To the line mate, to the line!

Maggie likes to be able to take a dip in our irrigation tank/pool. I can take it or leave it. If I need to cool down there's always beer.

Maggie did all the work of emptying and refilling the tank this year. We decided yesterday that it needed a bit of a top up but, by mistake, we left the tap running overnight.

Now if they only filled beer glasses like this.

They dined on mince and slices of quince

Each of the small villages around here has its Fiesta Patronal, a weekend of celebration, loosely tied in to the observance of some Saint's day. There is a similar and set pattern at each local fiesta - a meal, a chocolate feast, a religious procession, some traditional games, etc.

We were invited to join the meal on Friday evening at Ubeda in honour of Santa Barbara. We went last year when there were hundreds of us sitting out, eating from long tables set out in the light bedecked village square. We had a good time.

This year the setup was the same but we ended up on the table in the farthest reaches of the square with at least twenty other Brits. That would have been OK except that the village restaurant, the one that provided the food and organised the waiters etc. last year has closed down. So the best the organisers could do was to offer lots of different sorts of cold food. It was OK but not really much of a meal. I did enjoy the slices of cheese topped with quince jelly though.

Culebron's fiesta - Saint James - is next week but again, following a long established tradition, the Neighbourhood Association puts on a meal for its members the weekend before fiesta. Last year the food was absolutely splendid, ordinary Spanish food but served with a bit of style and some little touches that made it really different.

This year, like last, we had proper cutlery and plates (none of the plastic plates we'd used in Ubeda) and the food was dead tasty, but yet again there was nothing hot.

Sitting there, under the stars at about 2am, trying to decide whether I needed to roll down my shirt sleeves, because it was getting a bit nippy, and nattering alternately to the Spaniards on one side or the couple of English pals we had on the other it crossed my mind that life offers some very pleasant moments.

How easily we forget

There has been a marked traffic increase around where we live in the couple of years since we got here. I have started to moan about the traffic in Pinoso.

Fed upness with UK traffic was one of the negative reasons for leaving the UK.

Today my employers sent me to Valencia to collect some furniture from a warehouse. It was quite warm and the motorways around Valencia were full of articulated lorries three abreast pounding along at 120kph, or edging forward in traffic jams. Coming home it was a real pleasure to drop off the A35 motorway and get back onto the local roads for the last 40km or so.

Apartado de Correos

Our post was a bit unreliable so we hired a PO box. We did that about two years ago. As there were none of the little lockable boxes available we've just collected our post from behind the counter all this time. Last week a new set of real boxes arrived - numbers, locks, everything - very smart. "They haven't sent the keys yet though!" said the chap in the Post Office. This week there was a key. "But we only have one so you'll need to get a couple cut for yourself and then return the original."

I did, I have.

Fined II

In Spain the law says that you have to carry a couple of reflective jackets in your car. The idea is that when the car breaks down you put on the jacket to give you less chance of being knocked down by another motorist. Sensibly enough the law says the jackets have to be in the car, not the boot, so you don't get knocked down as you step into the road to put on your jacket.

A couple of Brits told me today that they'd been fined because the jackets, though in the cab of their van, were not draped over the seat backs. Either we have a language problem here about what they were actually fined for or Brits are being targetted as easy fine income.

105€ per jacket.

We popped into Portugal for a cup of tea

A little while ago I mentioned that Maggie may be interested in a job in Albacete. As it turned out the project she had applied to, with the British Council, where native English speaking teachers are placed in Spanish state schools, eventually offered her a job in Ciudad Rodrigo.

Ciudad Rodrigo is in the province of Salamanca about 730kms from our current home in Alicante and just 30kms from the Portugese border. We went to have a look his weekend. It was a ten hour drive with a couple of coffee stops and two hours of traffic jams around Madrid. We came back via Toledo but that was farther and took just as long.

Splendid little place, a walled city with lots of monumental buildings in the historic centre and a small modern town outside the walls. About 14,000 people and, according to the "electoral role", two Britons. The Duke of Wellington passed through as he chased Napoleon out of Spain. One of the few times we Brits have been on the same side as the Spaniards.

The school looked a bit rough though.

We strolled around, ate local specialities, watched a wedding in the cathedal, went to the "urinal" museum. People were uniformly helpful and friendly. On Sunday, as a bit of a detour on our way home, we really did pop into Portugal and buy a cup of tea.

There are a few pictures here

Tax refund

You may remember, back in October, I was dead pleased to be paying taxes and Social Security. It meant I was in the system. Better still I'm now due a tax rebate.

You can make your tax declaration any number of ways in Spain. I used an Asesor, a sort of accountant, to put mine together. I wasn't a tricky case. No investment income, no Swiss bank accounts, no money really.

I paid the 35€ they charged me to get the finished tax declaration asking Hacienda (the tax people) for a 392€ refund.

At the Asesor: "Only trouble is we don't seem to be able to get the OK from Hacienda on their Internet site, take the form to the bank and they'll transfer the cash"

At the bank: "Ah, the reason this doesn't work is that your bank account is a non resident account and only residents can pay tax - it's a paradox. Ask the Asesor to ask Hacienda to pay by cheque"

At the Asesor: "Come back in half an hour"

At the Asesor: "Hacienda say they won't pay by cheque - what about just opening another bank account?"

It went on and on until eventually I got my bank to give me a temporary account number to transfer the money to.

By the time I was done the Asesor was closed for the afternoon.

Fined

With not having got to bed last night till just after 6am I was rudely awoken by someone hammering at the door around 10am. They had been stopped by the Guardia Civil for a traffic offence and as they weren't quite sure what it was they were in trouble for they wanted me to act as translator.

Standing barefoot on the dirt road (just enough time to pull on T shirt and jeans), feeling very groggy and not quite knowing what was going on the Guardia officer gave me a very "oh Gawd here we go again" look as he wound down the patrol car window. It turned out that they were being fined for not carrying a copy of their insurance certificate (70€), their log book (10€) and their "MOT" (10€). They now have to produce the documentation at the local traffic office which is about 50 minutes drive away and where there is a remarkably long and time consuming queing system.

Providing the documentation is OK they will just have to pay the 90€, not at the traffic office but at a bank and that will be it.

Las Hogueras

All over spain there are celebrations to mark the shortest night of the year. One of the biggest events is in Alicante and as that's very close to home I went to have a look.

Originally items of houshold furniture were burned in the streets, old chairs and other junk, but, in some places the tradition has developed into a huge event. In Alicante there are neighbourhood associations that now club together to pay for the construction of their Hoguera. Some are true works of art. They will be burned at midnight tonight.

Whilst the main event may be the burning the streets are just alive with people, streets are closed off, there are "hospitality tents" all over the place, bands on every corner, disco music pumping out, thousands of locals and visitors everywhere.

I watched the mascletá (the sound fireworks designed to build up a deafening rythm) and watched the "folklore" parade where groups from all over Valencia and adjoining provinces send a representative float. I got quite animated when the float from Pinoso went by - I sort of waved and called to someone - a bit outgoing for me.


All this I got from the official programme but I met up with some Spanish pals and they weren't too bothered about watching stuff, they wanted to be involved. So we went down to the beach where groups of, mainly, young people sit around their own small Hogueras, well camp fires then, and laugh, talk and sing. A few people were drunk but they were the exception rather than the rule.

I was quite surprised when two of the young women I was with started to undress (that sort of undressing where women take off their bras underneath their shirts in a sort of Harry Houdini manouvre). Once in their bikinis they started to write out their wishes on little bits of heart shaped paper, grabbed a couple of apples and headed into the waves. The wishes and the apples go into the sea. If the wishes don't come back they will be granted (paper sinks) whilst if the fruit (which floats) is washed ashore that's a sign of good fortune, related in some pagan way to a good harvest.

Then we went on to a barraca, the sort of party headquarters for one of the groups that had built one of the big Hogueras in the town. Plenty to drink but, again, more laughing, talking and dancing than alcohol consumption.

A bit of a walk around the town to look at some of the bigger Hogueras, a couple of snacks, a final beer and then, because we're not young enough to party the night away we left. It was around 5am and there were still, literally, thousands of people on the streets.

The dustbin lorries and street cleaners had to mix it with the revellers

A small but effective swindle

I stopped at the lights in Alicante and a group of young Ecuadorians advanced on the car to clean the windscreen. "No thanks", they did it anyway. So I handed over a mean 50 centimos. One of them put his head through the side window, worried about some sort of snatch and grab I sort of pushed him back. A coin rattled against the inside of the door "I've dropped a euro" he said, the lights were changing, I pulled a euro from my pocket, gave it to him and drove away.

Of course he'd dropped a single centimo to make the right sort of sound as it fell. He made a profit of 99 centimos on that transaction as well as the 50 centimos I'd actually paid.

15 June 1977

When Franco died in 1975 the way was clear for democratic elections. It was a bit touch and go at the beginning as to whether democracy or a continuation of the dictatorship would win out. There was some fancy footwork but, thirty years ago today, the Spaniards went to the polls for the first time for a while.

Thirty years apparently represents the longest period of stable democracy in Spain's history.

A Spanish fishing boat rescued 26 refugees from a sinking raft off the coast of Libya yesterday. They were heading for Spain.

Quite a change in 30 years from some backward dictatorship to a modern European country.