Tealess for hours

A few years ago I used to take photos of houses and write the descriptions for an estate agency here in Spain. Often, if it were a house in the countryside, the sellers would tell me how they had spent loads of money on putting in piped water or connecting the house to the electricity grid. I had to be careful how I told them that all that money was irrecoverable. If they hadn't done it the house would have been worth less – off grid houses or with tanked rather than live water are less popular than the connected ones - but nobody pays extra because a house has electric and water. When you click the switch you expect the current to flow, when you open the tap there should be water. Utilities, like roofs, are things you expect in a house.

There was a little piece on the Town Hall website the other day about improving the water supply to some little hamlet and there was a picture of the pipe. It wasn't a very big pipe maybe 6 or 7cms in diameter. It wasn't very high tech either, just some thickish looking plastic pipe. I suppose that something similar feeds the water to our house. Yesterday though it didn't.

If there is leak on the householder's side of the water meter you call a plumber. If it's on the other side then you call the bloke who drives around in a big white Jeep and works for the Town Hall. He usually comes quickly, digs up the road and patches the leak. It happens from time to time.

I didn't worry too much when the tap was empty. The water pressure has been pathetic for a couple of weeks now and I presumed they were doing some routine maintenance to sort that out. Just to be safe though I sent a text to the Jeep man. I didn't ring because I didn't want to pester a man who might be, almost literally, up to his neck in it

Our Internet and phone connection had gone phut the day before. I suspected a general fault rather than a household problem. I used the WhatsApp group in the village to ask if other people were having problems. The answer was yes, which was both re-assuring and not at the same time. The phone and the internet connection came back. Somebody said a mast had collapsed but I don't know.

I must have been a bit too blasé about the water for Maggie's liking. She wasn't as confident as me. She used the same village WhatsApp group to ask about the water. Yes it was a general problem. A couple of hours later the water came sucking, blowing, popping and gurgling back. It was very cloudy and the pressure was pathetic.

We heat our water with a gas water heater powered by bottled gas. We chose gas because our rural electric supply is a bit on the feeble side. I thought we had the hot water supply secured but, this morning, the water pressure was so feeble that the water heater refused to kick into life. Cold shower or no shower were the options.

Civilization hanging by a thread or the delights of rural life in Spain?

Fallas in Elda

Spanish websites have improved no end in the time that we have been here. Nowadays it's nearly as easy to find something in Spanish as it is in English.

There are dishonourable exceptions of course. RENFE the state rail provider has a useless website. It may be possible to book a ticket and it may not but trying to find what trains go from where to where is impossible, so far as I can tell.

This being the case I had no worries about trying to find some information about the Fallas taking place in Elda this weekend. Google gave me the website and there was a skeletal but serviceable calendar. There wasn't much in the way of background information so if you didn't know what Fallas are then you would be a bit stymied but I did visit last year so I had a vague idea of how it all worked.

The basic idea is that a number of groups, comisiones, based on neighbourhoods build a falla. A falla is a sort of flammable tableau made of individual figures (which I think are called ninots) set against a built background. Usually the tableau represent a contemporary theme - maybe something political or sociological. Each Comisión also elects a series of "Carnival Queens" with a court of "ladies in waiting" and sends representatives, the mayordomos, to a central council which co-ordinates the whole shebang. There are activities all year round but the whole lot culminates with the tableau being built in the streets for a climactic weekend when there are parades, a mascletá (a sort of sound only firework display) and the burning of the tableau. The religious element, and there is nearly always a religious element in Spain, turns, I think, around San Crispín and San Crispiniano (The Henry V, Agincourt saints) the saintly brothers who are the patron saints of shoemakers. Shoemaking is an activity associated with Elda.

Last year I went looking for the various statues and found about four of the nine. I also followed a couple of the processions from their home base to a church but it was all a bit hit and miss. This year I thought to do it properly. So I tootled around the website and the Facebook page and eventually I found a timetable. Tomorrow, Sunday looked like a good day. I thought I could go to the mascletá at half past one and also wander around some of the fallas statues. I couldn't find the location of the individual fallas though and when I put the location of the mascletá into Google maps it came up with a blank. Another Google search and I found newspaper articles that gave me a clue as to the location but it had taken me a long, and frustrating, time.

Eventually I sent a snotty Facebook message to the Central Council something along the lines of "Do you want any tourists at your fallas? The answer has to be no. That's why there is no map of the location of the fallas and why the address of the mascletá isn't a real address. Ah of course, it's only for the people of Elda. The families with years of pure blood. I should have known". to give them their due they came back to me within a couple of hours with a little map and with a street name for each of the fallas and a comment to thank me for the message because it would help them improve the organisation.

So, if you have nothing much to do on the 18th of September and you are within striking distance of Elda I'll see you at the Fallas de Elda roundabout (Calle Juan Carlos I and Calle Jardines area) at half past one.

Political comment

I'm finding that I'm shouting at the telly and the radio more often recently. The politicians are talking more nonsense than usual but, more than that, one of them seems to have simply decided that none of it is really anything to do with him.

We don't have a proper government at the moment but we do have a Caretaker Government,  a Gobierno en funciones, run by the Partido Popular. Mariano Rajoy is the less than charismatic leader of the PP and Caretaker President. He's one of those blokes who appears to have almost no political personality. From time to time the news programmes show him out for a bit of exercise and he just looks wrong in badly co-ordinated sports clothes. If he abandons his suit for a jacket and trousers the jacket is too blue and the trousers too black. When he doesn't wear a tie he reminds me of that picture of John Major meeting the troops and wearing a ribbed pullover to ride around in a tank - completely out of his element. But to be fair, when I saw Mariano interviewed on a "come over to my house and let's cook something" type interview show he seemed a perfectly likeable bloke

In the UK the Speaker of the House of Commons is a party politician but, once they become Speaker, they try to be impartial. There is a similar position in the parliament here and Ana Pastor, from the same party as Rajoy, is currently the Presidenta del Congreso de los Dipuatdos. In the last, very short lived parliament, the equivalent position was taken by a bloke called Patxi López from the other side, the PSOE. When the Government has to explain itself before the MPs or diputados, it's the Presidente del Congreso who arranges the debate. Patxi tried, in the face of objections from the PP, to organise the debate when MPs wanted a Government response but when Ana should have done the same thing she prevaricated. There were mumblings about her lack of impartiality. The thing they wanted to talk about was an ex PP Minister, who had resigned, because he was suspected of having dodgy Panamanian bank accounts, taking up a position with the World Bank with obvious backing from the Caretaker Government. Mariano Rajoy said about that one that it was nothing to do with him. If Soria (the politician was called José Manuel Soria) wanted to apply for a "civil service" type job that was his right, completely up to him. I can see why Soria was interested though with a pay rate of 620€ per day. Rajoy had nothing to say about the impartiality of the Presidenta.

The ex Mayor of Valencia is a woman called Rita Barberá. She is one of hundreds, nay thousands, of PP politicians accused of corruption. In her case it's to do with illegal funding of her party. There are plenty of other politicians from the other parties being investigated for corruption but the majority stakeholders are definitely the PP. Even the party itself is caught up in a case for dodgy funding of a rebuilding programme at party HQ. But back to Rita; one of those larger than life characters that politics throws up from time to time. When she was defeated in the local elections to be mayor of Valencia her party popped her into the Upper House, the Senate. 

Spanish politicians have a sort of political immunity. They can't be tried by lower courts, just the Supreme Court, so that getting a prominent politician into the dock is a lengthy process. Rita resigned from the PP a couple of days ago but she is refusing to give up her seat in the Senate to maintain that protection.

As you may imagine the press wants to know what her (ex) party and particularly the Caretaker President have to say about the case. For days Mariano said nothing at all. He just kept quiet. This is one of his favourite tactics. Say nothing, see how things are going, maybe it will all go away. When he did speak his answer was that as Rita was no longer in the party he had no authority over her and it was absolutely nothing to do with him. Silly me, I thought that a President might have something to say about political corruption especially when the case is about illegal funding within his own party. I must be mistaken

Rajoy is a master of inaction but, to be honest, none of the leading politicians seem to be up to making a decision at the moment. We have a four way split. The centre left can't talk to the hard left because one is for talking with the Catalans about self determination. The party that doesn't seem able to decide whether it is left or right leaning has thrown its votes in with the PP this time though last time they did a deal with the Socialists. In return for their votes they demanded several concessions. One of the biggest was that the PP stomped on corruption. They haven't had a lot to say about Rita's shenanigans. The smaller regional parties can't join with either of the big parties again because of the stuff about Catalan independence. One of the two, apparently, workable options is that the centre left just abstains and so lets Rajoy back in. They have said no several times though. They say they can't stomach another Government headed by Rajoy. The other option is that Rajoy goes, that someone else takes over but his side are staying loyal at the moment.

I should mention that the PSOE, the biggest left leaning party, has a big corruption case going on at the moment too. That one involves two former Presidents of the Region of Andalucía. Those two did resign their political office and they are in court and fighting their corner. I don't remember feeling the need to shout at the radio when that story first broke.

Undressing and covering oneself in fake blood

I'm feeling a bit Sanjay Gandhi today - not because I've won a dodgy car building contract - but because I've been part of an enforced sterilization program. I didn't even offer a free portable radio.

Britons who live here are often very vocal in their complaints about how animals are treated in Spain. On a big scale the bullfights which kill horses and bulls in front of cheering crowds give them obvious ammunition. These sort of things no longer go unnoticed by lots of ordinary Spaniards either. Many Spanish people have no time for these hangovers from bear baiting times. Every time that the people of Tordesillas arm themselves with lances and sit astride their horses ready to cut down a bull they are harried by protestors. It's the same in Coria where the bull is peppered with little darts and then has his balls cut off. They no longer throw a live goat from the church tower in Manganeses de la Polvorosa to be caught in a fire fighter style blanket having bowed to public pressure. In Carpio del Tajo the they have not used live geese in their festival for over thirty years - nowadays the geese that they wrench the heads off, as they ride by on horses, are already well dead. Half naked protestors daubed with fake blood make it less comfortable for the bullfight crowds to get to their seats and so it goes on. Lots of the barbarism has been toned down but there are still plenty of spectacles which, at the very least, use the distress and suffering of animals as a form of supposed entertainment.

On a much smaller scale the expat rural Britons often have stories about puppies abandoned outside their homes, kittens thrown into rubbish bins and hunting dogs abandoned on the road when they are too old to keep up with the hares they are supposed to catch. Hunting, by your everyday Joe, is still very common in the countryside.Then of course there are, from time to time, stories in the British popular press about some donkey being terribly mistreated and most of us have a story about a horse, mule or dog tethered in the midday sun without shade or water.  On the other hand most Britons will add to that a story about other Britons who have abandoned dogs when they return to the UK as a reminder that Spaniards don't have the market cornered in mistreatment of animals.

Despite all of this apparent random cruelty there are lots of animal protection laws in Spain and they were recently beefed up which is probably why it's only in the recent past that people have started to be prosecuted. One of the reasons is that the perpetrators have made it impossible for the offence to be ignored. Post a video on YouTube or WhatsApp of setting fire to a cat and you can be pretty sure it will go viral. Shortly afterwards expect a house call from the Guardia. That was the case with a couple of twentyish year olds who had a whale of a time jumping on piglets and squashing and killing seventy of them in the process.

I remembered the piglet case from the news. There was another one about a bullfighter who had been mistreating a horse and as I Googled for the information I came across lots of newspaper articles along the line - "Guardia Civil shelves cruelty case", "Town Hall drops charges against man who arranged illegal dog fights" and so on. I wrote an article for the TIM magazine about catching song birds to eat and, there again, lots of the articles I read in my research talked about how the authorities turned a blind eye to illegal capture techniques. There is still an awful lot of acceptance of animal mistreatment in Spain though the idea that animals have no "rights" is far less prevalent than it once was.

Around here there are several animal rescue charities - lots are run by Britons. It's probably fair to say that dog rescue is the biggest area but I've been to both a horse and a primate rescue centre close by. Cats are often covered by the dog charities but Spanish thinking on cats is that, generally, they can take care of themselves. So whilst a loose dog will be hauled off to a charity for adoption or to the Town Hall dog pound nobody really takes much notice of the moggies unless they are being mistreated.

I may have mentioned that we took on a couple of cats recently. We got them from an association in Pinoso which is called Gatets sense llar del Pinós. The name is in the local Valencian language but it means something like Pinoso Kittens without a home.

Before we'd got the cats we had an occasional visitor to our garden, a big, mature, white, male cat. He was wary of us but semi approachable so we left out some dried cat food when we remembered. We hadn't seen him for a while but, as soon as we got the two rescue cats, he started to turn up regularly. There was a lot of screaming and bits of fur and cats refusing to come down from trees. The white cat even found a back way into the house so he could eat the food we'd left out for our two. We had a lot of fun with a hosepipe and I invested money in a water pistol. But Maggie had bigger plans. She borrowed a trap from Gatets; one can of Premium cat food and he was captured. And if you go back to the first sentence you will see who it was who got to take him to the vet where the castration was paid for by the local Town Hall via the Charity. I paid for the flea and parasite stuff though. He was obviously pretty sore and very wobbly as he came out of the carry box and made his way gingerly out of our garden.

September

It's pretty hot. Yesterday I went to Villena to have a look at the Moors and Christians parade. The parade started at 4pm and, according to the State Weather Agency, that was the exact time when the day's temperature reached its zenith  of 40.4ºC. Just for my mum that's 104ºF.

It's a bit unusual for it to be so warm in September. September is the month when Spain gets back to normal. The youngsters are going back to school, shops are back on regular opening hours, the Guardia Civil shelves its various traffic campaigns until either Christmas or the next long bank holiday weekend. On the telly the new series are getting under way and, on the radio, the journalists and DJs who have held the fort whilst the better known presenters take their holidays are going back to whatever it is they do when it's not July or August. League football is more or less back into full swing. The courts are about to go back into session too so we can look forward to a revival of all the corruption trials that have been on hold during the sandcastle and siesta season. It's not quite everyone who goes back to normal because there is a bit of a move to taking holidays, amongst groups like pensioners for instance, at the beginning of September when the weather is still good but the prices of accommodation and travel drop.

The politicians haven't had their usual long break. They've been in apocryphal darkened rooms with beer and sandwiches. We've had two General Elections one in December of 2015 and one in June of this year and in both cases the two traditionally big parties have found their number of parliamentary seats reduced because of the emergence of two new parliamentary groups. This means that nobody has a clear majority and the politicians have all been doing the it's my bat, my ball and I'm not playing. First the socialists had a go at forming a government and failed leading to the second General Election and we've just watched as the conservatives failed to form a government too. There's still talking to do and maybe they'll cobble something together but positions are so fixed that it looks unlikely. The general view of politicians, always bad, is at an all time low - the word vergüenza, disgrace or shame, is on everybody's lips. There are a couple of big local elections coming up which may lead to change but generally the pundits are talking about a third General Election. Spain's Constitution lays down a strict timetable for the holding of elections and without a change to the law, which is in the air but which needs all the parties to agree, the next general election will be held on Christmas Day. Can you imagine the turnout?

I'm still on holiday, or rather I'm not working. It's just about now that the various education courses are advertised but the start date of even the earliest courses won't be till the middle of this month and the majority will kick off at the beginning of October. It looks as though I'm going to be back with the same employers as last year which is not exactly a reason for rejoicing but it's an income and I need to earn some money. With a bit of luck I may also have a second little job teaching English at an academy in Pinoso. If it happens, and I have personal experience of the problems of getting new courses off the ground, it will be good to be working in my own community for a change.

Beginners guide to table manners

Very occasionally I write a piece for the blog which forms a part of the Country Fincas website. Country Fincas is the estate agent that Maggie works for in Pinoso.

Having written it specifically for them I thought why not use it myself? So here it is.

The English are ironic. The French don't like to wash. Germans are humourless and efficient. Well so they say. But the chances are that it's not actually true. There are some generalisations of course that are generally true. For instance punctuality is important, culturally important, in some countries and completely irrelevant in others. Punctuality doesn't really matter much if someone lives in a place without timepieces or where there are no trains to catch. My guess is that a Nigerian farmer in the middle of the countryside doesn't really care what time they start work so long as the work gets done.

Anyway, Spain is very similar, in most ways, to the rest of Europe. There is law and order, traffic is organised, water comes from taps, children go to school, supermarkets have lots and lots of food, cows are not sacred, head covering is optional, men can cut their hair as they wish, people only use chopsticks to eat under certain circumstances. In nearly all of the big things Spain is very much like the UK. There are hundreds or thousands of detail differences though and some don't seem so small when you are faced with what seems to be interminable bureaucracy or animal cruelty to give a couple of examples.

We've lived here for a while now and lots of those detail differences now seem so normal to us that we don't really notice them. When friends come to see us from the UK though it's different. They do notice. So here is my guide to eating and drinking. I'm sure that I will miss things out or overgeneralise but it's a good starting point for the tyro.

In a bar or café the server will come to you. It can be a little difficult deciding sometimes whether a place is a restaurant or whether it's a place where you can get a drinks and a snack. Table cloths usually indicate that you are expected to eat. Obviously you can choose to sit at the bar but you do not, usually, need to approach the bar to get served. Sit at your table, either inside or outside (on the terraza), and someone will come to you. If the terraza is deserted or if the bar staff do not have a clear view of the terrace it can be quicker to go to the bar, ask for your drinks, or whatever, and then sit down and wait for them to be brought. You do not need to pay until you are about to go though, if you are only going to make one order, it can be quicker to pay when the things are brought to you. If you pay the bar staff will presume that you do not need more service. In some seaside places or when a bar is crowded because of an event you may be asked to pay at once to avoid people slipping away without paying or to make life easier for the servers.

At events, music festivals, town fiestas etc. where there is a bar a bit like the beer tent at some British event, you may have to queue to get tickets which you then exchange at the bar to get the food or drink. The idea is to avoid the temporary bar staff stealing money by centralising the money taking.

Food is usually served from around 2pm through till 3.30pm for lunch and dinner from around 9pm till maybe 11pm. In tourist areas or where there are a lot of non Spaniards opening times are often earlier. Cold snacks, the famous tapas, are available at any time but anything that requires cooking may only be available when the kitchen is staffed for lunch or dinner. In the big cities food is available around the clock in many establishments. In lots of places there will be a display counter on the bar where you can browse some of the tapas on offer and order by pointing. Spaniards often order a lot of tapas to share rather than ordering a more formal meal.

Whether there will be a list of the things available or not is a bit hit and miss. Again lists and menus are more likely where there are more non Spanish customers. It's very usual for the server to list the things available and, when you ask for the bill, to simply tell you how much you owe without anything being written down.

The main meal of the day for many Spaniards is lunch rather than dinner. One way to eat cheaply and well is to have the menú diario or menú del día - the set meal - where you will usually be offered a range of first courses, second courses and desserts with a drink and bread. We Brits tend to think of the first course as being a starter but that's not usually the case and the first course is often as substantial as the second. The word menú suggests a set meal, the Spanish word for what we think of as a menu is actually carta. If you don't want to take one of the fixed options you can usually choose from the carta. The set meals are usually much, much cheaper. If you are wandering from restaurant to restaurant checking the set meal prices look to see whether the price includes bread (pan), bebida (drink), postre (pudding) and coffee (café). One of the little tricks in tourist areas is to miss those items off the list so that one 10€ menú includes everything whilst the 9€ menú next door charges extra for one or more of the items. It is very common for the menú to list postre o café, pudding or coffee so, if you have both, expect to pay a tad more.

Another little trick for tourists is that you see a blackboard outside a restaurant offering the set meal. Once you sit down you are given the carta and in it there is no mention of the fixed meal. Confused by the situation you then order from the carta and end up paying more than you intended. If there is a board offering a set meal then there is a set meal. Ask for it and you will get it.

Some places do a fixed evening meal too but it is much rarer than the daytime equivalent. Normally you will choose from the carta in the evening. One of those little differences is that if you choose something from the entrantes, starters, the serving staff will presume that it is to share with your fellow diners so the starters will be put in the middle of the table for everyone to have a go at.

I could go on but that's probably enough to digest for now.

I wave my hat to all I meet And they wave back to me

Somewhere I came across a newspaper piece about Los pueblos más bonitos de España, the prettiest villages in Spain. The organisation that promotes this list seems to be a not for profit organisation. Whatever its origins or purpose it gave us a simple holiday plan.

We have friends who run a casa rural, a country house for rent, which goes under the name of Vientos de Gudar in the village of Fuentes de Rubielos in Teruel. With a visit to our friends, and their house, as our ultimate destination we decided to do a mid distance tour from Culebrón up through the villages listed in the provinces of Castellón and Teruel with our end point being Fuentes.

The first stop on the list was Vilafamés then on to Peñíscola, Calaceite, Valdearobres, Morella, Cantavieja, Puertomingalvo and Rubielos de Mora. We also stopped off in La Fresneda and Beceite which didn't feature on the list but were recommended by locals.

The villages varied. Peñíscola for instance is a busy seaside resort with the old town built around the castle. Anyone who has seen, and remembers, the film El Cid with Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren knows the outline of Peñíscola old town. Morella too was packed with visitors, so many that the local police funnelled traffic into a huge car park. Once inside the walled town there were countless shops selling local produce and knick knacks, alongside tens of restaurants touting regional menus, all of them aimed fairly and squarely at tourists. Calaceite on the other hand, well the old town at least, was full of huge stone buildings and steep streets but there was hardly anyone around; we couldn't even find a bar to buy a cold drink. Valderrobres was something half way in between; more huge stone buildings, more steep streets and stone staircases lots of them almost deserted whilst, in the main square, the bars and restaurants were doing a brisk trade with we day trippers. Maggie says she liked Valderrobres best. Puertomingalvo was, perhaps, my favourite. More stone, more steps, a gigantic church, a small art gallery, a splendidly different restaurant and several people posing for snaps but still quiet enough to hear the birds singing.

As I said, our destination was the casa rural owned by a couple of old friends. They had the house built from scratch and they have been running it as a business for a few years now. Our pals said that bookings for their house weren't bad but they thought that rural tourism seemed not to be recovering from the economic crisis as quickly as beach tourism. In summer their adopted village comes alive with summer residents. In the past, the bar at the local swimming pool has been run by a group of young women who wear harem pants, sport nose studs and cook things like hummus and cous cous - pretty alternative for Spain. We were looking forward to snacking there but it seems they were outbid by another outfit for this year's summer contract.

Now obviously, as we were away from home we needed somewhere to stay overnight. We've used a lot of hotels in Spain and it's usual to be able to find something decent in the 50€ to 60€ bracket and often less. The weekend before we set out on our road trip for instance we'd gone to Madrid. We stayed in a central hotel there and we were mysteriously upgraded so that our 57€ bought us a junior suite. Also this month I made a bit of a jaunt to Ciudad Real, a small provincial capital, where the centre of town four star hotel cost just 39€. When I was trying to find hotels or guest houses for our three nights in Castellón/Teruel I had to discount lodgings in several of the villages we were visiting because they were beyond my financial reach. The choice seemed to be either expensive or slummy. In the end we paid 60€, 63€ and 70€ for the places we stayed. All of them looked great from the outside but all had pretty dodgy Wi-Fi and one didn't have aircon. None of them were bad, or dirty, or unacceptable but only the 70€ room could be described as anything other than ordinary.

I suppose there are sound motives, from a business point of view, for the higher prices (and snail like Wi-Fi) in rural locations but I did wonder if one of the reasons for the slower recovery of rural tourism is simply that it isn't price competitive with either its beach or city rivals.

Labels

One of my shorter pals had relatives who were horny handed sons of toil. Generation upon generation of farmers. They lived, as I recall, on the edge of the English Lake District. When the Ordnance Survey began to mark scenic viewpoints on their one inch maps (my long term memory is still fine) suddenly lots of cars began to pull up at the top of the farm lane to have a look see. The family turned this to their benefit by setting up a stall selling fresh eggs.

We were in Madrid for the weekend. We went on the AVE, the high speed train which, as usual, was on time both there and back. I only saw the indicated speed on the carriage displays once during the journey, a disappointing 296 kph. We stayed in some really nice hotel close to Alonso Martínez underground station. For some reason they gave us a junior suite with two washbasins, two tellies, a sofa and a king sized bed.

Straight off the train we dumped the bags and walked across the road to the Reina Sofia Museum - well museo in Spanish though it's a gallery not a museum for us. Four floors of culture. Although I've been to the gallery a couple of times, at least, in the past, it's years since I've actually been inside. We spent a couple of hours padding around the top two floors along with plenty of other people. There was no hustle and bustle. Lots of space and time to stop and stare. I was enjoying myself but my old feet and legs began to ache. We went for a sit down and a snack but, taken aback by the prices, we settled on a couple of overpriced drinks. We were generally overwhelmed by Madrid prices because of our hill-billy incomes but we got by anyway. The break though was fatal. We realised we were done for so we decided to have a look at Guernica (one must, mustn't one?) and then call it a day. There were a lot more people milling around that floor but there was no element of elbows or jostling; just maybe twenty people gazing in awe at Picasso's famous painting.

Next day and we did more wandering. Maggie was keen to see the Bosco exhibition, that's the bloke we call Hieronymus Bosch. He's a bit of a star in Spain partly because the Prado and Escorial have quite a lot of his work and partly because the paintings are bizarre. So we got in the shortish queue and waited for maybe twenty minutes to get some tickets for later in the day. It was about noon now and later in the day turned out to be quarter to seven. So we touristed away until the given hour and then joined the throng. This time it was a throng. People standing, apparently in raptures, ten centimetres from the surface of a painting and scrutinising the detail, lots of people laughing at the strange elements of the paintings, lots of barging, lots of gentle, art crowd, pushing. Museum staff were milling around to keep an eye on the punters and they were kept busy.

The strange thing is the last time we were at the Prado we went to have a look at the Boscos. That time there was nobody much around. There were a few of us but then it was similar, crowd wise, to having a look at the W. Eugene Smith photos in the Reina Sofia the day before. Not a lot of foot traffic, not a lot of scrutiny by the gallery staff and plenty of time to stand and stare.

My mind wandered to OS maps.

In the same place as always

I've mentioned it before, The poster that misses off the where or the when. The poster which tells you that the event is in the usual place. So, last night, with guests, we went down to Elche to experience the Nit de l'Alba - the night of dawn. I didn't need to check the info. It would be like always. Of course because I assumed it would be it wasn't.

Basically the Nit de l'Alba is an orgy of fireworks somehow miraculously loosely tethered to something religious. The origins are supposed to be that in the Middle Ages families in the city offered thanks to the Virgin for each of their children by launching one rocket for each child on the holy day designated to her. Nowadays all over the city, fireworks, aerial fireworks, are launched into the night sky in one long session of rolling thunder. I thought it was usually from quarter to midnight but Maggie told me that the city authorities were going to do something new this year in launching six enormous palmeras from different parts of the city at quarter past eleven. A pyrotechnical palmera is launching a huge number of fireworks from a concentrated area so that the tongues of flame and colour rise into the sky and fan out like the fronds of a palm tree, or palmera in Spanish. Elche is the city of the palm tree.

We headed for the Basilica church, where, at midnight, the most impressive of all the palmeras is launched from the highest of the church's towers. I read somewhere that it reaches over 250 metres into the sky. Sounds a long way to me. Anyway the square around the basilica de Santa Maria was closed. It seems that it has to do with European Health and Safety regs which have meant that several of the launch sites for the fireworks have had to be changed too. So, if things had to change, the city decided that it would try to improve the spectacle as well. Last night they pumped 64,000 rockets into the night sky and set off 390 of the palmeras using over two tons of gunpowder in the process. And that process started in earnest at half past eleven, just as we had arrived at the fences around the Basilica, and were discussing whether to go and get a drink or not. We waited whilst the lights of the city, at least in and around the square, were turned off. We waited whilst the fragment of the famous Elche mystery play - el Gloria Patri - boomed out from the loudspeakers and, as the sound faded away, the huge palmera from the church burst into the darkened sky. Impressive, With the lights back on the habanera type song, Aromas ilicitanos, got its turn to fill the square. It always says in the tourist write ups of the event that all the ilicitanos, the people of Elche, sing along with the song. Maybe so and maybe not but I can confirm that at least one young man was doing his best to make up for the recalcitrant, just in my left ear, at top volume and with obvious pride in his city.

We went on for a tapa or two and I forgot all about the firework battle, the guerra de carretillas, which I had described to one of our guests. In fact this morning I wondered if it still existed and I found that it does but that it has been renamed Carretillà to do away with the bellicose reference. In fact it was depressing reading for anyone who approves of the reckless abandon of some Spanish traditions. It seems the event, which once upon a time was a pitched battle between firework wielding youths, now has a specific, and purposely delayed, start time, is limited to one part of the city inside a fenced compound and that potential participants have to go on a training course beforehand.

One of the aspects I like most about the Nit de l'Alba has nothing to do with the organised part. It is that the city is simply rocked by bangers, rockets, Roman candles, flares and jumping jacks for hours. Fireworks exploded around the car as we searched for a parking space, we watched tiny children throwing bangers as we ate, the pavement was crunchy with rocket sticks. It would require a better writer than me to describe the way that the city simply booms and sparkles for hours but that's what it did and I think our visitors thought it had been worth the journey and the latish night.

Holiday, holiday, holiday time

I was born in Yorkshire. Summer holidays were short as I remember, a week usually, and our standard destinations were close by - Scarborough, Brid, Cleethorpes, maybe over to Morecambe or even Blackpool. Relatively local with the occasional long haul down to Newquay or maybe away from the beach in the Lakes. Apart from the school trip to Switzerland I didn't get to Europe till I was eighteen and, even then, it was only to Paris.

Nowadays my pals back in the UK tell me that they've been to far flung destinations - Bali, New Zealand, Goa, the Maldives, Abu Dabi. To be different you have to give Skyscanner a good workout and head for Kazakhstan or Greenland and even then it's just another destination.

Talking to Spanish students about their holiday plans is a reminder of my Scarborough days. They seem perfectly happy to go to the nearest seaside resort, if it's not too far, or otherwise they head for some rural destination equally close to home. It's a massive generalisation of course but I read something today that backs up my perception.

The Spanish Holiday Habits survey carried out by Madison Market Research for Cerveceros of Spain found that 90% of Spaniards prefer to stay local during the summer holidays. Half of those interviewed, irrespective of their age, said that the beach was favourite though trying new cities and new cuisine was good for about a third of the sample. It's been the same for the past forty years.

The survey did note one change though. The family holiday home is now less popular than staying in a hotel. The other big change is what goes in your luggage. The mobile phone obviously goes but so too do the laptop and the tablet. It's no good simply going on holiday you have to prove it to your pals by posting where you are online. Facebook is the favourite social network followed by WhatsApp and Instagram.

Over four of every ten people said that their favourite holiday drink was beer. First day essentials were going for a beer on a terrace, the space outside the bar, and having a siesta. I suppose that they prove that you are on holiday and not caught up in the usual round of work and domestic tasks. 

Forgetting Lionel Richie

Spain is in full fiesta season. Our local town, Pinoso, has just finished its fiestas or, more accurately, is about to finish in a couple of hours. The fairground has already left town, the barriers will be taken down tomorrow and all those temporary road signs removed. I would say we'll be back to normal but after so many days of non stop action lots of the town's bars and restaurants will be locked fast for a couple of weeks as will a lot of other businesses and we won't be back into the usual routine till September.

When we first got here I was keen to go to most of the various types of fiesta from the tiny village celebrations, where the fun might be a foam party or a bouncy castle, through to Moors and Christians, Semana Santa, Carnaval, Three Kings and all the other big events with thousands of people, late nights, lots of revelry and long, long processions. It would take ages to go through the various types of events we've been to. Maggie got tired of fiestas ages ago. She wasn't, for instance, for bothering with Romans and Carthaginians as long ago as when we lived in Cartagena.

I'm a bit underemployed at the moment. The real problem with not working is not earning. Time rich, cash poor as we used to say in the nineties. Maggie is working - all summer. So, if I do anything it costs money, which I don't have, and I have to do it alone.

I did think that I'd take advantage of the local fiestas this year as a cheap and easy to access form of entertainment. The truth is that my unwillingness to speak Spanish coupled with my increasing churlishness and a good dose of been there, done that means that I simply can't be bothered. I took one look at the children beating each other with the sausage dog shaped balloons at the village fiesta and turned on my heel. I grimly resolved to get involved in the Pinoso celebrations but I took the insinuation that I was some sort of sex offender quite badly and decided that a beer in front of the Spanish version of First Dates on the telly was a much more entertaining option.

I promise I will try to get out and about to a few more fiestas in the three weeks left of summer but I'm not guaranteeing anything.