Excessive moistness

I've mentioned before that the weather in Spain can be quite extreme. Sun, wind and rain can all be just a tad on the over the top side.

Actually I don't mind the sun at all. Here in Alicante province it always gets warm in July and August and the lower temperatures of May, June and September would still be a glorious British summer. In my opinion it's one of the delights of living here but Britons, Spaniards and probably Burundians seem to be constantly surprised that it's warm and several complain about it. True enough it can be destructive and it's not good when it's always sunny and it never rains and the reservoirs empty and the word drought is everywhere.

There's often a breeze in Culebrón, it can be a stiff breeze. We get those dust devils passing by quite frequently in summer - mini tornadoes. Suddenly a breeze springs up from nowhere, slams all the open doors shut, makes the windows rattle, sends dust everywhere and then is gone. But when it does blow it really blows. It actually quite scares me. We have some tall trees. I watch them creak in the wind and I wonder whether the roof would be strong enough to survive a tree toppling onto it.

I don't like the hail either. We get a fair bit of hail. It's something to do with hot air meeting cold air maybe with the sea temperature playing some part in that. I did read it up once but I'm old and I forget and I'm lazy so I'm not going to look again. Sometimes the hailstones are enormous and a few hundred grammes of ice doing 100 kph can do a fair bit of damage to the garden furniture that has survived the sun. And cars. And rooves. A child died this summer from a hailstone strike.

All of these phenomena get reported on the news and nowadays, because someone is always pointing their mobile phone at the right place at the right time, there are videos of tennis ball sized hailstones bouncing off cars, lightning flashes hitting football players and skyscrapers alike and of cars slip sliding in the snow. One of the staples though is floods. Spain has the sort of floods where it rains and rains and rivers overflow and places are flooded and Civil Protection launch rubber boats in the High Street. Much more frequently though we have floods where it rains for ten minutes depositing thousand and thousands of litres in no time at all so that drains can't cope, streets become rivers, stairs and rooves become waterfalls and cars float alongside skips down towards the sea. It looks spectacular on the news. You watch as the water comes gushing out of the windows of somebody's house or as cars float until they pile onto each other. Often a flood that affects one village will be light rain in one a few kilometres away. Microclimates in Spain are as common as tortilla de patatas.

Now we can be pretty smug about this. Those sort of floods are often to do with covering the land with tarmac and concrete. We live surrounded by soil. The road to our house is made of compacted earth. We're on a slope that seems to naturally guide the torrents past our land. Nonetheless the rain can cause problems. It finds the holes in the tin roof of the garage, it comes down the chimneys for the water heater or the cooker hood, it comes under the doors and if you've left a window open then mopping comes next - I lost a computer because the water came in through the open window. But there's a lot of difference between that and people squeegeeing 15cms of mud from their living room floor which is what we see on the telly time after time.

Yesterday we had a bit of a downpour. It lasted maybe 10 minutes. The rain took no notice of the metre overhang of the roof and the 30cm deep window casement and blew into the office so that Maggie had to retreat with her computer. I saw that the back patio was filling with water. I clean the drain every two weeks to make sure it's clear of leaves and stuff but the drain wasn't big enough and the water was soon 15cms deep and threatening to lap over steps and into rooms. I paddled out, took off the drain cover and the fight between water in and out became more equal. It took me a while to dry off though and opening the door to go out was enough to mean a fair bit of mopping up. Then the electric tripped. It turned out to be that the water blowing down the tube for the cooker hood had shorted the circuit. It's still wet enough to still be tripping (same word, different meaning) 24 hours later. But today the sun is shining so it will soon be dry.

And at t least I won't need to water the plants today.

The photo is from Pinoso but years ago. The video isn't from here. It's from all over Spain but it does give the idea.

Excuse me - do you have coconut milk?

Have you ever noticed how things can be difficult to find in Spanish supermarkets? It seems to me that these Spanish shops arrange their products to a logic that I didn't share and I've had to learn. 

Imagine I want peanut butter. My Britishness tells me to look for it with the jam or honey but my recent experience tells me to look for it near the chocolate bars, near the Nutella. Peanut butter isn't a good example because peanut butter is about as Spanish as celebrations on the 4th of July. Nonetheless, the next time you're in a Spanish supermarket, provided you're not Spanish, look around and I'm sure you'll find things that don't quite mesh with your idea of where they should, logically, be. Why aren't the crackers with the pitta and other bread substitutes? Why is the juice distant from the pop? Why are the kitchen and toilet rolls not alongside the cleaning products?

In Pinoso we have quite a few supermarkets and each one of them has a different sort of atmosphere or feel. There are none of the really big ones, no Carrefour or Alcampo, but we are well served for a town of 8,500 souls. I use all of the supermarkets from time to time but my default is Consum. It's a Valencian firm and it's a co-op. Whoever manages the Pinoso Consum is aware of all the Britons in the area so, among the standard Spanish fare, and without ghettoising the products in some international section, you'll find lots of "British" products from Oxo and HP sauce through to pork pies and ordinary council house tea. Most other Consum stores do not have the same range.

I have Consum's app on my phone. As I prepare my weekly list I can usually visualise where the products are in the aisles of the Pinoso shop. It's a bit like that Sherlock Holmes thing of seeing the action and reaction stuff but without falling over the Reichenbach Falls. When I occasionally end up in the Consum in Petrer or Sax it throws me completely that the organisation of the shelves is not the same. In Día or HiperBer or Spar I often wander around for ages wondering where they are hiding the Tabasco, the dried fruit or the sherry vinegar.

It's easy enough when you can ask. For instance I want tahini and the app says they stock it. I have no idea where it will be. All I need to do is to ask for sesame paste in Spanish and Robert is your parent's brother. Obviously they don't have the tahini but that's a different problem. Recently I've been shopping for a couple of people who currently have a bit of trouble getting out and about. They wanted crispbread. Crispbread could be in any one of four separate places. I had no idea what sort of packaging I might be looking for and there is no obvious translation. Neither is there a well known product - like British Ryvita - to compare it with. After a bit of a conference two of the shop workers sent me to the section with cream crackers and Tuc biscuits.

Ah, the excitement of a humdrum existence.

With nothing better to say

There's an ad on the Spanish telly for erectile dysfunction. I see it when I watch the local version of Wheel of Fortune. Maybe it's a reflection of the age of the early afternoon TV audience. The person who tells us about the product wears a white coat, a doctor's coat. He has a beard, a bit of a paunch and specs. He's white. He looks like the sort of doctor your average white Spanish, set in his ways, male with an erectile dysfunction might trust. It's the white coat though. The uniform of the trade. You'll see uniforms everywhere in Spain from Mercadona to Civil Protection.

We popped in to Bar Mucho for a beer the other day. We went in minutes after it had opened. We were the first customers of the day and the young Spanish server was cleaning down tables. The music in the background was reggaeton or reguetón - Spanish language music. Normally the background music in Bar Mucho is international English language stuff. I've heard or read various pieces about reggaeton and it's importance to the music industry. Apparently for the first time in the history of "pop" music, modern contemporary music, Spanish language songs are outselling English language songs in Spanish speaking countries.

When they ran the Dutch Grand Prix two or three Sundays ago I heard the report on one of the five minute Spanish radio news bulletins (I didn't hear the more recent Italian results). It reminded me of the wry observation that, when the Titanic sank, the Halifax Courier carried the headline - "Halifax man lost on Titanic". The bulletin told me about Alonso in 6th and Carlos Sainz in 8th. I'm sure they mentioned the Verstappen victory but they didn't report on the other podium places. And where Halifax leads the rest of Britain follows. Mind you I suspect that in the Cameroon they mention Cameroonian successes first.

The telly was on in the background but when they said "La nueve" I looked up from whatever I was doing to watch. I have to be honest here. I've heard several times that exiled Spanish Republican troops, fighting alongside the Free French under the command of General Leclerc (no relation to the F1 Ferrari driver so far as I know) were the first allied troops to enter Paris during the Liberation of Paris in August 1944. I presumed this was another slight exaggeration to boost national pride. The unit was called La Nueve, The Nine, The Ninth I suppose. Their American built halftracks and Jeeps had Spanish derived names like Brunete, Ebro and don Quijote. I'd always supposed this was a bit of an overstatement, I'd supposed they'd been there but that they were part of a bigger force. In fact it seems that of the first 160 troops into Paris, 146 of them were Spaniards. They were Spanish soldiers from the defeated Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and they joined up with the Free French forces, on the other side of the Franco Spanish border, to continue their struggle with fascism. 

I've not done italki for ages. Well no, I have. I hadn't done italki for ages but last week I did. Italki is one of the several online language teaching and learning platforms. A teacher and a student get together on Zoom or Skype or whatever online, virtual, remote, method they choose to talk face to face. In my case I simply use it for Spanish conversation but people also do proper classes with lesson plans and suchlike. I like it because it's cheap, to a time that suits me and, obviously enough, it gives me an opportunity to speak Spanish which I hardly ever do. I've changed teachers a lot. Before I start with a new person the only thing I say to them is, "There's no need to prepare anything, I just want to talk". Nonetheless, every time, without fail, the teacher is determined that we will have a topic of conversation. They send me something to read or a list of "interesting" vocabulary. I ignore the articles and the word lists and we just natter away. Conversation is like that. You start with erectile dysfunction and end up with online classes.

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The photo is from a book Pingüinos en Paris (Bajo dos tricolores), Una novela sobre los luchadores republicanos de La Nueve by Jordi Siracusa. The author asked for a mention if I used one of his pictures so there it is!

The writing's on the wall

I was born in West Yorkshire. I remember, as a callow youth, struggling through the gorse and heather on Keighley Moor, after my first ever visit to the Bronte's home village as a qualified driver, looking for cup and ring marks. I found some. I thought they were deadly boring to look at. I was profoundly impressed that they were there though. A continuity with the past. Imagine, someone, in their idle moments, a few thousand years ago, had chosen to leave their mark in the stone. If there had been mobile phones there might have been neither cups nor rings. We've got something similar, more impressive actually, on La Centenera Hill - the stone carvings the petroglyphs - here in Pinoso. Out at Monte Arabí near Yecla there are more. We humans, be we Tykes, Pinoseros and Yeclanos seem to want to mark our passing. My own initials are carved in the, "it's a school tradition don't you know", stone bench alongside the playing fields of my old grammar school - CJT 1969.

Carving is one way we do it but I suppose if I were to think prehistoric art I would instantly think cave paintings. Ochre and red antelopes, people with bows and arrows, hand prints, buffalo or bison, and, of course, penises - big penises. Male artists perhaps? We had very similar drawings on the back of the toilet doors at that same school. When I've been in the ethnological museums in Yecla and Jumilla there are maps of prehistoric sites in Murcia - Mortalla, Calasparra, Cieza and Mula for instance. In Alicante there are, Google tells me, 28 sites. Close to Pinoso we have the paintings over at Monte Arabí, on the same hill as those petroglyphs I mentioned earlier. To see some of the paintings, the pinturas rupestres, the best way is to book one of the regular guided tours from the Yecla tourist office but there are some paintings that you can visit anytime. They are protected from the rain by the overhanging cliff and from we humans by a big iron grille. There are more "cave paintings" at la Sarga and the Alcoy tourist office arranges a lot of visits there. The only other ones I've been to locally (well nearly nearby) are at Alpera just into Albacete province. There you have to ring someone to arrange a mutually convenient time. When I went the time was apparently only mutually convenient to me and the guide which made it a good visit. 

I'd never really made the link but, as is so often the case I heard a podcast that did. The link that is between those wall paintings and the stuff we see daubed all over the modern urban landscape. The bison and antelope at Sagra are painted with pigments made from water, animal fat, faeces, resin, crushed rocks and plants while the designs produced at the "Urban Art" event at the Cigarreras Centre in Alicante this summer used Krylon Color Master spray paint. In my opinion the work being produced there was a bit second rate but my opinion may have been coloured by the deafening, so-called, Urban Music that some very young DJs were producing at the same time. I did, though, enjoy a guided tour around Petrer that I did, just before Covid made things different. It was a guided visit to look at wall art in the town; the graffiti. Each year, at the ARTenBITRIR event in Petrer, they find new walls to let local artists loose on. Not the tagging stuff, the pictorial stuff. I don't really know much about tagging, the script based graffiti, the graffiti signatures. I'm sure there is some etiquette to it, honour among thieves and all that, but to me the tags often look like so much scrawl. Urban vandalism on any vertical surface that stays long enough to attract spray paint. The wall art can be good though. Petrer promotes it as does Monóvar - in fact it's all over the place in Spain and probably everywhere. I noticed, for instance that the Alicante tourist office has produced an online leaflet with the easy to decipher tile of Ruta Arte Urbano, San Antón, Alicante.

Plenty to gawp at then, from the prehistoric to the very urban only a few kilometres from home.

Fat man and petroglyphs on La Centenera 

Pinturas rupestres on Monte Arabí, Yecla. This is the organised tour

This is the overhang where the wall paintings are at La Sarga. Alcoy tourist office organises regular visits

If you go to Monte Arabí near Yecla for the "always available" cave paintings this is the cliff face you're looking for. Where the rock is orange, at the left hand side, you can just about see, in the photo, an arch with a grille over it. That's where they are.

On message

We did a bit of a circular tour last week. Up to Albacete, across to Cuenca and back through Teruel before coming home. 

Along the way we  visited the winery in Fuentealbilla, run by the Iniesta family, (Andrés Iniesta scored the winning goal for Spain in the 2010 World Cup), we looked at the huge 3rd Century AD Roman Mosaic in the tiny village of Noheda and we stayed in Albarracín which has city status even though it's smaller than either Algueña or Salinas. We even visited some old pals in Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel.

I often think Spanish written information is patchy or poor. I wonder why there is no list of the tapas on offer or why the office doesn't show opening times. I have theories; those theories go from the link between information and power to high levels of illiteracy in the Franco years to the much less fanciful idea that Spaniards simply prefer to talk to a person. There's no doubt that written information here is much better, and more common, than in once was but it can still be woefully lacking.

Raul, who showed us around Albarracín, was a pretty decent guide. He introduced himself, he asked people in the group where they were from, he modulated his voice when telling stories and he spoke louder when someone revved a motorbike or beat a drum within earshot. Nonetheless the information was a bit stodgy - there were a couple of stories but it was still, basically, dates and facts. Years ago, when Maggie worked in Ciudad Rodrigo she helped a couple of young women to prepare for their oposiciones, the official exams for local government and civil service type jobs. Both of them had to be able to present the "official" script, in English, for the cathedral or castle; any deviation from the script was considered an error and would cost them exam marks.

I have another story that ties in with this Spanish idea of memorising things as being good. The first time I came across the Trinity College Speaking exam in English was when I had to help a student prepare for the exam. Her talk was going to be about the first of the Modern Olympic Games. When she'd finished her presentation I asked her a question about it. She replied, in Spanish, that all she needed me to do was to correct the script which she intended to learn and regurgitate. That method was so common in Spain that Trinity changed the exam to ensure that it was a better test of speaking skills.

The tour of the bodega at Fuentealbilla, the introductory welcome to the museum house in Albarracín, the guide who explained the Roman mosaics to us and the volunteer guide who showed us around Albarracín Cathedral were all fine, maybe a bit monotone, a bit emotionless, but fine. There was good information. When the cathedral guide told us that the decoration had been done on the cheap, the marble on the wall was just decorated plaster, the marble columns in the side chapel were painted pine trees, I thought this may lead to a bit of interaction, a bit of story telling. But no. Under such circumstances I often think back to a tour I did around St Peter's in Rome. The story of Michelangelo lying on scaffolding, with Dulux dripping into his eye from painting the Sistine Chapel, swearing at the Pope and complaining that he was a sculptor, not a painter, as he was asked if he could turn his hand to building the biggest dome ever because the tarpaulin draped across the unfinished church was letting in the rain water and giving the Protestants a good laugh. There was a guide who knew how to engage his audience in a tour.

In the Ethnological museum in Cuenca. I was reading one of the "labels" by an exhibit. It was, at least, 500 words long, a side of typed A4 paper. It was full of Spanish words in the style of the English word ashlar. Who ever says ashlar? Isn't dressed stone a bit more accessible? Couldn't they write, ashlar,  finely cut stone, to help out we non architects? I reckon that there was as much reading as in a normal length paperback on the walls of that museum. It takes me a few days to read a novel. Again, all it needs is a bit of thought to do this right. 

At the MARQ, the archaeological museum in Alicante, they do the British newspaper thing of a headline followed by an explanatory paragraph followed by the full story. An example. Let's suppose there are some hats and helmets and other headgear on display. The label title says Visigoth headgear. You can stop there if that's enough for you. Under the title the label says something like: Hats, helmets, scarves and other head coverings were worn by both men and women during the Visigoth rule in Spain (5th to 8th century AD). Whilst most of the headgear had some practical purpose, protection for soldiers, hygienic hair covering for cooks, a sun shade for shepherds etc. the style and decoration also emphasised the importance of the wearer in the social pecking order. Again, stop there if you will but if you're a millinery student looking for inspiration or simply a devout museum goer each exhibit has a longer, explanatory description.

But I would have forgotten all about the guides, and information and museums, if it hadn't been for the TV news yesterday. They said there were a shortage of place in FP courses. Now I happen to know what FP courses are but I wondered why they chose to use initials rather than use the full version. FP=Formación Profesional. The literal translation is Professional Training - it's the sort of training that is more directly work related. I was reminded of my potential blog topic and here it is.

The sum of the parts

I'm trying to get in as many events and fiestas and ferias as I can before the stroke or the fit leaves me stranded in Culebrón, before cataracts blur my vision or before my knee finally gives way. My partner, Maggie, isn't convinced that it's a sound strategy. Maybe she's Virgo; I hear they're sceptical.

July and August in Spain are just loaded with things to do. There aren't that many weekends in two months and everywhere wants to shoehorn their event in. I've seen so many mascletás, so many Virgins carried on the backs of so many humble believers, so many men with big pot bellies, fake beards and 15cm cigars striding out that even romerias, firework displays and Moros y Cristianos are losing out to staying home with a can of Estrella and a good book.

Last week though we did stray from home. We went to Aledo down in Murcia, close to Totana. I'd never been to Aledo before but somehow I'd learned that they had a bit of an event where they light the old part of the village, the bit with a castle keep and the parish church, with thousands of candles. That was it really. They charged us money to get into the village and they did it in two shifts. The online tickets sold out in two days and the queues to get in were hundreds of metres long for both the early and the later visit. The villagers had been Blue Petering away. Water bottles turned into lanterns, hundreds of tea light candles arranged into recognisable shapes, burning torches alongside bandaged mummies and papier maché Egyptian tombs. Candles and torches a go go. There were musical groups at strategic locations. There were bright ideas and innovative ideas at every turn. It was first rate.

I have no idea how the Aledo Noche en vela is organised or paid for or promoted but the idea is so simple. Someone persuades the neighbours to take part and all their small contributions make one spectacular whole. This household decided to tie all those origami swans to the candle lit tree, whilst this one hung torches along the whole frontage of their house. Everyone does a little bit and, suddenly, we have a stupendous whole.

I've seen it before in both in Spain and in the UK but it seems more prevalent here. Basically it's the idea of making something touristy out of almost nothing. There are lots too where some group or society does something for an audience but this is different because a whole community is mobilised. Arrange for a few walls to be made available and suddenly there are artists everywhere keen to paint their street art on the blank canvas. Ask everyone in the village to make a scarecrow type figure and dress it up and put it outside their house on the appropriate day and there will be hordes of gawpers gawping and spending cash in the bars and restaurants. Get people to put bags over their heads and wear silly costumes to parade around the streets and hey ho, another reason to get a tapa in the nearby bar. Ask people to paint banners to hang from balconies and suddenly we have an exhibition. If I put my mind to it I'm sure I could think of lots more examples but I'm feeling a touch of ennui this afternoon.

That's it really. Nothing much to add. I just thought it was an interesting concept for a quick blog. 

Muak! Muak!

I'm not particularly good with people. I'm not particularly outgoing. I'm terrible at remembering faces (well whole bodies come to that) and I can forget names within a couple of sentences of being introduced. The opening phrases of a greeting are usually banal, sometimes surreal and occasionally bizarre. Greetings take me by surprise. It would probably be better if I stayed at home with a good book.

The other day some people that I do recognise on the streets, members of a Spanish family, had one of the older members die. I didn't know what the form was so I didn't do anything. I wondered about going to the tanatorio, I wondered about the mass but a mix of embarrassment, fear of speaking Spanish and my general diffidence meant that I did nothing. As ill luck would have it I bumped into one of the family a few days later. She greeted me, we did the two cheeks kissing, I failed to understand what she'd said to me, I failed to pass on my condolences and as she walked away I felt completely inadequate and kicked myself for not being up to the situation.

In my grey formative years those foppish French went in for that kissing each other thing. We steadfast Britons on the other hand maintained the creases in our trousers and shook hands. I know - we were all repressed. I am aware that nowadays even handshakes require some sort of hand twisting routine that I have never quite mastered. My dad taught me the basics of 1950s handshaking and Mr. Plant, the local greengrocer, had strong views on my posture, on the firmness of grip and the length of time of hand holding between men which he was happy to share. It didn't dawn on me, for years, that Mr Plant the greengrocer sounds like a made up, Happy Families, name. Nowadays preferring a politician style firm handshake is tantamount to admitting a sordid past and a pressing need to make an appointment with an analyst. My unease at performing a mutual back massage on greeting people whose name I should know and the need to be intimate with everyone down to the postie signals me out as an emotional casualty.

In fact I don't really care if someone I hardly know wants to slap me on the back or give me a bear hug. I probably file it in the hypocritical tosh section of my mental filing system but my facial expression will be tolerant or even approving. I squirm more when people substitute "Love you", for goodbye at the end of a phone call. Nothing like overuse to devalue something. That said I don't care for hugging or being hugged as a greeting or farewell but the reason is practical rather than my lack of sensitivity. I have no idea how I am supposed to do it. As vague acquaintances move into my personal space in their attempt to hug, kiss or exchange bodily fluids with me I usually end up treading on their toes (or having my toes trodden on) bumping foreheads or elbowing them in the kidneys. I've also broken several pairs of the reading specs because they are habitually hanging from a cord around my neck. I think the problem is that, even now, we Britons lack a proper set of instructions. 

Now the French know how to do it and so do the Spanish. Spaniards grew up with a routine probably reinforced by Señor Planta. Men here generally do the hand on the shoulder and handshake goodbye but it's common to see men, close family, saying goodbye with the double cheek kissing thing. Men to women and women to men for greetings and farewells is usually cheek grazing. First go left, touch cheeks then go right and touch cheeks. More contact for more familiarity. Easy as pie. Even I can do it. There's a routine, an understood set of actions. It's not at all false or over emotional it's simply shaking hands with the face. I do it as naturally as I do anything that requires any level of social interaction and I'm sure Mr Plant would be fine with it too.

Visiting a brothel

Now you may have noticed the Clubs dotted all over Spain. We passed one near Cabo Roig the other day. It was that which made me think of this post. The clubs tend to be on the outskirts of towns but not all are. 

I often think we immigrant Britons are divided into two camps - those who think Spain is brilliant and those who think it's a nightmare full of outdated systems and indolent people. With my rose tinted glasses firmly in place I thought for years that these out of town clubs were the result of careful urban planning. Noisy clubs, I was thinking dance type clubs, well away from people who wanted to get an early night.

In the time before Google maps, before Booking.com when things were still priced in pesetas and you were pleasantly surprised to find that your hostal bedroom had a washbasin, we were wandering around Southern Spain in a hired car. Our holiday plan was pretty simple really. We drove around gawking at stuff and when it began to get to evening we stopped outside a hotel or a hostal, asked if they had a room, asked how much it was and with that sorted we spent the evening eating and drinking. Proper holidays. That night the plan was proving trickier than usual. We'd tried in a couple of decent sized towns and either been turned away from full hotels or run away as we baulked at the prices. Our usual fallback of roadside restaurants with a bloke at the bar in white shirt, yellowed with age and sporting grease stains, and where there were a couple of underused, dusty and sparsely furnished rooms upstairs seemed to be, uncharacteristically, full of builders and travelling salesmen. It was getting dark, we were fed up and my body was crying out for intravenous beer. 

Then, Eagles like, a hotel appeared as if from nowhere. It had a huge neon sign - Club, Hotel. When we were hotel hunting we took it in turns to ask for rooms. Our Spanish was so dodgy, so stammering that humiliation was certain. It was my turn. We parked out front of the hotel in the very quiet car park. I opened a couple of double doors that looked entrance like and I was met with a wall of sound. Wrong door. That must be the club. I walked around the corner. In an unreformed 20th Century man sort of way way I was impressed by the shortness of the skirt and the length of the legs. The woman inside the skirt was young, thin and busty. They know how to have fun in Andalucia I thought. It crossed my mind that it was a bit early to be out having fun in Spain, it was around nine in the evening, but, well, rural nowhere. Then I noticed  a very red, equally thin, equally busty young woman with a red wig, red lips, red vest and indecently tight red shorts and red shoes. We're quick thinkers we Yorkshiremen. The penny dropped. I decided that this was a time to be as foreign as possible. I put on my broadest of Yorkshire accents. I probably said ay up. "Rooms this way?" I grunted. The short skirt had done her homework though - she was bilingual. "Ghelo, big boy - dew wants fun?" A little further on the other side of this display of femaleness I could see a sign that said reception. Maybe it would be safe there. I pushed on. The man behind the desk had some weightlifting type chums standing behind him to each side. They wore black t-shirts full of pectoral muscles and biceps. "This isn't a hotel for tourists, is it?", I asked. His look was so condescending. He shook his head. He uttered not a word. The short skirt had her hands on my shoulders. I pushed past. I pushed past the red wig. I jumped into the hire car. 

"No rooms," I said to Maggie.

The Knowledge

The fiestas in Pinoso are just about to kick off. As a fully accredited member of the I don't approve of taunting animals and I've just had my hernia fixed besides which my knee is playing up, club, it's a bit unlikely that I'll be taking full advantage of the real partying that the fiestas have to offer. I will wander the stalls, I will eat out, I will see a band or two, I will look at the fair, I'll grin at the ofrenda and laugh at the whacky racers but I'm not going to be there for the incredibly loud music at five in the morning nor will I be running around after the bullocks and it's for sure that nobody is going to be invite me to join their peña to drink cheap alcohol or abuse other substances beside some parked car pumping out music when all sane folk have taken their contact lenses out for the night. Even if I join my age peers to see the equally compromised one (or two) hit wonder from the 1970s I won't know the songs. It won't stop me having a decent time though. 

The phone shows it as a Barcelona number. I very rarely answer those, or the Madrid ones. I don't want a burglar alarm, or solar panels. I'm happy with our electricity provider. But it's the third time today - I crumble under the persistence. I'll do my version of a Woolwich accent. That usually scares them away though it makes Maggie wonder if I'm having a stroke. It turns out to be an Amazon delivery driver. The address they have for a delivery, Maggie's office, doesn't open on Saturday. I realise the driver is having trouble with my Spanish because he isn't. When I see him he looks Dutch or something but he doesn't speak English either - Ukrainian maybe?

On the phone he tells me where he is. I'll be there in five minutes I say. I'm being optimistic, even with a following wind eight might have been closer to the truth, but I'd forgotten the fiesta. Pinoso closes half of its roads at fiesta time. There are four main routes out, or, I suppose, in to Pinoso. None of them is actually closed but three of the four are compromised. It's not a problem for we locals. We can usually find a way around. Sometimes it's simply not possible and close is the best you can do. It's amazing the streets you know after living in a place for 17 years. Dodging around a blocked street, feeling cocky, feeling knowledgeable, Edgeware Road to Astrop Terrace in Shay Boo please cabby, there is a builders merchant's lorry unloading bricks on my route. I don't like going against one way systems but there is no alternative.

I dodge in and out of side streets and park alongside the Amazon van. It must be making your life a nightmare I say to the driver. He knows the Spanish for nightmare.

Dancing in the streets

I saw something about the fiestas in Cañadas de Don Ciro this last weekend. Now Don Ciro really is no more than a wide spot on a very rural road but they have fiestas. It reminded me that I hadn't written anything about our own local fiesta which was a couple of weekends ago now. 

The Culebrón fiesta is one of a series for the outlying villages which are part the Pinoso municipality. The first village fiesta takes place in late Spring and they go on through the Summer with the villages taking it in turns to have a weekend of festivities. The fiestas are not usually particularly exciting or expansive but they are deeply ingrained in local culture and they offer the villagers a break from the routine with a chance to have a bit of a natter with friends, family and neighbours against the backdrop of some planned activities.

There are usually two key themes. One is religious. Nearly all the fiestas are tied in to the patron saint for the village. The saintly effigies usually get an outing. Sometimes the saints stay away from home for days and sometimes they just get a quick tour of the village. There are as many variations as saints.

The other theme is eating, well eating and drinking. Most of the Pinoso villages have a sit down evening meal. Occasionally the meals are classy with ceramic plates and decent cutlery but usually it's plastic plates and glasses with mass catered food. The quality of the meal is importantish, it's always a topic of conversation afterward, but really it's the sitting and chatting and drinking and laughing that matters.

The dinners used to be followed by showband type bands, orquestras playing paso dobles and jotas. As budgets shrank, in the smaller villages, so did the number of musicians and nowadays it's often a playlist and a laptop. Mind you people have been complaining that the Motomami tour by Rosalía doesn't have any live musicians either!

The activities to go with the feasting, drinking, dancing and religious observance can be legion. Traditional games are very usual. In this area something, a bit like horseshoes, called tanganilla or caliche, is common, a cooking competition (traditionally for men) making gachamiga (a sort of garlic pancake) is standard issue too, maybe a communal picnic, vermouth sessions, foam machines, water slides or bouncy castles for the kids, cake and a drink type sessions - chocolate with churros, horchata with fartons, sometimes basketball or football competitions or even summer cinema. I've seen things as mundane as domino competitions and face painting and as innovatively simple as beer tasting sessions. It all depends a bit on your budget and it all depends a bit on what is considered acceptable in your neck of the woods. 

The activities are a bit academic. Village fiestas are not really about activities. They are about nattering to your neighbour, having a beer or a wine and remembering old so and so alongside the opportunity for a bit of partying.

One of the key figures in organising the village fiestas in the Pinoso area are the pedáneas or pedáneos. Britons tend to describe these people as village mayors or mayoresses but they are more actually the interface between villagers and the local administration. They also represent the village in any number of local functions. So if the street lamp outside your house fails or if you feel the bins are not being emptied properly the idea is that you moan to the representative and they pass on your moans to the town hall. Our village rep is Belgian. She's hard working and organised. She, and her family, seemed to have done most of the work to organise the fiesta. The one area where there were probably other willing helpers was with the organisation of the religious part of the proceedings. 

The programme was similar, but different, to the pre Covid years. On the Friday evening there was a vermouth session - a few litres of vermouth, nuts, crisps, olive and mixers and space to chat. On Saturday there was a market for second hand stuff and for craft stalls and the like. There was nothing for the Saturday afternoon. The evening meal on Saturday evening was organised into tables for friends and family groups rather than the more usual long table free for all. There was nothing on Sunday apart from the all important evening mass and procession followed by the "Wine of Honour" which is a  sort of end of event stand up buffet. 

Looking in, as someone who knows nothing about how things were organised and as someone who is not particularly integrated into the village, it felt as if the fiesta had a different emphasis to past years. It had a more businesslike feel. The timetable was more precise and none of the smaller elements were there - no competitions, no kids games. In fact, mass and procession apart it could have been almost anywhere sunny in Europe. The evening meal for instance was absolutely Spanish but the menu didn't feature anything that might be alien to a Dutch or Scottish diner. Anyone who saw the advertising and wished to could have a stall at the market or a place at the dinner table. That meant there were far more people involved than usual but not, necessarily, villagers. The religious ceremony maintained its village base with almost nobody, except the invited dignitaries and musicians, not having ties to the village.

It was nice to have the fiesta back. 

The Virgin comes down

I drove over to Novelda yesterday to see La bajada de la Virgen. I'd never seen this particular procession and I'm always up for a good romería. The idea of a romería is that a saint, well the carved statue that represents a saint, is moved from one place to another in a procession - usually from some sort of chapel to a parish church or vice versa. Normally the saints are carried on the shoulders of the faithful using a stretcher like base but not always, in la Palma for instance the saint rides in a cart. There are all sort of variations. The shrine where this particular saint, Mary Magdalene, came from is on la Mola Hill so she was brought down; bajada implies coming down, subida is when the saint goes up the hill.

The style of a romería can vary, some are pretty large scale like San Pancrecio in Sax, San Isidro in Salinas or the Virgen de la Nieves between Aspe and Hondón de la Nieves. Several are much smaller scale including very local ones like moving the Virgen de la Asunción from Caballusa to Pinoso and back or taking la Fatima up and down Monte Cabeço. If you want to see sheer madness the romería associated with el Rocio in Andalucia is the one - religious fervour turned pitch battle. It's worth a bit of YouTubery to see it!

Anyway Novelda was due to start at 7pm from the santuario up on la Mola. I thought I'd leave Culebrón around 6pm, park in the car park by the castle on La Mola have time to take a few snaps as the Virgin set off with maybe a couple of hundred people in attendance. I expected to be home in an hour or so. 

When I got to Novelda the town was under a state of siege. Roads were closed everywhere. Local Police and Civil Protection moved around purposefully. Parking spaces had to be fought for. Obviously this thing was bigger than I'd expected. In fact I reckon that half of Novelda was there. The crowds were impressive and to be honest I had no idea what was going on. The road up to the castle and sanctuary, Paseo de los Molinos, had a few stalls along its length selling beer and water and candles. There were promotional tents for dance clubs and most of the big houses along the route were hosting pool parties. Lots and lots of young people had matching t-shirts which I presumed were simply unofficial peñas, often just friendship groups, but they may have been tied in with the Moros y Cristianos festivals that are going on this week in the town. I wondered about asking but I never quite got around to it. I don't like to expose my appalling Spanish and, anyway, my mum told me not to talk to strangers.

When the Virgin came into view I was a bit surprised. Those teddy bears you can win at the fair are often bigger. As she progressed there were lots of ¡Vivas! - Hurrah the Virgin of Novelda - Hurrah. Hurrah Mary Magdalene - Hurrah and so on. I was wandering along close to the Virgin's carriers and every now and again something would happen. Maybe there were a bunch of people forming human towers to delight the Virgin. Or maybe she would dive into the spectators when she saw someone alongside the road in a wheelchair. The Virgin got close, the wheelchair user stretched out to touch the Virgin. I saw no actual miracles. As she passed some of the houses along the route there would be a volley of fireworks. Every so often Mary Magdalene would be set down on a tabletop, brought out of one of the local houses by well wishers, so that people could rub their mass cards against the little figure or lift their babies up to touch the statue.

When the Virgin passed the junction which led to where my car was parked I decided to let her go on her way. I did notice though that the candle sellers were doing brisk business. Presumably a candlelit procession would be part of the event later. 

Not on your nelly Dorothy Fields

You may have noticed it has been quite warm in Spain for a while now. As I write, the word heatwave is on lots of people's lips; French lips, British lips, Portuguese lips and more. Spain is on fire too but we touched on that a couple of weeks ago. While it's a bit unusual to have such high temperatures in Paris or London it's not that unusual in Madrid or Culebrón. It seems pretty obvious to the casual observer that odd weather events are becoming more and more frequent. The weather's gone mad or, as we say in these here parts, el tiempo ha vuelto loco. Maybe we drove it mad.

Those of us who live in Spain walk down the shady side of the street, look for the tables in the shade and often choose to eat inside a restaurant. We prefer to be coddled by the aircon, rather than go hand to hand with swarms of pesky and hungry flies under the sunshades on the terrace. It sometimes seems to me that Spaniards can take this to quite extreme lengths. Go on a coach and they will instantly draw the window blinds - no watching the world slip by. I'm never convinced about the efficacy of blinds down and doors closed on houses in the afternoon heat - I prefer a bit of airflow - but Maggie, my partner, is a true believer. She's not quite as sold on starting the concerts at midnight.

What made me think about this sun versus shade thing was watching a car being parked today. The driver had to do a lot of close manoeuvring, climb a kerb and, when the car was finally parked, shuffle over to the passenger door to get out of his car. All to take advantage of the dappled shade offered by a small tree. But he thought it was worthwhile.

The incident reminded me of when I used to work in Cieza. My colleagues always parked their cars together on the waste ground outside the school and I got into the habit of doing the same. I was nearly always there first because I worked the morning shift too. One day when we went out to collect our cars, I found my car abandoned by the others; my colleagues cars were parked in a different spot. I asked why. The answer was that as Spring became Summer the shadow of the nearby blocks of flats moved across the parking area. When we started at 3.30 pm in the afternoon they were already thinking five hours ahead and plotting the sun's course across the sky. By the time we got out of work at 8.30 pm their cars had been in the shade for a while and had had time to cool down. I should have guessed really. Earlier, when I worked in Fortuna, a man had been quite sharp with me for parking in the sun. "There's space around the corner in the shade", he chided, "don't be stupid and move it there!".

Oh, and Dorothy Fields wrote the song On the Sunny Side of the Street, the music was by Jimmy McHugh.

Run, run, run

It's Sanfermines up in Pamplona at the moment. You know the thing, white clothes, red neckerchiefs, running with bulls - the Hemingway book.

I often listen to the 8 am news on the radio and, for the past few days, today was the last, they've been doing a live broadcast of the bull running. It only lasts a bit over a couple of minutes so it doesn't interfere too much with the real news.

Once upon a time I lived in Ciudad Rodrigo. There too, but at Carnaval time, they have an encierro. The bulls run through the streets, lined with very solid, railway sleeper type, fences to the town square. Encierro means locking up so, when they get to the square, they are penned up.

The bulls are led along the route by mansos, bulls but not fighting bulls. Manso means something like docile but a five to six hundred kilos of bull isn't my idea of something cuddly. The idea is that these mansos have done the route before so they lead the fighting bulls to their destination. We'd watched all 12 bulls pass by one day in Ciudad Rodrigo and as they'd gone we came out from behind the big, solid wood fence we'd sheltered behind. Two of the daft mansos changed their minds and came running back down the street towards us. We were back behind that fence in a flash.

One day in Ciudad Rodrigo there is a variation where bulls are shepherded into town by men and women on horseback. The bulls are still loose and run in the street. We'd arranged to go to the house of a friend, a house with a balcony that overlooked the route. At some point the man of the house said that we'd get a better view in the street. Having no idea what was going on he led me through a gap in the fence and that's where we stayed. On the wrong side of the fence; the side full of bulls with sharp, gut rending horns. "It's easy", said my pal, "as they pass just climb up the fence and they'll trot by without giving you a second thought". I was wearing a big overcoat. As the bulls approached people started shouting at me for being so stupid, I was the equivalent of the infamous New Zealander who ran with the bulls in Pamplona in flip flops - the idiot guiri. When the time came the fence was full of faster more agile people than me, there was nowhere to climb. The bulls passed by. I didn't die or anything.

That same year Maggie's boss at the school where she worked was on the correct side, the safe side, of the fence. He lived in the town, he'd seen the bulls pass by on any number of previous occasions. He was leaning against the fence not even watching the bulls, talking to his friends. A bull decided to stab him through the fence. He spent about six weeks in hospital but survived. 

Two times two is four

This week, in the Spanish media there has been a lot about Miguel Ángel Blanco, a local politician in the Basque country who was abducted and murdered by ETA, the Basque terrorist group. Miguel died in July 1997 so this is the 25th anniversary. As always with things ETA related or to do with the victims of terror there has been controversy. Basically some people say that the political party Bildu, which operates in the Basque Country, and is a sometimes ally of the present socialist government, is the direct successor to the ETA terrorist group. Others say that making that association is as unrealistic as following the trail of the very mainstream Partido Popular back to some hypothetical Francoist roots. I wonder if there is some sort of rule about how long has to pass before groups, people, finally lay old antagonisms to rest, acknowledge the damage and move forward. I understand the Catalans are still upset by a battle in the War of Succession that took place in 1714 but Coventrians seem to have forgiven the Luftwaffe just as Dresdeners seem to have forgiven the RAF even if the evil intent and horror of those two bombing raids isn't forgotten.

Anyway, Miguel Ángel Blanco's death caused huge upheaval at the time - there was an anti terrorist demonstration in Madrid with at least one and a half million protestors. Lots of the Spanish media have been doing that thing where they go into the streets and ask young people if they know who Miguel Ángel was. The broad result is that 60% of young people don't have a clue about him. I didn't quite see how that was relevant or interesting. If you were to ask me who the US president was in 1997 or the French President or even the UK Prime Minister it would be guessing rather than knowing (Clinton, Chirac, Major and Blair). Time dulls lots of stories and if someone wasn't even born when Clinton, Chirac, Major and Blair were important then it's just another fact. And what is the atomic weight of caesium by the way?

I heard on the radio this week that the questions most usually failed on the theory part of the Spanish driving test theory part are to do with speed limits. I instantly thought "Ah, ah, I know this - defaults are 30 in town, 90 on open roads and 120 on motorways". The answer was 25. That's because the question was what is the maximum legal speed for a tractor towing a trailer; basically a trick question. What use is that to a new driver? If you drive a tractor and trailer you'll know the speed limit for your rig. If you drive a car the speed limit for a tractor is of nothing but academic interest. I remember that a favourite question on the British driving test of my youth was about braking distances. Having some idea of braking distances is also a bit of rote learning but the difference, at least as far as I see it, is that it demonstrates something practical about actual driving. Go faster and it takes exponentially, or is it geometrically, longer to stop.

Lots of news stories are good space fillers. January sales, Christmas lottery, heatwaves. Every time the traffic law changes the media use it as an excuse for doing a vox pop about driving rules. "How many points do you lose and how much you have to pay for breaking certain speed limits?", is a favourite. Some people know, most have some vague idea and lots don't have a clue. If you think about it it's a completely senseless question. Do you know what the sanctions are for running away from a bar without paying or for blackmail, ransom and murder? Most people don't because most people aren't police officers, lawyers, runners away from bars, kidnappers, extortionists or murderers. We all know that there is some sort of penalty if you do them and get caught. It's the same with a speeding. The detail means nothing. Don't contravene the rule and you'll never know the sanction.

It often seems to me that Spaniards are systematically weaned on useless information. There seems to be a tradition of crowding out useful things with the banal and obscure. Things that, should you ever need to know, you could just look up. It's the same process that means the letter you get from the tax people (or the doctor or the employment service) gives more precedence to the applicable legislation, the process and other verbiage than the key information which will take up one very subsidiary paragraph at best. 

Someone told me about the carpentry course they were doing. They studied the properties of different types of wood, they did a lot on tools, they even did the history of furniture but they didn't get onto making anything, in wood, until the last couple of months of the course. Each new Government introduces new education legislation which means that my information about school syllabuses may well be out of date but, in 2009, it was still a Spanish junior school thing to have everyone learn all the bones of the body. I often wondered why. It may have been more useful to show the youngsters how to search for such information - the generally applicable instead of the possibly irrelevant specific. A few  years ago there was furore because a Spanish A level type exam asked questions about some arcane mathematics. It's true that the particular equation or whatever was on the syllabus but it hadn't come up for years and, because the syllabus was so extensive, so unteachable, none of the teachers had introduced the topic to their students. Almost none of the students were able to answer the questions. I'm sure the examiners were high fiving each other left right and centre. Very comparable, in my estimation, to asking about the speed of a tractor. Here's one to catch them out. Spanish exams and tests are loaded with trick questions. 

I've asked Spaniards why they do this sort of thing and, as often as not, they seem to think the question is a bit silly.  They are inured to learning by rote and to anticipating trick questions. Learning seems so often to be equated with memory.

Going on fire

I read somewhere that 10% of the Earth's surface is on fire at any one time. I couldn't actually find anything to confirm that on Google but I did find something very scientific looking which said 340 million hectares of the planet burns every year. That's a lot of land. A hectare is 10,000 square metres, the land required as the plot for a new rural build house in Alicante. If you're not a local hoseholder then an International football pitch is usually about three quarters of a hectare. 

As I type the fire at Venta del Moro, on the border between Valencia and Cuenca provinces, is just about under control. A fire in Spain is classified as big when it burns more than 500 hectares. Venta del Moro left 1,300 hectares in ashes. A few weeks ago the Sierra de la Culebra in the North east of Zamora province burned 30,000 hectares. 

Firefighters classify these forest and grass fires into generations. The sort we've had around here, so far, have been First Generation. This means there is some grass or some trees to burn so the fire can run through this fuel until it reaches a fire break or until it is stopped; 1st Generation have extension. Even these relatively small fires can kill; I'm sure you remember that someone was killed out at Rodriguillo last year. Second Generation fires add speed to their characteristics; extension and speed. Third Generation add intensity; extension, speed and intensity. Fourth Generation is used to designate fires which threaten a built up area. By Fifth Generation we're onto fires that have extension, speed and intensity and they are also multi focus. Last year Spain had a series of Sixth Generation fires. These burn so intensely that they produce their own climate; basically they produce deadly and unstoppable firestorms.

Each and every year forest fires are big news in Spain. Over the past few years some of the bigger ones seem to have been more ferocious than ever. Apparently, worldwide the number is on the increase. Think Canada, Bolivia, Sweden, Indonesia, Australia, Portugal, the USA. The question is why are there more and more fires?

Experts reckon that one of the causes, stand ready to be shocked, is Global Warming. Back in 2007 our then President, Mariano Rajoy, said there was no such thing as climate change because his cousin, a university professor, said it didn't exist. Rajoy believes in Global Warming now. I don't think Donald Trump does. Apparently the forests are stressed, weakened, because they have been in an unusually warm environment for so long. They may be drier so when they do go on fire they burn more easily and put up less of a fight against their natural enemy. This means that 6th Generation fires can burn ten times as quickly as the 5th Generation ones. 6th Gen can devour 10 kilometres of forest in an hour, that's 5,000 hectares in a day.

Another reason, in Spain, is that Spaniards live on the coast and Madrid. Fewer and fewer people live in the countryside. Forests which used to be worked, land where people used to collect the brushwood for their home hearths, land where farmers routinely cleaned firebreaks, land where the natural patterns of agriculture with walls and terraces and fallow fields and different crops from plot to plot and clean tracks all produced natural firebreaks or at least ground that could be turned into a defensive position when the time came to fight. Around our house there used to be goats for instance. When the goatherd became too old nobody wanted to spend their days walking with goats. It was old fashioned. Nowadays our local goats don't wander and graze and fart in the open air. They are kept in a shed and fed on industrial feed. Our roadside verges and fields were mown naturally. Not any more. The field across from us was traditionally ploughed and planted. Now it just grows very flammable grass.

Spain has a lot of fire fighting kit, more than the majority of countries. An article I read said there were over 500,000 firefighting units including a lot of fire fighting aircraft. This is why so many fires don't spread. If this first barrier fails though, especially if the fire has fuel and time to develop into one of the Sixth Generation superfires, it doesn't matter how many tenders and pumps and firefighters there are because the only reason those fires go out is because they run out of fuel. Traditionally the "forest brigades", the firefighters who deal with these big fires are recruited for the hotter months, the summer months when, logically enough, there are more fires. Now, with climate change, the fires start earlier in the year and finish later. But the firefighters are not being employed for longer. The consensus is that the firefighters should be doing what the goats and farmers used to do in the months when they are less likely to be needed to fight fires. Cleaning the countryside to make it less flammable. As an aside cleaning the land in the hot summer months means that the firefighters might start tired when they are faced with a real fire. The problem, as always, is, who pays? Prevention may make good sense but the money spent is going into something that doesn't happen. This temporary employment pattern or the forest brigades also means that seasoned firefighters can't live from their "part time" jobs. They find other work and, if that work turns into a permanent job away from firefighting then so be it.

Another difficulty is that the firefighting contingency plans have not been updated to take account of these new circumstances. When the Sierra de Culebra burned it had the bad grace to start before, what everyone in Spain recognises as, the start of summer, July 1st. That's when the temporary firefighters jobs start. Only 40% of the firefighters contracted for the "fire season" were ready to go. But good planning might be a bit deeper than just employing the firefighters for longer. People leave the countryside usually for work. Planning which helped keep people in rural areas might mean that the natural firebreaks of cultivated land were back in place, planning that subsidised old style livestock farming instead of intensive mega farms might leave sheep and goats to clean up for us. Odd to think that installing decent Wi-Fi and mobile phone networks might help to control forest and grass fires.

And the last reason for fires. Us of course. We flick fag ends out of car windows without thinking. We have a barbecue that sets fire to some grass that gets out of control. We dump glass bottles from our picnics without a thought and then of course there are people who do it on purpose because if they set this or that piece of land on fire they can later push for the once rural land to be built on.

Careful with that axe, Eugene!

Ugly Spain

I'm reading a book called España fea, or ugly Spain. Actually the full, and translated title is Ugly Spain: Urban chaos, democracy's greatest failure. Now this book is 506 pages long and I'm on page 98 so I'm being a bit previous here but it did set me thinking. One of the central themes in the book, so far, is that Spain followed the US model of delegating planning to local administrations which have been open to corruption and cronyism. The end result is a mish mash of badly designed, poorly built and inappropriately placed buildings.

Lots of Spain is chocker with palaces and churches and big, big stone buildings. Around here in Alicante and Murcia those sorts of "monumental" town centres are far less common than in other part of Spain. Orihuela leans a bit that way and there must be others but, in general, this area is, architecturally, less impressive than many others. Pinoso is a perfect example. It's a great place to live, it's safe and tidy and with lots of services and lots going on but architecturally it's a bit limited. The Torre del Reloj isn't really that jaw droppingly beautiful and the newer buildings (with the exception of the tanatorio) were unlikely to win any architectural prizes.

Unlike some other towns Pinoso didn't go too bonkers during the "brick explosion" in the first few years of the 21st century. The expansion of the town was low key and a couple of the vanity projects actually turned out rather well. Compare it with Fortuna with the Lamparillas development or Monóvar with its plans for the Ecociudad and Pinoso was the soul of discretion. Nonetheless, if you look around Pinoso there are any number of half completed houses and blocks of flats. Glance towards the town centre as you drive along Calederón de la Barca (the road the lorries use to bypass the town; the one that comes out at the junction near the Repsol garage) and you will see tens of unfinished private houses. And whilst we're by the garage there are those big blocks of flats, some lived in, some abandoned, alongside the Jumilla road. I wonder if they will just be left there forever to rot? Lots of the older houses in Pinoso town are still owned by members of a families that haven't set foot in Pinoso for years. Their houses get no maintenance and every now and again bits fall off them or, in extreme cases, they simply fall down. 

Look around the central parts of Pinoso and you will see that, among the older houses, there are lots of single, two and three storey buildings. The single storey houses generally have a central door and a matched single window to left and right. The two and three storey houses have vertically elongated windows and doors with the casements and door surrounds picked out by moulding. Often there is a symmetry to the front of the building and some sort of horizontal lines to demarcate the various floors. Many have little balconies and lots and lots have the fancy grill work on the balconies and windows. There isn't a model but there is a repeated style. So, even if Pinoso isn't particularly architecturally interesting it does have a certain uniformity of character.

You do not see that uniformity as you move away from the old town centre. Santa Catalina is a district with a particular and different character but, again, it looks like it belongs here, it looks Valenciano. I'm not so sure you can say that about the Franco regime houses, the group of buildings to the west of Paseo de la Constitución, or in those the streets named for nearby towns. The residential home for older people, the pensioner's club, the theatre, health centre, nursery school etc. would probably look just as at home in Barnsley or Bilbao as they do in Pinoso. And would you say that the Sports Centre blends nicely and looks local?

Now it's obvious that if we stopped all modern development we'd all be living in caves or half timbered houses or maybe, if we were all rich, in those "Modernista" houses which were so typical of wealthy Spaniards as the 19th became the 20th Century. It's because, over the years, that we have built new in among the old, that we get the variety that makes towns and cities so interesting. Tate Modern to the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's. But when something new is built surely there should be an attempt to make it fit with what's already there, with the weather, with the environment with where it is?

Walk along Calle Monóvar and Perfecto Miro or Calle Azorín and although the houses are from all sorts of times there is a sort of oneness. The newer blocks shoehorned into a vacant plot stick out like a sore thumb. Look at the Town Hall. Now I understand that the old building was a right mess and a new one was needed. But seriously could anyone, ever, have thought that fitted in or was even nice? And what do you think of the municipal market in Plaza Colón? Is that building in keeping with the style of the square? Where are its credentials as a Pinosero, Alicantino or Valenciano building?

Over in el Faldar this weekend they burned their hoguera - the bonfire to celebrate San Juan. The villagers had built a replica of the water tower, called el Pouet (which I think means well in Valenciano) which is just off Calle Valencia on the western edge of Santa Catalina. All the blurb from the local Medios de Comunicación, the Town Hall's communication arm, was about how emblemático, symbolic, el Pouet is of Pinoso. If you know it you will know that for some reason, a few years ago, permission was given to build a block of flats next to it which were in a completely different style and which completely overshadow the little water tower. That block of flats was never finished. Presumably some property speculator went bust with the 2008 crisis and just walked away from the car wreck result. 

It happens in the countryside too. Look at the old houses and the way they sort of blend in to the land, maybe in a stand of trees, just in the hollow there, same sort of colouration. They do that estate agent thing of nestling. Then look at the newer houses. It's true that they haver better shaped rooms, insulation (maybe) and that their pools and barbecue areas make them nicer to live in than the more traditional houses. The trouble is that so many of them look completely out of place; almost as though they just landed there from some far away place. I'm sure it's perfectly possible to build something with modern features that would blend in just a tad better and maybe that idea should be intrinsic to the local planning regulations. 

Anyway, I have another 408 pages to go so maybe I'll have a more detailed, less simplistic, analysis to offer soon.

In tooth and claw

Roadkill always surprises me. I mean, the Pinoso Monóvar road, for instance, is not a particularly busy road and yet it is littered with the carcasses of dead rabbits, snakes, hedgehogs, foxes, cats and, occasionally, wild boar. I can't see how the sums stack up. Every now and then a lone rabbit crosses the road. Every now and again an occasional car comes down the road. What dread fate puts the two in the very same spot at the very instant for slaughter to occur?

In our early days in Spain we did a lot of commuting to and from Elche to Pinoso. We noticed that there wasn't much wildlife to be seen from the car. Whereas the place we'd lived in the UK seethed with rabbits, in Spain we never saw anything alive. It was similar in the early years in our Spanish garden in Culebrón. A few wagtails, swallows in spring and summer but, in general, the bird population seemed very sparse in comparison to what we'd been used to. Over the past few years the number of living things around us seems to have increased substantially. All I can presume is that there are fewer deadly herbicides and pesticides in agricultural use and that the creatures have benefitted.

I got to thinking about animals as a blog topic because last Thursday night I was reasonably surprised to find a very small ladder snake in our living room. In trying to pick it up I missed my chance and it slithered behind a very heavy piece of furniture. When it emerged, late the next day, I caught it easily and popped it into the field opposite our house. Fifteen minutes later I wondered what the lumpy squishy looking thing was on the floor. I was just about to blame the cat's digestive systems when I realised it was a toad. We get quite a few toads come visiting. I have no idea why - so far as I know it's a long way to any damp land. One of the favourite haunts for the visiting toads is in one of the bathroom shower pans! I usually pop the strays in the patch of succulents we have at the back of  the garden. The nearest thing we have to wetland.

Thinking about it we actually get quite a few wild beasts in the house. Usually though that's because we have four "domestic" cats. They bring shrews, voles, mice and rats into the house and then play cat and mouse with them. Often the supposed prey escape the cats. We've had lots of experience of sniffing the air to determine where the rotting flesh smell is coming from. Heavy, almost immovable furniture seems to be the preferred resting place of so many small animals left to die terrified or injured by our loveable pets. From time to time the cats bring us a live bird, or one time a bat. We have very high ceilings in the living room with pendant light fittings. Getting a terrified blackbird to leave of its own free will is not easy. Actually clearing the gizzards of animals devoured by our cats from our doormat isn't my favourite household chore either.

Whilst we used to bemoan the lack of largish creatures in our garden we have never been short of insect sized beasts in the house. Beetles, for instance, stroll in or out of our living room as though the telly was theirs to watch. Sometimes they do that remarkably noisy and clumsy flying too. Strangely, fingers crossed, I don't think we've ever had cockroaches in Culebrón unlike when we've lived in urban areas. There are lots of other, attention drawing insects from time to time. It's hard to ignore a preying mantis on a door frame or one of those 5 or 6cm long millipedes walking across the floor and the woodlice that roll up into defensive balls are pretty obvious too. There are grasshopper related beasts, centipedes and billions of spiders in a range of sizes just as there are lots and lots of varieties of ants. The ants usually stay outside but when they make occasional forays into the house we unleash Putin like chemical strikes against them. Despite netting on the windows and fly curtains on the doors our living space is a flutter of wings and buzzing beasties. Moths we have in squadrons. Generally they are the small, boring dun coloured ones. There are so many that all our dry goods are in plastic containers to avoid wriggling flour or undulating breadcrumbs. We get mosquitoes too but we're high enough for them not to be common. Moving up the food chain we get a lot of lizards. Without getting zoological there are smaller ones and larger ones. The large ones are maybe 15 to 20 cm long and the little ones 10 to 15 cm long. Both sizes  tend to wait near the lamps and then pounce on the flying things attracted by the light. It's still a bit of an event when a lizard suddenly runs across the wall as we're watching the telly. Thankfully in all these years we've only had one scorpion inside.

Outside there are lots of things that crawl, slither, hop and fly. Some of them, like the tens of butterflies that bob and dart around our garden are truly beautiful but some of them are a real nuisance. Like flies. They are everywhere and sometimes they make something as ordinary as sitting outside unbearable. There are lots and lots of wasps too, particularly where there is water, plenty of bees too and hovering hornet type things. Just the other day we had a near carpet of low flying wasps, or maybe bees, that sometimes landed to tunnel into the ground. We've had squirrels in the garden, they're a sort of iridescent brown colour with red tinges to their long hair (the one in the photo was watching a fiesta in Algueña when I took its blurry snap). The most common birds are wagtails, blackbirds, spuggies, collared doves and about twenty million swallows. The latter sit on the phone wires above our house and leave evidence of their stay on the cars parked below. Cuckoos and their cuckooing are pretty common at the moment and we have a few hoopoes that live close by. There are, nowadays, lots of other birds in our garden but I can't tell one from another. Oh, and it would be unusual not to see some sort of hunting bird hovering gently waiting for something to move below if you scanned the near distance.

From the front gate I've seen rabbits, hares and foxes but the wild boars, the hedgehogs and the like I generally see from a moving car. Far too often those animals have been reduced to a two dimensional version of their former selves in one of those random acts of violence I started with.