Desestimado

I quite approve of taxes. We all pay in, we all get more out. I know it's not a popular view.

Our local taxes in Spain are based on services, at least some of them are, so much for water, so much for rubbish collection etc. So the system isn't for the general good it's a specific charge. Back in December we got a bill for drainage but we don't have drainage so I appealed the charge. I didn't get a reply so, being away from work and having time we drove the 25kms to the tax collection office to ask what was happening about the appeal. Whilst we were there I also wanted to get a digital certificate to allow me to access the Virtual Offices of several quasi governmental organisations.

No chance with the certificate said the woman, no Internet today. Go to the Town Hall to get one. And the drains, we still haven't got a reply? She dug around in her computer, ah, yes, appeal denied. I was a bit cross not because of the charge so much but because of the woman's blasé attitude in an office where the customer service is usually good. I think I was caustic, the Spanish certainly seemed to flow, if not my body language made the message clear anyway.

We went to the Town Hall. The digital certificate woman was friendly, informative and efficient, ten minutes from start to finish. Now I wonder if it will work?

Así es

Someone recommended a book to me but, as it had been written at the turn of the 19th Century, and as it wasn't one book but a whole series I decided that the library was the best option.

My library card had expired so I expected to have to re-enrol. I took a new photo and all the documentation I thought may be necessary, sheaves of the stuff. Well, actually, I forgot the library card on the kitchen table at home!

"You may think your card has expired but it's not quite true we just keep renewing them," said the librarian. I asked if I could borrow a book as I didn't have the card - "No problem" she said. We dug out the book I wanted. The binding and typeface were very 19th Century. The librarian was sure she had a more modern version but the only one she found was a reference book - not for loan. "Don't worry" she said "We can jump that little rule." She wrote the return date on a Post It, in pencil, and stuck it over the reference only sticker. The return date is during the town's fiestas so I asked about returning the book. "Don't worry," she said, "a few days over won't hurt:"

Large library book under my arm I went to the local driving school to ask them to exchange my UK driving licence for a Spanish one. It's about time. The process was fast, efficient and reasonably expensive (75€.) "How long do you think it will take?" I asked "Well, it's summer, don't expect too much to happen before September," said the man.

And the sun's shining, and I'm on holiday - what more could one soul ask for?

Dichotomy

Sometimes it crosses my mind that I live a strange life here.

Being British I behave like a Brit. I turn up to places on time, I like written information, I don't queue jump and I eat food from every corner of the globe.

I try my best to live an ordinary immigrant life. I keep up with the news, I pay taxes and I vote. I don't speak Spanish much though as I'm paid to speak English and, obviously enough, Maggie and I speak to each other in English. You don't get to practise a lot of Spanish at the supermarket or buying a newspaper and the truth is I'm a bit unsociable anyway trying to avoid small talk in any language.

When I'm with Brits I'm often accused of having gone native. Being only vaguely interested in the news from "back home" or what's just happened on the X Factor is regarded as a venal sin. What do I care about David Cameron's posturings or whether it's a bank holiday? Those things affect me no more and no less than Berlusconi's pronouncements or Bastille day. Not always wanting to go to the quiz or for a roast on Sunday at one of the several expat bars is tantamount to treason.

When I'm with Spaniards they think of me as being as British as pea soupers in London. Lots of Spaniards are remarkably ill informed and firmly believe that fog and high tea are British realities. When I ask about culture, politics or social customs I'm never quite sure whether the simplistic answers I get are because they class me along with the inquisitive five year olds or because simplistic is what they have. I can't recount the number of times I've being asked if I've ever eaten paella. Being spoken to as though I were stupid is a far too common an occurrence.

When I'm in mixed Spanish and British company the Spaniards will corral we Brits into the same corner so that we can talk about dear old Blighty. It never crosses their mind that for many of us Spain is now our one and only home. Spain is where I go to the doctor, get my hair cut, buy bread and tax my car. It's also a place I chose to live and a culture I like and enjoy.

The truth is that I am adrift - no that isn't right - it's more that I'm not quite anchored. Caught between two existences and a bit at a loss in either. My links with the UK are pretty tenuous nowadays and my links with Spain are pretty shaky too. It's the language of course. Brits think I speak good Spanish whilst the Spanish think I'm a gibbering, incomprehensible fool. The quizzical look on the shopkeeper's face as I ask for a juicer. The sheer terror of making a phone call.

Yes, definitely strange

Shopping therapy

IKEA isn't really my idea of fun but every now and again Maggie feels the urge to make changes to the house and we go. We nearly always argue when we're there. I am persuaded of the need for shelves or cupboards or whatever but I don't understand browsing the sofas and desks and wardrobes and breadboards and glasses and clocks and picture frames. I always surrender though and succumb to scissors or shower curtains as well as what I went to buy. Maggie usually goes for blankets and candles.

We went today. As we wandered the aisles we bumped into one of my English students out shopping with her husband. They'd travelled to Murcia from Cartagena to buy capsules for their Nespresso machine and popped into IKEA to compound the fun. Then it was one of Maggie's work colleagues and her husband. They'd driven the 50kms to buy a picture frame. 

We were there for bookshelves. We made an error. We took a car with 1.5 metres of carrying space to buy 2 metre shelves. IKEA compounded the fiasco by having a power problem which knocked out their tills. We abandoned our compensatory purchases of scissors, blankets, toilet brush, shower curtain and candle lantern near the unmoving till queue and left empty handed.

Modern times in Western Europe eh?

Coals to Newcastle

The school is in a prime
 city centre location handy
for the sweet shop,
bars and  restaurants

You're going where? In high summer? You must be bonkers - it'll be like an oven! That's been the general drift of the conversation when I've explain to any Spanish chums that I'm intending to spend a week in Murcia city doing a 25 hour Spanish course and living with a host family for a week.

They also find it difficult to understand. You do live in Spain, don't you? Nearly all Spaniards firmly believe that a few months in an English speaking country will turn them into polished and fluent English speakers. If that's the case why hasn't it worked for me the other way around?

The reason is twofold, the first and most important is that I am so terrified to speak that I avoid doing so if at all possible. The other reason is that I hardly ever get the opportunity to speak Spanish. They pay me at work to speak English, Maggie and I speak in English and you don't get a lot of language practice buying a beer or getting the supermarket shopping done.

So, in a few days the Instituto Hispánico de Murcia and Maria Angeles (my host) will get the pleasure of my company. We were in Murcia today signing paper so we went to see where it was.

Who knows, maybe I'll have to speak a bit of Spanish?

¡Save our Cabezo de la Sal!

Escombreras in Cartagena

Salt in Torrevieja

When we got back to Culebrón on Friday there was a flyer in our letterbox; it started: "Our Cabezo de la Sal it is wanted to be filled with Brent Crude!!! it is intended to be transported from Cartagena harbour through a more-than 110km-km-long pipe to store it in the salt wells!!!"


Cabezo de la Sal  is one of the local hills, well if 893 metres or 2,902 feet  high is a hill it is - that's some 624 feet shorter than Snowdon.

I read, and wrote, about this last February but the whole project has come up again as a result of the recent election campaigns. Cabezo de la Sal is a mountain loaded with 500 million tons of salt of which about 120 million tons can be extracted with current technology.

The salt is mined by digging a borehole and then forcing high pressure water down the hole to dissolve the rock salt. The resultant brine is sent, by pipeline, to the salt lagoons at Torrevieja where it is mixed with the sea water so that when the water is evaporated off the yield of salt is much higher.

The wells go down between 600 and 1200 metres before the process is stopped, the borehole is sealed and the miners move on to drill another hole about 150 metres away. The end result is a mountain peppered with subterranean caverns.

Apparently EU legislation requires that each country should have a strategic reserve of crude oil which will last for 92 days "To cover any eventuality in the international market." Spain's current Strategic Reserve is in a lot of oil tanks in the Escombreras Valley in Cartagena. The plan is to bring the crude ashore at the tanker terminal there, build a 110km pipeline and pump up to two million cubic metres of the black gold into the disused caverns in our mountain.

The opponents say that there is a high risk of oil spills, that inhaling the vapour from crude causes cancer, that Pinoso is in an area of high seismic activity for Europe, that Pinoso could become a terrorist target, that land will have to be compulsorily purchased, that there is the chance that Pinoso might have to be evacuated if there were a disaster and that the mountain could become a restricted area.

The proponents say that there is no risk of fire with oil stored more than 500 metres underground because there is no oxygen, that there is no chance of pollution of aquifers or of escape of the crude because the remaining salt is plastic at that depth so naturally self sealing, that only in Hollywood films are mountains split apart by earthquakes, that they love the natural environment as much as any environmentalist, that and will use the best technology to build the pipeline, that the visual effect of the installations will be minimal and that Spain needs safe, cost efficient, effective storage and that this is it.

Personally I'm a bit ambivalent about the whole thing. The corporate response is glib and the Platform for el Cabezo Free From Petroleum's objections range from the reasonable to the bizarre.

The Black Hand Gang

I don't know about you but black is not a shade I associate with clean.

Years of "Omo washes whiter than white" brainwashing I suppose.

I bought the bar of soap in the photo last weekend and I was a little surprised when I opened the box this morning. It has a strange scent too, not really unpleasant but somehow not quite soap like.

Swearing like troopers

Following the elections of 22 May today was the day for the new council to start its term of office in Pinoso. I went to the Town Hall to watch the noontime ceremony.

The thirteen councillors were all there. First of all they swore an oath to be nice councillors. Some chose to place their hand on a thick gold and green book as they said their piece while others chose a thinner black book. I asked two people in the crowd what the books were but they didn't know. I presume one was a bible and the other a non religious legal text but I'm probably wrong.

The five candidates for mayor, those are the people who headed up the electoral lists for their respective parties, where then asked whether they wished to maintain their nominations to be mayor. Two backed down (the ones who have done a deal with the victorious PSOE party) so there were just three nominees in the vote amongst the thirteen councillors. It all went to plan, three votes for the chap who was mayor until today, two for the man who was deputy mayor until today and eight votes from the PSOE, PSD, BLOC alliance for Lázaro Azorín who is now our new mayor.

Bit more swearing, the handing over of the symbolic staff of office and then a speech from Lázaro.

That was enough fun for me for one day and I came home. Fair sized crowd though.

Catholic tastes

Yesterday it was rock bands (do they still call them that?) and today it was a brass quartet in the wine cellars of one local wineries; Bodegas Carchelo over in Jumilla.

Bit of a tour of the bodega, then a never-ending glass of wine whilst we listened to the quartet - who were seated amongst the wine barrels - doing their stuff. To be honest the verb listen probably isn't the right one as the audience was noticeably quieter during the breaks between tunes than they were whilst the quartet were playing. Concert over it was upstairs for a buffet of local delicacies with two more wines to try and then a gentle drive home.

PS I hardly touched enough wine to taste it. Ni una gotita al volante.

No staying power

There has been lots of press speculation about the King recently. A while ago he had some surgery. The doctors said they had removed a benign tumour but the cancer rumours persisted. The Palace said he was fine except that his hip and knee were a bit dodgy. Not unusual for a 73 year old, otherwise it was just the ailments of old age - "los achaques."  I thought that was an excellent word. It was a word I understood exactly.


Working on the principle that you're never too old to rock we went to see four bands last night. The event was called Ciclo Pop. One of Maggie's ex colleagues is the lead singer for a band called Aardvark Asteroid and the rest of the line up included Fuzzy White Casters, Arizona Baby and Sexy Sadie. Obviously we were keen to support James and his band but I'd wanted to see Arizona Baby for quite a while as well. Two birds with one stone. Even better the venue was only an hour or so from home.

It was a good venue, right in the middle of San Vicente del Raspeig, and the 11€ price tag was excellent for four bands. Nonetheless the crowd was pretty thin - two or three hundred people  maybe. The gig was late starting but we were perfectly fit as we watched James and the other Aardvarks and we were still well in the game for Arizona Baby. By then though the achaques were catching up. We older people have to empty our bladders reasonably frequently. We don't like those little cabin toilets. After 12 hours or so our contact lens had become unbearable. In my case too my mouth is a bit sore and I've had a mild if persistent stomach ache for the last three or four weeks too. The numbness that I get in my hands and feet was exacerbated by the chilly evening. Basically by 1.30am I was knackered and we still had to get home. So we bailed out and came home around 2am. We never saw Sexy Sadie.

Don Juan Carlos had his knee operation a couple of days ago. I'm sure if he'd been at Ciclo Pop he would have stayed the course.

A fiesty little chap

I've mentioned before that Eduardo the cat likes to present us with little gifts. Sometimes they are still alive - that's why we had a blackbird in the living room a couple of weeks ago and sometimes all that remains are a few organs - kidneys and livers seem not to be his taste.

This evening I popped outside for a smoke and there was Eddie doing a dance around this little chap. Tiny little snake; no idea what brand but, apparently unharmed. I shooed Edu inside, took a few snaps then scooped the snake up on a fly swat and released him in a bit of undergrowth.

By the way, Culebrón, means big snake in Spanish as well as a soap opera so the village wasn't named for this tiny example.