I think someone has it in for our palm tree. If you are a long time reader you may remember a post about an invasion of palm eating beetles, the picudo rojo. It isn't so much the adult beetles that cause the problem but their larvae which feast on the soft tissue and buds of the palms. The trees, I know they're not trees but that's what we call them, die as a result.
Working out how to protect the tree against the beetle and overcoming a slight difficulty with power cables made me think we were going to have to cut the tree down a few years ago but, one by one, we solved the problems. In time I settled into a gentle, and relatively inexpensive regime of spraying insecticide every six weeks. As I understand it the insecticide I am using works like fly spray and interferes with the way the muscles of the beetles work so they die of asphyxiation. The big problem is that it does the same to other beasts, including bees and that's bad. In a more general way, living in Europe, pouring chemicals onto the land is no longer considered to be a good thing to do.
When I first started there were a couple of, freely available, types of chemicals to douse the tree. Then the legislation changed. If I were to continue to use the chemicals I would either have to hire someone in who had the appropriate handling qualifications or get that qualification myself. I was going to do the exam until I discovered that there was an exception designed to cover cases like ours. I was allowed to buy the chemicals in very small quantities at about 25 times the previous price. That's what I did and that's what I've been doing for about the last year.
I sprayed the tree today and with my usual 30 ml of pesticide in 45 litres of water then I went to the agricultural supplier to buy the next dose ready for the next spraying. Hardly any left said the man. The legislation has changed again. The chemicals that I have been using can now only be used inside greenhouses.
Now I've never cared for the idea that I'm slaughtering bees. I have looked for other treatments. I have talked to a palm tree expert in Elche and to the bloke who trims out tree about other ways to protect our palm. I was looking for the equivalent of ladybirds to control greenfly. The biological control. There's a sort of worm that eats the larvae and a fungus treatment too. Neither of them seem to be particularly effective and the regime suggested by both my experts was that I should use the biological treatments when the beetles weren't very active, in the cooler months, but stick with the chemicals in times of risk. I was also put off by the price. I seem to remember fungus treatment cost 80€ per application and that it needed applying several times a year.
So, after the bad news, I went to the environmental department at the town hall to ask for advice. The woman there agreed with me that it was a bit of a problem that the chemicals had been withdrawn. She agreed that the optional treatments were expensive and ineffective and she told me that the town hall had chopped down lots of palm trees which it hadn't been able to protect. She said that down in Elche, where the palm groves have World Heritage status they are losing trees at a prodigious rate. I didn't come away uplifted.
Not a good prognosis. But I've just had a look on the internet. There seem to be all sorts of products at all sorts of prices. I hope it's market forces at work and not just snake oil. Maybe there's still hope for our palm tree and for the bees.
An old, wrinkly, temporarily skinny, red nosed, white haired Briton rambles on, at length, about things Spanish
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Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Thursday, February 21, 2019
Mainly the Archaeology Museum in Jumilla
Spanish museums used to be awful. Piles of stuff in random order often without any labelling or information. Most, though not all, are much better now and some of them even have levers to pull or computer screens to tap. There is still a tendency for the information to be a bit long winded (something I get accused of), and only very infrequently do you get the news story type labelling with a brief résumé in the first paragraph and more detailed information below. The most common style is a four or five hundred word description on each section. With all good intentions I read the first couple of information boards, scan the next two or three, read the first couple of lines of the next dozen or so boards and then start to wander aimlessly without reading anything unless it catches my attention. Usually the notices are in Castilian Spanish and quite often in English too. Occasionally around here, it's just in Valenciano which always annoys me.
It was sunny yesterday and neither Maggie nor I had work in the afternoon. We went for a bit of an explore and, more by happenstance than design we ended up heading towards Jumilla. I knew that there was an exhibition called Capturas individuales at the Archaeology museum there, the Museo Arqueológico Jerónimo Molina, but, I wasn't sure whether it was photos or paintings. If we were passing we may as well pop in to have a look.
Archaeology museums tend to be organised from old to new. Pre-history with cave paintings, arrowheads and the like close to the entrance moving on to the stone carvings of jewellery bedecked Iberian women and so on through Greek vases, Phoenician boats, Roman central heating. Then on to the Goths, the North African Moorish Invasion, onward to the Middle Ages and upwards through time stopping wherever the collections or the curators see fit.
We've done the Jumilla museum a bundle of times. We've listened to live music as we leaned against the display case that hold the two and a half thousand old year column featuring an armed rider. We've been on the roof on Museum Night to listen to poetry where the Republican prisoners took their exercise when the building was used as a prison and we've been to a talk about old Jumilla surrounded by Roman mosaics. So, when the bloke behind the desk asked us if we'd ever been before we said yes and that we'd only come to have a look at the temporary exhibition. The museum was not awash with people. Indeed we were the only customers. Moises, the man on the door, wasn't too busy. Our saying that we'd been before didn't stop him. He caught up with as we lingered over a bit of Iberian pottery on the first floor and started to give us a guided tour. His English was good and he knew his exhibits well. Altogether a very interesting tour. We didn't really get to see the temporary exhibition - they were paintings by the way. But, thank you, anyway Moises.
It was sunny yesterday and neither Maggie nor I had work in the afternoon. We went for a bit of an explore and, more by happenstance than design we ended up heading towards Jumilla. I knew that there was an exhibition called Capturas individuales at the Archaeology museum there, the Museo Arqueológico Jerónimo Molina, but, I wasn't sure whether it was photos or paintings. If we were passing we may as well pop in to have a look.
Archaeology museums tend to be organised from old to new. Pre-history with cave paintings, arrowheads and the like close to the entrance moving on to the stone carvings of jewellery bedecked Iberian women and so on through Greek vases, Phoenician boats, Roman central heating. Then on to the Goths, the North African Moorish Invasion, onward to the Middle Ages and upwards through time stopping wherever the collections or the curators see fit.
We've done the Jumilla museum a bundle of times. We've listened to live music as we leaned against the display case that hold the two and a half thousand old year column featuring an armed rider. We've been on the roof on Museum Night to listen to poetry where the Republican prisoners took their exercise when the building was used as a prison and we've been to a talk about old Jumilla surrounded by Roman mosaics. So, when the bloke behind the desk asked us if we'd ever been before we said yes and that we'd only come to have a look at the temporary exhibition. The museum was not awash with people. Indeed we were the only customers. Moises, the man on the door, wasn't too busy. Our saying that we'd been before didn't stop him. He caught up with as we lingered over a bit of Iberian pottery on the first floor and started to give us a guided tour. His English was good and he knew his exhibits well. Altogether a very interesting tour. We didn't really get to see the temporary exhibition - they were paintings by the way. But, thank you, anyway Moises.
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
Tortilla and coffee
Culebrón has a breakfast club. Well sort of. A couple of years ago, it could be even longer, some British chums made me aware of the Wednesday morning group at Eduardo's, our local restaurant, and I started to go along. It was quite a big group, made up of around the same numbers of Britons and Spaniards. I used to go most weeks but I stopped when I started Wednesday morning classes and I never got back into the habit. There used to be a lot of laughing as language failed and gestures and pointing took over so it was good fun as well as an opportunity to catch up on local gossip. I haven't been for months but, this morning, with nothing better to do I went for a late breakfast and to see who was there. As well as the home team there was Belgian representation. Just me representing the UK and only seven of us.
One of the Spaniards who regularly attends the group spent a lot of her life in the UK and she is hoping to return there in the near future. She's still trying to decide between living near to family or near friends she made here. That set a discussion going about why she wanted to return to a wetter and colder UK and why other ex Breakfast Clubbers had left Spain. I suggested that one of the reasons was that living in Spain, without good Spanish, is quite hard work and that's why lots of older Britons decide they will "go home". In the UK they can, at least, make themselves understood faced with those problems that come with age. I was really surprised with how little sympathy there was for that idea. The group was quite vehement that all that was needed was a little application to learn Spanish and that most Britons are unwilling to make that effort and choose, instead, to live in a British ghetto sidestepping interaction with the locals as much as possible.
One of the Spaniards who regularly attends the group spent a lot of her life in the UK and she is hoping to return there in the near future. She's still trying to decide between living near to family or near friends she made here. That set a discussion going about why she wanted to return to a wetter and colder UK and why other ex Breakfast Clubbers had left Spain. I suggested that one of the reasons was that living in Spain, without good Spanish, is quite hard work and that's why lots of older Britons decide they will "go home". In the UK they can, at least, make themselves understood faced with those problems that come with age. I was really surprised with how little sympathy there was for that idea. The group was quite vehement that all that was needed was a little application to learn Spanish and that most Britons are unwilling to make that effort and choose, instead, to live in a British ghetto sidestepping interaction with the locals as much as possible.
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Head them off at the pass!
I bought some books on Sunday. This is not, in itself, such an unusual thing. I usually have a book on the go. The difference was that I bought ten in one fell swoop.
Nowadays I can read almost any Spanish book without too much trouble. I've chosen to read more Spanish than English for two main reasons. The first is to improve my Spanish and the second is to bone up on the home culture. It does mean that I have no idea who is hip and cool amongst contemporary British writers but as I don't know the name of the Home Secretary, or the modern way to say hip and cool, you can take it that I've given up on keeping up to date with Britain. One biggish problem is that I often forget the names of the authors I've read. For some reason names like Eva García Sáenz de Urturi just don't stick in the same way as, say, Jessie Greengrass.
Anyway I am reading a book called Women of the Post War Period (Mujeres de la posguerra) by a woman called Inmaculada de la Fuente. I am finding it hard going. It's giving information about the post Civil War period in Spain by reference to the works of some famous women Spanish writers like Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite and Josefina Aldecoa. I've actually read something by three of those four authors but the continuous references to characters in their books, as a way of highlighting life in post war Spain, is becoming just a little wearing.
So, back to the book buying. In 1826 Pinoso finally became large enough to be self governing and separated from the neighbouring town of Monóvar. The event which celebrates that is called Villazgo. It's a big event in Pinoso which centres on local food, local traditions and local culture. This year's event took place last Sunday. Amongst the delights there were stalls from local associations and groups, from the local villages and from some businesses.
One of the stalls was selling old books including piles of notebook sized and notebook thick cowboy stories. The covers featured garish cartoon drawings. Inside the cheap, newsprint type paper was yellowed with age. Two euros for ten "books" seemed like a bit of a bargain. I had this vague recollection, from a radio programme that I'd heard that, back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s there was an industry in producing huge numbers of cheap, accessible books with weekly editions. I also remembered that the censors kept an eye on them to ensure that they passed on the "appropriate" messages for instance about a woman's role in obeying and keeping her man happy. I think they were also an incidental tool in a vague campaign to confront the country's shocking illiteracy rate. A definite addition to my cultural education.
This morning I chose one at random to read. El buitre de Denver (The Denver Vulture) by Silver Kane, printed in 1969 and with an original price of 9 pesetas. Apparently Kane was the pen name for Francisco González Ledesma who wrote over 1,000 novels in his lifetime. Over my breakfast cup of tea, before the household chores dragged me away, I'd read just 40 pages. Even then Kenton was already dead, shot in the back by his erstwhile partner and the gunslinger Mallory had gone a calling on Kenton's beautiful and curvaceous widow, Alice.
Definitely a bit less taxing than those postwar women.
Nowadays I can read almost any Spanish book without too much trouble. I've chosen to read more Spanish than English for two main reasons. The first is to improve my Spanish and the second is to bone up on the home culture. It does mean that I have no idea who is hip and cool amongst contemporary British writers but as I don't know the name of the Home Secretary, or the modern way to say hip and cool, you can take it that I've given up on keeping up to date with Britain. One biggish problem is that I often forget the names of the authors I've read. For some reason names like Eva García Sáenz de Urturi just don't stick in the same way as, say, Jessie Greengrass.
Anyway I am reading a book called Women of the Post War Period (Mujeres de la posguerra) by a woman called Inmaculada de la Fuente. I am finding it hard going. It's giving information about the post Civil War period in Spain by reference to the works of some famous women Spanish writers like Carmen Laforet, Ana María Matute, Carmen Martín Gaite and Josefina Aldecoa. I've actually read something by three of those four authors but the continuous references to characters in their books, as a way of highlighting life in post war Spain, is becoming just a little wearing.
So, back to the book buying. In 1826 Pinoso finally became large enough to be self governing and separated from the neighbouring town of Monóvar. The event which celebrates that is called Villazgo. It's a big event in Pinoso which centres on local food, local traditions and local culture. This year's event took place last Sunday. Amongst the delights there were stalls from local associations and groups, from the local villages and from some businesses.
One of the stalls was selling old books including piles of notebook sized and notebook thick cowboy stories. The covers featured garish cartoon drawings. Inside the cheap, newsprint type paper was yellowed with age. Two euros for ten "books" seemed like a bit of a bargain. I had this vague recollection, from a radio programme that I'd heard that, back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s there was an industry in producing huge numbers of cheap, accessible books with weekly editions. I also remembered that the censors kept an eye on them to ensure that they passed on the "appropriate" messages for instance about a woman's role in obeying and keeping her man happy. I think they were also an incidental tool in a vague campaign to confront the country's shocking illiteracy rate. A definite addition to my cultural education.
This morning I chose one at random to read. El buitre de Denver (The Denver Vulture) by Silver Kane, printed in 1969 and with an original price of 9 pesetas. Apparently Kane was the pen name for Francisco González Ledesma who wrote over 1,000 novels in his lifetime. Over my breakfast cup of tea, before the household chores dragged me away, I'd read just 40 pages. Even then Kenton was already dead, shot in the back by his erstwhile partner and the gunslinger Mallory had gone a calling on Kenton's beautiful and curvaceous widow, Alice.
Definitely a bit less taxing than those postwar women.
Wednesday, February 13, 2019
Confused for 80 seconds
Whilst I
was shaving this morning, I heard a piece on the radio about changes
to the rail service in Murcia. The National news has ten minute
sections of local news every now and then. In the bathroom the local
news comes from Murcia and in the kitchen the local news covers the Valencian Community. It's to do with signal strengths and because we are on the frontier between two regions.
RENFE, the
train operator and ADIF, the rail infrastructure operator, have
been in the news a lot lately. Over in Extremadura there was lots of
fuss about really old diesel trains breaking down all the time and leaving people stranded for hours. The
people of Extremadura complained that they live in a forgotten part of
the country. In fact there has been a lot of grumbling, from several
parts of Spain, that all the railway money is being poured into the glamorous
high speed trains whilst the much more travelled commuter lines are being largely ignored.
The story was rekindled a few days ago when, in Cataluña,
there was a head on collision between two trains, leaving several
people injured and one person dead. The trains looked like very old stock..
Back in
Murcia the city is awaiting the arrival of the high speed train line
out of Madrid. Over the last year or so, possibly longer, there have
been a number of pitched battles, really violent confrontations, between
people who live in the communities, that are about to be cut in half
by the high speed lines, and the police. I have read articles that
have suggested that vested interests are at work in suppressing
reporting the number and severity of those confrontations.
Foamy
faced I didn't quite catch the railway news but it sounded
interesting. Like Sheldon Cooper I approve of trains and I like to
use them. So I thought I'd check the story. I expected a quick, precision strike.
Not so. First of all my search turned up lots of unrelated stories about the
introduction of hybrid trains onto the line that currently joins
Murcia to Madrid. These trains can change axle width (Spanish
conventional gauge is wider than the standard European gauge used for the high speed lines) at Cuenca for the last part of the run into Madrid. They are hybrid because they have diesel as well as electrical drive for the non electrified parts of the route.
Thwarted by printed stories I had to go back and find the podcast of the news bulletin I'd half heard
this morning and listen. I understood the words but I still didn't
quite understand the story. In fact it turned out it was three pieces of rail news, affecting Murcia, reported as one
The first
was about temporary cuts in the service between Murcia and Madrid
because of the Variante de Camarillas. I thought I knew the word
variante and I thought it meant variant. So what was Camarillas? The
dictionary said it was a clique, a pressure group or band of people.
I wondered if it were maybe some local agreement to do with the
opposition to the new tracks. That didn't seem right though. Maybe it was
a place then? The only Camarillas that Google maps knew was in
Teruel. There was a street in Murcia called Camarillas
Reservoir Street and that was the clue. I found the reservoir on the map. I also discovered
that variante can mean detour. The Variante de Camarillas is a new
stretch of rail that cuts off a corner in the current route between
Murcia and Madrid. It runs from Cieza to Agramón (a place I've never
heard of) and means that the line to Calasparra will become just a
local line. Crikey. What a lot of work for such a simple story.
The second
story was that there were going to be closures on the line between
Murcia and Alicante. Again part of the difficulty was that there was
a place name involved, another place I'd never heard of; Reguerón.
It's a district of Murcia city. That story was about was closing
the current line whilst a couple of stretches of new track were
joined up.
The third
piece took no working out. Another place, but this time they
described the name, Trepía, as a village near Lorca. It was about protests demanding the building bridges instead of level crossings on the new
line.
Just 80
seconds of news bulletin which I would have understood perfectly if
I'd known two place names and how to say spur line in Spanish. Or which I would never have heard if I'd shaved faster and got into the kitchen for the local news spot!
Friday, February 08, 2019
Letters to the Editor
When we first got here I used to buy El País newspaper every day. It was a part of my introduction to Spain. El País is a left leaning Spanish daily that came into being shortly after Franco's death. If you were looking for a British political and literary equivalent it would be The Guardian. Although its paper sales have plummeted El País is still the second most read printed newspaper in Spain (after the sports only newspaper, Marca). The digital edition of El País is number one amongst all the online Spanish newspapers.
The newspaper has an English version which I've read for quite a while. About a month ago the English edition started to promote a new weekly podcast called ¿Qué? The podcast is presented by the Editor, a bloke called Simon Hunter. He gave us his Twitter name should anyone wish to comment. I'd enjoyed the podcast so I sent a message to say so. There was a photo alongside Simon's profile picture and I thought he'd done pretty well for himself considering that he looked so young. Later I read his biography somewhere and it says he went to University, in Hull, between 1996-1999. I did the same, went to Hull that is, but in my case between 1972-1975. I suppose that's why he looks young to me.
The podcast is very good. Informal but very informative. It mixes background and story for some of the big news events in Spain each week.
I was skimming through my news feed this evening and I came across an editorial, translated into English, of a story about the moderator/mediator/rapporteur proposed to help the negotiations between Spain and Cataluña. Negotiations between Spain and Cataluña is tantamount to suggesting talks between Cumbria and England but you'll have to take the meaning rather than question the phrasing.
Basically the article pointed out the democratic problems with the Mediator solution. I could tell that the premise was interesting but I had to read it three times, and it was in English, before I could make head nor tail of it. Half the problem was the translation. There had been hardly any attempt to interpret as distinct from translate. Being a bit whiskied up, knowing who the editor was and having his Twitter contact I sent a message. I suggested the piece was incomprehensible and it needed some judicious editing. He came straight back. Understandably, he was defensive. It was all a bit tense. I backed off, he backed off, the phrases softened. I'm half expecting an invitation to the Christmas party
It's pretty cool being able to talk to a newspaper like that. And good on the man for defending his people.
Tuesday, February 05, 2019
A stroll around Pinoso
I've always liked cinema so, when I began to take an interest in Spain, I made an effort to see Spanish films. For years and years it seemed that every Spanish film ever made was about the Spanish Civil War. They were almost all dull and drear. I also read Hugh Thomas's book about the war and I found it hard going. Paul Preston's more recent history of the same event persuaded me that he was one of the most boring writers that has ever put pen to paper. Years later, I thought I should give him a second chance, he seemed to be well regarded by everyone else, so I read his book about Franco. I have never been tempted to try him again.
The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to 1939. That's a long time ago. As I mentioned in a post a few days ago there are two schools of thought amongst Spaniards about the war and more particularly about the dictatorship that resulted from it. That it should be forgotten or that it should be given a thorough airing so that it can be finally laid to rest. Unlike Britons, a little older than me, who talk incessantly about "The War", the Second World War that is, I don't think that I've ever heard a Spaniard start a conversation about the Civil War. The majority of young people know about the Civil War from their school syllabus in exactly the same way as young Britons do topics on The Blitz. Our Town Hall had obviously decided which side it was on with the second in a series of annual week long events around a Civil War theme.
The war started because a group of army officers didn't much care for the result of the 1936 General Election. They organised a coup and botched the job so that it turned into a bloody civil war. The area where we live was the last redoubt of the Republican Government and, indeed, the last tatters of the defeated Government flew out of Spain to exile from an airfield about 5 km down the road from Culebrón.
Last Sunday we went for a walk around Pinoso led by the town archivist and a chap from Alicante University. The idea was to show us sites that had been important in the Spanish Civil War. I enjoyed standing on a street corner having to imagine the scene but, to be honest, the visit could equally well have been a lecture because there was very little to see in situ. The Archivist told us that the idea came from one of the local councillors. That's the same team that brought us a journey through the town archives and a tour of the local cemetery both of which have been among my favourite events here in Pinoso.
Anyway. so we're strolling around in the bitingly cold wind. We get told about the checkpoints to control traffic in and out of the town, we hear about the Pioneers, the socialist equivalent of a movement like the Hitler Youth, we hear about a lynching (and the dispute from the participants about whether that was a true story or not), we hear about paseos and about sacking the local church and the burning of all the religious statues. Paseo by the way is usually best translated as a stroll. Here though it's the euphemistic term used to describe the last walk to the firing squad during the Civil War years. At one point Maggie checked with me, as we walked from the site of an air raid shelter towards the clock tower used as a look-out post, that Pinoso had been in the area controlled by the Republic. I think that she was having some difficulty in squaring summary firing squads with the idea of the "good guys".
Just one little snippet from the talk that struck home with me amongst all the detail of colony schools and union activity. There has been a bit of a fuss in Spain recently about removing reminders of the dictatorship enshrined in street names. Lots of the ostentatiously named streets, like Avenida del Generalissimo, changed soon after Franco's death in 1975 but, in towns and cities the length and breadth of Spain less obvious Francoist street names and symbols live on. In Pinoso there were 12 of these streets with names like Capitán Haya, a Nationalist air ace, Sánchez Mazas, a writer, responsible for the "Arriba España" slogan and others of a similar ilk. Fair enough, I thought, change the names and there you go. What was pointed out though, by the guide, was that this was part of a systematic method of obliterating older social and cultural aspects from Spanish streets and replacing them with a "Francoist" history. It reminded me of George Orwell's 1984 hero Winston Smith writing a piece for The Times about an air ace. In reality the pilot never existed but, in a fake news sort of way, he would become important as soon as his story was in print.
The Spanish Civil War ran from 1936 to 1939. That's a long time ago. As I mentioned in a post a few days ago there are two schools of thought amongst Spaniards about the war and more particularly about the dictatorship that resulted from it. That it should be forgotten or that it should be given a thorough airing so that it can be finally laid to rest. Unlike Britons, a little older than me, who talk incessantly about "The War", the Second World War that is, I don't think that I've ever heard a Spaniard start a conversation about the Civil War. The majority of young people know about the Civil War from their school syllabus in exactly the same way as young Britons do topics on The Blitz. Our Town Hall had obviously decided which side it was on with the second in a series of annual week long events around a Civil War theme.
The war started because a group of army officers didn't much care for the result of the 1936 General Election. They organised a coup and botched the job so that it turned into a bloody civil war. The area where we live was the last redoubt of the Republican Government and, indeed, the last tatters of the defeated Government flew out of Spain to exile from an airfield about 5 km down the road from Culebrón.
Last Sunday we went for a walk around Pinoso led by the town archivist and a chap from Alicante University. The idea was to show us sites that had been important in the Spanish Civil War. I enjoyed standing on a street corner having to imagine the scene but, to be honest, the visit could equally well have been a lecture because there was very little to see in situ. The Archivist told us that the idea came from one of the local councillors. That's the same team that brought us a journey through the town archives and a tour of the local cemetery both of which have been among my favourite events here in Pinoso.
Anyway. so we're strolling around in the bitingly cold wind. We get told about the checkpoints to control traffic in and out of the town, we hear about the Pioneers, the socialist equivalent of a movement like the Hitler Youth, we hear about a lynching (and the dispute from the participants about whether that was a true story or not), we hear about paseos and about sacking the local church and the burning of all the religious statues. Paseo by the way is usually best translated as a stroll. Here though it's the euphemistic term used to describe the last walk to the firing squad during the Civil War years. At one point Maggie checked with me, as we walked from the site of an air raid shelter towards the clock tower used as a look-out post, that Pinoso had been in the area controlled by the Republic. I think that she was having some difficulty in squaring summary firing squads with the idea of the "good guys".
Just one little snippet from the talk that struck home with me amongst all the detail of colony schools and union activity. There has been a bit of a fuss in Spain recently about removing reminders of the dictatorship enshrined in street names. Lots of the ostentatiously named streets, like Avenida del Generalissimo, changed soon after Franco's death in 1975 but, in towns and cities the length and breadth of Spain less obvious Francoist street names and symbols live on. In Pinoso there were 12 of these streets with names like Capitán Haya, a Nationalist air ace, Sánchez Mazas, a writer, responsible for the "Arriba España" slogan and others of a similar ilk. Fair enough, I thought, change the names and there you go. What was pointed out though, by the guide, was that this was part of a systematic method of obliterating older social and cultural aspects from Spanish streets and replacing them with a "Francoist" history. It reminded me of George Orwell's 1984 hero Winston Smith writing a piece for The Times about an air ace. In reality the pilot never existed but, in a fake news sort of way, he would become important as soon as his story was in print.
Thursday, January 31, 2019
How do you say Historical Memory in English?
Spain came up with a novel way to move from the dictatorship of the 40s,50s, 60s and 70s of the last century to the democracy of today. No Truth and Reconciliation Commission here. The people who make the decisions about how things are going to work just decided to forget all about it - the Pacto de olvido - the pact of forgetting. Then, in 2007, the Socialist Government came up with the Historical Memory Law - Ley de Memoria Histórica - which recognised that there were victims on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, gave rights to the victims and the descendants of victims of the war, and the subsequent Franco dictatorship, and formally condemned the Franco Regime. Now neither Pact of Forgetting nor the Historical Memory sound like good English to me but I hope that you get the idea. The first idea, the pact, is to sweep the mess under the carpet and the second, historical memory, is to get it all out in the open so you can have a fresh start.
The Spanish Partido Popular, the Conservative type party, was against the Historical Memory law. Their argument was that it wasn't good to stir it all up again. The PP was in power between 2011 and 2018 so, in a very Spanish way, the law stayed in place but nobody did very much about it. Mass graves were not opened up so no remains could be handed over to families for reburial, at least not in any systematic or wholesale manner, and simple things like renaming streets dedicated to Francoist heroes or the removal of Francoist symbols was equally half hearted. And Franco himself, or at least his mortal remains, continued at rest in the place of honour inside the gigantic monument that is the Valley of the Fallen - el Valle de los Caídos.
Last night, in Pinoso, I went to one of the events that are "remembering" the Spanish Civil War this week. The events have the snappy title of Jornadas de Memoria Histórica y Democratica de Pinoso - Days of Historical Memory and Democracy of Pinoso - which, once again, you will have to interpret in your own way as I can't think of a decent English language translation. The problem, for me, is that the words represent concepts I don't share so I don't have good language for them.
The event was the showing of a documentary about Miguel Hernández; a poet from Orihuela in Alicante. The documentary is called Las tres heridas de Miguel Hernández and it's on YouTube with subs if you want to have a look. I knew a little about the poet having been to his house a couple of times, listened to radio programmes about him and even read some of his poetry. He stuck with the legitimate government and never renounced his socialist beliefs even when he was captured and locked up after his side had lost the war. He was condemned to death but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he finally died of tuberculosis in a prison in Alicante aged 32.
I enjoyed the documentary. Nicely put together and easy to understand. The people who presented it talked about some of the opposition that there had been to producing the documentary and the passions that Hernández still arouses in his home town of Orihuela. The question and answer session afterwards was really interesting. There were a variety of opinions but there were two obvious strands. The same themes represented in the idea for and against the Historical Memory Law. Sleeping dogs as against washing your dirty laundry in public.
The Spanish Partido Popular, the Conservative type party, was against the Historical Memory law. Their argument was that it wasn't good to stir it all up again. The PP was in power between 2011 and 2018 so, in a very Spanish way, the law stayed in place but nobody did very much about it. Mass graves were not opened up so no remains could be handed over to families for reburial, at least not in any systematic or wholesale manner, and simple things like renaming streets dedicated to Francoist heroes or the removal of Francoist symbols was equally half hearted. And Franco himself, or at least his mortal remains, continued at rest in the place of honour inside the gigantic monument that is the Valley of the Fallen - el Valle de los Caídos.
Last night, in Pinoso, I went to one of the events that are "remembering" the Spanish Civil War this week. The events have the snappy title of Jornadas de Memoria Histórica y Democratica de Pinoso - Days of Historical Memory and Democracy of Pinoso - which, once again, you will have to interpret in your own way as I can't think of a decent English language translation. The problem, for me, is that the words represent concepts I don't share so I don't have good language for them.
The event was the showing of a documentary about Miguel Hernández; a poet from Orihuela in Alicante. The documentary is called Las tres heridas de Miguel Hernández and it's on YouTube with subs if you want to have a look. I knew a little about the poet having been to his house a couple of times, listened to radio programmes about him and even read some of his poetry. He stuck with the legitimate government and never renounced his socialist beliefs even when he was captured and locked up after his side had lost the war. He was condemned to death but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and he finally died of tuberculosis in a prison in Alicante aged 32.
I enjoyed the documentary. Nicely put together and easy to understand. The people who presented it talked about some of the opposition that there had been to producing the documentary and the passions that Hernández still arouses in his home town of Orihuela. The question and answer session afterwards was really interesting. There were a variety of opinions but there were two obvious strands. The same themes represented in the idea for and against the Historical Memory Law. Sleeping dogs as against washing your dirty laundry in public.
Mr Pugh and Charlie Drake
They say that moving house is one of the most stressful things you can do. To be honest I don't think it compares to, for instance, living in Aleppo in 2015/16 but I appreciate the general idea. So moving countries must be extra hard. You still have to deal with estate agents and solicitors and utility suppliers but, on top, you have to learn a whole new bunch of procedures. As a new migrant everything comes in one big, strange, deluge and it needs doing now. Whether that's getting your identity documents, buying and taxing the car or working out which of those cleaning products in the supermarket is bleach it has to be sorted out straight away.
It's ages since we had to cope with the hundreds of things to be done on first moving here. The pain of it all is long forgotten. I might still have to renew our PO box or get the car checked for road worthiness every now and then but it's nearly fifteen years now since we were juggling piles of paperwork every day. In fact, to be honest, I've been feeling a little smug about it all recently. Brexit is reminding lots of the British migrants here that the sort of half British half Spanish thing might fall apart on them. You can argue all you like about the finer points of whether your British driving licence is still good but, if Britain crashes out of the EU, the jig is up unless you have that Spanish licence you should have applied for long ago. International Driving Permit time it is. So there has been a bit of a scramble amongst the Britons living in Spain to get their paperwork sorted. I think our paperwork is pretty much in order as it stands, hence the smugness. Mind you hubris and all that; pride before the fall. We shall see.
I've been repaying a favour to a non Spanish speaking pal who helped me out last year. He needed to sort a few bits of paperwork. There have been little hiccoughs along the way, forms left at home, the wrong certificate here and the wrong fee there but, basically, we've managed to sort everything out without any huge trauma.
What's struck me as we've been dealing with things is how patient the staff in the various government offices have been. We were standing in a queue, the man in front was Lithuanian and his partner was from Dominica. They were having language difficulties. The policeman dealing with them repeated his information, drew diagrams, sorted their documents into piles, wrote out internet addresses. The policeman must spend his days dealing with annoyingly confused people yet he didn't snort or tut or send them away. It would be human nature to get cross, to get fed up of it all but he didn't. It was the same with us. For the problems we had the officials dealing with us smoothed our path to get back in the queue when it would have been much easier, for them, to send us away. It mustn't always be like that because someone who helps people with official paperwork all the time warned me about someone working in Elda Police Station. The truth is though that I've never been treated as off offhandedly as I was in Elland, Halifax, Peterborough, Bradford or Manchester when dealing with Job centres and Social Security offices. True the difference is 30 or 40 years so I'm sure that if I were claiming Universal Credit in the UK nowadays I wouldn't still find the chairs bolted to the floor or dismissive staff.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Do you have doubts Charles? Do you?
I'm not a
particularly sociable type so I don't get a lot of phone calls. When
I do it nearly always takes me by surprise and I fumble with the phone controls and miss the call. This time I was half way up a palm tree, cutting off the branches that hadn't done that Confucian thing of
bending like a reed and had chosen to break like the mighty oak instead. It was from the bloke who fixes my
car. One of his Spanish customers had been complaining about the cost
of the photos for his upcoming wedding and Julian, for that's his
name, had mentioned to the customer that he knew someone with a
decent camera.
Now, as
you know, I take a lot of snaps. I like to take snaps of things with
bright colours and a lot of contrast. I've got lots of pictures of
people too but I'm not good at pictures of people. Friends take much
nicer people photos than I do. And that was my initial reaction, well
that and worrying that I'd somehow cock up taking the photos at all. Rather than saying no directly though we agreed that Julian would give the soon to be Bridegroom my phone number.
Palm tree
trimmed I set about the weeds listening to the Capitán Demo podcast.
I began to think about taking wedding photos. The pressing the
shutter button is a very small part of it. Wedding photographers do
all that ordering people about. Parents here! Get rid of that
cigarette! Mother of the bride - button up your jacket! Bridesmaids -
come here! And of course that ordering about would have to be done in Spanish. Then I thought about the ceremony and the routine. I know
the UK routine, more or less, but I've only been to one Spanish wedding
and the structure is different. How do priests feel about having the
photographer stand behind them in front of the altar? Is that what
you do anyway? Would I know where to be to get the appropriate snap? Do
Spanish couples sign the register, open the telegrams, make speeches,
dance the first dance and go off with tin cans tied to the back of
the car? Are there photos of garters and legs, do bouquets get tossed
to the expectant crowd or is that all too sexist for words? Wedding
photography has fashions. I have seen Spanish couples piling out of
cars at local beauty spots to have their photo taken with a seascape
as a backdrop but, to be honest, I have no idea what's expected. Do
they still do those blurred at the edges shots or frame the happy
couple in a heart shape? Would I be expected to be there from the
make up session at the Bride's house to the last sozzled guests
checking the beer cans for fag ends before drinking?
All of
those things aside let's presume that I managed to get some decent images on the SD
card. My guess is that there would be at least a thousand and maybe
more. Just a quick scan for the blurred, ugly and mis-framed shots
would take a while. Is there an expectation of photo shopping, of editing out double chins and spots? I never bother with my own pictures but then most of my snaps never get past the digital
format; they go on Google photos or Facebook and that's it. I've
hardly ever printed photographs since getting a digital camera.
Presumably, nowadays, you produce one of those photo-book things but,
for all I know the happy couple expect pictures on T-shirts and mugs.
How much does it cost to print photos? Which firms are reliable? Who does the photo selection
anyway? Is the photographer the arbiter of which photos get chosen or
the couple? What sort of quality, meaning what sort of cost, is
expected for the finished album? I vaguely remember that, at the one
Spanish wedding I've been to, several prints of the ceremony were
being passed around during the meal. That must mean that the
photographer had immediate access to a photo quality printer rather than relying
on BonusPrint. The more I thought about it the more I realised where
the high cost of the package offered by wedding photographers comes
from and the less interested I was in doing it.
Anyway,
when the bloke calls, I'll probably miss the call.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I got the photo at the top of this post from Google. It said that it was labelled for non commercial re-use but, just in case it isn't the firm that took it is Retamosa Wedding Stories from Torrent in Valencia.
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
Vote early, vote often
Many years ago - strange how all my stories start like that - I was at a Conservative Club fundraiser in North Yorkshire. I have no defence, I was just there - no kidnapping, no drugs, nothing. I spent a long few minutes talking to a relatively powerful politician of the time, Baron Brittan of Spennithorne or Leon Brittan as he was called then. I was talking to him about voting and how it was a flawed tool. I argued that voting gives you one chance, every few years, to choose between a couple of, or if you're lucky a few, electable groupings with which you share some opinions. He argued that choosing a band and sticking by them was the mark of a strong democracy. We didn't come to an agreement but he did buy me a drink.
It's the only tool that democracy gives us though, not the drink, the vote. The only other thing that might work is getting out in the street with a banner or a Molotov cocktail depending on your preference.
I got a vote in the referendum about the UK leaving Europe. I was on the losing side. Here in Spain, as a resident and a European Citizen, I have been able to vote in two lots of local municipal elections. Neither Spain nor the UK allows me to vote at a regional level but the UK system allowed me a vote in the last couple of General Elections and in Europe. I'm about to lose that vote for having been absent from Britain for fifteen years. My country is about to leave the European Union anyway so it looked like I was going to lose my Spanish vote too. Disenfranchised everywhere.
Hope springs eternal though. We have elections here in May and, when I heard an advert on the radio, advising EU citizens to get themselves on the voting register, I went to the local Town Hall and checked I was still registered. The people behind the desk thought I was barmy but they rang the central register and confirmed I was on the electoral roll. Whether that would do me any good after March 29 was a moot point. Then, the other day, a rather ambiguous letter from Pinoso Town Hall said that EU citizens should signal their wish to be on the voting list by filling in a form. It had to be done before 30 January. We're still EU citizens at the moment so Maggie and I went to the Town Hall and signed the form yesterday. The same day I read that the UK had signed a bilateral agreement with Spain to maintain the voting rights of Spaniards in the UK and Brits in Spain.
So I'd like to thank Robin Walker and Marco Aguiriano for signing on the dotted line on behalf of their respective governments and so keeping me in the game.
It's the only tool that democracy gives us though, not the drink, the vote. The only other thing that might work is getting out in the street with a banner or a Molotov cocktail depending on your preference.
I got a vote in the referendum about the UK leaving Europe. I was on the losing side. Here in Spain, as a resident and a European Citizen, I have been able to vote in two lots of local municipal elections. Neither Spain nor the UK allows me to vote at a regional level but the UK system allowed me a vote in the last couple of General Elections and in Europe. I'm about to lose that vote for having been absent from Britain for fifteen years. My country is about to leave the European Union anyway so it looked like I was going to lose my Spanish vote too. Disenfranchised everywhere.
Hope springs eternal though. We have elections here in May and, when I heard an advert on the radio, advising EU citizens to get themselves on the voting register, I went to the local Town Hall and checked I was still registered. The people behind the desk thought I was barmy but they rang the central register and confirmed I was on the electoral roll. Whether that would do me any good after March 29 was a moot point. Then, the other day, a rather ambiguous letter from Pinoso Town Hall said that EU citizens should signal their wish to be on the voting list by filling in a form. It had to be done before 30 January. We're still EU citizens at the moment so Maggie and I went to the Town Hall and signed the form yesterday. The same day I read that the UK had signed a bilateral agreement with Spain to maintain the voting rights of Spaniards in the UK and Brits in Spain.
So I'd like to thank Robin Walker and Marco Aguiriano for signing on the dotted line on behalf of their respective governments and so keeping me in the game.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
No summer lawns to hiss
Both Maggie and I worked this Saturday morning so, by the time we got home and ate something, we considered the day a bit of a write off. As always, when we have nothing more exciting to do, I suggested the cinema. I wanted to see the French film El gran baño which I think is called Sink or Swim in English. The reviews I've seen, and particularly the cinema themed radio show I listen to, said it was a must see. I enjoyed it but of the five films I've seen, so far, in 2019 it was actually my least favourite. I much preferred (English titles) Vice and Life Itself and I probably preferred both Aquaman and the Memories of a Man in Pyjamas which is a cartoon! Vice we saw in English because the Yelmo cinema chain now has an original language showing of at least one film, and often several, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. It wouldn't have been much use going to the Tuesday showing of Le Grand Bain in its original language as my French only deals adequately with pens and aunts. The Spanish dubbed version was the one we'd left for today.
I've grown to quite like the radio show about the cinema. If they say a film is worth watching I've tended to enjoy the film. They were less than glowing in their report on Vice, the film about Dick Cheney. I thought it was a good film and I wondered if part of their problem with it might be that the version they would have seen wouldn't have had Christian Bale, Sam Rockwell or Steve Carell (or anyone else from the original cast) speaking. It was one of those films where the timing, the phrasing and the pronunciation of the specific word were all important to the plot. The radio critics would have heard dubbing actors trying to get the same meaning and intonation into a rewritten version of the screenplay. They heard different voices working to a different script written to maintain lip synch and Spanish meaning. So they were reviewing a film with different actors and a different script. We all know that Ingid Bergman didn't actually say "Play it again Sam," to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca but let's just pretend she did. For a Spanish audience, read Elsa Fábregas asking José María Caffarel to "Tócala otra vez, Sam." Immortal.
A couple of months ago we saw a really nice, but slight, film called A Family Recipe to use its translated Spanish title and with either Ramen Teh or Ramen Shop as its international title. It's a film from Singapore and it centred on food. Singaporeans eat noodles. Spanish dubbing artists seem to like overemphasising the slurping and sucking sounds associated with noodle eating. It was really noticeable and remarkably annoying.
Anyway, that wasn't the thing I meant to post about. I had a thought about our garden as I waited by the car, by the gate, for Maggie to lock up the house just before we set off for the cinema.
In our garden there are plenty of trees and shrubs and stuff, particularly around the edges, but the majority of the garden area is bare earth - bare, bare earth - soil. I have to be constant in my attempts to keep the weeds down but the low temperatures of the last few weeks have slowed down the growth and made my job easier. I get the same effect in high summer when the heat keeps the little treasures at bay. The lack of weeding left me time for pruning and one of my jobs yesterday was clearing some of the smaller twigs and what not left over from that process. While I was tidying I noticed the blossom coming out on the almond trees. I was pleased that my inept pruning seems not to have killed anything of note. As I waited my gaze wandered towards the trees with those first signs of blossom and it suddenly struck me how un-English the bare earth looked and yet how ordinary and everyday it is for us.
I've grown to quite like the radio show about the cinema. If they say a film is worth watching I've tended to enjoy the film. They were less than glowing in their report on Vice, the film about Dick Cheney. I thought it was a good film and I wondered if part of their problem with it might be that the version they would have seen wouldn't have had Christian Bale, Sam Rockwell or Steve Carell (or anyone else from the original cast) speaking. It was one of those films where the timing, the phrasing and the pronunciation of the specific word were all important to the plot. The radio critics would have heard dubbing actors trying to get the same meaning and intonation into a rewritten version of the screenplay. They heard different voices working to a different script written to maintain lip synch and Spanish meaning. So they were reviewing a film with different actors and a different script. We all know that Ingid Bergman didn't actually say "Play it again Sam," to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca but let's just pretend she did. For a Spanish audience, read Elsa Fábregas asking José María Caffarel to "Tócala otra vez, Sam." Immortal.
A couple of months ago we saw a really nice, but slight, film called A Family Recipe to use its translated Spanish title and with either Ramen Teh or Ramen Shop as its international title. It's a film from Singapore and it centred on food. Singaporeans eat noodles. Spanish dubbing artists seem to like overemphasising the slurping and sucking sounds associated with noodle eating. It was really noticeable and remarkably annoying.
Anyway, that wasn't the thing I meant to post about. I had a thought about our garden as I waited by the car, by the gate, for Maggie to lock up the house just before we set off for the cinema.
In our garden there are plenty of trees and shrubs and stuff, particularly around the edges, but the majority of the garden area is bare earth - bare, bare earth - soil. I have to be constant in my attempts to keep the weeds down but the low temperatures of the last few weeks have slowed down the growth and made my job easier. I get the same effect in high summer when the heat keeps the little treasures at bay. The lack of weeding left me time for pruning and one of my jobs yesterday was clearing some of the smaller twigs and what not left over from that process. While I was tidying I noticed the blossom coming out on the almond trees. I was pleased that my inept pruning seems not to have killed anything of note. As I waited my gaze wandered towards the trees with those first signs of blossom and it suddenly struck me how un-English the bare earth looked and yet how ordinary and everyday it is for us.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
Corvera Airport
Years ago we very nearly bought a house in the Murcian town of Caravaca de la Cruz. It was a new flat and it looked nice. The last time I saw the building it looked decidedly scruffy. Our purchase was thwarted by a misspelled email address. The property had already been sold when we turned up in the agent's office.
One of the selling points of that flat was the new airport at Murcia. It was billed to be opening very soon and Caravaca would be only a short motorway journey away. I don't remember the year exactly but it was around 2002.
On Monday the last passenger flights used the airport at San Javier, near Cartagena, the one the airlines call Murcia. The day after the new Murcia airport, at Corvera, just over the Puerto de la Cadena from Murcia City, opened for business. The first flight was a Ryanair out of East Midlands.
We'd have had to wait quite a while for all the problems to be ironed out.
One of the selling points of that flat was the new airport at Murcia. It was billed to be opening very soon and Caravaca would be only a short motorway journey away. I don't remember the year exactly but it was around 2002.
On Monday the last passenger flights used the airport at San Javier, near Cartagena, the one the airlines call Murcia. The day after the new Murcia airport, at Corvera, just over the Puerto de la Cadena from Murcia City, opened for business. The first flight was a Ryanair out of East Midlands.
We'd have had to wait quite a while for all the problems to be ironed out.
Beep Beep Lettuce

The electrical goods in the kitchen are in open revolt. The kettle, bought eleven weeks ago, started to leak. I had the receipt. I took it back. "No, this isn't guaranteed," said the bloke in the shop. "It's the limescale that's done for it and improper use isn't guaranteed." I became very cross very quickly. "If you want me to ever buy anything, ever again, in this shop - I listed some of the several big things we've bought there - then you will take this back as part payment against a better make of kettle". He argued, I blustered. My Spanish held together remarkably well. I heard myself using a third conditional. I was impressed. We agreed the kettle was guaranteed and I came home with a shiny Bosch one.
As we drove across Castilla la Mancha I knew the sign said to watch out for otters crossing the road. Otter is not an everyday sort of word. I can watch a film in Spanish without too much trouble. I can read a novel in Spanish though I may miss the nuances. I can maintain a conversation - well sort of. Imagine if you can't. Imagine talking to an insurance company about the burst pipes in your house or opening a bank account or going to the doctor with a pain. What do you do when the instructions for the self service petrol pump make no sense to you and you need fuel and it's 2am. Having a conversation using Google Translate, with gestures, drawings, odd words and a lot of smiling is fine when you're on holiday but it's not so good if you need an O-ring for your pool pump and it won't help you decipher the letter from the bank.
I'm of a certain age. Lots of the Britons I know here are of a similar age. A friend, back in the UK, sent me a message minutes ago to say that someone I once worked with has cancer. We're getting to the time of life when death is not such an abstract idea. When chronic illness is probable as well as possible. Someone was talking to me about their concern that they may end up alone, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by people they couldn't talk to and being subjected to processes they didn't understand. I know of lots of people who have decided that it's time to move from that rural house that looked so idyllic just a few years ago. Now the garden seems boundless. The drive in to town a real chore, and with failing sight and a gammy knee, a potential problem. Some have moved into Spanish towns, others have gone back to the UK.
I know that I write about language a lot but, as I look around me, I understand the British ghettoes, the low level of knowledge about the place we live, the effort that Britons make to find people to provide British television and doctors and plumbers who speak English. It wasn't just the fridge door that reminded me to write this same blog yet again. I am appalled at the lack of support for the boats cruising the Med looking to rescue refugees and migrants. Count the emergency vehicles for a derailed train and compare that to the lack of response to a boat load of people abandoned at sea. I am disgusted at the racist attitudes of far too many people. I heard some MP, on £77,000 a year plus expenses, asking why some refugees don't stop when they get to the first safe country. I wondered if he would have walked from Senegal to Morocco and then crossed the water in a boat from Toys“R”Us to get his job? He wouldn't get it anyway without speaking English.
Wednesday, January 02, 2019
The car forum
Manuela Carmena is the Mayor of Madrid. For most of her career she was a lawyer and then a judge but in 2015 she entered politics with the left leaning Ahora Madrid. She now leads the city council with the support of the Socialist party. I like Manuela and I think that lots of people, even those who disapprove of her politics, like or at least approve of her too. I wait to be corrected. Actually she broke her ankle a few days ago and she's still laid up so, all the best Manuela.
Each year in the Christmas run up the Madrid council has a bit of a junket for the press. This year one of the presenters was a comedian and media host David Broncano. The event became newsworthy because it ended up as a sort of improvised comedy double act between the two of them. I heard a bit of it. One of the comments from David was that the only script he had was from Forocoches. I had no idea what Forocoches was so I determined to find out.
The story goes that the founder of Forocoches, Alex Marín, bought a Renault Laguna in 2002 and couldn't find an Internet forum that talked about cars. So he decided to create one. He'd been making some money from a series of websites before then and this was just another. Except that it took off in a big way. The forum on car chat soon spread to other areas and it is now a hotbed of political incorrectness, countered with political correctness, with opinions of very colour and hue about anything and everything. It's also like that site which tried to get Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name to be the British Christmas number one or, and they nearly managed this, to get the Royal Navy to name its newest scientific research vessel after a Spanish admiral who defeated a British fleet.
I wasn't at all impressed when I first visited the forum. The site looks dead old fashioned and it is festooned with adverts and banners but that doesn't stop it being massively successful. It took me days to raise the enthusiasm go back for a second peek. I then realised that you needed to be invited to join the forum. You could also buy your way in with bitcoin and the like. There were lots of warnings about code scams. One journalist who'd used the forum to write an article about her online dating experiences paid 20€ for her invitation! Codes are also given away on some of the social media sites so I had a look there but the codes are all gobbled up within minutes of being published. I couldn't be bothered and with looking at the parts that anyone can read, without being a member, I realised that even if I could get in I'd probably not be able to understand what was going on. It is a sort of Internet version of one of those conversations that you see in a film between a bunch of Locs wearing rappers and gangstas dripping in gold and driving around in Cadillac Escalades or Maybach Exeleros. The forum is loaded with street talk, abbreviations, obscure social references. I couldn't even understand the invitations to codes on Twitter without paying attention..
But that wasn't the point. It was that Manuela knew what Forocoches was and the newspapers didn't feel that they needed to explain. The threads that she and Broncano talked about included "Manuela is going to make us walk", (She's introduced traffic and pollution reducing measures in Madrid and tightened up on electric scooters and the like), "Echenique likes Manuela", (Pablo Echenique is an Argentine-born Spanish physicist and left wing politician who rides around in a high tech wheelchair because of his spinal muscular atrophy) and "I spy Stalinism in Manuela", (Maybe because she's short or has webbed feet - it couldn't be because of her politics!)
So, yet another thing I didn't know about Spain despite all these years here.
Each year in the Christmas run up the Madrid council has a bit of a junket for the press. This year one of the presenters was a comedian and media host David Broncano. The event became newsworthy because it ended up as a sort of improvised comedy double act between the two of them. I heard a bit of it. One of the comments from David was that the only script he had was from Forocoches. I had no idea what Forocoches was so I determined to find out.
The story goes that the founder of Forocoches, Alex Marín, bought a Renault Laguna in 2002 and couldn't find an Internet forum that talked about cars. So he decided to create one. He'd been making some money from a series of websites before then and this was just another. Except that it took off in a big way. The forum on car chat soon spread to other areas and it is now a hotbed of political incorrectness, countered with political correctness, with opinions of very colour and hue about anything and everything. It's also like that site which tried to get Rage Against the Machine's Killing in the Name to be the British Christmas number one or, and they nearly managed this, to get the Royal Navy to name its newest scientific research vessel after a Spanish admiral who defeated a British fleet.
I wasn't at all impressed when I first visited the forum. The site looks dead old fashioned and it is festooned with adverts and banners but that doesn't stop it being massively successful. It took me days to raise the enthusiasm go back for a second peek. I then realised that you needed to be invited to join the forum. You could also buy your way in with bitcoin and the like. There were lots of warnings about code scams. One journalist who'd used the forum to write an article about her online dating experiences paid 20€ for her invitation! Codes are also given away on some of the social media sites so I had a look there but the codes are all gobbled up within minutes of being published. I couldn't be bothered and with looking at the parts that anyone can read, without being a member, I realised that even if I could get in I'd probably not be able to understand what was going on. It is a sort of Internet version of one of those conversations that you see in a film between a bunch of Locs wearing rappers and gangstas dripping in gold and driving around in Cadillac Escalades or Maybach Exeleros. The forum is loaded with street talk, abbreviations, obscure social references. I couldn't even understand the invitations to codes on Twitter without paying attention..
But that wasn't the point. It was that Manuela knew what Forocoches was and the newspapers didn't feel that they needed to explain. The threads that she and Broncano talked about included "Manuela is going to make us walk", (She's introduced traffic and pollution reducing measures in Madrid and tightened up on electric scooters and the like), "Echenique likes Manuela", (Pablo Echenique is an Argentine-born Spanish physicist and left wing politician who rides around in a high tech wheelchair because of his spinal muscular atrophy) and "I spy Stalinism in Manuela", (Maybe because she's short or has webbed feet - it couldn't be because of her politics!)
So, yet another thing I didn't know about Spain despite all these years here.
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