Behind the name

Emilio Martínez Sáez. One time mayor of Pinoso who gave his name to our local theatre

When we lived in Cambridgeshire there used to be lots of "jokes" about Fen dwellers, in particular about Chatteris. Jokes to to do with interbreeding and the idea that, at birth, if a family had a surfeit of boys and a lack of girls then you found a family who were baby boy poor and baby girl rich and traded. I presume that Spaniards say, or at least said, something similar about country folk.

As I'm sure you know Spaniards have two family names. Usually that's one from the dad and one from the mum. Be warned if you decide to adopt Spanish nationality and you're surname deficient you will need to choose an extra. 

So you don't need to be a Royal and marry your brother/sister or even your cousin to end up with two surnames which are the same. All you need is to stay off Tinder and stay around the same area for a while. 

I'm reading a book about Pinoso written by a local bloke called Luis Doménech Yáñez. It's good fun; a bit sugary but interesting and entertaining. There's a list of the 106 mayors of Pinoso between 1812 and 2005 - all of them were men. I added the 107th, our current mayor, Lázaro Azorín Salar. That list of 106 includes mayors who were elected twice but not for consecutive terms. Then I did a bit of an analysis of the surnames. There have been 22 mayors with the name Albert as either their first or second surname. There have been 16 Ricos and 12 Verdus. Other surnames with more than 5 appearances include Peréz, Mira, Carbonell, Tortosa, Payá and Blanes. Anyone who lives in or does business here in Pinoso will recognise those family names. In fact I was a bit surprised that names like Domenech, Brotons and Ochoa weren't more common in the list. 

I was a bit disappointed that only 5 mayors doubled up their surname: Albert Albert (twice), Rico Rico, Verdú Verdú and Mira Mira.

Living here first names like Mariano, Isidro, Lorenzo, Emilio, Pascual or Rafael don't sound any stranger than Oliver, George or Grayson but there were some great first names in the list of mayors: Nivardo, Faustino, Dimas, Melecio, Hermelando, Evedasto, Agapito, Amador, Plausides, Antenor, Demetrio, Antoliano and Perfecto. 

Future Culebrón cats be warned!

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I can't imagine that anyone is interested but here are all the surnames. I'm sure there are errors in my transcription for which I apologise: Albert, Alfonso, Amorós, Azorín, Baus, Berenguer, Blanes, Blaquer, Brotóns, Calpena, Carbonell, Cerdá, De los Cobos, Del Pino, Domenech, Domingo, Durante, Falco, Gonzálvez, Graciá, Guardiola, Herrero, Huesca, Jordán, Jover, Juárez, López, Lucas, Maestre, Malhuenda, Martínez, Mauricio, Menda, Mendaro, Mira, Molina, Navarro, Ochoa, Ortega, Payá, Peréz, Poveda, Prats, Ramírez, Rico, Sáez, Salar, Sanchez, Tormo, Tormos, Tortosa, Verdú, Vicente, Vidal and Yánez.

Have you ever wondered about keeping up to date?

The world being connected, as it is nowadays, it would be quite possible to live our life here more or less isolated from things Spanish; we could behave as though home were still Huntingdon. We try not to but we could.

With time things change and so de we. As an easy example the food we eat and the way we buy things has changed radically. Ordering takeaway food to eat at home via my personal phone, without making a call, and having someone deliver it on a bike would have seemed incredible in my youth. Clothes change, habits change, tastes change, everything changes down to the way we speak. Although I've kept my distance and even stayed at home recently I have never shielded or social distanced but I know people who have.

I'm not that interested in keeping up with the UK. I tell my sister that I don't know the names of British politicians. She doesn't believe me. She's partially right in that I do half recognise maybe four or five current British political names but, Boris apart, I couldn't pick any current high value British politician out in a police lineup. It would be easy to catch up. I could sit down with a list and learn some names. I did that with Spanish politicians when I first moved here. Nowadays, dodgy memory aside, I know as much about Spanish politics as I used to know about politics in the UK when I lived there.

This sort of stuff is as important or as unimportant as you want to make it. The music market of my youth was very simple. If Decca hadn't signed the Stones and Parlophone had missed the Beatles then music history may have been different. Labels signed artists and labels pushed for radio plays and TV slots. Young people saw and heard that and went out and bought it, or not. Nowadays I have no idea how people decide which new music they are going to buy. The power of the record labels and the radio stations is nothing like it was and there is so much more out there and accessible than there was. A young person, with a laptop, can produce music in their bedroom which is much better, technically, than the stuff that Capitol recorded for the Beach Boys. It's an easy answer to say that the music is on YouTube or Spotify but how do those people know what they want access to without a radio DJ to act as go between? If you're happy to listen to music from the last century then it's completely irrelevant and if you're only interested in the Top 40 or the ever popular classics it's easy. If, on the other hand, you're interested in knowing what non established musicians are up to a quick glance at Bandcamp or Soundcloud shows just how many artists there are out there. As I said this sort of stuff is either important to you or it isn't. 

I still watch the telly. Lots of younger people, including younger Spanish people don't. They go to Twitch, YouTube and the like. One of the programmes I'm aware of on mainstream terrestrial telly, but very seldom watch, is an interview programme hosted by a bloke called Jordi Évole. He interviewed a Spanish "influencer" called Ibai. I'd never heard of Ibai so I had a look at some of his videos afterwards - he is quite entertaining but it wasn't a Road to Damascus event for me yet 40,000 people like him enough to pay 5€ a month to watch his Twitch channel. 

I'm still doing some online Spanish conversation classes so I get to talk to a couple of younger Spaniards each week. I asked them about Ibai. In turn they told me about other YouTubers and Influencers and Gamers. One of my contacts mentioned David Broncano which was a name I knew because I mentioned him in a blog about forocoches. Another talked about a bloke called Fortfast and when I hunted out his stuff I found news stories about his house burning down and court action from an ex-employee. A few weeks ago more of these Internet media stars made the headlines because they were going to live in Andorra to reduce their tax bills - just like Britons used to move to the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. I'm vaguely perturbed that I don't know about this stuff. How is it that I know who Tom Parker was but couldn't tell you the name of a song by Califato ¾?

As I said, this stuff is completely unimportant. I'm not that concerned about being whatever one says nowadays for hip and cool. I don't care (much) that I've never paid for anything with my mobile phone and that I still sometimes use cash but I suppose the problem I have with this "not being in the loop" has to do with that idea of fitting in. I don't want to be an English person, living an English life in a foreign place where the sun shines but the locals speak funny and don't do anything as well as we do.

Do you think I should take a coat?

It's an old photo. December 2007

I left the bathroom wearing just a t-shirt. Well, jeans and shoes and stuff too. My intention was to put on the hoodie that was hanging on the kitchen door but, as so often nowadays, I was distracted by something else and I forgot. It wasn't till I began to feel chilly that I remembered my original plan. 

My overcoat was also hanging from the same hook as the hoodie. Time for that to go into storage I thought. The overcoat, a long dark overcoat, is probably my favourite coat. It came with me from England. It was two or three years old when we got here so it must be closing in on 20 years old now. The lining's a mess and if you look at it closely it's got that sheen on some of the seams to bear witness to its longevity. March is the month when the weather starts to take a turn for the better here in Alicante. 

The t-shirt incident and the coat reminded me of a story I'd read, as a youth, about a civil servant and an overcoat - Dostoyevsky perhaps, or Kafka? Google says it was Gogol. The story tells of a minor civil servant whose life becomes dominated by saving for a new warm coat. As soon as he has it the coat is stolen from him by a couple of ruffians. The police will do nothing and he dies of a fever brought on by his coatlessness. If Gogol could write a short story about an overcoat I could blog about one!

In the North of Spain people need cold weather clothes just like they need central heating and insulation. Here, in Alicante, when people wear a scarf it's really only because they want to wear a scarf. It's just conceivable that on a couple of days each year a scarf may actually be necessary, gloves even, but, basically, proper cold weather gear isn't really called for in Alicante. It's not that we don't have winter or anything. As I have remarked tens of times it is perishing inside in winter but outside, when it's not nice, the best description, often, would be something like chilly. As we've closed in on Spring my denim jacket has come into its own and, before that, a sort of thick cardigan I have has done sterling work through the traditional winter months. Sports jackets are good too, a bit of a barrier against the cold but without too much weight. With a pullover and sports jacket I'm set up for most Winter Alicante weather except rain. 

This year I may have worn the overcoat ten times. When I wear my overcoat people don't notice the sheen, they don't laugh at it, they notice that it's big and dark and coatlike. When I wear the coat Spanish people often comment to me on the coldness of the weather. The wearing of a long overcoat is certain proof that it's cold. 

If March is when the weather cheers up late October and November is when we notice that things are changing for the worse. Last November I bought a jacket; one to wear outside against the cold and rain and wind. It was a bit of a whim but it was cheap and it was a nice sort of yellow colour. It's made of a vaguely waterproof sort of material so it could be a replacement for the rainy day waterproof jacket I bought in 2009 in Salamanca. The new jacket also has a bit of a lining so it is warm enough to replace the padded jacket I bought in Granada in 2016. I've tried hard to wear it, what with it being new and things, but I reckon it's been out fewer than four or five times in the four months.

The clocks change on Sunday. The sun has shone all today and I was able to cast off my pullover for several hours. Very soon that t-shirt will be fine as long as I remember to add the jeans, sandals etc.

Hooked to the silver screen

I have innumerable stories about going to the cinema. I started young and I'm still adding to the store. As an eleven year old I marvelled as my Auntie Lizzie sobbed while watching The Sound of Music. When I was fourteen my dad insisted that we went to a bigger cinema in Leeds to get the full Cinerama effect of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was well over 30 when I tried some sort of gruel that Poles prefer to popcorn as I watched a Swedish film with French subtitles in a Warsaw cinema. In Banjul I wondered if the running and shouting antics of the audience for a Kung Fu film would turn violent. As a student in the 1970s I recall scraping together enough loose change to see Last Tango in Paris with someone who really thought it was about dancing. In Madrid, in the early 80s, I sat, rifle-less, on a grassy knoll one August evening for cinema in the park. Hooking the speakers over the wound down car windows at a drive-in in Pennsylvania. Delighting in seeing season after season of black and white classics as they should be seen, on a big screen, at the Regent in Leeds. In fact, to this day, every time I see Big John twirling that Winchester and flagging down the Stage I'm reminded of the red plush of the Regent. Then there was that bloke who came to sit next to me as I watched Robocop in a huge, and almost empty theatre, in Mexico DF and asked me, in Spanish, what had happened so far. The gentle strangeness of the Cambridge Arts Cinema in the Market Passage or the time Timothy Spall sat next to us as we waited at the new Cambridge Arts. Laughing as the neighbour from No7 tried to keep his head down so we wouldn't recognise him as we watched the re-release of Deep Throat at Elland Rex. The planning that went in to seeing four films at four cinemas in one day at the London Film Festival and still getting back home on the last train. Knowing enough of French etiquette to tip the usherette in Paris as we watched the first Emmanuelle or those splendidly solitary evenings at the Grand in Ramsey with a beer and a cigar. I'd better stop now but, literally, tens more spring to mind. Just before I stop though special mention for the exit from a cinema here in Spain, in Ciudad Rodrigo, that went through the Bishop's Palace.

From home in Culebrón our regular cinema became the Cinesmax in Petrer about 25 km away. It was a second tier cinema so, instead of getting the Hollywood and Spanish first run releases, it programmed art house and foreign films. The staff called us by name and we asked after their children's exam results. The Yelmo, across the road from the Cinesmax in Petrer, also attracted our attention when they started to show films in English. We became regulars. It all went phut, of course, because of the virus. The Cinesmax, which must have been struggling anyway, has been closed for over a year now. The Petrer Yelmo hung on, valiantly, for a while, then tried reduced opening times before closing for a spell. They are due to re-open today. The same chain kept another cinema in Alicante open a little longer. When the Yelmo closed we discovered the Kinepolis, also in Alicante and also with English language films; they closed that too. Finally there was just the ABC in Elche left. That had been our mainstay this year until it too gave up the unequal struggle. 

With all our closest cinemas closed it looked like our film going was going to have to wait for better times. Google told me the cinema in Torrevieja was still open but travelling 90 kilometres smacked of desperation. Google is a wonderful thing though and, on Tuesday, I discovered the Cinemas Aana in Alicante. It's a small chain with three cinemas and they are soldiering on. 

There's a programme on Spanish TV called Cine del Barrio, which shows Spanish B Movies from the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. If you're British think of the Doctor in the House series or the Carry On films and you have the idea. The films, and the cinemas they were shown in, were the stuff that turned Spain into a cinema going nation. The Cine Aana was cast in that mould. It is not like the majority of cinemas that I've gone to for the past thirty or forty years. It does have three screens but basically it's the one bedroomed house described as a three bed. The main bedroom is fine but the two smaller bedrooms only have space for single beds and no wardrobe. The cinema seats weren't raked, as they are in most multiplex cinemas in a football stadium style, they were tilted backwards so that we were looking up towards the screen.

I'm not sure if it was the special, Wednesday, price or the location but there were a reasonable number of people, widely spaced as you may imagine with the restrictions, for the screening of the French Canadian film, Il pleuvait des oiseaux. Like the majority of non Spanish films it was dubbed into Spanish. The event was very neighbourhood and very Spanish despite the foreign film. The majority of the spectators were older women, in pairs, but there were plenty of men too. The man who turned up ten minutes after the film had started and as well as having trouble with numbers seemed unable to understand the difference between left and right and had a very loud voice. We thought the film was good but the man on the other side of the aisle wasn't that impressed; his snoring was an obvious critique. 

From my point of view the seats were comfy and we were seeing a film up there, larger than our imagination, and that made it all alright.

Not a mention of holidays and nothing for the weekend

I got my hair cut last week. As I'm sure you know I go to Alfredo. One of the tiny pluses of Covid 19 is that Alfredo has cut down the number of appointments he takes in an hour. If it used to be one every 15 minutes it's now one every 20 minutes and if it was one every 20 minutes it's now one every half an hour. This is to give him time to disinfect things and to make sure that there are not too many people waiting or sitting together. It also means, that for most of an appointment, there's just me and him in the room; so nobody extra to smirk at my Spanish.

I said good morning and Alfredo said, "Do you know there are 54 Nationalities living in Pinoso?". I had to say that I didn't. The last time I'd seen the figure it was "only" 42. "I wonder why?," he asked. Being an immigrant myself I had answers. I likened it to the Bengali population settling in Brick Lane or Spaniards congregating in West London - friends tell friends that a place is good, services spring up to serve migrant populations etc. I said that in our case it had been the affordability of the housing. I also suggested that there was an initial desire of the Britons moving to Pinoso to move somewhere ostensibly more Spanish than the coast. Lastly I suggested that Pinoso wasn't a bad little town. Plenty of facilities for its size and well maintained. Alfredo didn't seem convinced.

As I settled in the chair we agreed that we Britons were being joined by Belgians and Dutch and to a lesser extent by Germans and French. The actual figures nearly agree with us except for our Eurocentric twist.

The information that Alfredo was reading came from the Pinoso Town Hall media team. There are actually two competing figures. The equivalent of the National Statistical Office (The INE or Instituto Nacional de Estadística) said, from the census figures, that Pinoso has a population of 8,025 (4,055 male and 3.970 female) whereas the register kept by the local town hall, the padrón, a bit like the UK Council Tax Register, says that there are 8,424 inhabitants. Whichever figures you prefer that's an annual increase of either 59 or 71 more people living in Pinoso.

I'm going to be pretty cavalier with the figures. I'm going to round up and down and I'm going to use the padrón figures as the basis because the local town hall has done the break down for me and that's a lot easier than digging around the INE website.

• The total population of Pinoso is 8,424 people.
• Just over 6,800 Spaniards live in Pinoso.
• Nearly 1 in 5 of the population of Pinoso are not Spaniards.
• There are 54 nationalities living in Pinoso. (There are 195 countries in the World.)
• The biggest group of foreigners in Pinoso are Britons. Nearly 800 of us. Nearly 10% of the population.
• The second biggest group of foreigners are Moroccans. The 185 Moroccans are a bit below 2.5% of the population.
• The Dutch are next with 65 people then there are 64 Romanians, 55 Belgians, 54 Ukrainians and 39 Ecuadorians.
• The remaining 47 nationalities account for around 350 people.
• There are nationals of 24 European, 17 American, 6 African and 5 Asian countries in Pinoso.
• Of all the towns in Alicante province Pinoso has the third highest proportion of inhabitants born in other countries. Hondón de los Frailes and la Romana are first and second. All three are small inland towns.
• Nearly 180 Pinoseros live abroad.

The haircut was fine, as always. 8€ well spent.

Making me smile

I didn't do the 11 plus exam at school. It was just being phased out as I went from Junior to Secondary school but I was part of some survey to see if continuous assessment gave similar results to the old style exam.

The question I remember was: Which is the best pair?

• Peaches and ice cream
• Peaches and cream
• Peaches and apricots

The correct answer is peaches and apricots as they are both fruit. The question is obviously designed to mislead.

Spanish tests love to do the same. A sample driving test theory question for instance shows a tram and a car arriving at an unmarked junction and asks who should give way. The answer is the tram. There is a general rule to give way to traffic from the right at unmarked junctions. Obviously the likelihood of such a junction existing is minimal. The question tests something theoretical and unreal with no real practical application. Spanish education is a bit like that too. One commentator remarked that the Spanish way, for a course for trainee carpenters, would be to have questions on the properties of different woods and the history of cabinet making alongside a multiple choice question to identify different joints but without any sort of practical test.

To join the Spanish national police force here you have to do a competitive exam. One part of the latest exam has a test about words. There is a list of words and the question is are they spelled correctly as in the official Spanish dictionary. This adds a bit of a twist. One of the words for instance is outlet. It's used all over Spain for factory shops. It's spelled correctly in the list but it is not in the official dictionary so if you said it was correct you'd be wrong! Candidates should, apparently, know whether a common, everyday word is in the dictionary or not. If outlet is wrong then Brent, to describe a type of crude oil, is in the list, is spelled correctly and is in the dictionary. Broker is a bit half and half - it's in the list and in the dictionary but it needs an accent to be spelled correctly in Spanish - bróker. The other words in the test are often difficult and/or uncommon words - antediluvian and ribonucleic for instance are obviously words that any police officer is going to be using a lot.

Over the weekend we had the Spanish film awards; they're called The Goyas. The principal host of the  nearly all "virtual" event was Antonio Banderas. He'd obviously called a lot of his Hollywood chums who kept popping up throughout the ceremony to say "I support Spanish cinema" Some, like Tom Cruise and Robert de Niro did it in Spanish. Emma Thompson did it in Spanish too. She said it twice once in her best Spanish accent and then in a parody of a British person speaking Spanish. The comment I read in one of the newspapers said that the stars were "trying" to speak Spanish. I laughed because when the Spanish newspapers report on someone Spanish speaking in English, like Rafa Nadal, Felipe VI or President Pedro Sanchez they nearly always say "in perfect English".  They do, all three of them speak good English just as do Bruno Tonioli and Jean Paul Gaultier.

The open road

Driving in Spain is like driving anywhere. Well no, it's not like driving in Mumbai or Sana'a, but it is like driving in places that have reasonably organised traffic. Most people keep to most of the rules most of the time. By that I mean it's like driving in Dublin or Munich or Mirfield. The cities are busy, towns are busy but Spain has lots of space for not many people and hundreds of Spanish roads are dead quiet. Where we live the roads are very quiet. It's a joy.

Last Wednesday were in Elche and I left an obvious space so a car, joining from a slip road, could pop into the main traffic flow. The driver waved in acknowledgement. I was surprised; I wondered if he were foreign, like me. Spaniards do not, generally, acknowledge any assistance on the road. Flash someone in for instance and there is, usually, no answering flash, no quick flip of the hazard lights nor any little wave. Actually, if, as a pedestrian, you hold the door for someone entering or leaving a building there's unlikely to be any acknowledgement either but that's another post.

Most Britons complain about Spanish driving. Mind you most Spaniards I have ever talked to complain about Spanish driving too just as all Britons complain about British driving. Saudis don't complain about other Saudi drivers except after the bump.

Signalling is something that Spanish drivers don't seem to be keen on. Again I have seen facetious Facebook videos from Arkansas State Troopers demonstrating what turn indicators are used for and how they operate. Maybe it's not a uniquely Spanish problem. This lack of signalling is particularly problematic in roundabouts. 

Spanish roundabouts have a different system to the one in use in the UK.  Basically you have to be in the outside lane to leave the roundabout (just to be clear about this I mean the lane that has would involve driving the longest distance around the roundabout). The outside lane has priority over the inside lanes. Not that it's the recommended system but this means that even in the biggest city with lots of traffic and, say, a five lane roundabout your "safest" bet is to take the outside lane and to go round and round in the same lane till you reach your exit. It's not the method that the traffic authorities suggest but the "approved" version at times includes a lane change which is sometimes impossible to achieve. If you are in one of the inside lanes and there is a car outside of you then you have to give way. It is not the best system and, effectively, it makes all but the outside lane redundant. As you may expect, in reality, people use all the lanes and do what they can not to bump into each other. The rules also only require drivers to signal their intention to leave the roundabout or to change lane which is effectively the same thing. No turn signal means the vehicle intends to continue circling the roundabout. So, if you're waiting to enter a roundabout and there is no turn signal from the approaching vehicle you should wait. As signalling is considered to be a waste of time by nearly everybody it's an absolute lottery as to whether a car will keep coming or turn off.

If signalling is only for the woolly minded and weak then so, for some, is leaving any space between your car and the car in front. Most of the time the traffic just goes pootling along without any problem but if something is going too slowly the line of vehicles behind will drive as though they were in one of those Secret Service Convoys you see in the films. A metre or two between vehicles at most. This is usually a spectator sport for me because I leave plenty of space between the front of my car and the back of the vehicle I'm following. That's a distance for me to control. Not so for the driver behind me who often seems quite convinced that by closing the gap to the back of my car to some 30cms or so I will speed up. I often wonder where the driver behind thinks I am going to go. Boxed in by a vehicle in front and a not to be crossed white line to the left there is nowhere for me to go. I really don't understand their reasoning unless they are fans of doggy style and/or anal sex and find the rear of my car in some way exciting. 

Another quite interesting and problematic thing are the speed limit signs. Not the idea of speed limits but the signs for those limits. Spain is littered with signs. The general rule is to give way to traffic to your right but normally, where a minor road meets a major road, the signs override that generic rule and precedence is with the main road. There is though, usually, a sign to limit the speed as you pass the junction. On a typical 90km/h two lane road the speed limit across the junction is 60km/h. The majority of traffic doesn't slow to 60 but most people slacken off a little. I had a Guardia Civil car tailing me as I got to one of these signs. Discretion being the better part of valour I slowed to keep to the speed limit and the Guardia car almost rammed me from behind. It's the same sort of thing when approaching a roundabout. Presuming that we're on a normal two lane, 90km/h road there will be a sign maybe 200 metres out from the roundabout to say 70km/h and then 50 metres out another to say 40 km/h. It's a favourite trick of the Guardia Civil traffic cars to put their speed traps just past the sign because any average driver will be slowing for the approaching hazard but they will still be doing more than the speed limit as they pass the radar.

Just two last things. Although they are dying out now Spain used to have lots of junctions with a sort of horseshoe shape turn. Rather than stopping in the middle of the road to make a cross traffic turn you would drive into the horseshoe and then stop to check whether it was safe to proceed. Most have been replaced by roundabouts, though some still exist on quieter roads.  

This is from a driving test sample. The correct answer is the orange route.

The other thing is that in the past if someone was wandering around the road, going alternatively quickly and then slowly I used to presume they were drunk or stoned. Nowadays I just presume that they have an incredibly important WhatsApp message to type. And isn't that something you recognise too?

The night of nights

On Monday afternoon I was going through the programmes for the local theatres. We booked up a couple of events. That put a little smile on my face. Goody, goody, I thought. Out and about a bit, I thought. Away from the house for a while, I thought. Those were my thoughts as I crossed the patio and the living room heading for the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

If someone were to ask me if I were a theatre goer my answer would be diffident at best. Now and again, sort of, well no, not really. But, as I waited for the kettle to boil I started to think about it. I went to see a loads of plays when I was at University. At the time I knew a lot of drama students, some of whom were young women, maybe that was one of the attractions. Another was that the Gulbenkian Theatre was on campus and free. It was also really close to the Student's Union. The bar in there was very useful when I thought that I was going to die of boredom whilst watching a Congreve play. It gave me the incentive to get up and walk out; one of the few times in my life when I have walked out of something ostentatiously rather than sneaking away in the interval (and I've done that a few times!). I remember too seeing a play there that was based on Brecht - the actors had David Bowie type face paint and sat on tyres. The kettle still hadn't boiled but things were flooding in now. I remembered lots of Hull Truck productions. No, even further back, when I went to Butlins Holiday Camp as a lad with my family. I must have been about 11 or 12 and I was allowed to wander the complex alone. One of my chosen options was to go to the theatre, of sorts, put on by the Redcoats - I recall a whodunnit and a farce - careful with that axe vicar - sort of thing. Then after to the cafeteria to get a milky coffee, which I drank through a straw, from a Duralex cup. Such hedonism, such innocence.

By now the tea is brewed and I'm thinking about this as blog material. I recall that one of the few things I've ever seen in the West End is a Brian Rix farce. Imagine that, paying good money for innuendo and people called Gerald walking out of one door as Hermione comes in the other. Once I started to think about it lots and lots of theatre came rolling in. Stuff at the Arts Theatre and ADC in Cambridge, at the Key in Peterborough, those outdoor Shakespeare festivals at Tolthorpe and in Huntindgdon, the one man show in Catworth featuring a Weslyan Geologist, the Arts Centre in Spalding. It's like word association now; from one thing to the next. It's a bit like that John Hurt TV version of The Naked Civil Servant where Quentin says he's OK with the programme so long as they put in one particular image of him dancing. Images of my own come to mind, of past plays, past performances and past theatres. A mental hop and I think about being alone, when I was dead young, watching the telly, and being awestruck by something on BBC2, in black and white. It was a play where none of the actors wore shoes and it was about melting people down to make buttons. Google tells me it was probably Peer Gynt which is a bit disappointing. Not obscure enough for the growing hubris of this piece. Maybe my self analysis is wrong. Maybe I've always liked theatre. How strange. Oh, and there was  a recording of Waiting for Godot from Elland lending library. I enjoyed it so much the first time that I borrowed it a second time. My dad thought I was decidedly odd listening to Beckett. I went to see the real thing later. Remarkable memories.

We're at a bit of a disadvantage, theatre wise, in Spain. Ibsen and Beckett would probably be hard work in English nowadays and I don't think I'd manage them in Spanish. That's not stopped us though, we've been to lots of plays in Spanish. Sometimes I've nodded off and sometimes I've kept up without problems and even chortled at the jokes. The heavy stuff, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo or Lorca's La Casa de Bernarda Alba, both of which are on locally at the moment, might be a stretch both language wise and maybe attention span wise. Another half forgotten memory just popped up there. A memory to suggest that the language has always been challenging. I think it was in Palma, in Mallorca, in the 1980s when I'd got into the habit of coming to Spain for my holidays. I went to the theatre to see something called La Pepa Trae Cola. I must have wanted to experience a bit of Spanish theatre even then and almost certainly the poster gave me hope that it would be amusing and maybe comprehensible. As I remember it was a sort of farce (again); I've just looked it up and it starred a couple called Tomás Zorí and Fernando Santos. My guess is from a mixture of memory and skimming the Wikipedia article that this was like going to see a sort of Spanish Mike and Bernie Winters, as they flailed around at the end of their careers, heading towards oblivion. It was completely incomprehensible to me.

Maggie's much more realistic than me. She knows where our linguistic limits lie. Every time I thrust a (virtual) theatre programme at her she looks through the things I haven't earmarked and steers me away from the worthy play (or the farce) and suggests the ballet, or the opera or the concert. Things that have elements other than pure language. That's good too. This time though she liked the look of a play and we even booked a bit of feminist musical theatre. It's making me grin again just thinking about it. And we're in a box for one of the events. Lots of the theatres around here are really lovely. Old fashioned with lots of velvet, with gold leaf and with allegorical paintings on the ceiling or above the stage. I always like the boxes. Mind you I like the dress circle too - definitely the best view. Oh, and the Gods can be great. The Spanish name for the Gods is el Paradiso, Paradise. All the fun for a fraction of the price and often with an experience thrown in -this time it's freezing cold, this time it's boiling hot or maybe the rake of the seating makes you fear for your life. I don't particularly care for the stalls - too squashed. Mind you the Covid restrictions mean you can now sprawl when you go to the theatre.

Just one last thing. Recalling all these plays I remembered dragging my old pal Alan to the theatre in Villena to see Darwin's Turtle. My guess is that he didn't capture much of the plot but I don't think I need to apologise. I bet you remember that evening, don't you Mr. C? Memorable stuff going to the theatre. 

Democracy counts

The current Spanish Government is a coalition between a slightly left of centre political party, the PSOE, and a much smaller and much further left party, Unidas Podemos. The other week the leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, a Government Vice President, said, a couple of times, that the democracy in Spain was flawed. As you may imagine this caused a bit of a fuss. Then, a couple of days later, a talentless rap artist was sent to jail for suggesting in his songs that terrorists were jolly nice and our King was jolly nasty. People protesting the incarceration took to the streets and did a bit of burning and looting whilst they were there. Podemos was mealy mouthed in its condemnation of the street violence. 

My own opinion is that Spain has a bit of a problem with some aspects of democracy. For instance a woman, who tweeted some old jokes about about ETA, the Basque terrorists, blowing up the admiral Carrero Blanco in 1973, was sentenced to a year in prison (time that she would never have served) though her sentence was quashed by a higher court. Similarly 14 musicians in Spain have been taken to court, presumably for the content of their songs, though, in the end, only two were locked up.  Generally though it's a good place to live with all of the safeguards you would expect from a solid democracy even if there is a tendency to set those safeguards to the side every now and again and to be heavy handed and over authoritarian. There are far too many examples of the limitations on basic democratic expectations, like access to information, being able to complain or expressing an alternative opinion without coming up against insuperable obstacles or facing either a hefty fine or a jail sentence. Then again I remember that the UK locked up a couple of rappers for singing a song.

Freedom House, a US organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights begins its country profile for Spain with this summary paragraph: Spain’s parliamentary system features competitive multiparty elections and peaceful transfers of power between rival parties. The rule of law prevails, and civil liberties are generally respected. Although political corruption remains a concern, high-ranking politicians and other powerful figures have been successfully prosecuted. Restrictive legislation adopted in recent years poses a threat to otherwise robust freedoms of expression and assembly. A persistent separatist movement in Catalonia represents the leading challenge to the country’s constitutional system and territorial integrity.That sounds about right to me.

On Sunday morning I heard a piece on the radio based on the Economist Magazine's Democracy Index. I'd never heard of the Democracy Index but, apparently the UK magazine has been producing it since 2006. It quantifies the amount of democracy in 165 states. Not surprisingly their general, worldwide, conclusion is that the implementation of government imposed pandemic control measures led to a huge rollback of civil liberties in 2020. 

The Democracy Index score is based on five categories: 

• Electoral process and pluralism 
• The functioning of government 
• Political participation 
• Political culture
• Civil liberties 

There are a range of indicators within each of these categories and each indicator is scored. The questions are of this type: Are elections for the national legislature and head of government free?, Is the functioning of government open and transparent, with sufficient public access to information?, To what degree is the judiciary independent of government influence? 

From the score given to each country they are placed in one of four types of regime and ranked: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian regime. Although the score is plotted on a ten point scale it is presented in decimal format, 7.65 for instance, so it's actually more like a thousand point scale. Countries that score 8 and 9 are classed as full democracies, those with 6 and 7 as flawed democracies, hybrid regimes generally score 4 and 5 and authoritarian regimes score in the 1,2 and part of the 3 scale. 

The least democratic country on the scale for 2020 is North Korea with a score of 1.08. The most democratic country is Norway with a score of 9.81. Iceland, Sweden, New Zealand and Canada are right up there too. Surprisingly, in Western Europe, countries like Belgium, Italy, Greece and Cyprus are classed as flawed democracies because they score below 8 and, this time around, France slipped to that level. The best of Eastern Europe countries, Estonia, comes in as a flawed democracy as does the United States which is at position 25 with a score of 7.92. Just for a couple of my regular readers Russia is at 124, Qatar at 126 and Oman at position 136. Australia shares 9th position. In all the cases that's out of 167.

Spain does alright with a score of 8.12 and 22nd position. It's the lowest scoring full democracy in the table; teetering on the edge. The UK does better; full democracy with a score of 8.54 and position number 16. Ireland is better still, 9.05 and 8th place. 

So the Economist almost agrees with Pablo.

Far, far away

I used to visit Spain as a tourist long before I lived here. Usually I'd just buy a plane ticket and then find a hotel/pension when I got to wherever. Travelling around was done by public transport. 

I've always liked trains. For tourists cast adrift in a foreign land, they have the big advantage, over buses, of going to stations that have name plaques. Provided you know the name of the place you're going then it's just a case of being able to read. Of course this is long before trains, trams and buses began to speak or you could GPS track your position.

Now Spain isn't bad at signing things but it isn't good either. Signs are apt to be missing when you most need them. Sometimes they are there but not obvious. They lurk. Not big enough. Not in your eyeline. Not right somehow. Once you get the hang of it they are more noticeable but that's when you don't need them. When you're in a hurry, flustered, weighed down by kilos of baggage etc., they never seem to be there.

So, I'm in Madrid, I decide to go to el Escorial for the day. I get off the train. The few people who get off at the same halt go both left and right at the station entrance. I have no idea which way it is to town. I chose badly. It was the same in Almeria and in countless other places. I sometimes walked miles in the wrong direction dragging my luggage (some genius had still to put wheels on suitcases) before finally getting somewhere central. 

Monóvar is a town about 15 minutes drive from Pinoso.You pass through it going from our house to the motorway. When we first moved here we passed what was obviously a railway station with a board outside that read Monóvar-Pinoso.  We presumed it was a rail line between the two towns. We asked around and were told there was no longer a railway line to Pinoso but that the station was still in use and that it was possible to catch a train from there to far away Bilbao in the Basque Country. It wasn't true. It was just the sort of dodgy information that we Britons provide to other Britons. It was simply the old, long closed, railway station in the town of Monóvar which had also served Pinoso in the forgotten past. In the same way that PG Wodehouse always used to have Lord Emsworth send someone from Blandings Castle to meet the train in Market Blandings there must have been taxis or carters moving people and goods between Pinoso and Monóvar.

Right then, after five or so paragraphs of round the houses, my point is that Spain has a habit of putting its train stations a fair way from the town centre and without any signs for luggage hauling pedestrians. Not always I should add. Alicante and Murcia, Madrid and Valencia, for example, all have central railway stations

Spain has had high speed trains for ages. After I'd been to the Expo in Seville in 1992 I caught the high speed train, the AVE, to Cordoba just to have a go. I was given a glass of sherry and a newspaper as I boarded by a young uniformed woman who I suspect had been chosen for reasons that would not now be acceptable. When the line from Albacete to Madrid opened at Christmas in 2010 we drove the 90 minutes to Albacete to catch the AVE to Cuenca just for the experience or 300km/h travel. As we arrived there were people on the approaches to the station to watch the train arrive. They were there because it was still novel. Mind you there's not much to do in Cuenca on a Sunday. The AVE station in Cuenca is miles from the town centre. The bus that joins the old Main Square to the station takes 24 minutes to complete its route.

It was the same when the line was extended from Madrid to Alicante. We were there to try it out. Our nearest AVE station is in Villena; the most underused station on the whole of the AVE network. When the route for the line was being decided one of the possibilities was that it would follow the traditional tracks which run right through the middle of Villena. The locals weren't for that. They wanted the lines to run underground so that they didn't have to wait at level crossing time after time. So Adif, the people who own the lines and stations and so on, saved themselves a shedload of cash and hassle by running the line through open country close to Villena. Now it takes about a quarter of an hour to drive to the station from the middle of Villena. I bet they wish the unused land option was open them in Murcia. In Murcia city there have been pitched battles between locals, opposed to the route chosen, and the police. The tracks are set to run through an economically challenged neighbourhood on the approach to the city.

Anyway. Only a couple of weeks ago the extension of the line from Alicante to Elche to Orihuela. that will finally continue to Murcia, was opened. I had to go to Elche yesterday because there was some recall on the software on my car (cars used to be recalled for problems with the brakes or fuel lines or some such but now it's software) so I thought I'd have a look at the new AVE station when I was there. Google maps got me there. The station is down a twisty track in a field in one of Elche's pedanias, called Matola. It's 8 kilometres from the town centre and the signs were few and far between, a bit like putting the bus station for Pinoso in Culebrón. 

Names are not always what they seem

My latest book is a political biography about the bloke who was President of Spain, on the losing side, in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. I heard it reviewed on a podcast I listen to. Normally, when I read or hear about a potential book to read I download a sample to my eBook or save it to a wants list so that, when the time comes to buy something, I have a few queued up ready to compare and contrast. Like all the books I read in Spanish I will forget the title and author. Spanish names just don't stick. I've often had conversations with Spaniards asking if I've read something. I deny all knowledge but then, as they describe the content, I have to admit that I have.

I'd heard mention of a book by Benjamin Black on the Spanish radio; it was being offered as a competition prize. It turns out that Benjamin Black is a pen name for the Irish writer John Banville. I had never heard his name before yet I have no trouble at all remembering it. Why do I remember John Banville just as easily as I forget Josefina Carabias? I suppose the answer is because I'm British and the name John Banville (or Benjamin Black) has a resonance that a Spanish name doesn't. Of course it may be another sign of the years passing like my increasingly frequent visits to the toilet.

It's the same for Spaniards - namewise not bladderwise. My second name John doesn't flow properly for the majority of Spanish people who have to write it down. They often write Jhon instead which seems better, probably righter, to them. Spaniards typically have two surnames - dad's first and mum's second (though there's no problem with reversing them). So if I were named the Spanish way I'd be Christopher Thompson Marriot or maybe Christopher Marriot Thompson. Thompson was my dad's surname and Marriot my mum's maiden surname. Because I have two forenames - Christopher John - but only one surname - Thompson - lots of Spaniards presume that my first surname is John and my second surname is Thompson. Traditionally the first surname is used in address. Pablo Iglesias Turrión, one of our vice presidents, is usually referred to as Pablo Iglesias, for example. So I get lots of emails and post addressed to Sr. Christopher Jhon.