Taking the Waters

Romans and Arabs used to go for a scrub up in the naturally hot spring water that bubbles out of the ground at Los Baños de Fortuna about 30km from where we live. Maggie and her chum Ros decided to do the same yesterday.

In what we would call Victorian times a husband and wife team recognised the potential for building a small tourist resort around the hot spring. They put in the pool, treatment rooms, hotels, cafeterias and a park. They even threw in a religious shrine for good measure.

Ros and Maggie bathed. They hired sunbeds. They sipped on long drinks and they didn't gossip. Just after 2pm, tired from her exertions, Maggie suggested lunch. She's really got the hang of this Spanish thing that no event is an event unless it involves food.

The intrepid duo eschewed the charms of the Hotel Victoria and the Hotel España and, purely by chance, of the three elegant, but faded, hotels on the site they chose the Hotel Balneario, the oldest hotel in the whole of Murcia. The hotel was built in 1860, luckily for Maggie she wasn't there then or she'd have gone hungry because the restaurant wasn't added till 1910. They were greeted enthusiastically by the waitress who kissed them, announced to the whole restaurant that they were honorary Pinoseros and even introduced them to the cook as well as serving them food and drink.

I think they had a good time.

Social Security

My boss was convinced that he paid an amount equivalent to around 45% of the salary of each of his workers in Social security payments. I was equally convinced that it could be nowhere near that amount.

On my wage slip it says I pay 12% income tax and a bit over 6% in Social Security. I guessed, that the Spanish system would be something like the UK system, with the employer making a similar contribution to the employee.

An asesor, basically an accountant, deals with the wages for the firm I work for so I went to ask them what the situation really is.

I was amazed; my boss was right. The total contribution is between 42% and 45% of salary.

It's not surprising that so many people work cash in hand in Spain.

Almansa

Last night we went to Almansa in the province of Albacete, about 70kms from home, to meet our Spanish pals who had driven down from their home in Betera near Valencia.

Almansa has a population of just over 25,000 but a good number of them were out on the streets last night enjoying a beer, a bit of a stroll or a chat with pals.

Very pleasant

How pleasant

So we went to the dance in the village square on Saturday night. We got there about 11.30 to find just the band and the bar staff. They had no vodka - just beer, gin and soft drinks. Maggie was saved by supplies of red wine from a pal's house. Everyone else turned up sometime after midnight. When we left around 2am the band were still singing and the good folk of Culebrón were still dancing.

Not exactly the height of sophistication nor the most exciting event ever but a lovely warm evening, whole families out in the square. Nice.

Sunday we missed the hot chocolate and cake but we were back in time to see a couple of those religious figures, carried on the backs of the villagers, paraded through the street followed by a brass band and the town's dignitaries. The band even played the National Anthem and they made a weak attempt at that ¡VIVA! call and response. Then there were the folk dancers in the square and a snacklet to finish it all off.

All weekend we were greeted by English and Spanish chums alike. Our Spanish failed at times but the good humour never did.

Jolly good.

We eat by night, we eat by day

Good old San Jaime. Fiesta time in our little village. Last night we troughed down on a variety of meaty products. This afternoon we ate coca (a bit like pizza). Plastic cups and forks though.

Dancing in the village square later tonight.

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