can go to another tutor or forget it for that week. If I want to talk to someone five times in one week or if I want to talk to someone for three hours on the trot or if I want to talk to five different tutors in the same week I can. And if I suddenly stop I don't need to tell them why.

After nearly every online session, I get very angry with myself. In the conversation I had yesterday with Omar, in Galicia, we talked about dubbing films into Spanish and the different ways of dealing with cultural differences in the subtitles and about the markup on cinema popcorn before we wandered onto something about why official Spanish correspondence is so stultifyingly boring. It turns out that he and I have completely different ideas on the need for clear language by the way. That might sound pretty good but I've learned several strategies over the years for making those conversations seem more fluid than they really are. The main one is to lock onto one thing in the affirmations or responses coming from the other person and responding to that. It helps to give the impression that I understood everything when, in fact, I missed most of it. I also have quite a wide vocabulary and that makes me sound more fluent than I am. The truth is though that I'm often reduced to a list of words bound together with inappropriate and random verb tenses while I continually mix genders and almost never use idiomatic expressions be they single-word interjections or those stock phrases that we all pepper our own language with.

As well as the italki I do something similar online with exchange sessions except there the commitment is more regular. I'm not sure whether Manuel found me or if I found him but we met through some online intercambio system. We have a set time and we are pretty strict about half an hour in English and half an hour in Spanish in each section. If we can't make the session then we are pals enough to say so; we simply tell each other via WhatsApp that we have a birthday party or a funeral when we should be nattering so we put it off. I think we've almost become friends and if we were ever actually to meet in person we wouldn't be starting from scratch.

Given all these inputs, I can only think that I must be a bit of a slow learner still having problems—but such is life, I suppose. Some people pick things up easily while others slog away without gaining much traction.

Fit to drive

My Spanish driving licence includes the category to drive small lorries and big vans. I almost never drive small lorries or big vans, the last time was to help a pal move from London to Edinburgh and that was last century. I'm loathe to lose the right though. I justify the expense because my sister and brother in law have a motorhome that requires such a licence. I know their insurance company won't let me anywhere close to it but I self deceive myself that there is some need to keep those classes current. 

In Spain, there is a legal difference between professional and non-professional drivers. Professional drivers, like professional vehicles, are subject to tighter restrictions and more frequent testing than non-professional drivers and vehicles. This means there are differences in the renewal periods for driving licences. In my case, for instance, as an amateur, my car licence lasted 10 years until I became 65 years old, and then, as the curvature of my spine increased, the validity reduced from 10 to 5 years. For the slightly larger vehicle categories on my licence, the renewal period changed from 5 years to 3 years as I passed that milestone birthday. 

A significant UK/Spain difference, unless things have changed in the UK, is that renewing the licence here involves a sort of health check—it's supposed to assess your coordination and your mental and physical aptitude to drive. Once you have passed the initial test (or, as in my case, exchanged a UK licence for a Spanish one), there is no need to retake the practical or theoretical parts of the driving test at licence renewal time but you do have to prove that you are fit to drive by passing a "psychophysical aptitude test". You can go to any licensed CRCs (Centros de Reconocimiento de Conductores), which are dotted around Spain. We have two in Pinoso.

I have never had the least difficulty passing the range of tests for renewing my licence so, when, a couple of weeks ago, the traffic people sent me a message to say that I could renew my licence from such and such a date, I just popped into the office without considering the consequences of my not passing. 

The first thing was, as I went into the building, that I met someone coming out whom I first met years ago in a Spanish class. We were chatting in the doorway of the office. The woman who does the tests understood enough of our overheard conversation in English to pull him back. He'd told me he'd had an eye operation and no longer needed to wear corrective lenses (glasses or contacts). His licence said that he did so, if he'd been stopped by the Guardia Civil, he might have needed to explain why he wasn't wearing specs or lenses. She changed his licence accordingly. She also heard me mention that I'd had cancer, so I was told I needed something from my oncologist to say he saw no reason for the cancer treatment to affect my driving. I had to do that before I could take the actual tests.

I think I've done these tests four, maybe five times now. I've certainly done them in Pinoso at the same place the last three times. The process has never been quite the same; at each visit there are slightly different questions and tests. There are reflex and a coordination tests using computer graphics that make the original Space Invaders (Google it) look sophisticated. When you go "off track," there's a beep to warn you. I could have sworn that the device was on constant beep. Then there was an eye test; the administrator pointed to a line of letters. It was the one below the one I could read easily. "No worries," she said, "that's good enough, but maybe you should go to the optician for a check up." Last time, I'm sure they just asked me to read something on a distant wall. It was similar with the hearing test; I had to sit in a soundproof box, put on headphones, and press a button when I heard a beep. I have no idea what percentage of the beeps I heard, but she said my hearing was okay. I know it has worsened considerably because of cancer treatment. It was only as I listened for the beeps that I suddenly realised that a failure might endanger my "ordinary" car licence, which was valid until 2027 (on the new licence it will be valid till 2030). I also wondered if the C and C1 classes were, maybe, a bit stricter and had been designed for "professional" drivers.

Anyway, after being freed from the soundproof cabin—having answered truthfully that I had not drunk any alcohol for months—all seemed well. She took my photo for the new licence and gave me a bit of paper which allows me to drive in Spain for six months. She also returned my current, plastic licence, even though the computerised application has the effect of instantly cancelling the old licence on the DGT (the traffic authorities) system. As she did so, she mentioned that licences are usually replaced —even in worst-case scenarios—in under three months. 

Because I was writing this I just checked and the application on my mobile phone from the DGT (MiDGT) has already updated so, if I were to be stopped I have both my driving licence and the car documentation on me to prove that everything is legal. 

The State Christmas Lottery

I wasn't going to do this, I've done it so many times before, then I had a conversation. So I thought why not?

If you're going to win the El Sorteo Extraordinario de Navidad, the big Christmas State Lottery, el Gordo, on 22 December, an absolutely essential first step to becoming temporarily wealthy, is to get hold of a lottery ticket. If you don't have a ticket your chances of winning are nil. For most people that means buying one. I should qualify that. It's much more likely that you'll buy a tenth of a lottery ticket, a décimo, and with that you have the chance of winning 400,000€. 

If you were to buy a full ticket from one of the State Lottery Outlets, Loterías y Apuestas del Estado (like the one a few doors down from the Consum supermarket in Pinoso) it would cost you 200€. That's why most people don't. Instead they buy a tenth of a ticket for 20€. The big prize, el Gordo, the fat one, is worth 4 million euros for the full ticket or 400,000€ for the typical 20€ stake. Obviously that's before the tax people take their cut. Often you will see decimos on sale in bars and the like. Should you decide to buy your lottery ticket from there you're likely to end up paying 23€. Typically the bar is selling the décimos at 3€ over the odds on behalf of some "worthy" cause.

So each of the décimos has five numbers. The numbers start at 00000 and go on to 99999. There are 193 series of tickets. This means that each number, let's take an example 75045, will be repeated 193 times. 75045 series 1, 75045 series 2 and so on. That's why there are, possibly, 193 winning tickets. Remembering that each ticket is sold in tenths, there are, potentially, 1,930 winning décimos. 

In these days of huge jackpots I suppose that 400,000€ sounds like a mere bagatelle. The big difference is that if all the décimos of a particular number were sold, there would be 1,930 winners and that amounts to a whopping 772 million Euros payout.

There is a tendency amongst groups of Spaniards to buy the same number. The group might be a family - Granny buys two full tickets made up of 20 décimos to hand out to her brothers, sisters, sons, daughters etc. as a bit of a Christmas stocking filler. If the number comes up then each of those relatives will be 400,000€ better off. If it's a factory the car park will soon be full of new BMWs and, if it's a school parent teachers association (AMPA), then the school community will be full of joyful parents and teachers. When the number of the Culebrón village neighbourhood association comes up, on Sunday, we Culebreneros will be splashing the cava around willy nilly. Generally people simply choose from the tickets on display looking for one that ends in their lucky number, includes their birthday etc., but it is possible, online, to see if a particular number, your postcode for instance, is available. 

The tickets are all sold by the different "administraciones", the State Lottery Shops even if they end up with the local pigeon fanciers group or synchronised swimmers fan club. The numbers are allocated randomly to the different administraciones around the country. So the same number may be sold in Alicante, Astorga and Avila or that number may nearly all be sold in some village in Andalucía. 

Certain administraciones have a reputation for being lucky, though actually it's simply a numbers game. If people believe that the Doña Manolita administración, in Madrid, is going to sell the winner, more people will buy their décimos there. The volume of sales means there is a better chance that the winner will come from that administración. It doesn't stop people queuing for hours outside the famous offices though.

How the winning numbers are chosen is also very individual - none of this combining individual digits to get the winning number. There are two enormous "bombos" like those globe-shaped things that you get in a home bingo game to spit out the numbers. In one of the bombos there are all the numbers that are on the individual tickets, that's 100,000 individual numbers. So there is a ball that reads 00000 and another that reads 99999 and there are all the numbers in between. In a smaller bombo alongside there are 1,807 balls each one inscribed with a cash value. Youngsters from the Colegio de San Ildefonso in Madrid stand alongside the two bombos and sing out what it says on the ball disgorged by their bombo. First the number then the prize.

The majority of the little wooden balls, in that smaller bombo, have 1,000€ written on them. This is referred to as the pedrea. For those numbers you'll get 100€ back for your 20€ stake. There is just one ball with the 4 million jackpot and it's the same for the less valuable second and third prizes. There are another ten balls that will produce a win of more than 1,000€. Other prizes are based on having numbers very close to the winners, sharing some of the numbers etc. It's always worth checking your number against any of the dozens of internet sites where the winners are published or going back to the administración to have your number checked. 

Turn on a radio or TV or go into a bar on the 22nd after 9am and you will hear that singing of numbers and amounts, broadcast from the Teatro Real in Madrid all morning, until the prizes are exhausted.

Oh, and if you win some offensive amount of cash as a result of reading this blog don't worry yourself that I'll be offended if you want to offer me large wads of cash as a thank you.

Cautiously optimistic

Just a quick update on my throat cancer. For new readers, during the summer, I got to see an otorrino (Ear Nose and Throat specialist) and, after a few tests he said I had a throat cancer. He passed me to an oncólogo (Cancer specialist). They ordered up a few tests, decided that the cancer was just in my throat and lymph nodes and set me up for a course of 33 sessions of radiotherapy and three of chemotherapy. The radio sessions were in Alicante and the ambulance service took me there for most of the sessions. The chemo was in Elda. Along the way I had a picc port installed in my arm so they could take blood from my veins and put other liquids in. They also put in a PEG tube so I could put "milk shake" type food directly into my stomach when my throat became too inflamed to eat through my mouth. There have been a couple of snags along the way; I ended up on a hospital ward for three or four days because I kept throwing up and the dehydration was damaging my kidneys, but, generally it's been plain sailing.

The last of the sessions of radio or chemo was on 19 October so going on two months now. In the past few days I have seen the oncólogo, the otorrino, nurses in the chemotherapy day centre and a nutritionist. 

The oncólogo didn't really have much to say, but he wasn't worried about me either. He had a good feel of my neck and said he was pretty sure the lymph nodes were no longer swollen. He's going to order a CAT scan and I'm back to see him in about a month. He did say they could remove the picc port from my arm which was taken out by the perpetually cheerful nurses in the chemo day centre. They were also very nice about my Spanish. With the picc gone I was able to have a shower this morning without a plastic sleeve on my arm to protect the dressing for the first time since the beginning of September

The nutritionist said it was about time that I started to eat solid food instead of just feeding through my stomach. She only actually wants me to eat things like rice pudding, custard, creme caramel and the like. I do as I'm told and I've eaten a couple of those things today. They taste odd because my mouth is still slimy but I ate them alright.

The otorrino put his camera up my nose and down my throat and said "I don't see the lesion today that I saw in the Summer". He said my throat was still inflamed from the radio, which I think was to add a bit of caution to his earlier comment. He doesn't want to see me again till March.

And the problems I still have, as an effect from the treatments, are that my mouth is either bone dry or covered in horrible, foul tasting mucus nearly all the time, that I get tired quickly and that I feel dizzy quite often. Not exactly serious concerns. So, not so bad at all.

Paying the premium

When I went to the hole in the wall to get some cash there was a turrón stall in my way. Turrón is a sweet confectionery, associated with the Spanish Christmas, made with almonds, oil, and sugar. In the average supermarket a 250g bar of turrón will cost about 2.50€, most supermarkets carry something slightly better at, maybe 10€ a bar, but most steer away from the handcrafted product because it is breathtakingly expensive. There are all sorts of varieties of turrón, but the traditional ones are the hard and brittle Alicante variety and the soft, oozing oil Jijona style. The varieties of turrón, with chocolate or fruit are really for people who don't like turrón; they aren't much to do with turrón and are trading on the name.

The chances are that if you have some turrón this Christmas, it will be ordinary production line stuff. You might like it; you might not; but it's unlikely to send you into paroxysms of delight. The same is probably true of the majority of foodstuffs that Spaniards tend to rave about and which they buy in truckloads at this time of year. 

For instance angulas, or baby eels, are another Christmas delicacy. I had a quick Google and you can get fresh ones at 118€ per 100g. If that's a little steep the alternative is something called gulas which are made from ground fish reconstituted to look like elvers. A packet of gulas costs a bit less than 3€. This is lumpfish roe as against caviar territory. 

Miguel Angel Revilla, four times president of Cantabria, and well known character, used to always present quality, expensive, anchovies from Cantabria on his official visits. The anchovies I buy for my sandwiches come in triple packs for less than 3€.

It's similar with prawns—what we Britons call prawns. I don't think I'll ever understand the differences in quality when buying the right and wrong type of prawns. Whether gambas blancas, gambas rojas, gambones, carabineros or langostinos are the best and whether the ones from Denia are better than those from Huelva or Garrucha. Not knowing can cost you dear. Six of the better variety in an ordinary restaurant cost me 48€. It still smarts and that was six or seven years ago now.

Faced with such price variations the majority of us tend to plump for something with an everyday cost or, maybe, we push out the boat and buy the next step up. Then, when we taste it, we wonder what all the fuss was about. The problem is that we've bought run-of-the-mill. Spaniards wax lyrical about their air-cured ham. It can be spectacular but you have to be willing to pay for the quality, acorn fed, variety and eat it sliced wafer thin. The ham that most of us get most of the time—in a ham sandwich or as a slice of ham on our breakfast toast—can be anything between average and chewing bacon.

The point I'm trying, so long windedly, to make is that Spaniards often enthuse about certain food products that you may find uninspirational. There are lots of classic dishes, firm Spanish favourites, that often seem very commonplace. Croquetas are a good example; lots have the consistency of wallpaper paste, are served semi heated and taste of nothing much but, if you strike lucky or know where to go they are exceedingly good. Paella is another dish where the difference between a made to order paella cooked with care and the proper ingredients has nothing in common with the bright yellow rice served as part of a set meal in a tourist restaurant. 

Lots of these foods are rolled out at Christmas - mantecados and polvorones, peladillas, roscones, turrón, angulas, gooseneck barnacles (percebes) while other, all-year-round favourites, get a special outing at Christmas—prawns, croquetas, ham, roast lamb, and around here even broth with meatballs (variously named pelotas, relleno or even faseguras). If you get the opportunity go for the quality stuff - it's usually worth the stretch.

I was expecting the Spanish Inquisition

My 'old age' pension is derived partly from the UK and partly from Spain, as I have worked in both countries and accumulated benefits. Every now and again they, the pension people, check to make sure that I'm still breathing and not walled up in some Spanish cemetery. 

Today, was one of those days. There was a letter in our PO box from the UK asking me to confirm that I am still extant. I'm sure they've asked before, and I seem to remember that it was a simple enough process. I signed a form and I got another Briton to witness it. So, today, instead of coming home to read the paperwork, I thought I may as well sort it out then and there where I had access to a post office and at least a couple of people to witness my signature.

Maybe I'd misremembered, something which seems to happen more and more frequently, or perhaps they've beefed up their checks but, when I actually got around to checking the paperwork, they required someone of 'social stature', and with an official stamp, to witness the document. I can't remember who exactly, but the list included people like bank officials, medical staff, town hall employees, the mayor, a solicitor etc. They said I had sixteen weeks to return the form, well minus the two weeks it had taken to get from the UK, so there was no rush, but I like to get these things sorted. The challenge was that I don’t have many contacts who meet the pension authorities' criteria and who wouldn’t baulk at completing an “official” form written in English, which I would need to explain in a world rife with frauds and scams. Then it struck me: my accountant!

In the accountant's office I explained, in Spanish, that I needed someone to witness my signature. 'Ah', said the young woman, 'you want a "fe de vida"'. The meaning was obvious enough, she knew what I wanted but in my Spanish "fe" means faith and the expression I most associate with "fe" comes from the Spanish Inquisition. It's only because I thought to write this blog that I now know that "fe" also has a second translation as ID or certificate.

The Inquisition was supposed to protect the one true faith by searching out heretics - people who practised other religions or didn't accept the absolute truth of the Catholic Church's version of Christianity and its practices. Actually it was about personal vendettas, enriching the church and maintaining its power. The most extreme punishment of the Inquisition was to burn people at the stake and that involved a ritual public penitence before the actual death. That whole process was called, and this is the phrase I knew, an 'auto de fe' or 'act of faith'.

I do this all the time. Someone says 'our David had a puncture' and I see David deflating so I ask if it hurt or if he's OK now. When I try these word associations in Spanish the person I'm talking to generally looks at me as if I'm demented but today when the person in the office said I needed a 'fe de vida' and I said 'thank goodness it's not an auto de fe'. She chuckled. A minor triumph I thought. And I got my form signed.

Burnin' Down the House

It was in the early 80s. I had discovered Spain and was determined to learn Spanish. I didn't know that Andalucía had a reputation for an impenetrable accent, but as I had obviously heard of Seville/Sevilla, a two or three-week language course there seemed like a good idea. I went just after Christmas.

Sevilla has never been kind to me. It's a city where I lose my wallet, get stranded, choose the wrong hotel, or end up in a shoving competition with nuns. That first time I went there, for the course, it was horrible. They put me in a pretty advanced class based on a written exam. Although it was easy enough to fill in a box on a test page with the third person plural of the imperfect as against the preterite, it's quite another matter remembering that as you try to recall vocabulary, word order, gender, as you wrestle with the pronunciation etc. I struggled and struggled with the spoken language. I seem to remember the caretaker found me hiding somewhere, sobbing at my inability to cope with the language, and got me transferred to something more at my level— that may have been the day I thought maybe a little breakfast alcohol would loosen my tongue.

As well as the terror of facing the language, it was cold, and I'm sure that it rained and rained and rained. The "family" I'd been lodged with turned out to be a bloke sloughed in a dark pit of despair because his wife had just left him and whose cooking seemed to include only things made from the intestines of inedible animals or fish that Jacques Cousteau had never met. He did introduce me to lots of things Spanish though because he was stereotypically Spanish—he bought bread three times a day and talked endlessly about the films of Luis Buñuel. His house was dark, damp, and freezing—the sheets, which he didn't offer to change all the time I was there, were damp.

He introduced me to two forms of Spanish heating. The first was the brasero. To use a brasero, you need a round-topped table and a heavy long tablecloth. In his house, the cloth was of green velvet. Underneath the circular table is a shelf, about 15 cm off the floor, which supports a circular heater. The heater in his house had one of those elements that you would get in a one, two, or three-bar electric fire, common until the 1970s and still available, but it was shaped to fit into the space in the near-floor shelf. So the heater was underneath the table; the heavy tablecloth kept the heat in and, so long as you didn't mistakenly rest your feet too close to the heater and set yourself on fire, you could keep your legs warm - though not your upper body. In the olden days, the heat source was actually a metal bowl filled with hot embers. As you can imagine, the potential for post-meal family conversations becoming family conflagrations was significant.

The second form of heating was the Spanish equivalent of a calor gas heater. The heaters have a case that's large enough to house a butane (or propane) cylinder which has a valve connecting to the innards of the heater via a rubber tube. I think even then the heater had a piezoelectric igniter and followed an ignition procedure that can be remarkably recalcitrant at times. The one in Sevilla was in the bathroom—a small room which the heater could warm up in minutes because I think even my host didn't care for naked shivering. The bathroom was the only place I was ever warm inside that house.

Our house can be like a fridge. We stop that by pouring heat into it in an exercise that will hand the planet back to plants and other animals before long. It also causes the people at Iberdrola and petrol companies rub their hands in glee. We have an excuse for the lack of insulation, for the big gaps at the doors, for the high ceilings—it's an old house and our insulation options are strictly limited. Even in modern-built houses in Alicante, insulation is pathetic with the excuse that the Alicantino winter is short and soon gone. It's a total lie. Inside—not outside—our house, and lots of other Spanish properties, are cold from November through to April because hardly anyone pays any attention to insulation. The number of shops and offices where you are dealt with by people wearing outdoor winter clothing is legion. The insulation issue is not true in what are considered to be the colder parts of Spain but here in the South, builders are as optimistic as they are thrifty.

We've never thought to try a brasero and our main heating, when it gets cold, is a pellet burner which produces a very noisy 11 kW of heat so that we have to wear headphones to hear the telly. Nonetheless, in the kitchen, for mornings, and in the space I use as an office and in the living room, we have butane heaters—exactly the same sort of thing I was introduced to all those years ago. These "estufas de butano" produce radiant heat. Sit close and the heat they emit—about 4 kW—makes you think the room is toasty warm when in fact you're simply sitting in a very temporary warm bubble—something you realise every time your bladder forces you to make a temporary move.

At least the butane heaters keep your upper body as warm as your legs.