Palm Sunday

Once, when I went to Sunday School, they gave me a little cross folded from a palm frond. The Spaniards do Palm Sunday on a slightly bigger sale. We saw a couple of stalls like this today and they seemed to be doing a brisk trade getting ready for tomorrow.

The Sanctuary of Santa María Magdalena

Alicante province is a bit short on architectural excitement. There are no Salamancas, Trujillos or Cuencas around here but when we have pals over from the UK we often take the to the fabulous modernist house in Novelda and then go on to this church on the hilltop. A bit like a poor persons Gaudí

Gardening

We have a few fruit trees in our garden. The Spanish system is to ensure that the ground betwen fruit trees, vines etc. is clear of weeds and back to bare earth to avoid the spread of fire. Each year Maggie and I clear the weeds that have grown in the garden over the winter. This year we've had a mild winter and a bumper crop of weeds. Quite where to start is a little daunting


This is Maggie looking daunted

Busy doing nothing

Still nothing to write about. Over the weekend we joined a band of Brits at some garden centre in Caudete to hear a a talk by the authors of a couple of books about gardening in Spain. We ate in the cafeteria of a huge ironmongers. We went to see Forest Whitaker with a Spanish accent take over Uganda and today, with the times slightly awry because of the clocks change, we saw a few classic cars in Culebrón before going on to a mini fair in Pinoso organised by the friends of the wine. Maggie likes to be friendly towards wine.

Time to Blog something

It's a while since I posted anything so I thought I ought to; just to prove I'm still alive. The problem is what to Blog?

It could have been our jaunt last weekend to Calasparra (but buying a beer and a few tapas doesn't provide a lot of material) nor did the onward journey to Caravaca de la Cruz, where they have a remnant of the "One True Cross" kept within an ornate box that looks a bit like the "French Resistance" cross of Lorraine.

It could have been the Tour of Alicante bike race that flashed by our door yesterday (except that we only saw it from 200 yards away).

But generally what we do is to go to work, come home and slump in front of the TV so I thought I should maybe do that.

The TV output here is both similar and dissimilar to that in the UK. There are far fewer soap operas and "Wuthering Heights" type dramas and their game shows are as crass as they come. Slipping on banana skins is the height of humour. Game shows usually have women in short skirts or men with rippling muscles. There are still lots of variety shows where paunchy men introduce second rate dance troupes. The news is good but then again there is as much time dedicated to sport (i.e. footie) as there is to the rest of the news. Films tend to be older than in the UK. Investigative journalism doesn't seem to have much of a profile. There are chat shows but they are very different, much more fawning that Jonathon Ross or Parkinson even and one of the ones I've seen a couple of times has a host who wears a cravat and talks to his guests across a desk. There are lots of gossipy programmes and lots of Jerry Springer (fat people humiliating themselves) shows.

One of the difficulties for us is the timing of programmes. peak viewing in Spain is at about 10pm when people have got home from work and had something to eat. Most films start at 10 but, with the adverts they will go on till 1am. and, annoyingly, they will run twenty minutes of ads with just five minutes of the film left to go.

The state broadcaster is RTVE, like the BBC they provide radio and TV broadcasts. Like the BBC their first channel is more populist than their second channel. Unlike the BBC there is no licence fee but there are adverts and the adverts can last as long as 15 minutes, maybe a little more. TVE2 is very much like BBC2 used to be- worthy discussion programmes, hip music shows and minority interest stuff. RTVE is not the most popular channel. Telecinco, Channel 5 is. They have more cheap comedy shows, and increasingly US import shows like Grey’s Anatomy (though RTVE has both Lost and Desperate Housewives). Antena 3 has Who Wants to be a Millionaire. In fact there are lots of syndicated shows - Big Brother is on 5, Celebrity Come Dancing is on 1 etc. The odd thing is that all of these shows are home grown product or they're dubbed. I couldn't take to the West Wing (on 2) with Spanish accents because I knew what they should sound like whereas I was actually disappointed with the real voice of Bree van der Kamp on Desperate Housewives, I preferred the Spanish voice I'd heard first.

For first run films and big sporting events the equivalent of Sky, with buying power to match, is Canal+ available on subscription cable or satellite - I've never seen it except in bars. However, we have about 20 channels on TDT, terrestrial digital - a couple of sports channels, two or three 24 hour news channels, a couple of MTV like stations, five or six local channels as well as all the big three broadcasters plus a couple of upstart nationwide broadcasters like Cuatro (4) and La Sexta (6) - between them I suppose 4 and 6 are a bit Channel 4ish with the late night satirical shows, reruns of Sex in the City etc. Also each of the big broadcasters has some minor stations on digital a couple of which run kids programmes and non-stop Mexican soap operas. Digital often means that it is possible to listen to the original soundtrack, usually, but not always, English and if I put the subtitles on I can have English with Spanish subtitles, which I kid myself, has some educational value.

Being Brits of course we could, if we were bad people, buy a big satellite dish, run it on a free to air card and watch lots of British TV as well without paying any subscription or licence fees. As though we would!

Weather report

Even in Culebrón we've made 21º or 22ºC for the past three days and nightime temperatures have not dropped below 9ºC.

Maggie says it has been hot at work in Elche with 25ºC days.

Olé

We were in the Gods sitting on hard wooden steps, fortunately with plenty of squirming room, in one of those brilliant ornate wood and gilt theatres. The fat man next to us was very cross with the talking woman at the front; "ssshhhhh!". This was after nearly three hours of Flamenco. The man must be a fundamentalist - mind you a chap on our other side had risen to his feet, clapping and shouting olé, olé, olé after a guitarist had done his stuff just a few minutes before. Maybe we were the only non believers left at that point. Throughout the evening, lots of people amongst the audience had drifted away never to return.

If you think Flamenco is lots of big dresses, arms in the air, clicking castanets and stamping you'd be sort of right. But real Flamenco, the stuff that old men talk about over a few sherries down in Andalucia, is called Cante Jondo. This is the "emotional" Flamenco. It is performed by an oldish man with a slightly too tight, shiny suit and an open necked shirt who sits on a plain chair, claps his hands or snaps his fingers every now and then but who mainly wails out a song with a pained expression on his face. He is usually accompanied by a guitarist. Each song starts like this; "aieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". The first time I heard any I left after about two songs much to the disgust of the Andalucian audience. Nowadays I occasionally buy Flamenco CDs.

Maggie and I went to the 13th Annual Flamenco competition organised by the City of Jumilla. After several local heats there were six singers and two guitarists in the final round, nearly all Andalucians. There was a woman singer too, she wore a flouncy dress rather than a tight, shiny suit. The prize was 6,000€. The competition was in a local theatre, it started at 9.15pm and the singing etc were just over when we cleared off at about 12.10am. We didn't stay to find out who won but I did enjoy myself and I'd definitely do it again. Though next time I would take a cushion, some sweets and maybe a hip flask.

Candidates

There are district and local elections due in Spain on 27 May. Nationally the Government is Socialist (PSOE) but lots of the 17 Communities and Town Halls (inluding the Valencian Community and our local Town Hall) are held by the political right (PP). Votes are matched against a list of candidates so each contesting group, at whatever level, puts forwards its candidates in order. How many of the list get elected depends on the proportion of the vote the group receives. If the system were in use in the UK you wouldn't get those "shock defeat of Micael Portillo" stories.

There was a meeting in a local restaurant yesterday to "present" the local candidate for Mayor on behalf of the PSOE. I'd nearly gone to a meeting last week when a locally strong political party (The UCL, a sort of slightly right wing Lib Dems) presented their candidate but the lure of slippers and a brandy proved too much. I made a bit more effort this time mainly because I've been going to join the PSOE for at least 12 months now.

I've often been to see politicians on the hustings in the UK. Even with quite famous people the turnout can be pretty low. I remember seeing Willie Whitelaw, one time Conservative Home Secretary, in Mylthomroyd with an audience of fewer than 10. So when I got to the restaurant about 5 minutes before supposed kick off I was amazed to find it dificult to park and a gaggle of people outsie the door. It was worse inside, a heaving mass of shouting, greeting and furniture re-arranging Spaniards.

The meeting started 30 minutes late but, that aside, it was very swish. Big audiovisual presentation, pictures of Eli showing lots of teeth and looking very confident and trustworthy, all the local PSOE women Mayors out to offer their support, introductions from party big wigs and even a carefully thought out interplay between the Valencian and Castilian languages to ensure nobody was excluded.

I had to sneak off as Maggie and I were going to the Flamenco competition in Jumilla but it looked like the bun fight at the end of the meeting would be good too. The bar was groaning with food and booze and I could probably have made a few pals as I seemed to be the only Brit there.

Talking about language

It must be about time for people to be considering their summer holidays and I bet at least some of you are thinking about a Spanish (Castilian) speaking country. Because of my renowned language skills pals often (well maybe two or three in the last fifty years) ask me if I can provide a few key phrases to help them get by.

My advice is to not worry about phrases in the first place but to spend hours going over the pronunciation pages at the beginning of the phrase book. If you can read and pronounce the word Córdoba when you say it to the chap behind the desk at a railway station you will get your tickets without too much difficulty, if its bocadillo in the bar then your sandwich will soon be with you.

I went to get some fags today. I slipped a little and pronounced the cigar brand Dux as ducks, the man looked quizzical, I said it properly the second time, more like doooks and the fags were mine. Spaniards are nowhere near as tolerant of mispronunciation as English speakers. I'm told it's because they are speakers rather then writers but for whatever reason time spent on those vowel and consonant sounds will pay dividends on your holiday. ¡hasta luego!

¿Parlem Valenciá?

¡Parlem Valenciá! Speak the local Valencian language; it's an exhortation seen on plenty of walls in the Valencian Community which includes the province of Alicante where we live.

The language that most people call Spanish is, more accurately, the language of Castile. It's Castilian that is the home language for 20 countries of the World with the largest concentration of Castilian speakers being in the United States of America. Castilian is the third most popular mother tongue in the World after Chinese and Hindhi though English is still miles in front, numberwise, when additional language speakers are taken into account.

There are four main languages in Spain, all of which are Spanish: Galician, Basque, Catalan and Castilian. There are three variants on Catalan - Catalan itself, Mallorquin (from Mallorca and with other variants in the Balearics) and Valencian. Mind you radical Valencians or Mallorcans would argue that their's is a language not a dialect.

During the dictatorship all the local languages were supressed so as soon as the dictatorship crumbled there was a mad dash to reclaim local identity amongst the Catalans and Basques in particular. Now I'm all for that. Roots are a good thing, knowing where you belong and hanging onto the individualism of communities seems very positive. But these things are easy to radicalise and it is now difficult to find a Castilian sign in Cataluña. Whilst the Catalans used to only give grief to their rivals from Madrid over speaking Castilian it's now more acceptable to many Catalans to deal with me, for instance, in English than it is in Castilian.

I mentioned the Pinoso festival of Villazgo a couple of weeks ago. It's a big tourist event bringing people from all over the place. Some of them may even come from the next province along of Murcia (it is only 3kms from Pinoso after all). In Murcia they speak Castilian. But all the publicity for Villazgo was written in Valencian! There was no Castilian version.

Worse still, for government workers throughout Spain there are tests a bit like the UK Civil Service exams. In Valencia part of those tests include being able to read and write in Valencian. This is a problem for lots of Valencian speakers as it is very much a spoken language with significant local grammatical and word variations. Even first langauge Valencian speakers have to cram for their tests. For a teacher, for instance, with qualifications from Madrid or Toledo or Seville they have to pass the Valencian language test before they can work here.

It seems, to me, utterly ridiculous to abandon a language of World status for a local language spoken by a thousands rather than millions of people and then to make it a requirement for professionals to have language skills that are nothing to do with their jobs.

A blow for the common man

You may remember that I got a bit tetchy with the people who run the website for the Town Hall in Petrer (see Giving Blood, October 2006). I suggested that they might have time to put some dates and details on their events calendar if they spent a bit less time in the bar.

I had a look at their website today for the first time in ages. They've put the dates against all this years events, done a little spiel about them and, where they have the timetable, they've put that in too. I sent them a little note to say what a good job it was.