The Mojácar Old Days (were the best)

I’m not sure if they did table-service back then, I’ll have to ask Haro’s son Paco when I see him. ‘Let’s see, two gin and tonics, three wines, a beer and a Fanta Orange’ (the last one being for me). I’m pretty sure you had to walk up to the bar to place your order.

In those days, back in the late sixties, there wasn’t much else to do for my parents and their friends beyond gossip and drink while seated around the rickety tables of the Hotel Indalo in the square. There was no TV, no newspapers and few interruptions beyond…

‘Napia, gimme a duro’, said a dishevelled local fellow called Antonio: the price of a brandy.

My dad would hand over the five peseta coin and Antonio would totter into the bar for his reward.

Oddly, the word Napia (my family name is Napier) would raise chuckles among the local folk. Everybody had a nickname (important when there are seventeen people called Paco working in the town hall) and napia means in Spanish a beak, a hooter, a conk, a schnozz – in short, a large nose. This happened to be a feature of my father’s appearance, along with being very tall, red-headed, and covered with so many freckles that they always looked like they might one day decide to join together.

He was also known as El Langostino.

My parents had already decided to leave the UK and move to somewhere odd, when a family friend suggested Mojácar: a falling-down white village in the forgotten province of Almería with a view of the sea and just the one cheap hotel (60 pesetas a night). They arrived in the summer of 1966, just a few months after the bombs fell from the stricken USAF B-52 over the nearby village of Palomares.

I was at boarding school and didn’t make it over to Spain until the following year.

It's out of print, sadly.

A couple of the people regularly gathered around the tables on the terrace were something to do with the Americans – one of them was rumoured to be in the CIA and another had worked ‘for Uncle Sam’ installing a desalination plant over the site of one of the fallen bombs as a sop towards an outraged Franco (it was quickly dismantled after the Americans left and sold for scrap). The engineer deciding to stay and open the village’s first beach bar.

There were a couple of London wide-boys, a few artists, some gays, an Olympic skier gone to seed, a dance instructress who had been in the French resistance, a Danish fellow with a handlebar moustache who spoke better English than Terry Thomas (who he strongly resembled), an air-vice marshal with a plummy accent, an American draft-dodger (Vietnam), two or three piednoirs (Franco didn’t allow work-permits, but French Algerians were excepted), and a revolving number of others who came and went as circumstances allowed.

If they all enjoyed a few jars, the odd libation, a nip or two, a gargle and a swally, the only sober one at these sessions would be me. I was thirteen when I first came to Mojácar, and I maybe smoked a bit – but I had no interest in booze, and the one time I tried I was sick all over my father.

Smoking though. Everybody smoked. It was so cheap back then – a packet cost between five and twelve pesetas (three to seven cents of a euro) with the only problem being that this was black tobacco, grown I think in Extremadura. Far rougher than Virginia.

Not an issue of course – everyone in those times smoked Ducados or Celtas.

Even Antonio, the moocher.

The hotelier’s son, about my age, grew up as one does and wrote a book a few years ago. It was a homage to those early foreigners who had stayed either in the hotel or slept in the foyer. He kindly called his tome: ‘Mojaqueros de Hecho’ (Francisco Haro Pérez) - The Made Mojaqueros.  

Rain or Shine

It’s been raining a lot recently. I am sure that the ground could do with a good soaking, and the wild-flowers later this month and next will no doubt be spectacular. But for those of us who live under a flat roof (as most of us do in Almería) the first thing after the pitter-patter sound above our heads (unless it’s the cat) is to put out a few buckets in the living room, move the bed a bit to the right and tie a knot in our handkerchief to remember to see about fixing the leaks once the sun returns. 

Or, failing that, before next winter anyway.

We never think much about rain down here in the south, although flooding both on the Costa del Sol and the Costa Blanca can be mortal (229 people died in the Dana in October 2024 in Valencia). Sometimes houses near where I live get inundated, especially in those areas which are listed both as flood-planes and urbanisable by whoever makes these calls. 

My friend Chicho would tell a story of how he was sitting under an umbrella in his lounge watching water dribble through a crack in the window one wet afternoon when the local lagoon breached and a tide of water smashed through the glass and drenched the poor guy.

In most of Spain, a river is a river, or at least a stream. It will fill up when the rains come, maybe overflow and cause damage to the roads and nearby houses; but here in the dry south we don’t have rivers – we have ramblas, which are in effect, huge drains waiting for their moment of glory.

Along comes Storm Francis: Frank to his friends. The various costas are duly flooded and the journalists are to be found, standing in their wellies and speaking into the cameras. It’s the usual television cliché, like when they show snowballers after a good arctic storm.

Right now, I’m home safe, dry and warm. I have a couple of large tins of pork in a German sauce, courtesy of Aldi and my own planning ahead, a bottle of gin and some tea. I’ll be fine. I’m also isolated, surrounded by a lake as our dry river has filled and overflowed into my grateful orchard. The thing about the river-beds is that they can suddenly fill with water as a wave comes from up-stream. It’s not here that the rain needs to be watched, so much us up there. A decent wadi can fill in no time at all.

It will be a couple of days before I can get out and go shopping.

Actually, having written that, I see that I panicked needlessly, and the road is still there.

So: lessons. First of all, build your dream home on a small hill. It’s good for your tubes.

Second, if you are going to have a flat roof (and our local ordinance insists that you must), then make sure it’s leakproof.

Thirdly, buy a couple of those German emergency K-rations – mine are good until 2028.

 

This IA Stuff is Overrated

I didn't realise that I was so distinguished.

At least, according to Meta.

                                 ...

Lenox Napier is a British expat who has spent most of his life in Spain. Here's a brief overview of his background:

- *Early Life*: Born on June 28, 1928, in England, Lenox was raised by his bohemian parents in Norfolk. He attended Radley College and later graduated from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.

(My father would have been three years old when I was born. I went to Rugby school and disappeared to Spain with my parents as soon as I could.) 

- *Military Career*: Lenox had a distinguished military career, serving in the British Army from 1946 to 1983. He saw action in Malaya and was awarded the Military Cross in 1957. He rose through the ranks, becoming a Major-General and holding various commands, including the Berlin Infantry Brigade and General Officer Commanding Wales.

(Thanks, but no thanks.) 

- *Life in Spain*: In 1967, Lenox's parents moved to Mojácar, Almería, Spain, where they opened a bar called La Sartén. Lenox joined them and eventually made Spain his home. He attended an international school in Seville and later became a prominent figure in the expat community.

- *Career*: Lenox founded a newspaper called The Entertainer, which was widely read in the expat community. He also wrote for other publications, including El Indálico, and worked with Cope Mojácar radio.

(More or less.)

- *Activism*: Lenox is known for his advocacy work, particularly through AULAN, an organization that supports small property owners in Spain and fights against corruption and injustice. He has been involved in various campaigns, including protests against the demolition of homes and advocating for the rights of European citizens living in Spain.

(AULAN lasted about five minutes.)

- *Personal Life*: Today, Lenox is a well-known figure in Almería, recognized for his writing, his love of history, gastronomy, and culture, and his commitment to his community. He has been married to Jennifer Dawn Wilson since 1959 and has three children.

(Gastronomy? I'll eat anything. As for Jennifer Dawn Wilson, I wish her and her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren well.) 

Shopping for Food: The Early Days

I’m writing this while sipping on a Marzipan brandy, a slightly peculiar cordial that comes in a tall and skinny bottle from the local Aldi supermarket.

It makes me think of the old days, when one’s Christmas preference was a bottle of El Gaitero, a sweet cider which is sold in a champagne bottle – because the *pop* as the cork is released is an important part of the seasonal celebration.

Also, it was cheap – indeed, it still is.

Good too, even when you’re drinking alone.

Long before they built an Aldi on the other side of the hill from where I’m living, my parents would have to take the cuatro latas (as the Renault 4 was known) along the coast to our market town – Vera – which in the early seventies had opened the area’s first supermarket: Emilio’s – which I was glad to see is still going fifty-three years later. You could wander around and push stuff into your basket: ‘impulse shopping’ had arrived (‘What on earth is this?’, my mother might ask as she eyed something new).

Locally, we had a few groceries. The best known was in the village square: Juana’s place. She ran the shop – you would point at the shelves and say in your best Spanish ‘uno por favor’, continuing until you (and Juana) were content. Later, and Juana would catch on fast to her new market, she nailed a sign outside the store which read ‘Foodings’.

There was a fellow known as Tea-cosy Roger who lived in the back of the village, and one could drop by to ask him to pick up this or that in Almería (an hour and a half away) where he would go on the bus once a week. He always wore a colourful woolly cap obviously knitted by his adoring mum. His front room had a single tin of mock-turtle soup on a shelf to underline his commercial spirit.

Later, a local eccentric called Ian would offer an even more interesting service – driving up now and then to a suburb of Benidorm in his BMW and trailer to pick up British sausages and other goodies, to be mobbed on his triumphant return.

Supplies also arrived by air, as friends flying out from the UK remembered to bring bacon and teabags in their luggage.

A shop in the local port of Garrucha would regularly be talked into ordering strange products by a salesman than only a foreigner could possibly like. Diego would mournfully say as I enthusiastically picked up his final carton of johannisbeersaft, ‘Well, thank God that’s gone, I’m never buying that again’. Next week, he’d have a special on Irish butter biscuits.

For proper meat, my parents would drive down to the nearest decent butcher, a German in Torremolinos. This would take several days for one reason and another.

And thus, we survived. The local milk came in a tall returnable bottle fitted with a metal bottle top (like a beer). It was slightly blue in colour thanks to the added formaldehyde. On the bright side, it never 'went off'. Butter came in a tin from Belgium. Pork, goat, chicken and eggs were easy to find in the local markets. When the fridges began to appear in the shops, we found Spain’s excellent yoghurts and ice-creams – although the milk would take a little longer to arrive, waiting for the twin inventions of UHT and Swedish tetra-brik packaging.

Simple times. One paid in pesetas and got one’s change either in small coins or sweets.

But these days, as our area shyly joins the 21^st Century, we can now lay claim to several small supermarkets and four large ones, including the recently opened Aldi.

They are all playing Christmas music in their stores right now, which sort of explains how I ended up with a bottle of Marzipan brandy.   

Franco Gone These Fifty Years

There’s a Spanish word which has a very special meaning – or had at least, half a century ago – and it sounds odd to British ears: El Generalísimo, which might mean something like ‘the generaliest of all the generals’ practically a (what comes next – a field marshal?).

Anyway, I’m talking about El Caudillo, the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who after forty days and nights in the comfort of the intensive care unit at the Hospital de la Paz in Madrid, finally succumbed to his woes on November 20th these fifty years ago.

Not that you’d think it with all these fascist idiots still running around the city squares half a century on and giving what used to be called a Hitler salute.

There’s a story I like: Franco is in his hospital bed and there’s a crowd outside shouting. Franco – who is losing his facilities by this time – asks the doctor, ‘What are they saying?’ The doctor goes: ‘They’re saying adiós, adiós’.

‘Really?’ says Franco, ‘Where are they all going?’

In those times, Mojácar where I lived with my parents (when I wasn’t travelling somewhere) was a quiet and forgotten village with just a sprinkle of eccentric foreigners.

We never thought about Franco, and the Guardia Civil were chummy enough.

My father used to drop off a case of wine in the police barracks in next-door Turre every Christmas. It never hurts to have friends with silly hats and a pistol.

One day a few years before, back in 1971, the cops had come by on their mopeds and sorrowfully told my father and me that we would have to report to the local lock-up in Vera – a cavernous room under the ayuntamiento – as punishment for sawing down Mojácar’s first billboard, which had been erected by a Corsican fellow who had just opened the pueblo’s first souvenir shop.

He could obviously see which way things were going.

All we had with us was a bottle of Spanish lemonade (filled with vodka), a change of underwear, a couple of Ian Fleming novels and my dad’s radio. He liked to listen to the BBC’s World Service and appeared to be very disappointed when they failed to mention our incarceration.

We spent three days in the clink (I was just seventeen) and were due to face further punishment, but the British ambassador saved the day, and we were forgiven and our names removed from the records.

In Franco’s time, it helped to have un enchufe – a ‘good friend’ – and the ambassador had been to school with my dad. A few words in the right ear…

By 1975, Franco was on his last legs, and word reached us from the far-away outpost of Jávea in Alicante that the Swedes (I may be wrong about this) had decided to have a demonstration of their love and respect for Spain and so held a celebration with the famous, albeit fascist slogan Arriba España, which they had unfortunately translated on a large banner as ‘Up Spain’.

At last, El Caudillo finally died, and Spain entered into strict mourning. The bars were closed for three days, and solemn music was played on the radio and the one TV channel.

My father and some other foreign residents, being appraised of this tender moment in Spain’s history (as above, they found the pueblo’s only bar was unexpectedly shut), decided the thing to do would be to go to mass in our local iglesia and show our respects.

The priest was surprised to see us, as there was (as usual) no one else in Mojácar’s house of worship except a few old girls in black.

As we left, pulling off our neckties (those that still owned one) we found the mayor and a collection of irate locals waiting for us. Y’see, Mojácar had been a communist holdout during the civil war, and consequently, no one was sorry to see the old gangster go to his reward, such as it no doubt was.

‘Oops’, said my dad.

The tension grew until the Mayor Jacinto saved the day. ‘Antonio, go and unlock the bar. The foreigners are thirsty’.

I’m not sure, after all it was exactly fifty years ago, but I think we all drank champagne.

I Always Wear a Seatbelt (I'm wearing one now)

I needed a rag to check the oil on my old banger so I was looking under the kitchen sink for a discarded tee-shirt.

There’s a pile of them down there, maybe my wife thought slinging them under the sink was easier than chucking them in the washing machine. Especially the sillier ones which I appear to have collected over the years.

This one was from some restaurant and had a large black diagonal stripe on it, looking like – if one was driving – a seatbelt. A treasure from back in 1975 when the new law came in.

I took it down to the restaurant to tease them, but it fell apart in my hands. After a mere half a century of neglect plus the work of a few moths: I call it poor quality.

Since I was there, I stayed for lunch.

Had a few drinks with the owner, Juan, and a couple of others.

Driving home (yes, yes, with my seatbelt fastened), I thought I’d take the secret back-route that only I (and a handful of local drunks) are familiar with. It’s a bit bumpy some of it, and I know I need to slow down on a particularly nasty stretch, but I got home safely, while my friend Ángel (not his real name, he’s actually called Eluterio) who took the main road got charged by the cops for driving with his eyes crossed. In Spain the legal limit is 0.5mg of alcohol per ml of blood (they want to drop it to 0.2mg). To compare, in the UK the limit is 0.8mg. I know, they claim Spain is a tourist paradise. Poor Ángel: five hundred euros, (250 if he pays up sharpish) and four points docked from his driving licence.

He’s a changed man these days…

Indeed, we sometimes call him up to be the designated driver. These days, he sits there in the corner twitching gently while playing with his mobile phone looking for the WhatsApp police-control warning page.

One day, they’ll invent self-driving cars and I’ve started a savings jam-jar in the kitchen to be ready. Imagine: ‘Helloo Car, my old mate (hic!), take me home via the liquor-store’.

Up in The Smoke, the traffic-tzar is an old blue-stocking who has been tightening the screws on all aspects of driving for several decades. Right now, as far as he’s concerned, a capful of una clara (beer with lemonade) will pretty much do the trick.  

It’s all right for him though – he has a chauffeur. He can loll around in the back singing some popular number from Manolo Escobar (perhaps his catchy 'Somebody's Stolen my Donkey and his Cart') while the driver grinds his teeth and negotiates the M-30 in the rush-hour.

Mind you, and to make a point – you don’t need to drive ‘under the influence’ or indeed even completely sober for that matter if you live in Madrid or any other city in Spain. They have buses, taxis, trams and metros. You don’t even need to own a car.

And besides, there’s always a bar downstairs. Just use the lift (it’s free) to get home.

No, it’s us country-folk that have to take our lives (and everybody else’s) in our hands every time we go out shopping or to have lunch with a friend… and answer me this – how are the country-restaurants, with their reduced number of clients and their high social security outgoings, expected to make a dollar on their cheap menu del día and a glass of water?

So before you go drinking, always remember to plan ahead for your trip home.

…

My niece, who is a lawyer, tells me I must put a postscript here to say that I created the whole above story out of the cloth of fiction and that I don’t associate with drinkers and indeed I haven’t myself had a drop myself since the English won the World Cup: an admission which (except for the bit about the diagonal tee-shirt) I am happy to do.