Women don't sweat....

The building is an old Victorian indoor market - all cast iron columns and glass ceiling. The air conditioning was going full blast producing a background growl but if the aircon was at full tilt the hand held fans were going faster. Those fans make a distinctive sound as they furl, unfurl and flap and that sound was everywhere. The seats were relatively hard and relatively uncomfortable so there was a fair bit of shuffling. At least twenty official photographers wearing orange ribboned passes kept moving around crouching down like John Ford Indians dancing around the tribal fire with their tomahawks. Despite the fanning, despite the cooling system and despite the shuffling we all glistened.

On stage Estrella Morente was belting out flamenco songs. The name never goes without mention of her late great dad, Enrique Morente who went into a coma after an ulcer operation and died in 2010. She was there to sing in, and we were there to watch, a part of one of the most prestigious flamenco events of the year. It isn't held in the ancestral home of flamenco down in Andalucia nor in one of the big cities. The Cante de las Minas is held in the very ordinary, bordering on ugly, Murcian town of La Unión. I lived in La Union for about ten months so I can have an opinion.

I've mentioned this competition before so no extra details here but it was extra interesting this time. I like this event so I have a predisposition to go. I hadn't read the tickets or the advertising bumph very carefully. It said Estrella Morente and that was enough for me. I've heard her on the radio a few times and she had a song I liked in the Almadóvar film Volver - though it was Penélope Cruz who mouthed the song in the movie. Basically then I had no idea what I was going to see. I sort of expected crossover stuff - proper flamenco breezed up a bit. Like the stuff you get in almost any flamenco show in Spain but a lot classier. It wan't. To my untrained ear it sounded like a variation on the real stuff that the fat men in overtight suits wail out.

Maggie had arrived in Alicante airport from the UK at about a quarter past nine. The concert was at eleven and about 120 kilometres away so it was a bit of a dash. It was only when a woman in a long frock welcomed us to the concert that we realised the second half was going to be el Amor Brujo (the bewitched Love) by Manuel de Falla performed by the orchestra from a local private university. Originally the conductor was going to be Roque Baños, who is quite a famous writer of film scores, a chap who comes from Jumilla just down the road from us in Culebrón, but in the end Roque was doing something more important. I checked my tickets and yes it was all there. Clearly.

I don't care for Falla. I've tried honest. All that Three Cornered Hat and Nights in the Gardens of Spain stuff. It doesn't work for me.

Anyway so there we are shuffling and sweating and a bit surprised that we were watching a bunch of young people on stage producing classical music with Estrella doing the singing parts.

As we filed out into the square it was still only a bit short of two in the morning so we stopped to get a drink and a snack and we talked about the concert. We always talk about the things we go to see of course but usually it's a shortish conversation and this time it was much longer. I strongly suspect that it's not a concert we will forget easily.

Keeping up to date

When we first settled in Pinoso the Internet wasn't as all pervasive as it is today. There was still a weekly rag, el Canfali, which reported the news from Pinoso and many of the surrounding towns. The quality of its journalism was questionable but it was a part of my weekly routine to buy and read it. I was sad when it died. Good for my Spanish and good to know what was happening.

Our local Town Hall runs a radio station and a TV station. The TV station fell foul of the digitalisation of the Spanish television networks and finally gave up analogue broadcasting in March 2012. Even before it closed we lost the signal in Culebrón with a change of transmitter. I don't quite understand how or why but it still exists on the internet although it seems to produce still rather than moving images. There are just fourteen videos on its Facebook page for instance. The Pinoso Town Hall website is enigmatic about Telepinos's future "waiting to find a method of being an open window for all the people of Pinoso."

The radio station is fine. The signal's a bit weak our side of town but it broadcasts on the internet too. A mix of local programming and idiosyncratic music.

The other source of written information, alongside the commercial Canfali and the generalist commercial provincial press, was and is a free magazine produced by the Town Hall. It's called El Cabeço. It used to be monthly but times are hard and it now seems to be truly periodical - sometimes it covers three months, sometimes two. I don't have to worry about publication date. My pal Geoff collects one when he sees one in the newsagent where he picks up his Daily Mail every day. When it comes out I get one. I presume the same writing team put together the news on the Town Hall website every day.

I suspect that the editorial in El Cabeço is a little biased. When the PP/UCL were in power el Cabeço told us about their wonderful achievements. The present administration is PSOE/PSD and it's their turn to be outstanding. Nonetheless a lot of the information is purely factual and the parts I can read (much of it is in Valenciano) are usually pretty interesting. Each of the political parties gets space in the magazine anyway and they anticipate the guff of their opponents and answer back in anticipation. It can be amusing to read. There is obviously something close to "Parliamentary Privilege" in what opposing politicians can say within its pages.

You may remember that when we voted in the European elections I mentioned that we had a sort of referendum about some local questions too. Well El Cabeço tells me there's going to be another one in September this time about the future of our local salt dome, our emblematic mountainlet, el Cabeço in Valenciano or el Cabezo in Castellano.

Before I explain tell me what the answer is to this question: "Are you in agreement with the wells of the salt dome being used for potentially contaminating substances quite unrelated to their actual use?" It loses something in translation but I hope you have no doubt about the correct answer.

This is about the plan to use the empty spaces within the hill to store some of Spain's strategic oil reserve. I notice in his editorial in the magazine that the mayor doesn't shilly shally around when he describes the idea as damaging (nocivo) and says that he hopes the referendum will give support to the plans his party is developing to stop the project.

I don't quite understand why there is going to be a referendum. Thousands of opposing signatures have already been collected which surely serve the same purpose but I look forward to reading about the landslide support for keeping the hill clean in the next edition.

Braceando en el barro

It's a nice day. The weather station says 34.6ºC. It's still, and the only sounds are things cracking with the heat and buzzing flies. In Pinoso, just four kilometres way, they will be finishing off the free giant paella and the free beer to go with it. I wondered about going in but I couldn't raise the energy. I did the ironing instead.

I'm off work of course. I don't work, nor do I get paid, July or August. It suits me though my joy is always somewhat tempered by the alarming outflow from my bank account. The perennial problem plenty of time but no cash.

I'm only putting off one job. I have to phone the electric supply company to ask them about moving a pole. I've mentioned it before. The power supply to the house is being menaced by our still very healthy and free of the nasty beetle like picudo rojo, palm tree. I sprayed the tree again a few days ago and I hurt myself less and did it more quickly than ever before. I'm putting off the phone call for all sorts of reasons but I do need to talk to the neighbour first and he's not around at the moment so I can claim lack of opportunity rather than sloth.

It's not that I've been particularly slothful since finishing work. I went to Madrid to collect Maggie and we spent a couple of days there together. We made a frankly disastrous foray to Cartagena to see a couple of bands in the Mar de Musicas. We did our Hispano Luso road trip on which I finally got to see inside el Escorial (Felipe II's enormous monastery palace) after 25 years of trying, we got back to Ciudad Rodrigo after five years away, we bagged another of the fourteen Spanish National Parks at Doñana. Overall we saw a myriad of interesting and exciting things in the 2,890 kilometres we did on a route that took in stops at Cercedilla, Ciudad Rodrigo, Tabuaço, Lisbon, Evora, el Rocio and Malaga. A couple of days after getting back to Culebrón Maggie set off for the UK to catch up with her family and my life slowed down a little.

That said I went to see a paid for concert, Pastora Soler, as part of the Pinoso Fiesta and I've done a few other things there from the opening ceremony to sitting in the market square drinking gin and listening to the free soul night with a couple of pals. Life you know, drifting past.

Good morning sir. May I see your documentation please?

I get pulled over fairly frequently by the police, usuallly the Guardia Civil. Normally it takes seconds - they see I'm wearing my seat belt, see that the car has been checked for roadworthiness or whatever and I'm soon on my way. Not always, they sometimes have big guns and give clear instructions about leaving the car s-l-o-w-l-y. I've been breathalysed either three or four times as well. Always 100% clear.

On the way to stay in a hotel in Cartagena last week I was being followed by a police car with speed cameras mounted on the roof. I signalled left and pulled into a parking bay. The policeman started gesticulating and shouting. Once out of the car in that flurry of tripping over things fluster he told me off for crossing an unbroken white liine in the centre of the road. I shouldn't have turned left.

Today we went to visit a bodega though here in Portugal they seem to be called quintas. When it got to the wine tasting I only took about half a mouthful of wine. I've got to drive I said.

Five minutes down the road and we were pulled over by police officers on a country lane - their uniforms had the letters GNR on them. "Documentation please," they said in Portuguese. I tried answering in English, no good, I tried Spanish - that worked. It turned out the poliiceman had been a lorry driver and knew our bit of Spain as well as Spanish. There were no problems with the paperwork. "You haven't been drinking have you?" he asked, almost as a throwaway line. I told the truth. I was lectured on the strength of Portuguese wine and sent on my way. Two police incidents in five days is a bit on the top side thouugh.

Interesting about the language too. I complain a lot about not being able to speak Spanish very well. Being here in Portugal where I have difficulty pronouncing the name of the town that I'm staying in has brought home to me how communicative I actually am in Spanish. It is horrible being so lost and having to be so British about speaking to foreigners - well modulated sounds, a slow delivery and simple words. Of course, just as everywhere else the foreigners put us to shame and usually manage English remarkably well.

Like the dentist's

Maggie wants a mobile phone. Well, actually, she's got a phone but she needs a Spanish SIM card and a contract to make her phone work. It's taken a little while for her to get around to it but this morning she sat at her half functioning computer (the connection is completely unreliable at the moment) and set up a contract to Pepephone, one of the newer and cheaper mobile phone setups in Spain.

Just one problem. The card has to be delivered by carrier and signed for. As we are in and out all the time and then Maggie is off to the UK for a couple of weeks opportunities for delivering or receiving the SIM card are very limited.

Pepephone uses a travel agency as a shop for its services. It just happens that we're in Cartagena for a concert so we thought we could ask if there was the possibility of collecting a SIM card directly.

We have now been waiting for over an hour, we're still waiting. It's nobody's fault the people are doing their jobs but it is a very, very long winded process.

Badly informed - as usual

People tell me I complain. I usually think I am commenting or, more often, guffawing, at the preposterousness of whatever it may be. For instance in Of no fixed address

Anyway, as usual, I was wrong. Just ask Maggie. Always wrong. My address wasn't the real problem. True I had to go to Elda about 25 kilometres away where I was sent from one office to a second but once I was in the right place it took only a few seconds to change my address with the Social Security, with the Health people.

Back at the computer I applied for my European Health Card only to have the application turned down again. So I rang the helpline. I enjoyed the music and the mix of information and encouragement to not go away as the minutes ticked away.

The woman told me that I'm not employed, I'm not a pensioner and I'm not unemployed so I can't have a card. I explained that I have a job. She couldn't find me on the system and it took a while before she did. Ah, your contract ended at the end of June she said. Well, yes and no I replied. I have one of these fixed discontinuous contracts so I presume that although I'm not being paid I am considered to be employed. Not quite apparently. I have the right to claim unemployment pay and I would not be added to the unemployment statistics but unless I actually claim the dole I have no right to a health card. I checked that there was no problem with ordinary health care here in Spain and that was fine. I can get sick at home but not whilst I gad about Europe.

These contratos fijos discontinuos are designed for people who work in seasonal businesses. The job is yours when there's work but apparently the idea is that you go and draw the dole when the firm doesn't need you. Despite being entitled to unemployment pay people on these contracts are not registered as unemployed. A very odd situation and very easy for the firms to abuse I would have thought. Employ someone for eleven months until the summer holiday period, kick them loose with no need to pay them whilst they draw the dole and then take them on again when they have a nice tan. The other side is that people who have these contracts are unlikely to do much job hunting whilst they are temporarily out of work so they are a dead weight on the public purse. Apparently most of us on these contracts are women and lots of us work in food production, education and tourism.

Obviously my personal situation is a little strange. I'm sure that my boss would keep me working over the summer if I wanted to work. The truth is that it suits me and him for me to take a couple of months off. I avoid work and he doesn't have to employ somebody at a slacker time of the year. It has never crossed my mind to claim the dole.

I'd just better not get sick when we cross the border into Portugal over the summer.

Keeping schtum

Everyone knows that Brits in Spain wear socks with sandals, go bright red in the sun and swill beer. One of those conversational topics, designed generally to use comparatives in English, with students is about countries. We always agree that one difference is on the Tube. In London everyone keeps to themselves, reading or simply looking grim faced. In Madrid on the other hand the babble between passengers is drowned out only by the occasional impromptu musical jam session.

I was in Madrid the last couple of days and I'm sad to report that everyone on the metro is now glued to their mobile phones. For business suits and skaters alike their thumbs are dancing across screens catching or killing things. Earphones are everywhere to block out the surrounding world. Mobile phones, the great leveller.

Madrid looked very green too. Trees all over the place and that's without going anywhere near the Retiro. Busy of course but then, if you lived in Culebrón, most places would seem busy to you too. And expensive; it's not that paying 2.20€ or 2.50€ for a bottle of beer or 4€ for a tapa is too bad really but we generally pay about half of that so the final bill can be a bit of a surprise. And exciting - flash motors on the street, odd and stylish characters in equal measure, galleries, museums and events everywhere. And, best of all in the recently renamed Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Maggie popped out of one of the doors with a cartload of luggage which means she gets to eat pork and drink wine and I get my playmate back.

Of no fixed address

The British Embassy has a Facebook page called Brits Living in Spain. Lots of their posts are pretty good. Today there was one about applying for a European health card online and true enough there was a simple online form on the Ministry of Employment and Social Security's website for workers and pensioners. I filled it in and sent it off. An email came back to say my address didn't match anything on their database.

My address is easy. House number, Culebrón and postcode.

Postcodes in Spain identify a town or village. Culebrón is 03658 but the post office told us never to use that as mail would be wrongly sent to the sorting office in Salinas. Better to use 03650 they said. Some organisations have address checking software that matches the village name to the correct postcode and make arbitrary changes. Maybe the Ministry of Employment and Social Security is one of those organisations. So the mistake could be in the postcode.

Lots of Spanish internet databases require a descriptive word which is the equivalent of things like street, avenue, drive or crescent in the address and most of them will not accept a blank field. On the deeds to the house the descriptive term is Partida - a word that has lots of meanings but roughly translates as place or zone. On the equivalent of the Council Tax Register the Town Hall gave our address the prefix Caserío which loosely translates to hamlet. If a database offers either of these terms I use them. Sometimes the firm or agency I'm dealing with simply adds its own prefix and, quite often, additional information too. Our electricity provider for instance uses Calle (street) Culebrón and then adds bajo which is normally used for ground floor flats. True enough we only have a ground floor. The phone company has made up a different address which includes the word Aldea (village.) So the mistake could be the first word of the address.

Actually my name is nearly as fickle as my address. Barclaycard changed the spelling of my name to Christofer and on my health card and social security card my name is Christopher Joh as they ran out of characters. Online the phone company has given me a second surname. None of this matters very much as I get hardly any snail mail and most identification just happens through my ID number. I don't suppose my name is the problem.

All this makes it difficult to correct my address so it matches their database though. I looked at my tax return thinking there may be a link between Government databases but they have a different variation - Calle Rio Culebrón (Culebron river street) which I suspect is somebody correcting what they assumed to be a Brit misspelling of the address. From Caserío to Calle Rio.

I was told I'd got my first application wrong by an automated system so I thought I may as well have another go. I banged off another form. Maybe I can keep going till we get a match.

Another evening at the theatre

One of my favourite ways to start any blog entry is a reference to the past - when I was a boy..... when I lived in Elland and what not. I don't quite think of my time in Spain in the same way. Although we have been here for close on ten years now all the Spanish stories seem fresh. So I wasn't going to blog my visit to the theatre yesterday evening until I realised that it was four years ago that I last smelled greasepaint in Torre del Rico.

I met Barry and Carole (remember us as barrel) when I delivered a lot of furniture. I seem to recall that they had a lot of space to fill in their house cum converted bodega and I spent hours if not days fastening together Mexican style flat pack furniture. Nowadays we just say hello and catch up when we pass in the street in Pinoso but Facebook keeps me up to date with their comings and goings. It was because of Facebook that I realised that Carole would be on stage on Saturday evening. She's a member of a group called Asociación de Mujeres Rurales Torre del Rico or the Rural Women's Association of Torre del Rico. Maggie and I last crossed the border into Murcia to see her in a play in the village in August 2010.

We've meant to go every year but somehow things have got in the way so, even though there was no Maggie, I wasn't going to miss it again. The setting was the same. There were no tractors passing this time but otherwise it all looked very familiar and appealingly amateur in the sense that it felt community owned.

It was good fun. I was alone of course and, as always, startled to be surrounded by so many Spanish people. I kept my head low in the hope that nobody would speak to me and I bolted as soon as the cast had taken their final curtain call. It was like being in Culebrón as the audience assembled. Lots of greetings, hand shaking, kissing and smiling. It was the same as the show started. I heard whisperings behind me along the lines of "Is that Mari Carmen on stage?" Friends amongst friends I thought as the actors on stage struggled to stop themselves from laughing as they delivered double entendres, forgot their lines or consistently and purposely repeated one of the character's names incorrectly. It was full of Spanish that I didn't understand, word play type Spanish using lots of the local diminutive and even more local terminology but I see that in 2010 I reckoned  I understood about 25% of the dialogue. It was definitely a lot higher percentage than that last night - unless of course Carole tells me there was no word play or double entendre in any of it!

I was really impressed with Carole's Spanish. Back in 2010 it was definitely a double memory test. Not only did she have to remember her lines she also had to remember the strange word forms of a foreign language. Last night the pacing and delivery made me pretty sure that she understood her Spanish lines completely and only had to remember them. Good stuff all round.

Corpus Christi in Elche de la Sierra

Elche de la Sierra is a town in Castilla la Mancha. The journey is from Culebríon in Alicante to Murcia and from Murcia to Albacete Province in Castilla la Mancha. The President of the community is a big noise politician in the ruling Partido Popular and I recognised her as she went into church for the Eucharist service. Those of you who know me will realise how remarkable this is.

I do some on-line surveys. One of the favourite topics is to ask if I recognise some celebrities and then to say whether I think they would be good stars for TV ads. I usually don't recognise anyone except the most internationally famous. I missed Shakira in the last one for instance until they gave me a clue! So recognising de Cospedal was out of character.

We were there to have a look at the sawdust carpets. These are exactly what they sound like. Individual groups are given a bit of street to decorate. Beforehand they make masks which are then placed on the street and coloured sawdust is sifted onto the mask to leave a coloured pattern on the streets. There is a competition for the best scene.

The church procession features lots of children who have taken their first communion this year and lots of women in mantillas and peinetas (the headdresses and high combs) and worthies like the President of the Community who escort the Eucharist displayed in one of sun shaped monstrances (custodia.)

The procession follows a route marked by sheets, table cloths, shawls and the like draped from balconies (at least that was what a woman told me but as all the rest of her information was wrong so this may be too) The procession also stomps all over the sawdust carpets.

Interesting little trip.

So sweet

The sound and picture quality were surprisingly good. Apparently it was a kosher copy of the film so that may explain it. Amazingly, despite its age I'd never seen Mama Mia! As Inma said it had to be a family film but the warm up videos, all Pitbull and Justin Timberlake with Ke$ha involved a plethora of bikini clad groin and breast shots. In my Parade buying days of the sixties they would have been very risqué. Pharell Williams seemed so much more family friendly.

I was greeted warmly and repeatedly. Only one question though - "Are you still alone? When is your señora back?" Nobody mentioned money and I had to ask where the donations box was.

I walked from home as the light faded reckoning that a 10pm start time was a little optimistic. Spain is a lot farther South than the UK though so even on the longest day of the year it was dark just after ten. The film started more or less on time, punctually by Spanish standards, at around 10.20 which saved me from any probing second questions. I was sitting there watching the film on a T shirt warm evening thinking how appropriate a sunny Greek island film was for our first ever Summer Cinema Event.

The man with the computer and projector started a second film but the mood had passed. The coca and infusions were being passed around, people were drifting away. Culebrón's first cinema night was over