Return to sender, address unknown

   Santiago Alcanda a radio 3 presenter      

I have quite a long Christmas break. I fancied getting away from work and the usual alternatives of doing very little and drinking a lot of brandy. I spent hours on the Internet looking at websites in Teruel, Granada and Albacete provinces. I sent a few emails - "Are you running your horse riding/cookery courses/star gazing courses in the period between 26th and 31st December?" I got not a single reply. I'm not surprised. From my experience lots of businesses never look at their email. And whilst there are lots of honourable exceptions the disorganisation in Spanish businesses makes me laugh and cry by turns.

Anyway, back in November I got a little annoyed at not being able to find anything but the most banal contemporary music on Spanish radio and I wrote to Radio 3, the state broadcaster which says it champions contemporary music, to ask what their music policy was. They have an Internet form for the purpose. I anticipated at the time that I wouldn't get any sort of reply and of course I haven't.

But this isn't reasonable. Who do theses people think they are that they can just ignore my question? It's a public enterprise, paid for by us, the taxpayers. The question wasn't rude, I kept the bad language to a minimum and there was no doubt what the question was. So I sent the question again, and again, and again and then I sent a snotty email in English asking if they were guarding state secrets. I gave them the template for a simple reply too "We don't have a music policy we just get a few old blokes to drone on for a while on air"

Tonight as Maggie made the living room a no go zone with Strictly Come Dancing I used the time to step up the campaign. I sent the question again. I also sent the same question to another part of the same broadcaster (a bit like sending a question about BBC Radio 1 to Feedback on BBC Radio 4.) What's more I sent the original question and a complaint about not receiving an answer to the "Viewers and Listeners Defender" a sort of radio ombudsman.

Good grief, all I wanted was to hear a few non top 40 modern Spanish bands on the radio but now what I want is an answer. It doesn't have to be an answer I like but I want an answer.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At the risk of opening myself up to public ridicule I have reproduced the question here just to prove it wasn't rude. Well it proves that if you can understand my version of Spanish.

¿Cuál es la política musical de Radio 3?

Querría disfrutar de Radio 3. Creía haber descubierto una alternativa a la programación repetitiva, limitada y lenta de emisoras como Cadena Dial y los 40 Principales.

Pensaba que R3 era una emisora musical. Desafortunadamente cada vez que pongo R3 hay alguien hablando. Me parece que la mayoría de los locutores preferiría oír sus propias voces que la música

Pensaba que R3 era una emisora contemporánea. Desafortunadamente cada vez que pongo R3 suena música de los años 50,60 o 70

Pensaba que era una emisora tanto generalista como especialista. Desafortunadamente muchas veces cuando pongo R3 oigo Country y Western, Jazz o Flamenco. Esas músicas tienen su valor y su audiencia pero, en mi opinión, no son estilos musicales aptos para las horas de máxima audiencia.

Por eso tengo interés por conocer cual es la política musical de Radio 3 pues no logro encontrarla en la página web.

I'll name that tune in one

Many, many years ago I had quite a good collection of salsa, cumbia, son and other Latin American music. A colleague I gave a lift to soon grew tired of my conversation and turned on the tape player to be greeted by Celia Cruz. He wasn't impressed with the Latin sound. "Don't you have anything British?" he said as he shuffled my tapes. Finally, with a little whoop of joy, he found Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. "Now there's some proper music," he said, as he pushed the cassette into the slot and began to hum along. He was an educated chap, I'm pretty sure he knew Beethoven was German but that isn't the point. He was culturally in tune with Beethoven in a way that he wasn't to with Los Van Van.

Pinoso has a nice theatre, the Teatro Auditorio Emilio Martínez Sáez, named for an ex Mayor of the town. The walls of the theatre are lined with light wood panelling and the ceiling slopes gently from the back of the circle to the rear of the stage - you know the sort of place - pretty typical for its 2002 opening date. Tonight, on our way from Culebrón back to Cartagena we stopped off at the Auditorio to see a performance by the Elda Chamber Orchestra.

The programme, in aid of a cancer charity, had lots of titles that we didn't recognise along with lots that we did. When it came to the tunes though we recognised them all. Canon de Pachellbel may be spelled oddly but we were pretty sure what to expect whereas Oh Luz de Dios didn't really give us any clues until the musicians struck up what I recognised as either O Tannenbaum or The Red Flag.

It was an enjoyable little concert, nothing too strenuous, but, all the way through, as an unknown title became a recognisable tune I came back to a thought about a heritage shared across Europe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The picture is from the Telepinos Facebook page

This is not my beautiful house

Quite a strange experience today. We went for a meal. The odd thing was that it was in somebody's living room. A chap and his wife, who used to run a restaurant in Pinoso until they retired, now do meals to order from their home in the countryside.

A pal booked eight of us in. We ate quite a lot of very decent food for a rock bottom price sitting on green plastic patio chairs. Plenty of booze as well though some of us were driving and stuck to water.

At one point I was outside the chap's house having a cigar and staring at the sun bathed scenery. In the distance was the village of Algueña overshadowed by the huge marble quarry that produces so much of Pinoso's wealth. The man told me he'd worked there for 26 years before setting up his restaurant. He remembered me as an occasional customer from the time I worked in the furniture shop. I asked him if he didn't miss the convenience of town living. He didn't. He'd been to see his grandaughters dancing ballet in Pinoso the evening before and the day before that other members of his family had been to his house. What more could he want - a peaceful existence with friends and family close by?

I talk to a lot of Spanish people because of my job and it's one of the recurring themes. They have plenty of complaints about how things are but, when push comes to shove, the great majority seem very happy with their lot.

Bring me pine logs hither

Around fifteen years ago, when Maggie and I finally set up home together, we bought a Christmas tree from Woolworths in Huntingdon. We still use the same tree. The lights, the sets of lights that burst into life yet again tonight, came the year after. The first set were very sensitive and gave up the ghost after their debut.

I was adamant about us buying a plastic tree. I wanted something that we would remember each year, something that would grow older and more threadbare along with us. I have fond memories of the tree I grew up with, the tree my dad and I decorated to celebrate the arrival of my new baby brother. I wanted something similar for us.

Whisky, like Nat King Cole, is a part of the ritual of decorating the Huntingdon tree. For years it was a decent malt but times are hard and it was Dewars tonight. Unfortunately driving and scotch don't mix which meant that the tree decorating, the official recognition of Christmas, had to wait until we'd been to see The Pinoso British Choir do their stuff in their annual carol concert in the Pinoso Parish Church.

I mentioned the British Choir a couple of years ago. Since then Spaniards and Brits have sung side by side at Christmas. This year a later date for the carol concert meant that several members of the British Choir would have been missing because of the call of family, turkey and sprouts. It looked as though there would be no British presence in the Parish Christmas celebrations The local priest was having none of that. He suggested a separate British concert. That's what we went to see tonight.

To be honest it wasn't the usual standing room only event in church but, nonetheless. there was a good mix of Spanish and British in the audience. The Priest made a good fist of speaking English and the English chap who spoke for the choir did a splendid job of speaking Spanish. The choir did really well. All through the concert I found myself grinning from ear to ear. It was excellent fun.

As we walked back to the car I asked Maggie if she thought I could use a phrase about the choir on this blog along the lines of "What they lacked in technique they made up for in heart." "Absolutely not," she said," I thought they did really well."

I agreed. So our Christmas has now begun.

People aren't nice about Albacete

My mum reads these blogs so I'm going to be in trouble. If you tell Spanish people, presumably those who aren't from Albacete, that you are going there they trot out a little phrase of advice "Albacete, caga y vete" Albacete: shit and leave. There, I've done it now. No pocket money for weeks. Better not to recount the story of my first ever visit to Albacete on a perishing December night as it involves a porn cinema. I could end up grounded for years.

Maggie is not here so I'm alone. She's not a big fan of Albacete anyway. Personally I like it. On a sizzling August afternoon with the heat haze rippling off the plain I think it's about as Spanish as Spanish can get. Today it was a bit dull and then a bit wet.

The town isn't large. It's small or at least it feels small though apparently it has 170,000 people. We, I was with my pal Geoff, found ourselves wandering in circles because we had no map. I would have liked a map. Indeed we followed the signs to the tourist office so we could get one. The tourist office was closed. It was a particularly splendid example of the art in that it had no sign outside to say it was a tourist office. We had to ask someone where it was although we were standing just 10 metres from it. I presume it was closed because yesterday was a bank holiday and local government employees often get the bridging days to form a long weekend. Lots of Spaniards would have been on holiday today but Albacete isn't a big tourist destination so presumably there wouldn't have been any work for the tourism people anyway. Hang on, do I glimpse a paradox here?

We did stumble across the Cathedral though and opposite was a very green building with an ornate frontage. I took a snap and walked over to see what it was. The sign next to the door said MCA. It wasn't a big sign; think solicitor's office brass plate sort of size. Underneath, in quite small lettering it said Museo Municipal de la Cuchilleria. Albacete is famous for knives. Like Sheffield and Toledo it has a long history of finely crafted blades and here was the local museum dedicated to knives, scissors and all things cutlery. We paid a very reasonable entry fee and went in. I thought it was a good museum. Geoff doesn't really read Spanish and, as all the labelling and notices were monolingual, our pace around the exhibits was more hare than tortoise. The video was in English though so we watched that through. I was impressed enough to buy a couple of books telling the history of knife making in Albacete.

Once we'd eaten a rather ordinary meal we took people's advice, at least the second part.

Sorry, I missed that

We've just been to the opening of a new bar - or, more likely, a bar restaurant - in Culebrón.

It's the same bar we went in when we were looking around the village before buying our house. That bar folded. We had a meal there when it re-opened, briefly, as a Uruguayan Steak House. That closed too but, with new people, it re-opened as Casa Pepe for a while. I seem to remember we managed three visits before they pulled down the shutters.


Now I know I'm quite forgetful but I'm surprised what I've already forgotten about the new bar. I've forgotten its name for instance, or when it will be open or what it will be serving.

Actually, come to think of it despite having a house in the village I don't remember being invited to the inaugral event. I do remember that Eduardo (the owner of another restaurant in Culebrón) mentioned that his sister intended to let out the bar/restaurant again and I recall that people at the Neighbourhood Association meal mentioned the opening to us. I don't remember seeing any official publicity though and although I've often been told that the sum of all human knowledge is on the Internet our new bar doesn't feature.

Whilst we were drinking the free drink and eating the free food tonight we were told that the family who will be running the business have been running a successful community bar in the nearby village of Chinorlet. I really do hope that they manage to repeat that success in Culebrón. Having a community meeting point in Culebrón, especially one with beer, would be a huge plus.

I'm not sure though, from what I've seen so far, that my hopes will be realised.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We went back today. It's called Nou Culebrón. We went in around 4pm with the intention of getting a quick coffee, just to show willing. The restaurant was full, there were lots of staff most of whom seem very occupied. Well at least they seemed too occupied to say hello or  to serve us.

Avoiding carbon monoxide poisoning

Ingrid told me a story. She holds with the majority view that telephone sales people should be made to run around dripping wet wearing only a towel to see how they like it. One day though a chap phoned trying to sell a combined electric and gas supply package and Ingrid positively welcomed the call. She was enthusiastic. She would be delighted to take advantage of the offer. By Ingrid's account the man handled the unexpected situation well. He remembered his training and kept on extolling the virtues as he completed the draft contract. It all fell apart at the address stage though. Ingrid lived in an old half timbered cottage with green wellies in the porch and a big red Aga in the kitchen. "Aah, I'm afraid we can't offer piped gas to your location," said the salesman, "your  house is too rural." "I know," said Ingrid, "why didn't you?" Then she put the phone down.

There's no piped gas in Culebrón either. Piped gas in Spain is generally only available in relatively large towns. We make do with gas bottles. We buy the lighter, Cepsa branded aluminium bottles from the shop at the bodega in Pinoso though we also have a couple of the heavier steel Repsol bottles. We could have the bottles delivered but we're not that organised.

Gas kills lots of people in Spain. Often people cobble together ingenious but lethal heaters that explode and demolish the building around them. Sometimes death comes more quietly in the form of carbon monoxide poisoning.

The legislation says that you should have your gas system and appliances checked at installation and every five years after that. Sensible legislation in my opinion. We had it done five years ago. We had it done again today. So now, if the grim reaper comes to call we can be pretty sure that it won't be in the form of flesh tearing shards of sharpened metal or the lack of oxygenated blood.

May I bring this meeting to order

It was the Annual General Meeting of the Culebrón Neighbourhood Association today. As is now usual we were greeted effusively by lots of people. As usual we had the meal beforehand. As usual we had a choice of rice and gazpacho. As usual Maggie and I sat with Mari Luisa, Daniel, Marisa, Carol and David. As usual there was a gap next to us at table.

With the tables put away, the paella pan scrubbed clean and the prawn heads picked up off the floor it was time for the Annual General Meeting.

The AGM is always a bit disorganised. At least by UK standards it's a bit disorganised. When I say a bit disorganised read absolute chaos. Sometimes there is an agenda but today there wasn't - no minutes either. Of the four key members of the committee - Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer and Secretary - only the Chair and the Secretary were on hand. With little else to lean on the meeting hinged around the accounts.

The slightly inebriated Secretary started by eulogising the Village Mayoress and the President of the Neighbourhood Association. He made more or less the same remarks every hour for the remaining three or so hours of the meeting. He employed quite colourful  language too - very Kenneth Tynan.

The original fifty or sixty diners dwindled down to maybe ten people. I drank five whiskies, generous whiskies, from a bright pink J&B bottle, during the meeting. The President resigned but, as nobody was willing to take her place, the Secretary suggested she stayed on another couple of years so that she would resign at the same time as the village Mayoress. This apparently made sense. I was happy. She is one of the few people in the village with email.

We were told that the Village Hall didn't really exist as a legal entity which was why we couldn't let any Tom, Dick or Harry donate a gas cylinder to fuel the stoves to cook the paella. That's why gas featured in the accounts! We heard a few times how the President took full responsibility for not delegating responsibility. It's true that she mopped up her own spilled G&T. The President and Secretary complained that nobody was willing to help at Villazgo or carnival time. I dared to speak. "I think it's because we don't get asked." The Secretary  told me I was wrong. Fortunately nobody else heard because they were all talking to each other. I was on the front row. The President asked me if it wasn't true that the trip to Benidormm had been excellent, I agreed, it had. It was decided we would go to Benidorm again.

I was going to have a sixth whisky and see it out but, for no real reason, I chose to slip away instead. I didn't quite see where we were going.

Except Benidorm of course

Bouncing off the ionosphere

I like listening to the radio. Getting your news from the radio obviously has it's disadvantages (no pictures) but radio does have the huge plus of portability and not being attention seeking. The Internet and television are nowhere near as compatible with driving, shaving or showering as is the radio.

Generally radio here is reasonably good. There are stacks of local stations full of local news and stories. Nationally the news coverage is fine with a range of political views spread amongst the various broadcasters though politicians don't get anything like the cross examination that they are subjected to in the US or UK. News aside speech radio doesn't have anything like the breadth of, for instance, BBC Radio 4 (drama, arts, comedy, documentary reports etc)  but with my "Proud to be British" hat on I suspect that very few radio stations in the world do. Sports coverage is enormously important and takes up hours of air time. Sport is synonomous with football though basketball, tennis, Formula One, cycling and golf get the occasional look in.

We have a classic music channel, Radio Clasica, which is a lot like the BBC Radio 3 of yonks ago - a bit highbrow and a bit tedious. There's nothing like Classic FM

Not knowing how to describe it adequately I'll call it pop music. Pop music gets badly treated here. I've said before that the commercial channels tend to play a limited range of songs over and over again: They play far too much dated music (not so much Beatles as lots of "Hips Don't Lie" Shakira) and the playlists change so slowly that you're sure the programme you listened to today has exactly the same content as a programme you heard six months ago.

The state broadcaster has a pop music channel too - Radio 3. A quick look at their website and you can see that they're a bit staid but, then again, it looks hopeful enough. The very first programme I listened to on Radio 3 was playing modern Spanish indie bands and the next had modern world music. Hopeful I thought. Radio 3 does have some good programmes but it also has far too many presenters who prefer the sound of their own voice to the music and they play far too much really old stuff. It also has minority programming like country and western or jazz at peak times.

Now I realise that young people can access modern music in so many ways that radio is not now the key medium it once was. On the other hand the eclectic nature of radio does mean that it can do some of the sifting for you. The radio is on, in the background, you like something, you check it out on Spotify, YouTube, Internet radio or Facebook and then, if you really like it, you download it to your computer or phone and it's yours.

I've been fretting about this for some time now and this morning when I popped into town and some bloke was droning on about some macrobiotic festival in Madrid instead of playing music I decided to do a bit of complaining. And that's what I've just done. I banged off an email along the lines of asking Radio 3 what sort of music policy it has that allows it to broadcast just three 1950s flamenco tracks per hour at ten in the morning - or something along those lines. Actually I should be honest. I wrote an email and then asked a couple of Spanish pals to correct my grammar so that I didn't come across as a fool. It was interesting that they made very few changes but they chose to make my language much more formal.

The website was opaque of course so sending the message wasn't easy and I don't suppose they'll reply but at least it formalises my right to complain.

Moonstruck

There's a bit in Moonstruck - actually it could be in any film featuring Italian people in the United States but I'm pretty sure it was Moonstruck - where the family sits down to eat mountains of spaghetti and behave like Italians. The film came to mind as I dithered between Spotted Dick and Lemon Meringue.

I'd been out all morning and I hadn't been anywhere near Spain. At one point there was a gang of us hanging around a petrol station just out of Barinas. I was one of them. I had an alcohol free beer in hand and I was enjoying the sunshine as I wandered around looking for a poster advertising the loss of a dog. A chap who was blowing up the tyres on his van shouted across to the pump attendant that the place had a very foreign feeling today. The petrol man just laughed.

We were on a car treasure hunt. This one was to raise money for Barney's dog rescue. There must have been about forty of us involved as we drove hither and thither counting the number of arches here and the purpose of the flagpoles there. Perfectly good fun. Our endpoint was the White House restaurant in Fortuna where I feasted on liver and onions. I even considered ordering a cuppa to finish the meal just to maintain the Britishness of it all.

I'm aware of my Britishness much more here than I ever was when I lived in the UK. I'm reminded of it every time I try to coax one of my students to pronounce would like wood and not like gwud and every time a waiter gives me that second glance as I order something.

I went for the mixed fruit cheesecake in the end by the way.

Las Lamparillas

The best route home from Cartagena to Culebrón passes close by the town of Fortuna. Alongside the ring road the gaunt skeletons of hundreds of unfinished houses bear witness to the folly of the Spanish building boom. The planned development, built in the bone dry scrubland that surrounds Fortuna, was to be called Fortuna Hill Nature and Residential Golf Resort.

 A key part of the new resort was the Las Lamparillas development. It was aimed at golf playing Britons who weren't quite rich enough to buy a similar place on the coast and was planned to have 3,737 houses when complete. There were other agreements for other developments in Fortuna. If everything had gone as planned Fortuna's population would have increased from 10,000 to 100,000.

A research project carried out by a local university in 2004 gives some idea as to the scale of the building work planned. Across Murcia, a region with just one and a half million inhabitants, there were agreements to build 800,000 houses. The figures never made sense but nobody seemed to notice before everything went pear shaped.

Work on Las Lamaprillas, which was just part of the whole resort, started in 2007. By 2010 the principal developer of the site went bust with debts of some 120,000,000€. The banks that had loaned the money took the valueless site and the part completed houses as payment. Nobody, not the banks, not the courts and certainly not the developers considered doing the decent thing by the people who had paid deposits for the houses or to the merchants who supplied the building materials. Local businesses and house buyers are still owed around 30 million by the developers.

The town mayor says that it's easy to criticise now but that, at the time, everyone was doing well out of the building boom and nobody was complaining then.

Local councils can re-classify former rural land as urban land. On reclassification citrus groves and farm fields become much more valuable as buildiing plots. In the boom years Fortuna town council found itself with nearly 10 million euros extra from the sale of reclassified land and the councillors set about spending the money with gusto. They expected more money to follow and they borrowed against future income. The result now, in the lean years, is that the council has had to jack up taxes and either cut services or charge more for them. Many projects were never completed but the bank loans on them still have to be paid off.

In small towns in Spain everyone knows everyone else. Little networks of friends and relations do favours for other little networks. The money coming in from the developers apparently flowed into lots of those networks. At the time of the local elections in 2003 with so much money swilling around the locals became much more interested in who was in charge whilst the politicians saw the potential in controlling all that lovely money. The ruling PP party set about buying votes. It wasn't until 2011 that the courts found party workers guilty of vote rigging. The mayor, the same man is still the mayor now as then, chose not to resign.

The people of Fortuna will be paying for las Lamparillas for years to come. Spain is paying for lots of similar projects the length and breadth of the country.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since writing this article a higher court has confirmed the charges of vote rigging in Fortuna and the Mayor, Matias Carrillo, has resigned.