Can I call you a cab sir? I'd prefer you called me Chris.

I don't normally do news. I more usually blog about what I had for breakfast but, when we were down in Alicante for the tail end of the weekend, there was a big line of taxis that went past the hotel travelling at a snail's pace and hooting their horns. They were striking in sympathy with the Barcelona and Madrid taxi drivers. And, in those two cities we have seen pictures of roads blocked by taxis, of improvised camps on key thoroughfares and attacks on the cars the taxi drivers consider to be unfair competition.

There has been an intermittent battle between taxis, the sort of taxis that have to get themselves registered with the local authorities and comply with all sorts of regulations, and any other sort of private hire for years now.

Around here, ages ago, people, particularly expats, saw that there was a market for making a few euros by using their car to take somebody that they didn't know down to the airport in Alicante/Elche. The taxi drivers noticed that some cars were in the airport dropping off zone a lot and they didn't like it. There were stories about the airport run drivers finding themselves hemmed in by taxis whilst the police were called. I have no idea whether it really happened or not but the story was certainly told and retold. The airport runs still go on but, with the rise of the Internet and especially the mobile phone applications, it was only a matter of time before somebody came up with a  more systemised way of undercutting traditional taxi services and their metered charges.

I think that Cabify was one of the first and I think they are Spanish. So far as I understand it they have always used what I would describe as chauffeur driven cars. I think that Addison Lee offer something similar in the UK though, as I picked that reference up from some song lyrics, I may well be wrong. Again, as I understand it, the idea is very neat. A cadre of insured, tested, and registered vehicles with professional drivers that could be used to transport people from A to B already existed. All that was needed was something easy to use which could put potential passengers in touch with drivers and their vehicles. Cabify produced that interface. The cars they use were, I suppose, the cars traditionally used for weddings, funerals and shifting business people around. In Spain they are labelled as Vehículos de Turismo con Conductor or VTC - private cars with drivers.

Then of course there was Uber. Without bothering to do any decent research my basic understanding is that Uber was just one up from the airport run except that the Uber interface did away with the need for the word of mouth recommendation. The application existed solely to put drivers and passengers in touch. That model quickly ran into legal problems in Spain so Uber relaunched itself using chauffeur drive cars just like Cabify.

So the "proper" taxi drivers were a bit upset. They were losing business to these people. They fought back by claiming that the new firms were flouting legislation and, at the moment, their argument is that the VTC cars should be limited to a ratio of thirty taxis to one VTC. They argue that VTC cars were never supposed to be an alternative to taxis and that the premise was that VTCs and cabs operated in different markets.

Now I don't know about you but the reason I don't use taxis a lot is that they cost too much. I know that if a gang of people get a taxi on a Saturday night to go clubbing it seems reasonable enough but, when you get off an aeroplane lost in some city and decide to use a taxi to get you to the hotel it costs lots and lots, sometimes as much as the flight. In my case it's only because I'm on holiday and primed for spending cash that I don't cry. I also know that taxis are generally only available where there are plenty of people. So it's easy to get a taxi in Barcelona and not so easy to get one in Pinoso. In fact I'm never sure whether we have a taxi in Pinoso or not. I use taxis when I'm a bit lost, when I can't be bothered to cart suitcases around, when somebody else is paying, when my car is in the garage and I need to get back to work quickly and maybe because the public transport alternatives are infrequent or non existent.

To be honest my one experience of trying to use a mobile phone application to get a car was not that satisfactory either. It took a fair while to set up the details on the application and when I sent the location a driver phoned me back to say that he couldn't pick me up from wherever I was because only licensed taxis could collect there. So I found myself hot and bothered from dragging suitcases around trying to cup the mobile under my chin, shouting into it above the din of the traffic, in a language that is not my first, trying to describe what I saw to a driver who was only hundreds of metres away. It was all a bit fraught. And to be honest the final fare didn't seem to be that low either. I wondered if it might have been easier to walk out of the train station and put my cases into the back of a traditional taxi.

So I'm all for competition driving down prices and the Internet applications seem like a simple and effective way to do that. After all taxis are a bit of a left over from times long gone, a licenced monopoly that doesn't seem quite right in 21st Century Europe. It also seems inevitable. Legend has it that Ned Ludd, a textile worker who smashed a couple of modern machines, gave his name to the term Luddite. Over time Luddite has grown to mean opposition to industrialisation, automation, computerisation and newer technologies in general. It seems to me that's where the taxi drivers are. George Harrison said that All Things Must Pass and that's what lamplighters, coal merchants and Blockbuster video have all done. Taxi drivers are of the same stuff. They are on a loser unless they change and adapt. Camp out as they like on the Castellana or the Gran Via; block the traffic for a couple of days if they must but it won't, in the end, make any difference.

Armani doesn't do a blue tux

Twenty years ago, more, I was walking out of Covent Garden, probably via Floral Street, maybe King Street. It was love at first sight. In the window of Emporio Armani; a charcoal grey suit. I walked away twice but I was drawn back. The chap in the shop wasn't like the man in the Aquascutum shop a few years before who had explained to me that if I were just looking that's what the window displays were for. Mr Armani's man was welcoming and persuasive. My credit card groaned but bore the strain. I wore suits a lot then and I always felt great in the Armani. Like a dinner jacket it had a magical back straightening effect.

In fact, once upon a time, I had suits and shirts and shoes and trousers for almost any occasion from a barbecue to a wedding. Maybe a new tie for a funeral or new shoes for a naming ceremony but the basic kit was there. It's not the same now. I have jeans and T shirts and hardly anything else. I never iron. I do have several pairs of chinos and quite a selection of short sleeved shirts in the wardrobe but I can't wear them. They look alright on the hangers but, once on, the buttons on the shirts gape and the trouser waistbands dig in. Heaven knows why; a faulty washing machine maybe. They are remnants of the dress code from the place I worked in Cartagena.

We went to see the crowning of the local carnival queens in Pinoso last night. Considering that we are a town of 7,500 people the event is glitzy, polished and professional. The presentation is rehearsed and smooth, the frocks range from the elegantly understated to the fluffiest meringue. The smiles are wide, teeth flash and emotions are on plain view.

As we set off to see the coronation I changed my shorts for a far too narrow (given my age) pair of jeans, brushed my hair but kept the same t shirt on. Maggie changed into a nice bright frock. She had caught the mood better than me. In general people were pretty smartly dressed. Some people were in their finery but smart casual was the order of the day.

People do dress up in Spain, they dress up all the time, but they seem to do it more because they want to rather than because society tells them they have to. Normally, if you are going to a wedding or a baptism then you put on your finery and, in general, women seem to do it much better than men. They look relatively comfortable in their satin dresses and high heels whilst the blokes fidget with their marginally too short or slightly overtight suits and the wayward knot in their tie. The same doesn't seem to be true of funerals. The general style for funerals always strikes me as being a bit scruffy and I sometimes wonder if there is a slightly anarchic resistance to dressing up in the face of mortality; better to cock a snoop at death than to kowtow. If there is a dress code in banks and insurance offices I haven't caught the essence of it. For most professionals the appropriate style seems to be an unremarkable blouse skirt or shirt trouser combination but, nearly as often, the woman bank manager will be wearing a metaphorical pair of ripped jeans and pink pumps and nobody seems to mind or even notice. At the theatre I've seen men in Salamanca and Madrid wearing traditional cloaks side by side with men in scruffy everyday stuff. Basically, and within reason, people seem to wear what they want when they want.

So, nowadays I go everywhere and to everything in jeans and T shirts. I don't have a pair of shoes that will take a polish and however nice the salesman is I will never again spend over a thousand quid on a suit.

As it should be

Coming home was just brilliant - that feeling of being in Spain when Spain is almost a parody of itself. It's not really hot but it's very definitely summer. Probably in the low 30s. Nice and warm, hot enough to make anyone sweat, hot enough to make it dusty, hot enough for those sudden gusts of wind to be very welcome and nearly hot enough for a spaghetti western snake to slither by. I finished teaching the last of my courses this morning. No more work for a few weeks. I'd celebrated with a beer and a chat in the market square. The streets were lunchtime deserted as I went for bread. The cicadas sang. My sandals kicked up little swirls of dust as I walked.

In the car, on the way home, I had the windows open and the new Florence on quite loud. Loud enough for the bloke working on putting up the dodgems in the market car park to look up as I passed. I waved and wondered why he was working at such an odd time. Coming around the Yecla-Jumilla roundabout they're redoing the tarmac. Blokes in the shade of the road rollers eating their pack ups in the midst of the none too subtle aroma of fresh and glistening tar. A few kilometres later, as I turned up our track, I had to give way to the bin lorry which left a trail of 7th Cavalry like dust that settled gently on my car. The bin lorry was aromatic too. Rubbish cooking in the heat has a very particular smell.

Goodbye Lou, Hello Louise

Irene (pronounced something like eeh rainy not eye reen) runs a little charitable setup called Gatets sense llar del Pinós. Google translates the Valencian to English as Homosexual kittens of the Pinós but I think that may be a Google glitch! Translated to Spanish it says Gatitos sin hogar de Pinoso which is something like Homeless Pinoso Kitties.

Maggie looks at Irene's Facebook page quite often. She'll say "Oh, look at this poor old cat, with three legs and a duff eye that has been abandoned" and I'll respond with something along the lines of "Well, we've got plenty of space, what's another cat to us?" Maggie thinks of the feeding, the damage to the house, the things being pulled off the shelves and the vet's bills and common sense saves the day. But, a couple of weeks ago there was a picture of a few weeks old Siamese like kitten with watery eyes on the Facebook page. Usual comment from Maggie, usual reply from me. I'd reckoned without the euphoria of the English quarter final victory though. So we now have a newish kitten in the house. Bea and Teo aren't happy about the new arrangement but the violence has been low key to date.

The first name that popped into my mind for a male "Siamese" cat was Samuel. So we had a provisional name. The name may not be definitive though, There has been a small scale discussion on Facebook against his picture. I just sent a longish reply to someone who posted there and I thought to repeat the comment here....

We have this sort of tradition of proper names in keeping with calling them him or her rather than it - Matilda, Mary, Eduardo, Harold, Beatríz, Teodoro and Gertrudis to date though, on a day to day basis the names inevitably get shortened and we use both the anglicised and hispanic versions. The cats that don't get a proper name - Mr Big Balls, Stripy Pants and Hissy Missy are the ones that only sponge off us but never get to pull threads on the sofa or lie in front of the pellet burner. So Samuel, which can be pronounced like the better Tadcaster beer maker or in a Spanish sort of way, as something like Samwell, works fine. Then Maggie wondered aloud about Sebastián so I started looking through names that began with S  because we thought S to go with Siamese. A bit like Martin, Melissa or Mandy the Meyncoun and Paco, Pedro or Penelope the Persian. We both liked Sancho. Sancho of course was the proleterian hero, the voice of reason behind The Knight of the Sad Countenance, El Quijote or Don Quixote so, although there is no obvious English equivalent I definitely approve of Sancho as a name. But I like Samuel too.

So, if you have any thoughts; vote!, vote!, vote!.

The pedanía at play

Each of the little villages associated with the small town of Pinoso, the pedanías, have a weekend fiesta sometime over the summer. It's the turn of Culebrón this weekend. It's happening now.

So far we haven't been to anything that's been put on at this year's fiesta and I suspect that we won't be going over for the rest of the event tomorrow. To be honest the programme isn't that important, it's more the idea that the village is as full as it ever gets, that people are around and that they do things together with a lot of laughing as a part of the recipe. In the past the event had a sort of curtain raiser in a meal organised by the Neighbourhood Association the weekend before but that hasn't happened twice in a row now, possibly because of differences of opinion between a couple of key village personalities. As I haven't rejoined the Association this year I wouldn't be able to attend even if it had happened!

People who have a "weekend home" in the village will use it this weekend if they ever do. When the football competition was on I'm sure some of the spectators had time for a chat and maybe a beer. Whilst the children were served cake with chocolate the adults probably chatted and sat around, maybe with a beer. I've only glanced at the programme for this year but it hasn't changed much over the past few years. The big events are the meal on the Saturday and the mass and procession on the Sunday where the figures of San Jaime and San José are paraded around the village. Since 2013 there has also been a walking and running race that attracts a lot of competitors and fills the village in a way that doesn't happen on any other day of the year.

I can hear the after dinner music now, as I type. We would usually be there but the last couple of times it has all been a bit lacklustre and we have had our incomer status emphasised in various and subtle ways.

I was very clear to Maggie that I didn't want to go but she thought we should. Her argument centred around the fact that we live here. So, at the last minute, and way past the closing date for reserving a place, Maggie made an effort to book us in for the meal. She phoned, texted and sent another message but the pedánea, a sort of village mayoress didn't reply.

Red in the face

My mum was unhappy about the heat in St Ives, in Huntingdonshire, unbearable she said. Somebody here in Pinoso was complaining to me about how hot it was too but, because I keep a little record in my diary, I thought I was aware that, so far, both June and July have been a little cooler than usual.

So I did a bit of checking. I was a bit surprised how difficult it was to find full sets of data for past years  and I could only really get fullish sets for 2013, 2014 and most of 2015. All of these results are from the same weather station so any microclimatic differences are evened out. And it seems to be true. Both June and July this year (so far) have had lower maximum temperatures than in the previous quoted years. Mind you the difference isn't really that much and the nightime temperatures are much as usual.

In 2013 in Pinoso the highest June temperature was 35ºC, for 2014 it was 32.5ºC, for 2015 it was 37ºC and for 2018 it was 31.5ºC
In 2013 in Pinoso the highest July temperature was 36.5ºC, for 2014 it was 35ºC, for 2015 the records are missing and for 2018, so far, the highest is 33.5ºC

In 2013 in Pinoso the lowest June temperature was 8ºC, for 2014 it was 7ºC, for 2015 it was 9.5ºC and for 2018 it was 8.5ºC
In 2013 in Pinoso the lowest July temperature was 12ºC, for 2014 it was 11.5ºC, for 2015 the records are missing and for 2018, so far, the lowest is 12ºC

Autocrats, Republics and Monarchs

I'm sure that you remember that Charles I, King of England, Scotland, and Ireland had a bit of a problem with Oliver Cromwell. Charles was executed on a cold day in January 1649 and a Republic declared. Cromwell headed up the Republic as Lord Protector and, on his death in 1658, the title passed to his son, Richard. The army overthrew Richard in 1659 and invited Charles I's son to be King. It was all made official with Charles II's crowning in 1661. His first parliament ordered that Cromwell's body, and those of another couple of people responsible for the death of the old King, be dug up and hung. The heads were then stuck on a 6 metre long poles near Westminster Hall. Cromwell's head kicked around until 1960, when it was buried at Sidney Sussex College in Cambridge

When the Hapsburg, Carlos II of Spain, died in 1700 he left no heir. The Bourbon family took over and they have kept Spain in monarchs ever since despite a couple of hiccoughs along the way. For instance Fernando VII had his reign interrupted when Napoleon put his brother on the Spanish throne in 1808 but that didn't last long. Fernando was back in 1813. Just one generation later, in 1868, Isabella II was deposed and a new monarch had to be found. Eventually the politicians asked a chap called Amadeo, from Savoy in Italy, to be King but he never took to Spain and abdicated after just five years. There was a very short lived Republic before the Bourbons were back in 1874 but that went pear shaped again when, in 1931, Alfonso XIII and his English wife abdicated in the face of The Second Republic, the one that Franco and his pals put paid to in the 1936 -1939 Spanish Civil War. Franco ruled Spain from the overthrow of the Republic till his death, in bed, in 1975. He named, as his successor, another Bourbon, the still alive Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in 2014 and who is just now running into a bit of a problem around his handling dodgy money during his reign. His boy Felipe is a Bourbon too and our present Head of State.

Funny thing there. Franco was buried inside the basilica in the rather impressive Valley of the Fallen. The new Socialist government is talking about exhuming his body so that it can be buried somewhere a little less showy. At least for the moment there is no talk of heads on sticks.

Now Maggie was sifting through Facebook and came across an article reprinted from the Observer of 1959. I was going to trim it down and pull out the salient points and try to tie that in to rulers of one hue and another. In the end I decided to leave it as it was for you to read or not. The article is impressive in how old it feels; I suppose 1959 is, really, long time ago but it still sounds like the recentish past to me. I particularly noted the idea of the radio and films as engines for social change, the idea of needing a labour permit to get a job in the city and the "bread and circuses" reference to football but you may pick up on something else from an article written at just about the half way point in Francoist rule of Spain.

The Observer piece said that this was an edited extract from an article by Nora Beloff entitled ‘What’s Happening in Spain?’, published in the Observer on 19 July 1959. Here's the text.

One of Spain’s principal attractions to it’s millions of visitors from industrial Northern Europe - besides sunshine and cheap services - is the archaism of the countryside.

You can drive for hundreds of miles and, apart from a patchy and uncertain tarmac under your tyres, there is nothing to remind you of the twentieth century: no poles or pylons, no petrol stations or electric pumps, just the peasants and their children in floppy hats and dateless clothes, women carrying pitchers on their heads and the two commonest landmarks, the donkey and the Cross. All this produces an illusion of permanence: so these people have always lived and so it seems they always will.

The illusion is false: and the tourists themselves are one of the reasons why. Their disturbing impact on old Spain was noted by the National Association of Fathers of Families, one of the major corporations now authorised in Spain, who said at it’s annual congress this year: ‘It is impossible to overlook the danger represented in certain regions of Spain by the tourist current as a vehicle of ideas and customs highly pernicious to our family morality...’

Primarily Spanish farming is being forced away from its primitivism by the reproduction rate of the Spaniards themselves. The population has increased by five million since the Civil War, and a European country with the lowest agricultural yield and the highest birth-rate is condemned to modernise or die. The switching of public investment from industry to agriculture, notable in irrigation, has, in fact, already been decided upon.

The change is being accelerated by the penetration into rural Spain of Western notions of progress. This comes partly from the tourists, but also from a plentiful provision of American films (very cheap and available in local currency under the American Aid Agreement) in village cinemas and from the spread of radio. But the decisive fact has been the migration of surplus labour into the cities, so that hardly any peasant family is without a cousin, brother or child to bring it into touch with the modern world. An old lady from a remote mountain village in the Asturias said she had had seventeen children, but added with a chuckle that her eldest daughter had married in the nearby town and had had only three;’They are cleverer these days...’

Crowding into cities is a common enough feature in the modern world but in Spain it has reached catastrophic proportions. Madrid (now two million) and Barcelona (one and a half million) are in a state of siege. Every day police patrol the platforms when the trains from the west and south arrive and peasants without labour permits are sent back on the next train at public expense. They find other ways of slipping back.

There are today 120.000 of these immigrants grouped in the outlying slums of Barcelona. Some we visited have built their homes on the beaches by the railway track, regardless of the stench, where the sewers tip their contents into the sea. You can see them with buckets trying to fish food out of the filth. Bureaucrats have visited the site, declared it insalubrious, and forbidden further building. So now when, as frequently happens, the waves knock down existing shacks, families have to move in together.

Leaving aside the sub-proletariat of the slums, who sell their services far below the minimum wage, labourers have suffered far less from inflation than white-collar workers and school teachers whose standard of life has sunk far below conditions before the Civil War. Many Spaniards will tell you that the Government is deliberately pursuing what an orange-dealer from Valencia called the ‘cretinisation’ of the Spanish people: demoting and starving the intellectuals (who are traditionally anti-militarist, anti-clerical and anti-Franco) and boosting the current football craze (which has now ousted bull-fighting in popular favour) by radio, television, liberal allocation of newsprint to sports papers, and the building of colossal stadia.