Life in Culebrón

For this post to work you're going to have to pretend that lots of generalisations are true. For instance that a man and a woman living together and caring for a few children is the historically normal family unit or that, through time, women have worked at home while men have worked elsewhere. You can't bridle either at the idea that people in the UK go to work in the morning, have a lunch break and then go home sometime in the early evening; 9 to 5. Likewise, for Spain, we're going to agree that people go to work in the morning, stop work in the early afternoon, start work again in the late afternoon and then go back to work till mid evening. Again, Pitman style, we'll call it 9 to 2 and 5 to 8.30. So, in this generalised world, Britons have a shortish lunch break during the working week which means that they eat their main meal of the day in the evening. Spaniards on the other hand, with a longer midday break, eat their major meal of the day then. This is not to sugg...

When I used to teach English to Spanish speakers we had a lot of fun with Good Morning and Good Afternoon. I'd stress with the students that we Brits are often pedantic about the time. At 11:59 it's morning but at 12:01 it's afternoon. Evening is vaguer. Does it really begin at six and run to midnight? In summer surely the evening starts a bit later than on a dismal cold grey day in December? And what about greetings? Spaniards use Good Night when they meet people whilst we Britons don't. In my shebeen going days I used to prove my sobriety to the bouncers at four in the morning (at night?) with a cheery Good Evening. If I'd been a baker or a morning show radio presenter going to work at the same four in the morning I'd probably have greeted my work colleagues with a Good Morning instead. The word "tarde" is used here to describe both, what Britons call, afternoon and early evening. Most people learning Spanish usually thinks of tarde as translating ...

We went to a wedding at the beginning of this month. It was only my second in Spain. The last one was back in 2017. That time it was a civil ceremony but it was a full scale event with both the bride and groom turned out in traditional style  - white frock for her and a suit with a waistcoat for him. The setting for the ceremony was dignified, we threw things at the newly married couple, they drove away in a classic limousine and the do at a hotel afterwards was posh and tasteful. There was copious and excellent food, lots of drink, smart clothes, little presents from the bride and groom, speeches and modern touches like a "photo booth"; the full works. Spanish weddings are very recognisable to Britons, there's no best man and the language is different but otherwise it's all very much to format.  We did get to go to a wedding in the UK in 2019. That time the setting was a country castle with an oak panelled bar where the Lagavulin flowed. The ceremony was in the open ...

First my habitual opening diversion. Over the years there has been a fair bit of controversy from time to time about the skin colour of the actors who interpret Othello in the Shakespeare play. You probably know that the full title is The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice . Moor, from Blackamoor is an outdated and offensive term to describe a Black African or other person with dark skin. In Spain the word moro is the direct equivalent of moor. It's used to describe dark skinned people, usually people from North Africa: Tunisians, Algerians, Moroccans and Sahrawis. As with other, similar, words its use can be racist or not. Generally though, for most Spaniards, moro is just a descriptor, like the use of Eastern European, Whilst the media shy away from the word ordinary people don't. I haven't heard many suggestions of a name change for the Moros y Cristianos events though there are plenty of concerns about white people blacking up during those, and other, events. Over i...

Emilio Martínez Sáez. One time mayor of Pinoso who gave his name to our local theatre When we lived in Cambridgeshire there used to be lots of "jokes" about Fen dwellers, in particular about Chatteris. Jokes to to do with interbreeding and the idea that, at birth, if a family had a surfeit of boys and a lack of girls then you found a family who were baby boy poor and baby girl rich and traded. I presume that Spaniards say, or at least said, something similar about country folk. As I'm sure you know Spaniards have two family names. Usually that's one from the dad and one from the mum. Be warned if you decide to adopt Spanish nationality and you're surname deficient you will need to choose an extra.  So you don't need to be a Royal and marry your brother/sister or even your cousin to end up with two surnames which are the same. All you need is to stay off Tinder and stay around the same area for a while.  I'm reading a book about Pinoso written by a local b...

The world being connected, as it is nowadays, it would be quite possible to live our life here more or less isolated from things Spanish; we could behave as though home were still Huntingdon. We try not to but we could. With time things change and so de we. As an easy example the food we eat and the way we buy things has changed radically. Ordering takeaway food to eat at home via my personal phone, without making a call, and having someone deliver it on a bike would have seemed incredible in my youth. Clothes change, habits change, tastes change, everything changes down to the way we speak. Although I've kept my distance and even stayed at home recently I have never shielded or social distanced but I know people who have. I'm not that interested in keeping up with the UK. I tell my sister that I don't know the names of British politicians. She doesn't believe me. She's partially right in that I do half recognise maybe four or five current British political names bu...

It's an old photo. December 2007 I left the bathroom wearing just a t-shirt. Well, jeans and shoes and stuff too. My intention was to put on the hoodie that was hanging on the kitchen door but, as so often nowadays, I was distracted by something else and I forgot. It wasn't till I began to feel chilly that I remembered my original plan.  My overcoat was also hanging from the same hook as the hoodie. Time for that to go into storage I thought. The overcoat, a long dark overcoat, is probably my favourite coat. It came with me from England. It was two or three years old when we got here so it must be closing in on 20 years old now. The lining's a mess and if you look at it closely it's got that sheen on some of the seams to bear witness to its longevity. March is the month when the weather starts to take a turn for the better here in Alicante.  The t-shirt incident and the coat reminded me of a story I'd read, as a youth, about a civil servant and an overcoat - Dostoye...

I have innumerable stories about going to the cinema. I started young and I'm still adding to the store. As an eleven year old I marvelled as my Auntie Lizzie sobbed while watching The Sound of Music. When I was fourteen my dad insisted that we went to a bigger cinema in Leeds to get the full Cinerama effect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was well over 30 when I tried some sort of gruel that Poles prefer to popcorn as I watched a Swedish film with French subtitles in a Warsaw cinema. In Banjul I wondered if the running and shouting antics of the audience for a Kung Fu film would turn violent. As a student in the 1970s I recall scraping together enough loose change to see Last Tango in Paris with someone who really thought it was about dancing. In Madrid, in the early 80s, I sat, rifle-less, on a grassy knoll one August evening for cinema in the park. Hooking the speakers over the wound down car windows at a drive-in in Pennsylvania. Delighting in seeing season after season of black an...

I got my hair cut last week. As I'm sure you know I go to Alfredo . One of the tiny pluses of Covid 19 is that Alfredo has cut down the number of appointments he takes in an hour. If it used to be one every 15 minutes it's now one every 20 minutes and if it was one every 20 minutes it's now one every half an hour. This is to give him time to disinfect things and to make sure that there are not too many people waiting or sitting together. It also means, that for most of an appointment, there's just me and him in the room; so nobody extra to smirk at my Spanish. I said good morning and Alfredo said, "Do you know there are 54 Nationalities living in Pinoso?". I had to say that I didn't. The last time I'd seen the figure it was "only" 42. "I wonder why?," he asked. Being an immigrant myself I had answers. I likened it to the Bengali population settling in Brick Lane or Spaniards congregating in West London - friends tell friends that a...

I didn't do the 11 plus exam at school. It was just being phased out as I went from Junior to Secondary school but I was part of some survey to see if continuous assessment gave similar results to the old style exam. The question I remember was: Which is the best pair? Peaches and ice cream Peaches and cream Peaches and apricots The correct answer is peaches and apricots as they are both fruit. The question is obviously designed to mislead. Spanish tests love to do the same. A sample driving test theory question for instance shows a tram and a car arriving at an unmarked junction and asks who should give way. The answer is the tram. There is a general rule to give way to traffic from the right at unmarked junctions. Obviously the likelihood of such a junction existing is minimal. The question tests something theoretical and unreal with no real practical application. Spanish education is a bit like that too. One commentator remarked that the Spanish way, for a course for trainee car...

Driving in Spain is like driving anywhere. Well no, it's not like driving in Mumbai or Sana'a, but it is like driving in places that have reasonably organised traffic. Most people keep to most of the rules most of the time. By that I mean it's like driving in Dublin or Munich or Mirfield. The cities are busy, towns are busy but Spain has lots of space for not many people and hundreds of Spanish roads are dead quiet. Where we live the roads are very quiet. It's a joy. Last Wednesday were in Elche and I left an obvious space so a car, joining from a slip road, could pop into the main traffic flow. The driver waved in acknowledgement. I was surprised; I wondered if he were foreign, like me. Spaniards do not, generally, acknowledge any assistance on the road. Flash someone in for instance and there is, usually, no answering flash, no quick flip of the hazard lights nor any little wave. Actually, if, as a pedestrian, you hold the door for someone entering or leaving a buildi...

On Monday afternoon I was going through the programmes for the local theatres. We booked up a couple of events. That put a little smile on my face. Goody, goody, I thought. Out and about a bit, I thought. Away from the house for a while, I thought. Those were my thoughts as I crossed the patio and the living room heading for the kitchen to make a cup of tea. If someone were to ask me if I were a theatre goer my answer would be diffident at best. Now and again, sort of, well no, not really. But, as I waited for the kettle to boil I started to think about it. I went to see a loads of plays when I was at University. At the time I knew a lot of drama students, some of whom were young women, maybe that was one of the attractions. Another was that the Gulbenkian Theatre was on campus and free. It was also really close to the Student's Union. The bar in there was very useful when I thought that I was going to die of boredom whilst watching a Congreve play. It gave me the incentive to get ...

The current Spanish Government is a coalition between a slightly left of centre political party, the PSOE, and a much smaller and much further left party, Unidas Podemos. The other week the leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, a Government Vice President, said, a couple of times, that the democracy in Spain was flawed. As you may imagine this caused a bit of a fuss. Then, a couple of days later, a talentless rap artist was sent to jail for suggesting in his songs that terrorists were jolly nice and our King was jolly nasty. People protesting the incarceration took to the streets and did a bit of burning and looting whilst they were there. Podemos was mealy mouthed in its condemnation of the street violence.  My own opinion is that Spain has a bit of a problem with some aspects of democracy. For instance a woman, who tweeted some old jokes about about ETA, the Basque terrorists, blowing up the admiral Carrero Blanco in 1973, was sentenced to a year in prison (time that she would never...

I used to visit Spain as a tourist long before I lived here. Usually I'd just buy a plane ticket and then find a hotel/pension when I got to wherever. Travelling around was done by public transport.  I've always liked trains. For tourists cast adrift in a foreign land, they have the big advantage, over buses, of going to stations that have name plaques. Provided you know the name of the place you're going then it's just a case of being able to read. Of course this is long before trains, trams and buses began to speak or you could GPS track your position. Now Spain isn't bad at signing things but it isn't good either. Signs are apt to be missing when you most need them. Sometimes they are there but not obvious. They lurk. Not big enough. Not in your eyeline. Not right somehow. Once you get the hang of it they are more noticeable but that's when you don't need them. When you're in a hurry, flustered, weighed down by kilos of baggage etc., they never se...

My latest book is a political biography about the bloke who was President of Spain, on the losing side, in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. I heard it reviewed on a podcast I listen to. Normally, when I read or hear about a potential book to read I download a sample to my eBook or save it to a wants list so that, when the time comes to buy something, I have a few queued up ready to compare and contrast. Like all the books I read in Spanish I will forget the title and author. Spanish names just don't stick. I've often had conversations with Spaniards asking if I've read something. I deny all knowledge but then, as they describe the content, I have to admit that I have. I'd heard mention of a book by Benjamin Black on the Spanish radio; it was being offered as a competition prize. It turns out that Benjamin Black is a pen name for the Irish writer John Banville. I had never heard his name before yet I have no trouble at all remembering it. Why do I remember John Banville ju...

I bought some porridge oats the other day. The supermarket ones were missing from the shelf so I shelled out double the price for some branded ones, Oatabix. There was a label on the side of the packet. It was a bit like the label you get on electrical goods to show how energy efficient they are. The one on food is called Nutri-Score. I'd never seen it before but it's simple enough. Green is good, orangey yellows are okey dokey and red is a certain ticket to purgatory. Apparently the French invented the label using some UK Food Standards Agency scoring system. It uses seven indicators: energy (lots of calories) -bad, sugar -bad, saturated fats -bad, sodium -bad, fibre - good, protein - good. So far, so good. It's not that hard to see the sense. Obviously it's an oversimplification but that's the idea; to make it simple and fast. I think it's a good idea. Now, imagine you're Spanish and you think that the Mediterranean diet is the bee's knees even though ...

When I do my online Spanish classes I talk about things that have happened to me in Pinoso. One of my teachers is obviously quite taken with this bucolic existence. He seems particularly tickled by some of the names - the Angustias, Hilarios, Artemios, Pompilias and Laureanos, - but he also likes the little stories about the more mundane names, the Virginias, Remes, Juancos, Elsas and Enriques. I think it's the idea that, even as a complete outsider, I still use names to describe people. The plumber isn't the plumber he's Lucrecio and the optician is Elsa and the bloke who sells me gas is Quique. I was reminded of this by a literary reference to an esquela. An esquela tells you that someone has died. I occasionally hear an esquela on the local radio to say that Don or Doña such and such has died aged whatever and that the service will be at 11am this morning in such and such a church and that his or her family are upset. More commonly though I see a piece of A4 paper pasted...

I presume that Spaniards know what Coplas sound like. I don't really. No, let's be honest I don't at all. I know it's a sort of poetic metre and, having Googled it, I now know that the copla is a form with four verses and four lines in each verse. Coplas have a musical form too. Again, remembering that I am probably wrong, think of an overwrought Spanish waily sort of song and you probably have it. On the other hand you may be thinking of something a bit too Flamenco. Andalucia is the part of Spain that supplies nearly all the clichés - the frocks, the hats, the dancing, the horses, the sherry, the bulls etc. and a strong and regularly mimicked accent. I think coplas are Andaluz too. Not to let detail get in the way of a post there was a big, blousy woman called Lola Flores who was famous for singing coplas. I've half looked at a couple of videos and she does a lot of lifting her dress off the floor and stamping as she sings. Lola was famous for her performances on ...

Over the weekend the wind blew lots of branches off our fig trees and uprooted a two metre high aloe vera plant that I've never much cared for. It took me three trips with the wheelbarrow to haul the remains away. At least the wind means that it's not quite as cold. When we first bought the house one of the few good things about it was the tree lined drive. We still have the trees despite the sport practised by so many visiting vans and lorries of reversing in to them - usually serially. In fact, rather as you would expect, they are somewhat taller now than when we first moved in. I was listening to the two big pointy ones nearest the house creaking in the wind. Culebrón, like Skegness, can be bracing.  The tree alongside the house is at least 10 metres tall, a plumber warned us against it. Roots under the house, blocking up the drains, he threatened. The tree a bit further away, possibly a larch, is even taller and heavier. They probably won't blow over but they might. I c...

Here they are called Borrascas, I'm not sure what they are in English but something like storms or maybe Atlantic Lows. The storms that come in from the Atlantic and nowadays, just like hurricanes, have alternating and alphabetically arranged female and male names - Ana and Bertie, Charlotte and Derek. A little over a week ago Filomena, brought lots of snow which caused problems all over central Spain, particularly in Madrid, and low temperatures everywhere. When it gets cold, and more so when it gets hot, Spain uses more electric. This is not a great surprise. The nuclear power stations never go offline but all the other forms of electricity generation have ups and downs. You can't pull so much from wind turbines if there is no wind, the solar panels don't work so well at night and even the hydroelectric stations are affected by droughts and rainstorms. When all else fails the gas and oil fired power stations are brought on line. The power generated from these fossil fuel...