The dark swallows will return

On a good day, with a following wind, I can tell an ash from a rowan, a beech from a hornbeam. Chestnuts, sycamores or oaks are easy. The black and white job is a magpie, that brown and blue is a jay but they are all corvidae. Wagtails and blackbirds, spuggies and starlings, robins and reindeer - I can tell them apart. I don't know a lot of bird names in Spanish but I know a few - if I know the bird in English I usually know it in Spanish though those little finch jobs keep slipping my mind - pinzones and jilgueros I think.

Sometimes I know the name but I wouldn't recognise the bird if it were to gather in large numbers on my porch or peck holes in the top of my soft-top Aston Martin. Kites spring to mind as an example. They were pointed out to us as we cruised the Duero in Salamanca but I have no real idea what they look like. I'm not really much good at natural stuff. Our garden is full of colour. Maggie despairs of my lack of plant knowledge. It was only because she mentioned it yesterday that I noticed we have lilac in bloom. As we drove through Almansa the other day I confused cherry blossom with jacaranda - purple trees are purple trees.

I was knocking back weeds the other day when I heard a cuckoo. This is one of the main things I do in the garden, take out weeds. Some Spanish person told us that keeping the soil weed free was a Mediterranean tradition. Apparently rigorous weed control means that your garden will not burst into flame so easily in July or August. Weeds are green. Occasionally I realise that I have hoed out something that Maggie planted. In my opinion she should have bought something with a bit of colour. If it's coloured it may be a flower. If it's green it's obviously a weed.

The cuckoos have been on the go for a little while now. I mentioned this to a Spaniard who looked blank at the news. I suppose the Spanish do not have a history of letters to the editor of The Times. Maybe they don't have Gilbert White either but I presume they have something similar?

Anyway, so I'm talking to my English class about collective nouns. We've done team and flock and herd and I say we have more which are less common - a gaggle of geese -  no need to write that down I say, it's not an important or useful word. Although I think the word goose, in Spanish, is a dead normal word, an everyweek if not an everyday word, most of the students don't. We're getting silly now so I mention a murmuration of starlings but it takes me much longer to explain what a starling is than it does to explain the term murmuration. By the time we're onto a venue of vultures - surely they know vultures? - I am really in a hole.

I have a pal. On the rare occasions twenty or thirty years ago, when she persuaded me that walking in the countryside had any value, she would hop around woodland lanes pointing out coltsfoot, stinking jenny or celandines. It was a bit like Ivor Cutler's dad - "Loook! A thistle," and then, "Looook! another thistle." We soon knew the thistle. She told me her mum had told her about plants and animals because she was a country lass.

I think we Brits know a bit about birds and trees and plants. Some know more than others of course. For many of us I suspect it's a bit superficial - if it's got the wings at the front instead of in the centre it's a hawk - kestrel? If it's at the seaside it's a seagull. Long legs? heron? crane? egret at a push? And if it's on a pond and likes bread it's a duck.

We live in the countryside in Culebrón and in Pinoso. I am consistently surprised when my mention, in Spanish, of nightingales, swallows, sparrows, robins, voles, shrews, hares, badgers, hedgehogs, nettles or thistles leads to bewilderment amongst my students. I would have thought that all country folk would have known their way around the local fauna and flora but apparently not.

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The blog title is from a poem by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer

Volverán las oscuras golondrinas

en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar,

y, otra vez, con el ala a sus cristales

 jugando llamarán;

The dark swallows will return

To your balcony to hang their nests

And again with their wings at your window

They will call as they play.

And the other six dwarves

Thirty one years ago, in the Bar Lennon in Valencia, the barman turned out to be the chatty type. Having to talk in a mixture of mime, tortured Spanish and broken English was no obstacle to his chattiness. He sang the European anthem. He invited us to the beach and, amazingly, we and he turned up the following morning at the appointed time. He and his pals frolicked, stark naked, in the sea whilst we two Brits toasted ourselves to the colour of boiled crabs and ate all the food.

Jaime has been an occasional friend ever since. Time passes. He turned 60 on Thursday. I would be even less impressed to see him in his birthday suit nowadays. Pepa, his long time minder arranged a surprise party in Fuentes de Rubielos​ in Teruel where the two of them have a business renting out a country cottage.

It's 300 kilometres from Culebrón to Fuentes so we had to get up earlier than we would have liked on Saturday morning. We made good time though and we were only 10 minutes late for the agreed 12.30 congregation. The birthday boy wasn't due till around 1.00. When he arrived he looked suitably surprised, he grinned, he pumped hands and he hugged people effusively in appropriate measure.

The venue was a concrete floored, chilly, ill lit storage space underneath the municipal swimming pool. It looked like the sort of place where the tractors and the ride on lawnmowers are parked for the winter. A big square table had been set up in the corner to take advantage of the natural light from the frosted glass windows. There were about 15 or so party goers. We had plastic chairs, a paper table cloth and plastic cutlery.

The guests, included a man we met for the first time probably at Jaime's 50th and who never took off his mountaineering style anorak. The tall German woman I met on that beach at el Saler did a lot of the cooking, Jaime's 86 year old aunt seemed to take a shine to Maggie. A man, who we think deals in frozen seafood, had a great line in card and other magic tricks. Presumably he's available for bhamitzvas and weddings too.

I must say that I felt we were playing at being very Spanish as we sat on plastic chairs in the middle of the sunny street chatting and nibbling on crisps and olives whilst the mountain of meat and various styles of sausages were cooked on the municipal street barbecue.

We ate the meaty feast in the garage. We drank beer and wine and sparkling wine with Happy Birthday sung in three languages and gifts handed over to a suitably appreciative Jaime.

And when the eating was done the crowd started to drift away. A few of us went on to the village bar for a coffee​, maybe with a splash of something. By late evening we were the only guests left.

Tax burden

Today is the first day that we Spanish tax payers have been able to sort out either under or over payments in the 2016 tax year. The Spanish tax year is the calendar year.

Everyone, resident in Spain, who earns over 22,000€ or has more than one source of income, has to make a tax declaration. If you earn money from more than one source you don't need to make a declaration if you earn less than 12,000€. The declaration is on worldwide income. What happens is that the tax office, Hacienda to you and me, sends out a thing called a borrador, a draft assessment. Once you are on the website you can check if the borrador looks fair enough. If you have just one job with one salary and things are pretty much as they were last year you may have to tweak a few things but, chances are, that the borrador will be close to the truth. For quite a few years all I did was to have a quick scan and press the accept button because Hacienda usually sent me back a few euros.

If your situation is a bit more complicated you can, of course, buy yourself the services of an accountant to help you fill out the form. I had a short period of being self employed and so I used an accountant, un asesor, for a couple of the declarations. The other option is to book an appointment at the tax office and go and get them to help you fill in your tax declaration. I did that at the beginning when the online version didn't exist. I also did it when I first had problems with the tax on my UK pensions. I reckoned that if a civil servant filled in the form it was much less likely that I would get a late night visit from some heavily armed tax officials keen to check my deductions.

My pension has been a right pain tax wise. It's paid in the UK. Part of it is a Government pension (the sort that police officers, the military, civil servants, teachers and the like get) and part of it is private. The Government Pension, under EU arrangements, has to be taxed in the UK. In the past the Government Pension didn't have to be declared in Spain. The amount was less than the UK tax threshold so, although it was in the UK tax system, I didn't actually have to pay any tax on it. The private bit, and that amounts to less than £400 per year, comes from AVCs. Although I nominally pay UK tax on that income too I have always known that it should be declared in Spain as part of my worldwide income. I didn't think though that even the meanest of mean tax officials would be worried about a piddling £400 earned and taxed miles away. I didn't bother to sort it out. It was pure, one hundred percent, sloth. I don't even have my usual excuse of worrying about speaking Spanish. The UK tax people must have grassed me up to the Spanish Hacienda and the Spaniards came looking for their unpaid tax. I was actually able to take advantage of a tax armistice to pay the back taxes I owed without any penalty but I did need to pay an accountant to sort it out.

Then some Spanish tax laws changed. Although Government Pensions remain taxable in the UK they now have to be declared as a part of my income or that of anyone in a similiar situation living in Spain. Were the situation to be that tax was due on that pension in the UK then Hacienda would knock the amount paid in the UK off any amount due in Spain. The system still avoids double taxation but it also did away with advantage that UK residents in Spain got from both the UK tax threshold and the reduced rates for people on low incomes in Spain.

So the borrador was available online today. Hacienda has a new computer programme this year and it has been widely billed as being easier to use. I agree. It was a lot slicker and a lot easier to understand than the older system. As soon as the system fired up it asked me how much I'd earned on my UK pension. I told it. I boldly clicked, I wasn't worried because I thought I was pretty well sorted, tax wise, nowadays. I insisted on legal contracts for both my teaching jobs and, without doing the sums on the tax deductions, I presumed that I was paying my tax bill every month from my salary much as people do in the UK with the PAYE system. I was wrong. For some reason one of my two employers appears to have paid none of my tax and the other seems to have paid at some discounted 2% rate. The lowest Spanish tax band is 19%. Basically then I've only paid a tiny fraction of the tax bill on my teaching work and none of the tax bill on the two UK pensions. When I pressed the button the shiny new computer system told me that I owed the difference. I felt nauseous as they say in Hollywood.

I'm not going to say how much the tax bill is because it would be dead easy to work out how little I get paid and that would be embarrassing. Suffice it to say that it would take me two months of teaching to earn enough to pay my outstanding tax. It was a bit of a shock to the old system I tell you.

A Ghost in the Machine

One of the first things anyone moving to Spain, or intending to do something like buy a house here, needs to do is to get an NIE. An NIE is the official ID for we foreigners - the initials translate as foreigner's identification number. NIEs come from the National Police and, whilst it seemed like a major hassle at the time, it's actually a dead easy process to get one.

Spanish society is pretty keen on identity.  I bought some tickets online for a theatre piece the other day - there are no tickets - I just have to show my ID when I get there on the night. Buy a train ticket, query a bill, buy a new phone, do almost anything in the least official and you will need to show your ID. It's a legal requirement to carry official ID when you are out and about.

The ID document for Spaniards is the DNI. Nowadays it's credit sized card and it has an electronic chip built into it. Amongst other things that means that Spaniards can identify themselves online via a card reader. My ID is a bit of folded paper. My Spanish driving licence uses the NIE number so, nowadays, I generally use that as my official ID. Nonetheless, every now and again some petty official asks for the folded piece of paper and then I have to show my official ID, my passport, to verify that the person named on the piece of paper looks like me. My NIE has no photo. My driving licence has no chip.

To prove who I am online I need a digital certificate or a digital signature. It's not difficult to get one. The people who make the coins and banknotes provide one for ordinary people as do most of the regional governments. Professional and private bodies also produce similar documentation either as a service to their members or at a cost.

I don't quite know how the certificates work but I presume that it's some bit of code that lodges in the computer and tells whichever website you are talking to that the certificate ties in with your claimed identity.

I've had five of these digital signatures now since I've been here. I need a new one each time I get a new computer. I got one from a bank that never worked. The others I've got from three or four different offices but they have all been supplied by the Autonomous Government of Valencia, the region where I live. The first one I got was a right pig to install. It would only work on certain versions of certain browsers but over time the process has improved.

To get the digital certificate I went to an office in Elda, about 25kms away. I showed my driving licence, gave them my email address and signed about four sheets of paper. I had to go between 8.30 and 10am but, that aside, the process was painless enough. The website, to install the certificate on my computer by registering the code I'd got from Elda, was working. In fact installing the new certificate was as easy as pie. It worked as it should. It worked with Chrome and, being that way inclined, I checked it on Mozilla and Edge and it works with them too. Yesterday I applied for a renewal of my European Health Card and that government website worked too. The last time I tried to get a health card online the process was a right royal pain but this time it took moments. That didn't use to be the case. It makes life easier when a website does what it says on the tin.

I see on the news that the UK (maybe that should be England and Wales considering the little problems in Scotland and Northern Ireland at the moment) triggered article 50 today to set about leaving the EU. Who knows, when I'm no longer an EU citizen with all the rights that has brought me in Spain, maybe I'll at least get a proper plastic NIE card!

I'm English, not stupid

My mum tends to get cross with people when there is no need to. I think I may have inherited some of her angry genes. I do get fed up, though, of some Spaniards thinking that because I stutter over Spanish I don't have a clue about what's going on around me.

I wrote an email for some tickets to an event the other day. There had been a cock up in the process, at their end, so it was a reasonably lengthy email. I got a reply in Spanish. A couple of hours later I got a message with a similiar message in a close approximation to English and, at the same time, another email in Spanish to check that I was aware that the performance was in Spanish. Did the email writers think I was that Shakespeare writing monkey with the typewriter?

We're in the Carrefour concourse. Some people approach me to persuade me to sign up for a WiZink card. Now WiZink is the bizzare name that some people from the Banco Popular have thought of for a range of products that they label as basic and simple. Amongst other things they have bought the Spanish Barclaycard operation. I have a Spanish Barclaycard and Barclaycard keep telling me that very soon they will send me my new card. I tell the people on the stall that. I tell them that I am already a customer. "No," they say "you can win two flights to New York."  By now I'm surrounded by three people trying to earn their commission by signing somebody up. My Spanish, which has been fine up to now, begins to crumble. I repeat that I am already a customer, I even resort to showing my Barclaycard. They obviously know nothing about the relationship between WiZink and Barclaycard. My Spanish becomess incorrectly formed and badly pronounced. "The card is the same." I say loudly and I start to walk away. One of the Wizink people gets hold of my arm. I shrug them off and head towards the Carrefour entrance then I turn around and go back to them and say in clear and precise Spanish "I'm English, not stupid" before turning on my heel once again.

People do it to me all the time. My Spanish is imperfect, very imperfect, but I'm reasonably clued up about what's going on around me. Senility has not yet set in and I'm begining to get angry enough, or maybe fluent enough, to occasionally turn on the people who think that their lack of knowledge about something combined with their fluency in Spanish makes them right and me wrong.

Bucolicisms

When we first got to Spain we had a dial up Internet connection. By the time we got to Culebrón we had Internet that came down the power cables; 1mb as I remember. I have no idea why but Iberdrola, the electricity retailer, dropped that service and left us in the lurch. At the time there was only one other reliable option, the old state telecoms company now branded as Movistar. They gave us 1mb too. Over the years, that increased to 3mb but that was as fast as they could go with the infrastructure they have.

Meanwhile a local company, Conecta3, had been cabling up Pinoso. After a while, they offered a service to the outlying villages too. The speed was better, 8mb, and their all in package for land line, Internet and mobile, was less than I was paying Movistar. I hesitated for a while because of the potential problems of switching but, in the end, it all went smoothly.

The firm has been good. They increased the speed out here in the sticks to 12mb  without increasing the price (I just checked a moment ago, it's running at 11.52 for download and 1.19mb for upload) and in town they are running at a very creditable 300mb. They also set up hotspots all over Pinoso so I can connect my mobile to Wi-Fi for free. The only time that we have had a real problem they had an engineer here within ten minutes. It turned out that the cat had pulled out some plug in the skein of cables where phones, Hi-Fi and lamps cohabit.

There's a Facebook page called something like Pinoso buying, selling and helping. Somebody asked, on that page, if anyone was having trouble with Conecta3 and I mentioned that the Internet service dropped out every now and then and that I needed to reconnect - a bit of a nuisance but not really a problem - I said.

A couple of hours later I got a private Facebook message from the boss at Conecta3, a chap that we know. He mildly chided me for not having reported the problem. He said that we'd missed out on an update to our antenna for some reason and that he hoped the oversight had now been remedied.

Living in a small place certainly has its advantages at times.

Bravery

I need a digital signature to do things online. I have one but the certificate is computer specific and so I need a new one for a newer computer.

One of the agencies that provides the signatures is a collection agency called SUMA. They're the bunch that collect our rates, water and rubbish bills. Pinoso isn't big enough to have a permanent office but they have a session here on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings in the old Casa de Cultura.

There were several people in front of me and each enquiry tends to be quite lengthy. I waited patiently but as one person came out and the next person went in I did something very Spanish. I queue jumped.

All I wanted to know was whether it was worth waiting as I suspected that I couldn't get the signature except by going to a permanent office. It took seconds and the answer was negative so I saved myself a long and fruitless wait.

But I felt very proud of myself for being so daring. Speaking Spanish across a room full of people isn't something I like doing but I did it.