Spanish Shilling

Censorship is Greed

2012-01-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

Spain has passed its own Internet copyright law called the 'Ley de Sinde', after apparent heavy pressure from the American embassy, pressed in turn by Hollywood. Oddly, the Ley de Sinde, Sinde's Law, was crafted by the Minister of Culture from the last Government, the PSOE Ángeles González-Sinde, where it was pulled at the last moment by popular opprobrium. The masses, for once, had spoken. Then, as the PP Government took over in December, the socialists' law was quickly switched through Parliament and will be on the books from March. You would think that a Minister for Culture's job would be to support culture, rather than cut it, but there you go - and to Hell with the masses, by the way.
So, the Americans forced through the anti-copy law here in Spain, yet a few weeks later, failed (thanks again to the masses) to do the same thing through their own Congress back in Washington.
The Pirate Bay, a Swedish file-sharing site, recently commented that Hollywood itself was born out of filmmakers moving away from the East Coast, where Edison had just invented the first movie projector, to avoid his patent and to market their own systems.
Well fine. All this becomes the second step in the policing of the Internet in the West. The first was to do with paedophilia (and who is going to argue with that?), now it's about protectionism and later, when we get around to it, it'll be about freedom of speech.
In fact, a ripped-off film may lose someone a few cents, but that someone is either a copyright owner - a rich corporation - or a wealthy participant. The money won't go to the stage-sweep, who might be grateful for it. With music, the trail is even easier. Real musicians do what they do to make music or to make money?
Who gets that money by the way: all competent musicians, or those whose production is manipulated by the companies?
We won't mention the SGAE here - who collect the royalties and sometimes put them to creative use...
Today, a piece of Spanish news about copyright ownership appears, that the family of the writer Valle-Inclán, the Civil War poet who died seventy five years ago, should have the copyright ownership extended by three years because their sugar-ticket didn't receive any rents during the war years. The family has apparently fought ever since over who should get what from the plunder and has even held back some material from the Public view for their own reasons of profit. Should families (or record companies) live from dead authors and musicians?
The other night I saw a film. It came from a friend who had bought it from a market stall. It was an illegal copy. It was also very bad, but that's beside the point. I have three alternatives with such a film: see it and pay, see it for free or not see it. If I pay for it, and it turns out to be bad - can I get my money back? If I see it for free, or I don't see it - is there any material difference to the copyright owner?
For that matter, if I like a CD and play it a hundred times, should I perhaps be paying the record company some more moolah? Can I lend a book to someone without alerting the family of the author?
Now, if I am not going to pay for something, having obtained it for free, then the film or music company will not be taking my shilling, whether I see or listen to it or not. However, since the film from the other evening, 'Mr Popper's Penguins' (truly awful rubbish with Jim Carey), could never be classed as 'culture', there may be a way out here. Put a block on downloading or copying rubbish and leave cultural material alone. Call it 'Censorship on Entertainment' and leave it at that. We could have a 'Ministerio de Entretenimiento' whose job would be to collect our savings and send them to the moguls.
Meanwhile, those who, for monetary considerations, decide against downloading 'Fast and Furious Part V' will have a choice - read a book, download something of value, or watch telebasura.
The certainty is, with all of those clever kids out there equipped with a digital brain and a keyboard, the Internet should remain safe from the lawyers, politicians and bankers who would like to control both it and, of course, us.

The Underground Car-park

2012-01-16T01:22:00.000-08:00

Mojácar is quiet these days - as in 'there's no one open and no one comes to visit' rather than 'it's quiet'. Ever morning, the bangbangbang of the drills wakes up the neighbours at an early hour. The dust rises and the trucks come in and out. This underground car-park for just 37 cars will cost over 1,5 million euros and oblige the pedestrian village to have a drive-through lane past the church. The whole thing should be ready before June's Moors and Christians festival.

The Availability of Books

2012-01-08T02:51:00.000-08:00

Without television (long story), we read a lot at home; either churning through the Internet or staying up with a good book. Years ago, when there really wasn’t a TV option, and satellite watching was still a far-off idea, we would carefully write our names in our stash of well-thumbed novels – spy stories, thrillers, derring doos and bug-eyed-monster books – and lend the best ones to our friends, who would rarely, if ever, return them. Sometimes, I find one of our collection in a jumble sale or on a friend’s shelf.

There isn’t much in the way of book-shops here – and the rare one that opens usually doesn’t last long (there’s a good one called Bookworld in San Pedro that bucks the trend) – so I go along to the local markets now and again to fill up with the reasonably latest used and cast aside thrillers. Mojácar has a Wednesday market with one chap with a good selection in English and a second Sunday flea-market with a few stalls of books of every and any description. Turre has an English language book-stand on Friday market and Albox has a large Saturday flea-market, although I have yet to visit. Otherwise, a few supermarkets – notably SuperTurre - sell a cheap range of new books at five euros, and there are no doubt other places besides.

Perhaps the best choice is to join the Mojácar English Library (bottom floor at the Centro de Artesanía, now confusingly re-named at the Centro de Usos Multiples) which is open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 11.00am until 1.00pm.

Besides these outlets, we have the three fallbacks of Amazon dot com, friends coming out from England (via a good bookshop) or the wonders of electric books with Kindle and so on.

All of these mean I have plenty of books in the house, on shelves, in boxes and trunks and in an unsteady pile beside the bed. Being blessed with a faulty memory, I'm slowly working through the old ones again with the same sense of wonderment and surprise as the last four or five times.

The best book I have read in the past few months is called ‘The City and the City’ by a British author called China Miéville. It’s a murder mystery set in a city populated by two different nationalities that speak their two exclusive languages and walk through their city totally ignoring anyone or anything connected to the other population. They are taught from birth to ‘unsee’ the others as if they didn’t exist and, in the book, few people are able to ‘cross’. Odd, but makes sense. It also reminds me rather of life in Mojácar where many people also ignore the other nationality as if they simply weren’t there. The difference is, the English-speakers here don’t have a Council or an Elder.

Although they do,without doubt, have a better library.

The Day Trip

2011-12-30T23:11:00.000-08:00

The odd things that happen in Spain. Yesterday we went to Almería to pick up two friends and to continue on to the Province’s other big city, El Ejido. Just along from our first destination is a feed store, so we stopped there for a few things, including happening on a clip to hold the dog safely in the car – the police being very keen on stopping you these days if your pet isn’t properly secured.

Next door at the stables, we transferred to Loli’s car, and four of us boarded along with two miniature ponies and a baby sheep that happened to be loitering nearby. The ponies jumped into the rear of the vehicle without much prompting. Noticing my surprise, Loli told me she once went to some children's pet-show with no less than eighteen critters in her buggy, including ponies, tortoises, chickens, rabbits and a slightly bilious coatimundi.

Today, we were off to a party for disabled children given by a physiotherapist called Beatriz, who with Loli and Barbara, makes up the senior members of Animo.

Loli’s vehicle has tinted rear windows, so our load of horseflesh was safe from the public eye, as long as our passengers didn’t neigh too loudly. Unfortunately, one of them was minded to produce ear-splitting whinnies through most of the trip, which included the part where we drove across the city of Almería.

I had the window down (to combat the smell – Dutch ponies can be stinky in confined quarters, especially after breakfast). We arrived at the lights at one point just as another shriek came from somewhere in the rear of the vehicle. A man in the car next to us looked up in horror. All he could see was Loli and me. ‘She’s had this cold for weeks’ I told him gamely ‘nothing seems to shift it’.

It was a good day with the children in El Ejido. We gave them rides on the ponies and told them stories about the sheep, a black and white male that stuck firmly beside Loli during the entire experience, as if his friend could somehow explain what the whole thing was about. A Wise King showed up towards the end of the afternoon and pulled presents out of a sack on the back of one of the ponies. Each child got a calendar decorated with his or her photo (I got one of me posing with our chicken, Maude). Barbara and Loli, co-writers of Manual Básico de la Hípica Terapéutica, both received hard-covered printer’s copies of their book.

Once again wedged into the car and lulled into drowsiness by another sustained chorus of bellows, we returned safely past any and all police check-points to the stables in Almería and, transferring to our vehicle, we continued home, the car full of tomatoes from El Ejido, some grain for our horses and a box of mixture for Maude.

A Stuffed Bull's Head

2011-12-19T05:05:00.000-08:00

The age old problem of 'what to buy someone for Christmas' has just been answered. A stuffed bull's head. These are not just any old bulls, these ones come from the top farms, breeders and some of them even met their ends at the hands of a famous bullfighter! Imagine the jolly stories you can make up as you swirl your glass of wine and ripple your pencil-thin moustache.
When I was around nine or ten, I came to Spain for holidays with my parents. We went to Playa del Haro (as it was comfortably called in those days) and saw a thrilling bullfight in Gerona. I got a large raffia bull's head to crown my experience and it decorated my bedroom in England for the next few years.
I found this flyer at the Sicab horse fair in Seville last month and thought that it would interest those Gentle Readers who don't like raffia. So there you are, your very own genuine stuffed Bull's Head.

The Siege of Mojácar

2011-12-15T21:13:00.000-08:00

It seems that this retablo, showing 'el asedio de Mojácar', is in Toledo. The wooden carving was made by Rodrigo Alemán (1470-1542) and the picture is part of a new collection of historical photographs held by the Ministerio de Cultura and the Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España. The 'search page' is here.
Mojácar was attacked in 1488 as part of the final surge against the Moor. The fortified town either gave in after an agreement between the alcaide and the Christian leader that they would all get along peacefully (the disneyesque version suggested by a plinth at the fuente) or the more historically accepted version is that the whole town was put to the sword and repopulated by 400 properly Christian Spaniards from Lorca.

A slightly neglected copy of the retablo, made in 2004, is affixed to the back of the Mojácar church.

All This?

2011-12-13T05:49:00.000-08:00

All this for 37 cars? That's not someone who cares for Mojácar.

Banco de Sabadell

2011-12-10T13:00:00.000-08:00

Full marks to the Banco de Sabadell. I know that they are merely after our savings, but it's not often that you see an acknowledgement towards the foreigners who are living here full-time rather than those who are enjoying a short holiday here (and yet seem worthy of the spending of millions of euros in their pursuit). Tourists, you see, have no reason to be loyal. They'll take their next holiday somewhere else.
As the bank manager knows, there is a huge amount of money being pumped into Spain by those foreign settlers. There would be a lot more if the politicians woke up.

The Nice Picture from Carboneras

2011-12-10T01:20:00.000-08:00

There you are, leafing through the various catalogues, magazines, webpages and so on, in search of that vital holiday: as guaranteed by the State and your Employer both. Hard work for fifty weeks means a fortnight of some rest and relaxation to compensate. Where to go?
There are the tried and true holiday destinations, where you pretty much know what to expect, having perhaps been there before, or from hearing reports from your work-mates. There are farther away resorts, with new and cheaper offers: well, why not?
There are new places as well, perhaps more exciting, or adventurous... and won't those same work-mates be jealous when they hear about your discovery?
So, Carboneras. It's a small fishing port in Almería, just along from Mojácar. It has some good and cheap fish restaurants and a castle. There's an attractive bay and some famously wild nudist beaches. The tiny and pretty village of Aguamarga is just next door. Carboneras also has, as you can see from the picture, a splendidly odd sculpture cum farmhouse, built in the early sixties by a Belgian who ended up being eaten by a tiger in Bengal.
But here's the thing. The Carboneras Tourist Board has to work with what it's got, which in this case is the most polluting power station in Spain (according to the European Environment agency) which, by the way, was cropped from the above photograph. The massive plant, accompanied by another behemoth, the Holcim cement factory, are within scant metres of the above oddity - jus' saying. The town is also known for the Hotel Algarrobico, an unfinished 22 storey hotel where completion was put on hold several years ago by the Ministry of the Environment because it was built both too close to the sea and also in a national park, breaking two planning laws in the event. However, with politics, inertia and a whopping demolition bill, no one has actually got around to knocking it down.
Carboneras isn't a bad place, the food is good and the people seem nice, but is it really the best choice for a holiday? Perhaps not.

This Beats Garden Gnomes

2011-12-03T23:57:00.000-08:00

So, what's this? A mansion in El Ejido, the Almería city famous for its farming under plastic and opulent wealth. The owner of this tasteful looking house, in a clear homage to the past, has seen fit to decorate his garden with a selection of mechanical hardware, including an old Moto Guzzi 98cc with a stick shift hanging from some chains, an antique 1950's Citroen stood on a plinth, and just inside the garden, to the right, an artillery piece. Is that a bit of a airplane disappearing around the corner? One day, I'd like to see inside the house!

Spanish Invention

2011-11-28T09:41:00.000-08:00

You probably knew that the submarine is a Spanish invention. There is an early example raised on the port in Cartagena. Designed and built by a local engineer called Isaac Peral in Cadiz in 1887, it ran on electric current. The earliest Spanish submarine, however, was built by a Catalonian called Narcis Monturiol and ran manually. For (presumably) rather short distances. A later version ran on steam.
But Spain has invented many other useful gadgets (a friend of mine here in Mojácar lives comfortably off a garlic peeler he came up with a few years ago).
The Autogiro being one such (or so I read here). This was a variation on the helicopter, with stubby rear wings and a forward propeller. A large free-spinning propeller pointing upwards kept the thing (more or less) in the air. A British version called 'The Flying Bedstead' used to putter loudly over our garden when I was a child in Norfolk. The autogiro was developed by Juan de la Cierva in the nineteen twenties. Another useful invention, the arquebus, comes from Spain, although Wikipedia appears to disagree, suggesting Hungary instead. Better luck, perhaps, with the easy-to-assemble Molotov cocktail, which was first used by the Republicans during the Civil War before finding its way to the Finnish resistance to the Russian invasion of 1939.
More peaceful inventions include the famous Chupa Chup, the gob-stopper on a stick, introduced by Enric Bernat in 1958. I know that he sells a lot of them to the Chinese and Kojak used to swear by them when solving crimes. Chupa Chups are often used to wean one off another Spanish invention, The cigarette. This was manufactured originally by Seville beggars, who would roll odd bits of tobacco collected from the cigar makers into tubes made from rice paper. The first commercial cigarettes in a packet appeared in 1825 and where commercially named as 'Cigarrillos Superiores' in 1833. They didn't carry health warnings in those days.
The fregona is a fine Spanish invention. I've no idea what it's called in English, but it is a sponge on a stick used for washing floors. It comes from a airman called Manuel Jalón Corominas, introduced in 1956. Another, the pencil-sharpener, dates from 1945 from the workshop of Ignacio Urresti. Then, two partners called Juan Solozábal and Juan Olive came up with the stapler in around 1930.
Finally, according to the comments that follow the Spanish original (an article which promises more inventions in a second part), much of the above is erroneous.
Now they tell us!

The Underground Carpark

2011-11-26T02:09:00.000-08:00

For those readers who haven't been up to Mojácar village recently - either because they live in California, Coventry or Kiev - or because they don't fancy a short drive up from the beach, here's how the famous dig is coming along. The picture comes from upstairs at the Town Hall's urbanismo building. The church is on the left and there's a narrow string of slightly worried shops and bars running along the top of the picture. Will it all be ready for Easter?

Quality Tourism

2011-11-25T22:18:00.000-08:00

As the Mojácar Town Hall wonders how much to budget for the Madrid tourist Fair in January - the Fitur - I would like to suggest a few things which might be done to attract visitors (and package-tour trippers, for what they're worth to the local economy), all without breaking the bank.
A sign on the motorway exit to start with, similar (for example) to the one off Puerto Lumbreras (Ciudad de Alfarería) or the nifty models - rather mistreated these days - outside Nijar. According to a study made in a tourist destination in Cadiz somewhere, about 10% of the tourist traffic that arrived off the motorway was impulse-driven. How much would a sign cost?
Jacinto Alarcón, our old mayor, once recommended visitors 'to summer your winter in Mojácar'. The point is, the small and inadequate infrastructure in Mojácar is full during the summer and yet it is completely empty during the rest of the year when Mojácar, thanks to its extraordinary micro-climate, is extremely comfortable. That's a season to promote... and it would be directed to people willing to listen.
Make the pedestrian entrance to Mojácar near to where the cars are parked. Three hundred metres walk to the Plaza Nueva and another three hundred metres back...? Along a narrow road with a miserable pavement...? Put an elevator up to the back square and make it - now that we are building there anyway - into something attractive and vehicle free (dentro de lo que cabe).
Support up-market hotels, like the Parador, where the clients have money to spend, rather than run-down tripper hotels, whose agenda is to cut every corner, while encouraging their guests to stay within the walls.
Encourage foreign retirees to buy in Mojácar - they will be bringing in large sums of money and spending all year long. Stop treating those foreigners, now local residents in good faith, as pariahs: allow them a bowling green if they want one (no one here plays padel tennis). Perhaps celebrate 'International Day' like they do in the Costa Blanca and the Costa del Sol instead of the just-mojaquero-days like the Romería and the Día de la Virgen. Mojácar's reputation could improve.
A silly thing perhaps, but maybe a street name to honour the foreigners who, between them, brought this town back from absolute poverty? We don't have any Calle Fritz Mooney, Plaza Paul Becket or Avenida Bill Napier. In fact, while there are Calles de Rumanía, Francia, Suecia, Dinamarca etc... there isn't one honouring Inglaterra or Reino Unido. We are 50% of the population you know.
The sign in the photograph is good, isn't it? It comes from Granada and doesn't have any mistakes in the English. It's as if... they asked someone to check the spelling.

Rosmari's Carpark III

2011-11-17T03:16:00.001-08:00

Work has started to speed up a bit, some fifty days into the project. Soft 'fill' is being taken out of the upper side of the square. Already one unsuspected water pipe has burst. One can see the church with its protection and the metal chapa that surrounds the entire square. The best viewpoints being either from the upstairs of the Town Hall's urbanísmo department (above the Tourist Office) or from a handy stump outside the Vientos del Desierto restaurant. The leader of the Moros Viejos, the founding club from the 'Moors and Christians' festival held each June, has expressed his dismay in the speed of the obra to the mayoress, Rosmari Cano in a letter delivered recently.

Rosmari's Parking II

2011-11-09T11:41:00.001-08:00

I was in the pueblo this evening for a look around and a drink. The two squares are now one, with our old house and the 'schoolmaster's house' demolished. As things stand, it's quite nice, although, with the high metal fence (to stop us seeing any rare artifact from the past two thousand years...?), the view is pretty limited. The church has a lona (a canvas cover) to protect it and rumours are about that the floor is already giving way. At La Sarten, the local foreigners are enjoying 'quiz night'. Some questions, however, remain best unanswered.

The Lavatory Bar

2011-11-06T02:11:00.001-08:00

In the old days, before the passing of Franco, the bars closed at 1.00am. Most of them no doubt closed a lot earlier, right after the black and white football game on the telly ended, but the bars in the tourist towns at least, would remain open for the boozy foreigners until the bell went. By the late sixties, prices for a gin and tonic had crept up to fourteen pesetas, and a beer cost anything up to a duro – five pesetas. Our town lush, Old Antonio, would patrol the bars in Mojácar on the look out for a drink, looking more and more dishevelled after each invitación. ‘Rubio, dame un duro’, he’d whine.

The local bars were dressed in simple stone, marble, slate, tiles and plaster. There might be a calendar for decoration, the obligatory shelf of bottles, Green Fish gin and so on, perhaps a TV or a radio or a juke box – or with luck, all three. Noise was the keynote of a good bar, with the walls rebounding the sound and lifting it on high.

The few foreign bars would be decorated with paintings from local artists (who always attempted to drink for free) and would have the lights on low. Music came from a record player.

By 1.00am, those who wished to continue with the business of drinking would move to our solitary discothèque, run by Felipe, a Frenchman from Casablanca. Felipe would charge a little more for a cubata, the generic name for a mixed drink, but he had a disk jockey and a dance floor. At 2.00am, according to the rules, he’d close the door and pretend to be shut while we finished our drinks.

This could take some time, as the next legal establishment, the Fisherman’s Bar in nearby Garrucha, didn’t open until three.

In those days, the local Guardia Civil had to provide their own transport, which would generally be an old moped. They wouldn’t bother hiding behind a road-sign to catch the occasional drunk driver – they couldn’t stop you without ‘probable cause’ anyway. At best, they might be in the village watching the small car-park and helping drivers reverse safely out of their space and away down the hill.

The trip to Garrucha took about fifteen minutes and included a drive through the dust, ruts, or puddles, depending on the season, of the floor of the riverbed, the oddly named ‘Rio de Aguas’ that, in those days, more or less divided the two towns geographically.

Garrucha High Street was and remains, a narrow and ugly road that flows straight through the fishing village and away towards Vera and civilization to the north. In those times, it was a two-way street. Half way down it was the Bar Bichito, a bar with a special licence to open at 3.00am for the fishermen to have an early morning carajillo, a black coffee and brandy. This particular mixture always seemed like a good idea to the inebriates from Mojácar who would order a round as a song began to bubble up from within them.

Hitherto, the drinking had been reasonably quiet, with the music taking the strain, but in the Bichito, fetchingly designed in white tile throughout and known to the foreigners as ‘The Lavatory Bar’, there was no music and entertainment had to be found elsewhere. The bar made ordinary local bars of the times look positively attractive. The door was on the end and opened into a narrow bar which stretched along in a small 'el' shape parallel to the street. There were two small tables and a few chairs just inside the door, and, if feeling faint, one could always sit outside on the curb. Otherwise, we stood at the chest-high bar (or even higher for some of the vertically challenged local fishermen), blinded by the bright lights and namesake decor and watched, between songs, as Pedro man-handled his one-spout Italian coffee machine. The toilet facilities, a throne with a long drop, were through the back and doubled as a storage room for the beer and soft drinks.

The fishermen and the old municipal cop would look on in a friendly way as the small group of plastered Britons, French, Germans and Americans, depending on the draw, would start on their lengthy repertoire. A family favourite of ours was ‘I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now’ (an old song immortalised in the late sixties by the New Vaudeville Band) followed, perhaps, by the popular drunken bawl ‘I’ve Got Sixpence’ or perhaps ‘Bless Em All’. A cockney couple, Pat and Tony Farr, had taught us a number of songs, such as ‘I’m One of the Ruins that Cromwell Knocked Abaht a Bit’ or ‘I’m Henry the Eighth I Am’ and so on.

More carajillos as Pedro, face pitted with acne, would tell everyone to hsss, to be quiet. People are trying to sleep (apparently).

Things could only get worse as the Rugby Songs were unleashed. Rugby Songs are England’s answer to folk music and run along the lines of ‘My Little Sister Lily’ or ‘They Were Tattered, They Were Torn…’ with lots of lines ending in –uck and so on. Curiously, many of them are set to opera music, which gives the performers a chance to really crank out the key words with enthusiasm. At times, even the extranjeros can be loud.

The ride home was always uneventful I’m sorry to report. No accidents or arrests. But those were different times. Cheap, basic and fun.

Rosmari's Underground Parking (update)

2011-11-06T01:18:00.000-07:00

Apart from the hive of activity that is Bartolo's nick-nack shop, the cigarette shop and the lotería (we never close), the village of Mojácar is dead this windy Sunday morning. Up by the Church, the Mayoress' plan for an underground car-park totters on, slowly. As the pictures show, nothing much has been accomplished so far, beyond removing the parked cars from the two upper squares and closing off the entire area with 'chapa'. One section of this stamped metal has ceded under the heavy wind, blocking off the narrow run into Liberio's house. Liberio the Carpenter is not amused. 'Will this crap be finished by Easter?' I ask him. 'Maybe the following one' he says.
LATER: apparently, on Monday 7th November, work started on the demolition of the two houses centred in the photos. The one on the left, originally built as two apartments, was our first home in Mojácar in 1966.

Welcome Home

2011-11-02T21:50:00.000-07:00

One of our oldest residents decided in May to return to England. She had lived abroad since the fifties, first for many years in Tangiers, and later here in Mojácar. Her house is a beautiful home bathed in light and our friend is always full of cheer and warmth. Sometimes there were parties around her pool - a chance to catch up with some of the older residents who don't 'get out much'.
Family pressures obliged her to move to a nice country retreat near Brighton, and it was with a mixture of surprise and pleasure that I heard her voice on the phone a few days ago. 'I'm back', she said. 'No more England for me'.
It seems that she had missed her home and her friends and, despite being 93 years old, she is back here 'for good'. With so many people leaving - or wishing they could leave - it is great to see what must be our oldest resident back amongst us.
Another small garden party yesterday. Tapas, wine and some good laughs. I think that all of us present felt both pleased that she had returned, and in some way, we felt confident that we too will stay.

Horses

2011-10-26T02:14:00.000-07:00

We went to see some horses yesterday, at a large lettuce farm between Cuevas and Pulpí. I know the owner from years back and he has - besides any number of thousands of hectares of lettuce - around a dozen Pura Raza Española horses and a donkey. Barbara, who has a blog about horses and riding therapy at Animo, rode a beautiful nine year old mare around the ring, bareback as usual.

A Day in Granada, with Friends

2011-10-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Barbara is now getting the Animo work with hippotherapy going again, and we now have a new therapy horse here in Mojácar (see Animo) . As a small part of this, we went to Granada yesterday to meet a Japanese friend who works in a similar field at the Tokyo University. Aki speaks some English, and his uncle, here on the left of the photo, speaks a bit of Spanish as part of his studies into Flamenco. So, as they had a spare day or two before returning to Madrid (and on to Vienna), the three of them (that's Student Nim in the middle) were able to spend some time with us - which, ineviatably, included a visit to the caves of the Sacromonte to see some real Flamenco.

AECC

2011-10-16T11:16:00.000-07:00

A large group of people turned out today for a walk from Mojácar Pueblo down to the Hotel El Puntazo to support the Spanish cancer association. Among them was our mare Cuqui. You can meet her over at Animo.

The Mojácar Square

2011-10-10T23:17:00.000-07:00

This is the square in the old part of Mojácar that is being made-over as an underground car-park. In the picture, taken last Thursday, the square is, for once, without any cars. It looks rather better than usual. Will it look like this (smarter and so on, but similarly spacey) after the work has finished... sometime next Spring?

One must hope for the best, while recognising that our ayuntamiento and its alcaldes have never managed to improve the pueblo in thirty years of attempts (atentados, a good mis-translation) . Much has been written elsewhere about this project (the estación de metro) which has the unqualified support of the local Partido Popular: members, supporters and honorary Romanian Glee-clubbers; with the horrified resistance from everyone else, including those who chose to live in Mojácar because of its beauty, magic and appeal.

Still, they had their chance in the local elections last May.

The house on the right of the picture, with a whimsical no-parking sign in front of it, was our old house, bought new off a very young Juan García in 1966 for the peseta equivalent of 540 euros: two apartments, upstairs and down. I stayed upstairs for the school holidays while my parents were there full-time. Downstairs, a Frenchman called Michel rented for 18 euros a month, which he could rarely afford, preferring to bring along a melon on the first of the month and then stay for dinner.

We eventually sold the place to Joan Noble (an artist type with hair died a fetching shade of blue) and she lived upstairs and rented out the downstairs to a succession of restaurants and bars. The town hall was the final buyer, buying it earlier this year for a fortune, so as to have clear title to knock it down (a figure not reflected in the latest budget for the final tally of the underground car-park).

Behind the now demolished block, is a flash of brickwork. This is the relic from the same Juan García's demolition, as mayor, of an old ruined house there which was built over a narrow street-tunnel - the famous Arco de Luciana, known in English as Lucinda's Arch. Lucy was a Mojácar girl who fell for a Christian prince who died in battle in 1488. She promptly threw herself to her death (or perhaps tripped over the entrance to the tunnel, built in around 1890). Never mind - it was pretty and attracted tourists with their cameras.

After Juan idly had it knocked down, a succession of mayors promised to replace it. Salvador, Carlos, Gabriel and Rosmari. None of them ever did - or ever will. Even - and here's a thought - by putting it somewhere else. Luciana wouldn't mind.

So, as work begins on the upper square, dooming the casco viejo to an eternity as a non-pedestrian village, the mayoress admits in a sparsely attended pleno (there were four of us), that she doesn't like the final plans for the square's embellishments either: stone sails to soar above the streets.

Food and Some Sex

2011-09-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

At the risk of being thought a bit smutty - here's a picture of a poorly-named restaurant - or maybe 'snack-house' might be better - which adjoins onto our local knock-shop, the Hotel Argar on the outskirts (damn, I'm doing it again) of Vera.

The delightful name of this establishment, clearly readable on the photograph, means in Spanish of course 'Eat, Eat'.

But, what is on the fare this evening (after a strenuous session next door)? I don't know what you're having, but I'm winding up my meal with a brandy and, as a special treat, a piece of the tarta de la casa.

Mojácar the Beautiful

2011-09-28T01:01:00.000-07:00

Ah - the beauty of Mojácar - sadly beaten down over the years by the speculators and the ignorant, but still a place to enjoy. Here is the magnificent 'Mojácar la Vieja' mountain with an old cortijo in front. A simply stunning... no, wait, hold on... some fucking idiot has gone and painted some crap all over the ruin.

To Horse!

2011-09-21T23:55:00.000-07:00

That's me riding bareback on a hispano bretonés being led by Trini, a trainer from Barcelona who is here with us for a few days. Trini has brought down two of these enormous and placid horses for Barbara to work with. You'll find more about this at Barbara's site Animo where she writes about therapy horses.

For Life

2011-09-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

It all started, innocently enough, with imitators of servicemen wearing a tattoo on their arm, while some young tourists, inspired by seeing Indian women wearing a small stud in their noses, deciding to do the same. Tattoos and piercing slowly became a queasy but moderately fashionable idea, with young men sporting a modest earring or two and – generally speaking – society’s less-attractive girls found themselves considering a small tattoo on an intimate part of their body, or a ring through their nose or, worse still, their lip. At least the ring could be removed later, probably without leaving a mark.
The first non-regulation tattoo, you might say, that I ever heard of was worn by Erna, an old Danish woman who had been in the French Resistance. She was connected to a group called Les Papillons, and she had a tattoo of that brave collective, put on I hope after the war, high on an inside leg.
Around the same time as Erna, who had merely intended to drive to Lyon but, according to her, had missed the turn-off and not possessing a reverse gear in her ancient Renault, arrived in a cloud of steam in Mojácar, another old-timer called Benjamin Rappaport bought a house here. He too had a wartime memento, this one a number tattooed on his arm in some camp by the Nazis. Later, Sammy, an American pansy, arrived in Mojácar and opened a bar. He had a few blued and faded scrawls on his arms, and in his ear, an ear-ring.
For a while, Mojácar slept in peace. There was a girl with a stud in her nose called ‘Golden Snot’ who caused a small sensation in the eighties, but, in women, piercings and ‘tramp stamps’ were rare and generally un-admired.
But here we come to it: small tattoos and moderate piercing came to the attention of trend-setters, who these days are usually either film stars or football personalities, neither group known for either their intelligence or their humility. Small and coy became large and obvious; self-mutilation became suddenly fashionable.
Tattoos feed on being evident. Their owners choose their site for their visibility, and like to wear a reduced amount of clothing to show off their vanities. Some of these will be tattoos on their neck or forehead, or heavy ear-stretchers, rendering them entirely unemployable. Others, if one is to believe the hype, will have clitoral or penile piercings leaving their friends with the uncomfortable recollection of the story of the two young lovers with dental braces who, in a simpler age, got locked together while kissing.
Some people chose messages in Arabic or Chinese to tattoo across their chest or emblazon on their neck, which may or may not say ‘peace’ in those languages. In fact, they generally say ‘cretin’. Others list their children’s names – or the names of their lovers.
A girl I know has a number of different tattoos, pictures, designs and words inked into her epidermis by a high-speed needle. They hurt, but, she says, there’s a kind of ‘high’ in getting them done. ‘You want more’, she admits.
And in every town, there’s some guy with his equipment, ready to mark you up – for better or for worse – for ever. And with him, his assistant who will pierce your tongue, neck, nose, septum, lip, breast or privates. You may get an infection, but it’ll be worth it. Brad and Angelina both have them.
So, I feel sad for the girls, who have been peer-pressured into having a small ‘thing’ tattooed on their left shoulder, denying them a chance to wear a pretty dress.
For life.

Fond Memories

2011-09-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

Going through all the boxes of photographs, we found this one of our son, Daniel, when he was little, posing with a donkey apparently called Bella. For some reason, there was always a number of animals in or around our house (we even have a lavatory still known as 'The Pig's Bathroom'): dogs, cats, tortoises, donkeys, wild boar, chameleons, horses, mules, ducks, chickens, peacocks, pigs, guinea pigs and rabbits. What with attrition, disease and the passing of the years, most of them have now moved on to their Reward.

And there comes a small fear of mine. When I, too, pass off this mortal coil to a Better Place, I can't help but imagine a misty empty field somewhere, a tree or two, perhaps the spirits of a few loved ones close to me... and then, with a drumming of mighty hooves, a hundred, a thousand critters will breast the far-off hill and run towards me, hooting, honking, barking and screeching, mostly (I hope) with a fond look in their eye as I try, against all odds, to remember their names.

Muammar Qadhafi

2011-09-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

From the Washington Post; a full-page advert from Wednesday, October 22, 1980. For some reason, I have this stashed away. Not much to do with Spain (despite his properties in Benhavís, Marbella), but maybe of historical interest. Consider: Carter and Reagan and their times have long passed, but a dictator like Gaddafi managed to last rather a longer time (he seized power in 1969). Camping in a truly provocative way with his tent in the Downing Street and Rose gardens... and the Western rulers kissed his hand.

It's worth reading - Gaddafi makes some good points. I'm not an apologist, but doesn't his country have rather a lot of oil?

Bédar 1966

2011-08-21T02:24:00.001-07:00

Bédar is a small white village in the high hills of the Sierra de los Filabres, overlooking the wide plain of Los Gallardos, Antas and Turre which is rimmed on the other side by the concurrence of a few descending mountains, the final one covered by the white cubed houses of Mojácar, with the Mediterranean Sea beyond. Bédar was a mining village, peopled in its day by the Moors, and re-discovered by the British in the 1880s when they set about opening up a number of hills between Águilas and Bédar looking for iron, copper, silver and other minerals.

By 1966, when we drove up the dusty track to the cracked and sun-bleached village, overlooking the empty mining buildings abandoned forty years before, there was just a few people left, hanging on with some small agricultural work or merely abandoned and living on smaller pensions while their lungs slowly subsided under the ravages of emphysema.

There was just the one bar, run by Pedro, an old man with a large chin who shuffled about in his carpet slippers and spoke a few words of broken English. That first time my parents and I went up there and had lunch, a paella possibly spiced with cat, washed down by glasses of Green Fish (a popular kind of Spanish gin, made in Murcia) with warm Fanta orange. The mayor happened by and, as far as my father could make out, introduced him to his hermano who may have sold him a line of village houses for 60 pounds. ‘I’ve either bought a house off somebody called Herman,’ my father admitted to his friends in Mojácar later that day, ‘or I had a very expensive lunch in that village up there’, gesturing vaguely towards the hills.

There were a few foreigners living in Bédar at the time, including a Dutchman and his Moroccan wife. The Dutchman collared my father the next time he braved the dusty track up to the small village. ‘You don’t want to live in this place’, he said, ‘there’s this mad Dutchman who has a house here and doesn’t like Englishmen’. ‘How interesting’, said my father, ordering another round of gin, ‘and what a curious accent. Where are you from?’

An elderly British poet called John Roberts lived in a house around the back of the village, in an area known as the Gypsy Quarter, with his mother. At the time of buying his place, he had neglected to buy off all of the family owners, inheritors in equal parts from some old miner, long taken to his reward. This meant that Roberts shared his house not only with his mum, long time suffering from dementia, but with a truculent couple who weren’t clear if they were gypsies or not, but knew that they didn’t like foreigners.

Howard the American hippie lived in the surviving wing of a ruin further round to the left. He smoked dope and lived off provisions he obtained from friends close to the American Forces PX in Madrid. He certainly carried a better brand of gin in his kitchen.

A British couple, retired as I remember from a rubber plantation in Malaya, lived somewhere below Pedro’s bar. The Rawlins said that they liked the tranquillity and the views. Mr Rawlins painted this picture of the church seen from the east (our three ruined houses were just out of view on the right) and gave it to my father with the following message written on the back:

‘To my friend Bill Napier, on the occasion of his birthday, 20 January 1969. B.R.’

For Jack

Mojácar Editorialised

2011-08-18T03:07:00.001-07:00

Having struggled through the highlights of the Sol Times and the Weenie, I was just preparing to leave the café when the distributor for the local Spanish freebie 'Actualidad Almanzora' showed up. Not as many pages as the other two, but at least the articles are generally interesting (and always about local issues, with no regurgitated news, waffle or tripe).

The page three opinion piece by Savaronola is always worth reading. It's a proper article rather than fifty words lifted from the Daily Mail and this issue deals with Mojácar's woeful attempt at tourism. I'm going to paraphrase his thrust below:

Mayor Jacinto started the ball rolling in the mid sixties with 'residential tourism', where people buy a house, fix it up, buy a car, kitchen goods, furniture, and then keep the local bars and shops busy the year round. This brings in continuous funds to the community and also - to stretch a point - brings in a certain amount of civic pride. The new residents want gardens, clean streets and some culture: theatre, concerts, exhibitions and so on.

But, warns Savaronola, in Mojácar, a few local people, uncultured but drowning in greed, looked for short-term profit and, having wrestled control of the town hall, they soon changed the town's direction towards apartment building (higher profits, although lower full-time occupancy), multiple 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' hotels and a savage drop in the area's reputation abroad. They got their stash ok, those few - giving Mojácar the distinction of having the highest per capita wealth in the whole of Andalucía - if rather unevenly divided, but they never bothered much with improving their knowledge and culture.

Which is why we have padel-tennis competitions, a white-elephant football stadium, hotels at 32 euros with bed and three meals in the middle of August, several dying or dead hotels reduced to hulks (Moresco for example), overflowing sewage systems vented into the sea, and a reputation across Spain for botellónes and stag night parties.

Unsurprisingly, Jacinto's dream (he got us a Parador Hotel) has been betrayed by smaller men.

The editorial compares Mojácar to some other small coastal wonders, like Positano, Capri, Portofino, La Rochelle, Dubrovnik, Santorini, Rhodes and so on, all towns where there is no 'crisis' to worry about, and laments that we were herded into a crashed and ruined Mad Max film-set instead.

So, as we continue to allow our leaders to betray us, with the casco viejo of Mojácar as the next victim, we can turn away our faces from culture, civic pride and harmony, and simply try to sell-up before the whole place collapses in shame and despondency.

When those few miserable mojaqueros, the ones who ruined this area simply to stuff their mattresses with oodles of cash, come to buy our houses and businesses at 10c in the dollar, and we are all cut loose again, where on earth will we go?

Strong stuff? You should read the original!

Pizza in the Pueblo

2011-08-17T10:55:00.001-07:00

We had dinner in the Pulcinella the other night: four adults and two small kids. Basic spaghetti and pizza. The roof-terrace was packed and business must be good. They have a chap down in the street who approaches you as you arrive in the Plaza Nueva to send you upstairs. They also have a large sign in Spanish overlooking the Square, with a second, roughly translated into English. It would more likely read: 'Presented at the European Pizza Championships' (rather than submitted by).

Like many businesses here, they may not wish to consider employing a Briton for their occasional English posters and menus, but they seem happy enough when the shoe is on the other foot.

Making an Entrance

2011-08-09T15:39:00.000-07:00

Here's the thing. When you have parked your car in the 'Campo de Fútbol', you must then walk up the Avenida de Paris to get to the centre of Mojácar. You will be sharing this narrow bit of pavement with everybody else, coming and going.

It's not quite one metre wide.

Plague

2011-08-06T01:38:00.000-07:00

In our small corner of enchantment, we are accustomed to occasional swells and troughs in the local population of varmints. An English-language newspaper recently mentioned the plague of flies which had swarmed out of nowhere, covering the outside in unbelievable numbers. Yet, by the time the report came out, the mass of flies had gone, returning to the usual status quo, which is a nuisance rather than a serious bother. Where did they all go to? Unlike the Chinese, who were reputedly told to kill a hundred a day, no doubt on pain of having their own wings pulled off, we manage to avoid keeping tally, relying on an aerosol spray to do the job.

I once bought a trap for flies, a plastic pack crowned with a hook and a cardboard landing area and with a small lump of damp rhinoceros shit secreted in the bowels of the package. A sure-fly success with the moscas. Within days I had about a kilo of dead and rotting flies in my swollen bag, hanging in the arbour. I had to bury the whole stinking mess at the bottom of the garden. A few grasshoppers came along to mourn.

One summer we have a plague of mosquitoes; another time – as this year – there don’t seem to be any. We may have locusts, a plague of them stripped Mojácar in 1906 causing a catastrophic famine here, or it may be a simple swelling in the population of fleas, or scorpions, or mice. This comes about either because the particular thing which eats them happens to be in a decline that year, or because the particular thing which the plague eats, happens to be in abundance. Nature will eventually balance things out, saving the environmentalists or the household bottle of insecticide the trouble. Our current problem with the palm tree beetle is that, because it comes from foreign parts, there is no local creature that likes to snack on it. Give it time.

At the moment, in our neighbourhood, we are troubled by ants. They are those little ones which like sweet things and, as we found out yesterday, they have a particular regard for Sugar Puffs. A long line of them crossed the floor of the kitchen, headed for the larder. Meanwhile, a rather more obvious line of pieces of cereal was jauntily marching along the other way, out the door and down a hole on the terrace.

We are also currently blessed with woodlice: also apparently known as ‘roly polies’. The Spanish ones are nevertheless rarely able to roll into a ball, and prefer to lie on their backs with all of their legs waving futilely in the air as they wait for someone, unknowingly, to pass by and grant them release from this vale of tears. ‘Crunch, crunch yuck!’ as one of the kids said with disgust last time we had the problem with this particularly pointless pest, around twenty-five years ago.

But plagues are always a short-term problem, controlled by the natural rhythm of the seasons. With a little patience on our part, we know that even the tourists will soon be gone and we will once again be able to enjoy our evenings without being obliged to wear some repellent.

Miguel Angel Gallery

2011-07-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

My picture shows Félix Clemente Gerez, currently exhibiting at the Miguel Angel Gallery on Mojácar Playa, posing with visiting American artist Lynette Lombard. The exhibition continues through August 30th and is of a very high quality.

Sex Talk

2011-07-23T03:18:00.001-07:00

In a country like Spain, where there are brothels on the outskirts of most towns - large bars or hotels with names like ‘Club Los Angeles’ decorated outside with bright coloured lights, sex is no big deal. So, the girls inside might be drugged and under a 24-hour watch. They’ll have their passports kept by the brothel owners and they will have to perform a number of times a day to pay for their room. The police will not usually intercede and the city fathers – as often as not enthusiastic customers during the early evening – will turn a blind eye.

Almería is said to have over a hundred of these jolly clubs, with one of the nearest for Mojácar party-goers located on the outskirts of Vera slap-bang next to a snack bar with the rather unfortunate name of ‘Come, Come’ (it means ‘Eat, Eat’ in Spanish, nothing tawdry here. Move on people). Actually, there are some puticlubs nearer to home, usually apartments or villas hired by strange people from foreign parts, who, now and again, get arrested or deported.

The usual brothel has a number of girls floating around, in various stages of dishabille, bothering or chatting you up (you decide) as you order an overpriced drink from the waiter and nod politely at the mayor sat on the next barstool but one. In fact, many Spaniards use these larger places more for a ‘slap and tickle’ than a fully fledged ‘poke, rattle and roll’ upstairs for a reasonable price (it used to be sixty euros plus a shilling for the maid, last time I asked).

Sex used to be dodgy in the old days of Franco, although Spain has always had its cat houses and its putas. Now, of course, most of the fallen women are foreigners, particularly Romanians (the government has just taken away their rights to get any more honest work) and South Americans. Well, everybody likes something a little bit different.

We have sex workers, tarts or what have you; boys in hot pants and transvestites too; all cruising up and down the streets in certain areas, or in the town park, or on the highway. Now the Catalonians want them to wear fluorescent jackets so as not to be run over. That will be fun – makes them easier to spot, anyway.

Sex is also in evidence in shops and petrol stations, where the XXX videos are on the shelf next to the sales-clerk (and often next to a sellotaped picture of the girl with her boyfriend smiling innocently at the camera). How on earth do you sell those things, I asked the girl at the Mojácar gas station. Well, we have a number of customers who don’t want to miss any on them, she laughed.

The videos are frank and extremely self evident. ‘Let’s Fuck’ would be a rather humdrum title for one of them these days.

No one seems to mind.

We have Internet sex of all sizes, types and description, which is either viewed or not, depending on the inclination of the surfer. We have sex on TV, especially after midnight where – if the translator is working – you get to learn a lot of specialist French or Russian, and if not, your domination of the Spanish word aaarrghh improves no end. There will be adverts galore as well.

But now the bluestockings in the Government, aghast at any sexual inequality, want to put an end to all this fucking. Stage One is to pull prostitute’s adverts from the classified pages of the newspapers. Here’s the kind of thing they mean: ‘Mulata transformist, Miranda, new stunning 23cms. Loaded milk bottle. Private. Discretion. Very feminine. I dress as a woman for you…’ (culled from this week’s Weenie).

The proposal, creaking through the Govt, is to change the General Advertising Law - ‘La Ley General de Publicidad’ - to prohibit adverts ‘for sexual favours and for clubs dedicated to prostitution’ in newspapers and their digital editions, if readership is not (somehow) limited to 18 years or older.

Children, put down that paper at once – read the Beano, whydontcha!

Newspapers, of course, thrive on advertising – especially (and rather obviously) free newspapers. So this rule is going to attract some unfavourable press.

Prostitution, according to El País, is worth about 50 million euros a day in Spain. They say they get that figure from the Asociación de Clubs de Alterne. The Spanish Brotherhood of Brothel-keepers, fine people all. The same newspaper fails, unfortunately, to tell its readers how much the naughty adverts are worth to them on a daily basis, but the Euro Weekly’s Costa del Sol edition for this week has, on P.89, five small display adverts and four columns of classifieds dedicated to ‘XXX Relaxation’.

All this fuss comes from the fertile mind of the new Secretary of State for Equality, a chip of a thing called Laura Seara, who says that she is limiting the new rule to the press, but hopes to amplify it to the Internet and the TV, but ‘that will depend on Congress’.

So, is Spain going to end up like Nebraska? I hope not.

A Short Drive in the Car

2011-07-21T03:40:00.001-07:00

Spectacles, testicles, wallet and watch, combined and in pantomime, appear to be a way of remembering how to cross oneself successfully. For me, they are a simple mnemonic to remember to leave the house properly equipped. As age creeps up upon me, I find I forget things. Like not doing up my flies or forgetting to brush my hair, or coming out without my glasses. However, there is nothing more irritating than driving down to the shops only to find that I had left my wallet at home. And while it is useful to know what time it is, and therefore if the shops are open or not, I depart from the list by not wearing or indeed owning a watch. One day, when they invent watches that tell us what year it is, then maybe I’ll reconsider.

So, my four stations of the cross have descended into three: zipper, not that this is really my immediate concern - unless of course I am entertaining - spectacles and wallet.

Unfortunately, a knot in a handkerchief won’t do. Firstly, because I would have to remember to carry a hankie, and secondly, because my list of vital things to remember before I leave the property turns out to be rather longer than the t, s and two double-yous mentioned above.

I need two pairs of glasses, one for reading and the other to keep the sun out of my eyes. These sun-glasses, usually originally belonging to somebody else, often tend towards being bent, scratched or hopelessly unfashionable, which explains how I ended up with them; but they are useful in the summer, especially if I find I need a short nap while talking to the vicar.

I like to carry a mobile phone. Mine has a short battery life – a couple of hours or so – and is rarely charged when I am. This makes it an optional item on my list. Keys of course: car-keys, house and that strange one on the key-ring that no one remembers where it came from. I must carry an ID, which these days, and thanks to the polizie, mean both a passport and a letter from immigration saying that they care. So much easier than the old Residents Card which I carried about with me for forty years. They’ll be making us wear a blue triangle embroidered on our shirt next thing we know.

My pockets are filling up. I’ve brushed my hair and had a pee. Shut the dogs away and checked that the door is locked. I’ve got the plastic shopping bag out of the kitchen (no sense in wasting three céntimos), turned the water off in the garden (hah!), put the chicken away in its cage, eaten its egg, checked my pockets again and added the coupon from the supermarket, a pen, a small camera… and am now ready.

But wait, I’ve forgotten where I had planned to go.

Recharging in Granada

2011-07-17T21:45:00.000-07:00

Granada is such an astonishingly beautiful city. Contrasted with the City of Almería, a dump which had its only time in the sun in the early thirteenth century, Granada regains one's faith in the history and culture of Spain. It's not far from where we live, perhaps two and a half hours - supposing we don't stop in Guadix or Purullena (the troglodyte town where they sell pottery) - and it's a manageable size at something under 250,000 souls. But, what's there to see? Suffice to translate the sign above, which reads roughly as:

Give him some coins, Woman

Because there can never be in this life

Anything as hard to bear

as being without sight in Granada.

I'd leave it there, since the best thing is to rush out, now, and buy tickets (or a tank of gas) for Granada and see for yourself, only, I had one more small thing to say, and it needed a second picture.

It's this; they really do seem to care for their city. The streets are clean. Pedestrian streets are for walking around in (and not dodging cars, or having them double parked) and there is a sense of pride evident in the people there.

This is not Almería.

We stayed in the Hotel Victoria NH which is central and comfortable.

The Fire, Remembered

2011-07-11T04:45:00.001-07:00

The brush-fire that burnt 2500 hectares of land in Mojácar two years ago has now been all but forgotten. Several houses were lost, some cars blew up, many trees and gardens went in a moment, animals died and, once again, our town had got itself onto the Front Pages for all the wrong reasons. It wasn’t that the Town Hall hadn’t seen the fire coming, although another fire had burnt much of next door Turre’s Cortijo Cabrera only one week previously, it was their lack of useful reaction which should have peeved the local population.

I say ‘should have’ – people here put up with a lot. There’s no room here for complainers. Not if they ever want to see a job again, at the very least. Anyhow, Mojácar is apparently the richest town per capita (if a trifle undivided) in the whole of Andalucía.

Rather than declare a ‘State of Emergency’, our Mayoress was advised to let a visit by the surprise new (and unelected) President of the Junta de Andalucía José Antonio Griñán, come to see his new possessions, turn into a political opportunity to help our local tourism rather than our locals. Griñán, carefully driven ‘the long way’ to Mojácar Playa from Turre, where the schoolchildren had been lined up to sing him something straight out of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Song-Book, missed the burnt-out hinterland of Mojácar. No soot, dead trees or the smell of charred animals for our leader, but rather a plea to help our hotels (run mainly by Catalonian businessmen and with a staff overwhelmingly drawn from Ecuador) while sipping a sherry at the Parador. Following the meeting, the Andalucian Media, which receives 200,000 euros a day of public funds in ‘institutional advertising’, was duly told to run a few adverts for Mojácar tourism.

And that was that.

Here at my home, we lost a number of trees; in fact, their dried-out trunks are still falling in the high-winds (two fell earlier this week), and a few outbuildings. The garage lost its roof and the swimming pool its pump and some of the façade. I’m not complaining – the main house survived.

A surge blew all of our electric equipment. I rang the Sevillana and was given the modern version of the ‘Act of God’ excuse, that the surge was ‘fortuito’ and therefore not their problem. Accidents are so often ‘fortuitous’ these days, don’t you think? Does anyone have a CD player, or a spare amplifier?

The water pipes burnt during the fire, but the swimming pool held enough sooty water to help with the buckets. The roots of some trees burnt for days, and a bucket of water down a smoking hole would elicit a loud steamy whoosh.

The local fauna all died. Almost all were burnt to death, including some small birds we saw, as the fire hit, that flew off with burning wings. Not an image to forget. Other animals, our lazy tree-rats, the wild tortoises, the rabbits and voles all died. The wild boar may have escaped, but there are few foxes around these days. I remember, just two days after the fire, as we were beginning the job of cleaning up the house and charred garden, hearing the hunters out with their shotguns, in case any bird might have survived the cataclysm and was unable to hide behind the naked trees. Bang. Bang.

We had seen the smoke approaching in the high wind. A police car had fired its sirens – ‘run, run now!’ and, with the dog and a single picture wrenched off the wall by the door, we had fled the scene. We had met up with some house owners in the riverbed and watched as the hill between our house and the shocked group had suddenly glowed red. We learnt afterwards that one of our neighbours was just about to get into her car to escape the fire when the vehicle abruptly exploded, burning her legs and arms. She was forced to run back inside her house as the fire, borne on an incredibly strong wind, rushed against her home and around the walls, igniting what could be burnt, leaving everything else to smoke and soot. We found our shocked neighbour later and took her to the medical centre on the beach. A dozen fire-engines arrived that afternoon and worked until late in the evening. It was good to see them. We slept on the beach and drank tea.

The President of our autonomous Region wasn’t the only person who never visited our barrio to see the fire damage. The Mayoress never came by either. Not to do anything much, but to at least look indignant and shocked as we showed her the smoking ruins. I think we could blame the first fire, which was obviously not extinguished properly, and the ‘environmentalists’ who were campaigning at the time to save the dead underbrush, as it provided cover for our local wild tortoises.

What tortoises?

We were asked to report our losses to an office on the beach, itemised and with photographic evidence. A few months later, a letter arrived from Madrid. In the event of my house being entirely and completely destroyed by some act of nature, the Government of the Nation, it said, would be pleased to extend 15,120 euros to build me a new home. Kind of them, we thought, but luckily our house survived (if a trifle scorched).

Wild fires are regular occurrences in Spain during the summer, although this was the first one in Mojácar for twenty years. It was big enough to receive some press coverage. Even our local English-language ‘newspaper’ laconically reported that a British television personality of small standing had been staying on the beach during a fire but was unharmed. Well, it’s not The News of the World…

So, two years on. The fire cost me a few hundred euros in cleaning up and hiring skips for dead branches and other material, but, as the main damage – several hundred trees destroyed, the stables and store-room contents lost, electrical goods fried and a few domestic birds killed:

Well, put that down to experience.

Lunchtime Blues

2011-06-27T04:55:00.001-07:00

There’s something queer about the food these days. You go to a restaurant to eat and half of the menu is designed for some kind of wedding feast. It’s all got fancy-dancy for some reason. Perhaps the Michelin Man is seated at table number seven. What’s wrong with ‘sat’?

In the good ol’ days, food was food. No cream doodah then, no fennel sauces or roasted swedes. Simple stuff. A salad was lettuce, sliced onions and tomatoes with a heavy and oily aliño; now it’s got enough different kind of vegetables rattling around the plate to make a rabbit blanch. The main course used to be a plate of what one hoped were mutton chops (or were they perhaps goat?) or slices of pork (known collectively in our area by the foreign contingent as ‘crotchmeat’) or perhaps a plate of chicken knuckles with chips.

How to prepare chicken knuckles. Take one chicken, have at it with an axe, then drop result into a sartén with plenty of oil and garlic. Fry to taste. Riquísimo.

All the best crotcheramas (as we called them) could manage this simple fare, and with a bottle of really quite nasty wine, the whole thing, plus pan, came to around sixty Pesetas a head. Now, what’s wrong with that?

There was no menu and no price list. If you didn’t know what you wanted, or couldn’t understand the waiter, you wandered into the kitchen and pointed.

In those days, if we wanted a decent roast, we’d have to drive to the nearest butcher. He was a blood-spattered German trading six hours down the coast in the Calle San Miguel, Torremolinos’ high street. We’d fill up the plastic freezer box, spend the night on the piss, and head home the following day.

The twenty or so who made up the foreign community in the village in those days would be waiting for us on our doorstep when we returned. One of them was a retired air vice-marshal with a plummy accent called ‘Tabs’. My parents had left the door ajar one particular evening and had gone round the corner to the first and only foreign bar for a nip while the roast roasted. Tabs, on his way up the hill for a pink gin, smelt the rich smell of the roast waftin’ on the evening air and stopped by the house to invite himself to dinner. He went in and found no one around, so he checked inside the oven – as one does - to have a look at his potential dinner. Satisfied, he carried on to the pub for a large one and to obtain an invitation from my mother, in which he was successful.

Now our oven was one of those old Butano three burner ones with a lid and a slight wobble. When the hungry party returned an hour later to check on the roast’s progress my mother found that Tabs’ tour of inspection had, by briefly opening the oven door, put out the gas. Tabs later recalled that ‘no one had ever talked to him like that before’.

The milk in those days was undrinkable. It came in two litre glass bottles with a thin neck. There was a slightly blue cast to it due to the fact that the manufacturer had substituted the cream for pork grease and added formaldehyde to keep it stable. This baby could sit in the sun all day. Tea, if we could get it, came in teabags brought out from England loose in people’s luggage, wrapped around the socks. Eggs and chips were the standby at home, and cocido in the restaurant in the square. Tabs would insist on the plates being warmed, without much success from the kitchen-wallah, so he would usually place his plate under his shirt for a few minutes to do the job. ‘Under trying circumstances’, he would say, ‘one tries to keep up appearances’.

Another dish of the time remains to this day a favourite of mine, although it is now extremely hard to find. You see, it’s too cheap. This is ‘Huevos a la Flamenca’, a small earthen dish with ham or some kind of donkey-sausage served with peas, peppers and a fried egg. The whole, cooked in tomato paste. I happened across one the other day outside Granada: delicious!

Food, back in those days, was scarce and no one was going to mess around with sauces. Actually, come to think of it, it may have been because you couldn’t get cream. Eggs, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, salchichón, chicken and pork was about your lot. The local grocers, known in a gesture of Spanglish relations as ‘The Foodings’, had a few tins on the shelves plus ‘Spanish’ bread, truly awful chocolate, some rather nasty looking sardines and a rack of wine in returnable bottles (two Pesetas back). They’ve still got the chocolate. Credit was extended to favoured customers; a dried lima bean went into your jar for each Duro owed. This system was eventually overturned – literally – by an escaped chicken that broke into the store one night. Reportedly, it ate most of the evidence.

Tapas, even more than today, were the solution. You used to get a bloody good tapa in Andalucia with your quinto or your tinto. A piece of magra, lean pork, with some chips and bread. Two fried cordoñíz eggs on toast. A ham, cheese and alioli cherigan. A small plate of whitebait... a fat chunk of tortilla de guisantes... home made potato crisps (when was the last time?)... a few of those would set you up nicely.

So these days it’s all la-di-dah. The menu’s in English (and Spanish, and French, and Italian, and German...), the food is all poncy, the wine list is exhaustive (and exorbitant), the postres all come from those fine people at Frigo and, worst of all, You Can’t Get Huevos A La Flamenca.

Requiem for Dr Galindo

2011-06-13T01:11:00.000-07:00

We have a village doctor called Dr Galindo. He is the old-style kind of doctor who looks after his patients. He may be on the ball with the latest developments in medicine or not: it doesn't matter, because he's a good man with knowledge and understanding.

Like the famous and much-loved Don Diego who died earlier this year after looking out for Mojácar for a lifetime.

Last year, word came that Galindo was being moved by the Servicio Andaluz de Salud and that a new doctor was to take over. We started a petition to keep Galindo and got 800 signatures. We passed them on to the mayoress who said she would see what she could do. But, as always, far-away paper-pushers triumphed and the new doctor, straight out of school, duly arrived to take over. She was very young and insecure, and would often send her patients on to specialists at the Huercal Overa hospital.

Everyone wanted Galindo back.

So, word came that he was at the Centro Médico on the beach. My wife, who has been ill for a long time, decided to 'change' to the beach to continue with Galindo's treatment.

Then, just after registering down there, we were informed that the young woman had given up in the village and that Galindo had returned... to be there for at least a year. However, despite the strength of our petition and rules that you can choose your doctor, my wife was told that she would have to stay on the beach for a minimum of three months before she could return to the village.

We can't afford 'private insurance' any more, after being stiffed by some fraudsters a few years ago, so a good doctor who understands B's condition is important.

So today, we passed by the village centre. Can we see the doctor? No, you are registered on the beach and anyway, he isn't here any more. We now have a new medic.

So, where's Galindo?

We aren't allowed to tell you that.

Politics Killed the Goose

2011-05-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

Those of us who wanted, voted on Sunday in our local town. The local people voted with trepidation, since a vote for the wrong party-leader will mean four years without any projects, work or favours for them or their families. The non-locals - those who were on the voting-list - voted with enthusiasm or with hesitancy; they voted with conviction or they voted doubtfully and, from those who were sent home to get their passports, they voted with a dash of anger. Some thought they could vote, only to find they couldn't. Others, as usual, didn't bother to come along at all.

Our town is an exceptional and beautiful place ruined by thirty years of 'democratic' elections, where mayors and their teams have exploited the pueblo for their own ends, turning Mojácar from a moribund municipality in the 1950s with less than 600 inhabitants to the richest town per capita in the entire region of Andalucía only fifty years later.

Not that the wealth is very evenly spread.

The Town Hall, unlike any other I've ever visited, has no photographic memorial to past administrations. No oil paintings of previous mayors. In fact, I can understand their point - since Jacinto Alarcón, the old mayor who famously 'gave away' properties to outsiders in the early sixties, there's been no one in the Town Hall worth honouring. Here, it's all about greed. We may have the highest proportion of misers in Spain, I don't know: no one has made a study. Our wealthy local class certainly doesn't spread it around. You won't see any privately funded public buildings or even a park bench with a brass plaque on it, donations from the Rich and the Good. Here, the various multimillionaires (some of whom whimsically claim to be socialists) keep their money safe and unspent. Mojácar is to be sacked and despoiled. It's the rule.

In our town, there have been a long list of cynical projects designed to mine the public purse, from useless and ill-considered buildings to pointless stadia. Many having already fulfilled their purpose before the first brick was laid. Much of our town has been knocked flat, in exchange for poorly designed monstrosities which, in these straightened times, are hard to sell or rent. On the beach, vast numbers of small noddy houses and minuscule apartments lie empty: you make more money per metre on petite dwellings than larger homes, you make nothing on parking lots or wider roads.

During those fifty years of massive growth, Mojácar inevitably watered down its local population of lordlings. While many returned from their uncomfortable exiles in other lands, attracted by the new wealth flowing into their pueblo, and considering their bits of land and properties, inevitably a new type of settler was filling up the town, the 'forasteros': the outsiders.

These were divided into the not-from-around-here Spaniards (who knew the ropes), the rich foreigners with rights (the northern Europeans), the poor foreigners with rights (i.e. los rumanos) and the poor foreigners without rights (the sudamericanos).

Some of us having, since 1999, the vote. Although, Spain being Spain, we had to ask for it. In triplicate.

In our town, the forasteros knew that they were here because it was a great place to live, better than wherever it was we came from. We were dismayed by change, by poor planning and by being exploited by the locals, secure in their power. We were more than them, yet we remained without any say in the future of our community. We were divided, tricked and unloved. The rents were raised as the customers fell: and no local person would drink in our bars or buy from our shops.

So now, despite its wealth, Mojácar is once again dying. There's no enthusiasm or poetry left here anymore. Everything is for sale. There's little reason to try and keep the dream alive. The forasteros must leave. Without us, there will be no work, no income, no community. And thanks to our 'hosts', there won't even be much to remember us by. Like the Visigoths, we shall soon be forgotten.

In a few years from now, even the local people will have to board up their properties and move away, once again, to Hamburg and Lyons in search of work. We need another Jacinto, not a RosMari.

Plastic Bags

2011-05-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

I was at the counter in the supermarket this afternoon, waiting to pay for my few and modest provisions, when I was reminded, yet again, that I had forgotten to bring a shopping bag with me. There was one in the car, but with my packets and cans and tins and bottles and vacuum-packed goods all waiting on the check-out tray, I had to bow to conformity and common sense and buy a plastic bag for a nominal couple of céntimos. They don't give them away for free any more, in solidarity with Mother Earth. How could I possibly complain about such a thing?

This whole plastic bag thing is an important gesture towards the environment. We must be true to our unborn future generations. We have been using plastic for years in ways which are an abomination and no doubt our land-fills are full of untold millions of tons of the stuff. I thank our leaders for showing us the way.

Of course, in the old days, we didn't have throw-away razors (with five or more blades for a really close shave: thanks Gillette), or disposable lighters. We washed and returned our beer bottles and left the milk bottles outside for the milkman. Alright, maybe it wasn't exactly milk here, but they used to wink gamely at you and call it 'leche'. Corks were made from an amusing thing called 'cork' which comes from a 'tree'. Goods came in a wrapper rather than lost in an unnecessarily large presentation box. A butcher chopped up your bits of meat, rather than the cooler-counters piled high with Styrofoam trays of sliced viands, vacuum-packed to last.

Fruit juice came in a fruit. Meat was wrapped in paper. Many items for baby were washable and re-usable and you could bring your own container to fill with oil. Water was just water and not a whole shelf of different brands all in their own uniquely-shaped bottles. I shan't go on since I'm sure you get my point, but consider this:

If the new rule on plastic bags are a small step back from the insanity of our throw-away culture - then why don't they give us our groceries in paper bags, like they do in America?

The Foreign Vote

2011-05-08T22:12:00.000-07:00

It has taken a while to get as far as the title in last Sunday's Voz de Almería, which hardly needs translation. The story says that there are 7,500 Britons able to vote across Almería and elsewhere lists some of the candidates, giving honorary British status to Astrid Schröder and others. The picture is a presentation of Ciudadanos Europeos, which is fielding candidates in Arboleas and Mojácar.

The very Spanish Constitution itself had to be changed to allow Europeans to vote in local elections in Spain - to vote and to be voted for, or, as the Constitution puts it 'active and passive suffrage'.

Since 1999, Mojácar has been one of the leading towns for 'European' participation, with several candidates including myself floating around on various lists, and even - to date - two councillors: Matthew Shatford and Albert Schröter (no relation to Astrid). Neither managed a full term in government. In these elections of 2011, the town has two party leaders and a generous number of other candidates who were born in Northern Europe, in fact, with the exception of the PSOE, all the other parties have a foreign presence of greater or lesser extent. Even the PP has managed to cram a single Briton into their list safely near the tail at Nº 9 where they won't be any threat, but might make a difference.

Oddly, only two towns in Almería have taken the plunge: Mojácar with its aspirations to improve culturally and Arboleas, beset with terrible problems of what the Junta de Andalucía refers to with some satisfaction as 'viviendas ilegales' - illegal homes. Both towns have a lively interest in local politics and, in both these towns, the foreign vote will make a difference.

Not so elsewhere across the province, for with a few exceptions - Jim Simpson in Zurgena, Joanne Tissington in Albox and Lois Benson in Bédar - the majority of towns with a foreign element have managed to safely ignore the problem for another four years. Perhaps it's our fault.

A Question of Trust

2011-05-02T03:16:00.000-07:00

We've been looking at old newspaper stories about Barbara's work with the disabled here in Mojácar. She started an association called Animo which helped children with physical, mental and sensory problems, by animal assisted therapy: in short, by riding on horseback. She ran the association with around 40 volunteers - many with RDA experience - from around 1988 until the early 2000s, when her health got bad (from an accident related to the charity work). She has now started it up again and has a blogsite here. Besides the charity work (with no support from the Mojácar town hall), annual horse fairs and donkey baseball-games for around eight years, Barbara helped improve life for about fifty 'students'.

I have also worked in something pretty close to a charity - putting out a free weekly paper between 1985 and 1999. The Entertainer was meant to help inform Britons about life in Spain, and to try and support and protect them as possible. I have lived here for a long time and know a lot about this country. Over the years I have produced or edited in all over 2500 newspaper editions, including 200 in Spanish. Eventually I sold the paper - although I was never paid and am now being sued by the 'buyers' for placing some tart remarks about them on the Internet.

Were we both wrong to trust people?

Sevillanas

2011-05-01T00:57:00.000-07:00

See the outfits! The shoes! These little girls are going onto the stage with their dance mistress to show us some 'sevillanas', a type of white-bread flamenco preferred by the Spanish, safe from the anarchy of the gypsies original, passionate and exciting music - a bit like The Archies playing the blues.

Semana Santa

2011-04-21T01:52:00.000-07:00

As we know, Semana Santa, Holy Week, is a long and agreeable holiday. We spend it on the beach or in the bars. A few of us might dress up in purple and perhaps even go to mass. But for most of us, it's a welcome week off work and a chance to relax.

Might even meet someone.

The Opportunity for Change

2011-04-16T23:58:00.000-07:00

We are in the days of the 'pre-campaign', as defined by the rules which were quietly changed this past January. You can't put up your posters yet - although there are several in Mojácar for the delightfully named UM party, covered by tarpaulins to uphold the law, but just as effective for anyone who lives here and saw them in their glory for a month or two. 'Capacity', they say. 'Oh yes we can'...

Meanwhile, the main parties in the country, the national ones, have their opportunity. They will be on the television with their business as usual, their scandals and mutual accusations (carefully not mentioning anyone else, since, like most countries, we have the politics sewn up in a two-party system). Then, there are the 'routine' meetings when the party leader or a minister (or equivalent) is chewing a microphone in public, talking, naturally, about state affairs... not the upcoming local elections - that wouldn't be right. There are autonomous elections in many parts of Spain as well, where the non-Spanish Europeans are not invited to vote, but thankfully, Andalucía is spared that. Here, our autonomous elections are held with the national ones, in the hope that the eternally ruling PSOE-A gets in again. Since the autonomy is ruled and run from far-off Seville, it won't make much difference here anyway.

In the towns, the smaller parties must wait. We gossip and plot our modest campaigns as the larger parties look over their war-chests and order their billboards and teeshirts from Madrid. It's the calm before the storm. The mayors may have handled the voting list, but we shall get copies of them next week.

But what does this advert from nolesvotes mean? Don't vote for the establishment. It's about the institutionalised corruption in Spain, the sell-out to Hollywood ('Ley Sinde'), the 'war' on Libya (with Spanish munitions flying on both sides), the five million unemployed, the protection of the bankers, the alternation (and mutual protection) of the two parties, plus the CiU in Catalonia. 'Without your support', says the association, 'the big parties have nothing'.

Here in Mojácar, with the PSOE in collapse, the peril for our town comes from the local PP, who have not only mismanaged and affronted our citizens for the past four years, on their return to power, they are planning to eviscerate the square beside the church, making a pointless underground car-park for residents: a park for 37 cars. Will the workmen stop as they dig through 4,000 years of history as treasures from the past are unearthed? They didn't the last time with Gabriel, when ruins and graves were found in the Plaza Parterre, neither the time before with Bartolo while chewing up the surrounds by the Castillo. And all for what? Several million euros of scarce Town Hall money misspent. This party builds 'Padel Tennis' courts on the beach at a premium, without there being any demand or interest. The football stadium wasn't cheap either, even though we don't have a team yet. The Art Museum, switched expediently to a gallery earlier this month, has now been closed.

It's time for a change. Choose a party that reflects the make-up of your community, a party with a proper mixture of Spanish and 'European' residents. A Town Hall should at least reflect the make-up of its citizens and should, like the nation above it, be responsible to them - not to self perpetuation and outside interests.

Spell Me Right, Por Favor

2011-04-13T03:55:00.000-07:00

If I am faced with a word or name I'm not familiar with, I copy it out carefully. I expect most of us do. However, foreign names are considered slightly frightening by many Spaniards. Too many letters or not enough. In today's newspaper, Helen Prior becomes Hellen. Even a simple John becomes Jhon or even Jhonathan. There was once a brand of Spanish denims called Jhon Jeans. I may have an old pair somewhere. My dad was called William, or rather more often, at least in print, Willian. My own name is pretty simple, but even after being here for 45 years, people can get it wrong. There's a mention of me in a book published by the diputación de Almería, about how I ran a newspaper in this province during fifteen years. So much for posterity, they've spelled my name wrong.

Perhaps this explains why everyone is called Pepe or Paco. In fact, when I was a kid, the local people used to call me Pipo.

I guess it's all to do with concern over the spelling.

Local Elections: May 22nd

2011-04-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

I suppose there is a natural reticence in getting involved in local politics – or even going as far as voting. We’ve all either heard, or indeed volunteered, the various excuses of ‘it not being our place’ or ‘we don’t know the candidates’, either of which are really rather an admission of ignorance and a lack of enthusiasm for one’s community. Go and meet your neighbours! Find what you like and identify what you don’t. It’s now your community and it’s worth making the best of it.
To the comical line about how the natives are restless, as the fireworks are exploding, the megaphones are honking and the crowds are cheering, I would answer that we are not in some South Sea island uneasily wearing grass skirts. We are not colonials – this is our town: our future.
There are different issues that incite different people. Those unfortunate enough to live in an ‘illegal house’ (there are literally thousands of families in this position in the Almanzora Valley) would be wise, if they could, to vote for a party which offers solutions, rather than creates and exacerbates the problem. Other people want more sports facilities or perhaps residences for the elderly; they might want more discothèques and less police presence, or maybe the very opposite. It’s all about politics (and in my examples here, age and inclination).
There are the two main parties in Spanish politics, the PSOE – mostly responsible for the ‘illegal houses’ problem; and the PP, which favours and champions ‘land grab’. One is nominally socialist, the other, in theory, conservative. However, in local politics, it’s all about local personalities and local issues. Our mainstream party candidate for example is aware of the local issues and, despite pressure from ‘head office’ in far-off Seville or even farther-off Madrid, will seek to provide local solutions. At least, so one might hope. In reality, small town politics is often about local personalities, families and opportunity. We call it ‘clan politics’. We can ignore all of this and we will in turn be ignored.
Otherwise, it is better to participate, join in and integrate. Sooner or later the parties must open their gates to fresh ideas and finally face the loss of their baleful family influence. The community becomes the stronger and this in turn creates wealth and jobs. Property prices would even rise with the demand from buyers and potential settlers – because who wouldn’t want to live in a harmonious and well-treated town?

The Bonfires

2011-03-31T23:06:00.001-07:00

We used to have a number of pine trees in the fields around the house. They were planted originally by my father about forty years ago. He was a keen tree-planter, he said, because there weren’t any in this part of Spain. Trees, that is. Or planters, come to think of it.
He would drive up to the village fountain with several large plastic bottles that started out life holding industrial chemicals (for the swimming pool – the water came by truck). Fill them up then lug them out of the old Renault and over to the seedlings. In the end, there were about 500 trees, almost all pine, and quite a few of them festooned with a type of disagreeable caterpillar which regularly makes its presence in the pages of the ex-pat press. More because of its rash-inducing hairs and its processionary characteristics that anything it might do to the unfortunate pine tree.
A brush fire in the high hills of next-door Turre a couple of summers ago was improperly put out and a second fire duly caught a week later and rushed down the hill, across the valley and into our municipality, burning, among other far more important things, our five hundred pine trees, along with their resident caterpillars as well.
So, two winters on, the trees are dead and dried up, ready for some attention. They fall like skittles in the wind, their roots rotted away. I have a hand saw and have been pruning away at the smaller trees as and when the house needed firewood, but now, with the trees falling in any direction, crushing whatever is underneath, some friends have come by with chainsaws: some wood for them, some for us.
For the past three days, I’ve been burning the remains of the forest – the small branches, fir cones and other detritus – in some large bonfires. Here, you should get your burning permission first, unless you intend to have a good brush-fire and burn down the neighbourhood (don’t get caught – an Englishman in Granada recently cooked half the province and got fined ten million euros).
In the old days, you went to get a licence from the local police, but now, a special fellow from the department of the environment shows up twice a week (although not on any set days, unfortunately) to give out exactly the same permit. Several of us were waiting for him last Monday. Our policeman phoned to ask where he was. He said he couldn’t get a car to come in that day.
So, I’m using an old permit. It’s not as if anyone is going to check.

The Queue

2011-03-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

There's a graffiti outside the Centro de Extranjería in Murcia, the place where, from nine to three, five days a week, scared or patient or bored foreigners must queue for hours in the hope of getting their work or residence papers. It says 'burocracy or apartheid?'.

Oddly, the pintada has been there for at least five years, the time I've been going past to get to the train station.

Either the ayuntamiento de Murcia is very lax about painting over the scrawl... or perhaps they agree with the sentiment.

Being a European with my passport and absurd A4 - ever since the Ministerio del Interior took away our 'tarjetas de residencia' (I'd been a resident in Spain for 40 years - alas no longer!) - I sympathise with the poor North Africans and South Americans as they patiently wait in line. Reading the graffiti.

The Odd Job Woman

2011-03-15T00:09:00.000-07:00

Long time Mojácar resident Struan Robertson (owner of 'The Time and Place') has written a thriller available from Amazon. Just type in 'The Odd Job Woman' for details.
A thriller set in expatriate Mojácar, when an English odd job man answers a call from an isolated villa to open a locked deed box - he also opens a deadly can of worms and soon discovers that life will never be the same again! Both a whodunnit and a thriller, the action is nonstop and full of twists, leading to a final denouement set against a backdrop of British expatriate society along the coastal strips of southern Spain. This book is for anyone who likes thrillers - while its eviscerating look at life on the Spanish Costas will appeal to everyone who has ever been there on holiday, lived there - or thinking of moving there...
Struan says: 'I've been writing most of my life but never seriously tried to get published before; except for this book. I'm now half way through another thriller, also set partly in Spain, where I've been living, on and off, for the last thirty years. I'm also writing a memoir. I was brought up on a Scottish Highland sheep farm. Went to sea when I was seventeen and stayed there for the next fifty odd years - except for ten years as airline flight deck crew. Er, that's it..!'.

N:B - book available only at amazon.com (not amazon.co.uk)

A Solution for Mojácar

2011-03-11T06:17:00.000-08:00

Well, the Town Hall has spent a fortune on the two large empty squares up by the church in the village. The Mayoress wanted to build an underground car-park for 37 cars at a cost of two million euros (around 60,000 euros per car) and says that there were lots of ‘takers’. The Town Hall has spent around 250,000 in buying the rather mungey Loro Azul bar and apartment (where I first lived in Mojácar in 1967 for a couple of years) so as to presumably knock it down. They spent another 42,000 euros on a study to build ‘several municipal buildings’ in the area, although without any plans as to what they might, eventually, be used for.
The whole, rebuilt area, with its car-park nestled safely under it, would, naturally, find space for the much missed Arco de Luciana, a stone tunnel under a nearby bar where a Moorish virgin threw herself to her death after her gallant Captain perished in battle. Or, at least, she might have if the tunnel hadn’t of been built in 1910. Hey, in our town we sell 'fantasy' (witness the Moors and Christians spectacle).
Luckily, there was a schism in a recent pleno, and the lunatic project was dropped – at least until after the next elections. In short, those in favour of an underground car-park, sundry non-specific buildings and a racetrack through the pueblo, vote for Rosmari and the Partido Popular. Those against, don’t.
In another pleno, held on March 11th, the Council decided to offer a modest 3,000 euro prize to anyone who could come up with a sensible idea for the area. Here’s mine.
First of all, I think that it would be a good idea to improve the looks of the pueblo. We could encourage those who live there to improve their surroundings and we could bring fresh ideas to repair the village and, in short, make property there more attractive and perhaps even a ‘good investment’. To do this, we need to return a ‘theme’ to the village, which would clearly be to make it look more ‘ Moorish’. Some arches, overhead beams, ‘ Moorish doors’ with their curves, their charm and their mystery. Lucinda’s Arch should be returned, but it doesn’t really matter exactly… where. It can be in any spot which would be improved by a romantic, arched Lover’s Leap. We shouldn’t build two squares (and underground car-park) around and on the back of a centenary tunnel knocked down by a mayor and ignored both by him, and the three of four that followed. Thinking back, it was just a narrow tunnel outside two bars where people used to piss.
The front of the pueblo, the Plaza Nueva (so called, by the way, as it was built in the Seventeenth Century) is the commercial entrance to Mojácar. It’s pretty attractive, although could be improved. However, it’s where the trucks and suppliers must park to maintain the pueblo and its shops and bars. It has a good ‘look-out’ point, the marbled ‘Mirador’, which unfortunately needs to be urgently replaced or repaired. Perhaps it could return to its earlier function of a two storey car-park… for about thirty cars.
However, the main parking for Mojácar remains around and at the foot of the back of the village. There’s a considerable walk to regain the Plaza Nueva. Most people don’t and won’t visit, even though the pueblo is the lodestone of the area. We love Mojácar pueblo, but we stay on the beach.
To repair this, the pedestrian entrance to the village, the route taken by residents, shoppers and visitors alike, can easily be the same Plazas de Frontón and de la Iglesia. All that is needed is a short vertical ride from the ample car-park below. This car-park, now thankfully relieved from having a Wednesday fruit and vegetable market, has a large number of parking spaces. There are further parking-spaces in other next-door fields and levels. By bringing pedestrians up to the village with a mechanical lift, to be decanted into those upper squares, the whole problem of a pedestrian village is largely resolved. With these two upper squares turned into either gardens or, please, slightly ‘upmarket shops and taverns’, Mojácar could once again regain its pride of place as the leading destination and residential attraction for the area.
Could I have my 3,000€ now?

The Headless Jesús

2011-03-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

It seems that a lightening strike decapitated the Vera Sacred Heart yesterday. The ten metre high statue was erected in 1949 on the Cerro de Espiritú Santo, the hill which overlooks the city and which was also the centre of a previous Vera, destroyed in an earthquake in 1518.

The mayor has promised to return the statue to its former glory as soon as possible.

La Cutreza

2011-03-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

¡Ay, que gusto ir a comprar en Mojácar donde siempre uno está asegurado de encontrar prendas y otros recuerdos de calidad! "Hay un pelo entre mis dientes y no sé de que coño viene". Muy poético. "He follado en Mojácar", "Me han jodido en Mojácar" y luego, "Mojácar - ¿A ti, como prefieres tu polvo?"

La verdad es que, hasta subimos el tono de nuestras triquiñuelas, no vamos a subir el tono de nuestros visitantes.

Tenemos tiendas que venden las camisetas en las fotos, tenemos tiendas que venden sombreros mexicanos (no se sabe porqué) y tenemos tiendas que venden navajas, muñecas horteras y productos "Made in China". Luego, siempre puedes hacerte un tatuaje o ir a Garrucha a comer pescado. Lo que no se note mucho en nuestro pueblo, que una vez fue el más bonito de la provincia, es vida. Quizás esto cambiará después de las elecciones.

Perfectly Welcome

2011-03-01T08:39:00.000-08:00

It was to be a quiet party, just five or six of us. Maude had baked a cake and John had bought a bottle of champagne. There were a few beers and some sodas in the fridge and I had lit the barbeque ready for my speciality of burnt sausage à la birthday boy. Furthermore, in case my older sister Rachel, who works at the tourist office, could make it, we had some roast potatoes and a salad prepared – she’s a vegetarian. I went to put on some quiet music on the CD player.
Just then, a large blue bus stopped outside our house and people began to disembark. Rachel seemed to be there with them, shouting some instructions. The mass of people began to swell towards our gate. I ran over to see what was happening.
“Rachel, what on earth are you doing?”

“Well”, she said, “they’re tourists. They’ve come to join in. Could you take their picture?”
And so it is. Tourism today is so ubiquitous, that any fiesta, celebration, public event or exhibition must somehow cater for the visitors. Often at the expense of the locals, for whom the event was designed. While the bars, restaurants and knickknack shops all make out like bandits during these affrays (or at least, should), the local people will find themselves relegated to the ‘second row’ or even unable to attend at all.
Take our late summer fiesta. The four day long San Agustín fiesta is a very enjoyable thrash that seems more concerned with its commercial element than its social or religious one. Not only are the shops open until all hours, but a large number of out-of-town vendors come along to see what they can earn. The attractions are staged in a relatively small part of the municipality, so the bars and restaurants who failed the ‘location location’ test will not get much out of the affair (besides paying for the fiesta handbook). Lights are put up and taken down again, bands are hired and fireworks are let off. Is all this effort for the residents – or for the tourists?
The mainstays of commerce are industry, agriculture and tourism. There is precious little of the first two here and so we are obliged to cater for the third. I think that some of our shops sell needlessly vulgar tat – perhaps reckoning along the famous line of ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ of Jack Cohen – and cheap Chinese souvenirs may attract cheap Chinese souvenir hunters. I’m not against tourists – unless they stand in my way – but I’m against hordes of them. Why not cater for less but wealthier tourism – Monte Carlo rather than Benidorm? We could make our town look nicer and even attract a wealthier type of visitor. After all, the Parador is a better hotel than the Pueblo Indalo.
So, the question is this – why does the tourist office advertise a local fiesta? Is it to help the citizens, or to help the shopkeepers?
In fact, sometimes it is clear that the public fiestas are just private affairs. We have two of this type, the Día de la Vieja and the Romería de San Isidro - both town hall picnics in the country where tourists and even non-local residents are simply not invited. Perhaps because there are no commercial advantages to doing so.
It is an axiom that, before you invite your friends over to your house, you clean the place up. Dust, wash, air and plump and even sometimes even paint, plaster, repair and rebuild. Then you feel better, proud of your home and ready to receive. The visitors come away favourably impressed and satisfied. Shouldn’t our resort receive the same consideration? Why not make our town look nicer and more attractive so the tourist will like it better? (To say nothing of how we might like it better as well). There’s plenty enough to be done. Meanwhile, by all means, give them their free paella, but save some for us.

This article isn’t about just Mojácar, but it’s clear that the pueblo itself is a kind of magnet to the area, a magnet which we all acknowledge, but don’t bother to visit…
Benidorm, by the way, works very well as a tourist destination. It takes a massive proportion of all British visitors to Spain and serves them well. It has a grid-system of streets leaving everyone close to their destination and also close to the beach. For residential tourism however, you will have to go to equally wealthy nearby town of Altea (which has just one large hotel).
My story at the top of the page? Well, here’s a true one. Barbara was hosting a small party on the hill behind the village. She and her pet cow along with some friends were celebrating San Fermín. The running of the bulls – or rather the trotting of one very affable pet cow called Petite Suisse. There was a picnic and some gypsy friends played the guitar, passed the bottle and sang. Some walkers joined in, eating and drinking with the group, while everyone vaguely thought that someone else must have invited them. The walkers, it turned out, thought that it was a town hall funded fiesta. So what – they were made perfectly welcome.

Rural Tourism

2011-02-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

Here’s a piece that caught my eye (from the local daily newspaper): ‘The Comarca of Andarax has enough natural resources - scenic, cultural, economic, agricultural and gastronomic - to exploit a model to attract new tourists…’
A touch inelegant the text, perhaps, but it was the best that me and the Spellcheck device could do between us at a moment’s notice.
Tourism is the answer to all of our ills. A quick morning presentation, a chat with the local minister or councillor, a glass of ‘vino español’ and a tapa or two from the local ‘School of Gastronomy’ and all is suddenly well. We shall create jobs and be wealthy. The tourists are coming.
Spain has a touching belief in its own skill in attracting tourists, after all, it’s the world’s second-most visited country. No, hold on, fourth.
Let’s say that there are two sorts of tourists. Those on a short holiday to the beach, here in Spain (because it was cheap… or because the neighbours came last year and liked it… or because of the sun and the beach and the… no. I’m kidding: it’s because it was cheap), and those who are here for a longer period, perhaps with their own car, who perhaps even live here.
The first group are here for a brief time, to have fun. They may be customers of a tour-operator, flown and bussed in to some hotel in some – and who cares which – resort and they will be glad to be away from their desks, or their machines, or their shovels. Their contact with ‘gastronomy’ (as the Spanish like to call it when using what they fondly imagine is English) is no more than the odd meal outside their hotel and a non-fatal exposure to the catering service within.
If those visitors wanted ‘culture’, they wouldn’t be staying on the coast of some random tourist region: they’d have flown to Granada, or Seville, or Cordoba, or Madrid or Valencia. Barcelona even; but not, I think, the region of the Comarca of Andarax. ‘Two weeks on the beach, with paella, beer, girls and… Oh… within striking distance of the Comarca of Andarax’, said Mr Jones to the nice lady at the desk…
The main village in the Andarax is the agreeably pleasant mouthful of Canjáyar. The Junta de Andalucía, of course, won’t let anyone build in this village of 1500 inhabitants (falling every decade since 1901) so attracting full-year ‘residential tourism’ is out. In short, it’s down to the trippers. However, I really don’t think that it will be easy to tear away the visitors to our fine hotels along the playa to persuade them to come along and visit or even to buy its local wine or olive oil.
Perhaps the national tourist industry will be intrigued. They come from the cities for long weekends, and have a whole month off in August. Maybe they would want to drive up to the hills of the lower Almerian Alpujarra to have a warm day’s visit (up to 45ºC in the summer) and a bowl or two of lamb and chips with some local wine (they bottle a good one in Laujár, another pretty village in the area - see photo above).
I am sure that the initiative to attract tourism, and therefore money to the Comarca of Andarax is a good one. The ‘turismo rural’ hostals in the hills up there will be full. Tens of people will be visiting during the summer months.
Meanwhile, along the coasts of Spain, tens of millions of visitors will be slowly turning pink under the omnipresent sun. The buses will be turning on their diesel engines and the hotels will be unpacking their frozen dinners.
Another day, another dollar.

Alan Simpson

2011-02-18T12:21:00.000-08:00

Alan Simpson died the other day, on his way home at lunchtime. He was one of the Mojácar 'old-timers'. We gave him a good send-off at the local cemetery, where he joins more friends than a person should decently lay claim to.

Here's something I wrote together with Emilio Aramburu which appeared in our local daily La Voz de Almería:

Alan Simpson murió en Mojácar el domingo 6 de febrero después de una caída fortuita. Alan, conocido por igual entre los mojaqueros y extranjeros por su sobrenombre ‘Alan One Wine’: el hombre que tomaba un vasito de vino en cada bar en su diario deambular por las calles del pueblo de Mojácar. Llegó por primera vez a estas tierras mojaqueras en 1968, camino a Inglaterra desde su guarida en Azila, en la costa atlántica de Marruecos. Los pocos forasteros de entonces estaban congregados en la plaza de Mojácar, tomando el sol y no menos brandis. Ambas cosas estaban igual de baratas y agradables. Para Alan el viaje a su país terminó aquel día. Nació en Inglaterra en 1930 y tuvo la fortuna de sobrevivir a una bomba alemana que cayó sobre su casa en los últimos meses de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sufriendo la deshonra de ser sometido al examen de sus heridas por el médico, mientras permanecía, asustado y desnudo, tendido sobre un piano bajo la nieve. Comandante en la Guerra de Corea, ganó una medalla por salvar a una tropa de un campo de minas. Después de la contienda siguió en el Oriente, en Malasia (durante su guerra por la independencia). Viajó como explorador en Nueva Guinea, en una canoa de madera en compañía de unos cazadores de cabezas, durmiendo bajo las estrellas junto a los fardos de los "trofeos humanos" de sus compañeros de viaje. Más tarde, determinado a no volver a su país natal, viajó por el África tribal y el Sáhara -donde conoció a Wilfred Thessiger (muchos años después, Manu Leguineche escribió un libro sobre el destacado explorador, pero no antes de consultar unos apuntes con Alan)- antes de encontrar trabajo en África Occidental. Allí comandó una tropa de seguridad de 650 hombres en Sierra Leona para proteger los campos de diamantes, que luego fueron la razón por la guerra civil que duró veinte años en aquel sufrido país. En Ghana llegó a ser jefe de policía y, después, minero de oro, plata y estaño. Estuvo en Zanzíbar en una revolución y vivió en Marruecos, antes de inclinarse por lugares menos peligrosos. Tras vivir alternativamente durante años entre Marruecos y Mojácar, finalmente eligió su residencia definitiva en esta última localidad en 1990 y, desde entonces, ha sido siempre apreciado por todos sus convecinos, que, por su afabilidad, discreción y cortesía lo han considerado un verdadero ‘gentleman’. Hace unos años, escribió un libro, Naked in the snow (Desnudo bajo la nieve), en el que recogió todas sus anécdotas y vivencias por el mundo, terminando con algunos capítulos sobre esta población almeriense. Ahora descansa en el cementerio de Mojácar junto a muchos amigos lugareños y "expatriados" que, desde hace casi medio siglo, eligieron esta tierra para vivir para siempre. Goodbye, Alan. One wine for you.

The Spanish Mess

2011-02-04T23:22:00.001-08:00

Spain is not doing well. Unemployment is up at astronomic levels – certainly beyond those that sparked the great depression in the early thirties in America. Our own numbers are carefully massaged anyway, with those who have never worked, plus those who have given up trying to find a job, no longer being added to the dismal pile. The answers to this situation, besides creating futile ‘public’ jobs here (we have more ‘funcionarios’ than manufacturing workers in Spain), is to continue to pay fourteen or even fifteen months wages per year and to make it as hard as possible to fire anyone (and therefore chancy to hire anyone). The unions defend the workers all right – but only those in work. A new plan by the Government to extend the number of years of work before any reasonable pension kicks in is met by this comment in El País: ‘how can I collect all these years of employment to be able to deserve a pension… when I can’t find a job?’
We now hear that Germany – whose economy is now in positive territory - is offering jobs to Spanish university leavers. Well, those kids can’t find them here.
I’m clearly not equipped to write about such lofty subjects as national economies, but I have noticed that the unemployment rates are lower in Northern Spain and higher in the South.
So let’s look at Andalucía.
Our government, both the one in Madrid and the one in Andalucía, has changed the way Spain does business. You could say that the country has gone from ‘macho’ to ‘manso’ (tough to weedy) in the last seven years. You can’t speed, you can’t smoke, bullfights are all but banned, drinking is controlled and frowned upon, you can’t walk your dog on the beach, you have to observe the boy/girl boy/girl rule in your political parties, the Internet has fallen under Government control, European residents cards have been abolished (meaning, of course, that we are now obliged to carry our passports and a special police form) and all public buildings must be wheelchair accessible. All very commendable for a modern industrial state, but not much use for, at least, Andalucía, whose main industry is tourism: selling the sun and the beach to foreigners.
In Andalucía (unemployment at around 30%), tourism is controlled at a level which, of course, actively discourages tourism. The experts about tourism are the hoteliers, who are in reality, merely experts about hotels. Tourism here means package-tourism, even though this year’s visitors may choose some other destination next time: cheaper, boozier or just ‘different’. Here we have a new breed of controllers (and their bean-counters), and the old ways have gone. The regional government has, for example, taken over the control of our beach-bars. Now these bars, essentially a shed erected on the sand that sells cold beer and spitted sardines done on a fire, must be policed to within an inch of their life, with permanent installations, yet be dismountable come mid-October. Outside of Mojácar, which somehow continues as a bohemian resort (although not for much longer), we bring our sandy customers to places made of stainless steel, with conformity in design and waiters in white shirts and black bowties. San Tropez prices, too.
Jacinto Alarcón, the old mayor of Mojácar who pretty much invented the place, long before anyone in the province had thought of tourism (which might be defined as ‘bringing in money from outside, in exchange for goods which stay here’), had an idea. He wasn’t particularly interested in the summer visitors, which stimulate the local economies just as long as they are around, as much as he was in earning all-year-round income for his community. Money flowing in from abroad in a steady stream of wealth. He came up with a slogan for Mojácar ‘Veranee aquí el invierno’, which inelegantly translated means: ‘Summer your Winter Here’, or perhaps even a play on words – ‘Summer staying All Year’.
Today, half a century afterwards, Mojácar in the winter remains distressingly quiet. We haven’t been able to promote our winter sun. The summer one, after all, takes pretty good care of itself.
But let’s remember those killjoys in the Andalucía Government, who not only encourage alcohol controls outside the bars and restaurants, and smoking inspections inside them – thus rather destroying our reputation for a pleasant holiday destination – but who are concerned about poisoning the year-round settlements for retired people (who spend vast gouts of money in exchange for some peace and quiet) by threatening them with demolitions, and obliging them to live with hosepipes and noisy diesel generators.
The European youth, at least, the educated ones, are heading north for jobs. Europe’s seniors, who could bring in wealth and create employment here in the South, are being put off by blind politics.
Unfortunately, jumping off the ledge on a ground-floor window doesn’t solve anything.

Mojácar Movies

2011-01-26T05:55:00.000-08:00

They used to shoot films in Mojácar, back in the 1950s and through until the 1970s and in the days before the place was trashed. In all, about a dozen were made. The most famous one is 'Sierra Maldita', a film made by the ‘rojo’ director Antonio del Amo in 1953. The story tells of a ‘barren’ girl who lives in the dry and miserable top half of the ‘Pueblo de Arriba’ and her suitor, who comes from the fecund bottom half of the same township, where there is water and the girls will make better wives. He courts the heroine, has a fight against the baddie with axes while out in the forests preparing charcoal, and eventually wins the girl’s hand… and has lots of babies. It’s not bad, actually. The ‘top half’ of the pueblo was shot in Mojácar (the ‘bottom half’ in Níjar) and you can see the broken-down state of Mojácar in those days, when the population was only around 600 souls, and the film crew had to leave their transport in the river-bed and take donkeys up to the village!
‘El Beso de Judás’ (directed by Rafael Gil) was shot the same year in various locations, including Mojácar, Pulpí and Aguilas (All looking something presumably like Jerusalem).
In 1962, ‘Marcha o Muere’ (‘Marcia o Crepa’ original), a flick about the French Foreign Legion with Stewart Granger, was shot partially in Pulpí, Cuevas and Mojácar (Lawrence of Arabia was being filmed elsewhere in Almería at the same time).
Twenty three chapters of an American TV show called ‘The Rat Patrol’ were filmed in Almería in 1966, including scenes in Mojácar.
Robert Siodmark directed his 'Custer of the West' in 1966, filming in Almería with some scenes in Mojácar. My Dad met the star, Robert Shaw, in the Parador hotel and was apparently rude to him in the lavatories. I’m sure they are both sorry now.
'Fliegender Sand', a German production, was filmed partly in Mojácar in 1967, and a Spanish/German co-production called ‘Cantando a la Vida’, about a Eurovision singer who has disappeared, starring Massiel, was filmed the following year entirely in Mojácar.
In the seventies, several films were made in Mojácar, including Orson Wells’ ‘Treasure Island’ in 1972. My dad lent him an old Renault 4 and a driver, Michel Meynard. The two hit it off and spent most of the film – a wretched picture shot on ‘Treasure Island beach’ along the way past Macenas – drinking. They would play checkers with glasses of brandy and anis with the deal that you drank your enemy’s pieces.

'The Final Programme' was filmed partly in Mojácar in 1973, a rather obscure SciFi film by Robert Fuest and starring Jon Finch (who made several films in Spain around that time, while residing in Mojácar).
Silvio Narizzano, a Canadian who lived in Mojácar for many years, made ‘The Sky is Falling’ (‘Las Flores del Vicio’) with Dennis Hopper (who, I’m afraid to say, my dad kicked up the arse in a bar one night). The film was remarkably bad and was shot in Mojácar and Bédar. Here’s the storyline from ‘imdb.com’: ‘Chicken, a desperate hippie junkie living in a small Spanish village, is finding it difficult to separate fantasy and reality. This isn't helped by the villagers practising magic and child sacrifice, or his involvement with a group of boozy ex-patriates lost in their own dreams and regrets’. Silvio didn’t like my mother much, and named one of the characters after her.
‘Night Child', a psychological horror film with Mark Lester (he had found fame with ‘Oliver’) and Britt Ekland, was shot in 1974, partly in Paul Polanski’s house (Ric’s older brother). The film was directed by Andrés Vicente Gómez.
Finally, apart from a bad porn film shot in a hotel room of the Moresco, and an advert for chocolates (a fleeting glimpse of our house as the hero arrives '...because the Lady prefers ...Black Magic'), the seventies closed with four chapters of the popular Spanish TV series ‘Curro Romero’ being filmed locally in 1976 and 1977.

Some material from here.

A Plan for the Village

2011-01-24T09:07:00.000-08:00

This is a notice from the Mojácar Town Hall. It says that since the 'underground car-park projected to be built in the village next to the church has received the 'go-ahead' from the 'Culture' Department from the Junta de Andalucía in Almería, the Town Hall wants to know who is interested in acquiring a parking spot and to please leave their name at the Town Hall.

If there is enough 'places' sold, the building can evidently go ahead, and the money spent would be recuperated in part. This 'refreshed' money could then, presumably, be spent wherever necessary...

Too Many Youse

2011-01-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

You know how I sometimes complain about how 'they want our business... but won't give us any back. Not even in translation. Not even a beer'?

Well, let's meet down at the 'Loungue Bar' and I'll explain it further...

Mojácar Parties for 2011 Local Elections

2011-01-14T05:08:00.000-08:00

*Updated a few times!!

In 2007, 13 parties presented candidates for the local elections. This was something of a record (the people from the Guinness book were said to be very excited). ‘Lots of parties’ of course favours the ‘most voted’, in 2007, the Partido Popular got five councillors out of the thirteen seats contested. They joined a quorum with Ciudadanos Europeos, GIAL and, for some reason, Asamblea de la Izquierda. This year, so far we have five confirmed from before, plus at least three new ones and maybe also another one or two from last time.

The parties from 2007:

1.- LEVANTE SOSTENIBLE DE MOJACAR (LEVANTE SOS. MOJACAR) 1 JOSE LUIS ARTERO GARCIA

2.- ASAMBLEA DE IZQUIERDAS (A.Iz) 1 CARLOS SALVADOR CERVANTES ZAMORA

3.- CIUDADANOS EUROPEOS DE MOJACAR (C.E.M.) 1 ANGEL MEDINA CHULLIA 2 LENOX SCOTT NAPIER

4.- PARTIDO INDEPENDIENTE DE MOJACAR (P.I.MOJ.) 1 MAATI EL OUARDIGHI EL IMANI

5.- PARTIDO POPULAR (P.P.) 1 ROSA MARIA CANO and ALBERT WALDEMAR WERNER SCHRÖTER

6.- PARTIDO ANDALUCISTA (P.A.) DIEGO GONZALEZ

7.- PARTIDO DE ALMERIA (PdAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA

8.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE) 1 PHILIPPE KIRSCH GOMEZ

9.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA DE ANDALUCIA (PSA) 1 JUAN ALFONSO LOPEZ RODRIGUEZ

10.- PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO DE MOJACAR (PDM) 1 GABRIEL FLORES MORALES

11.- GRUPO INDEPENDIENTE POR ALMERIA (GIAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA

12.- IZQUIERDA UNIDA LOS VERDES- CONVOCATORIA POR ANDALUCIA (IULV-CA) 1 FRANCISCO RUBIO SANCHEZ

13.- MOJACAR NUEVA (MN) 1 ENRIQUE JOAQUIN GARCIA MAURIÑO LORENTE

14.- Mojácar 2000 (decided not to present a candidature)

Some of the above have gone and some others have started up. Here’s my list (so far). There may be errors, but I don’t get paid to do his – and those who do, clearly can’t be bothered:

Local elections May 2011

3.- CIUDADANOS EUROPEOS (C.E.) (name shortened) 1 ANGEL MEDINA CHULLIA, 2 LENOX SCOTT NAPIER

5.- PARTIDO POPULAR (P.P.) 1 ROSA MARIA CANO, Diego García (was GIAL)

6.- PARTIDO ANDALUCISTA (P.A.) New Candidate

8.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE) Manuel Zamorra (new)

12.- IZQUIERDA UNIDA LOS VERDES- CONVOCATORIA POR ANDALUCIA (IULV-CA) Miguel Egea (new)

13.- MOJACAR NUEVA (MN) 1 ENRIQUE JOAQUIN GARCIA LORENTE (maybe)

New Parties (Confirmed):

UPyD ALBERT SCHRÖTER (was PP Ind)

Unión Mojaquera 10 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA (was PAL) and GABRIEL FLORES MORALES (ex-mayor, was PDM)

Mojácar Positiva Se Mueve Jessica Simpson

?? Diego Gonzalez (was leader of PA) Diego confirms that he is seeking a new party to lead.

Gone: Mojácar 2000, PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO DE MOJACAR, PARTIDO DE ALMERIA, PARTIDO INDEPENDIENTE DE MOJACAR, LEVANTE SOSTENIBLE DE MOJACAR, ASAMBLEA DE IZQUIERDAS, GRUPO INDEPENDIENTE POR ALMERIA, PARTIDO SOCIALISTA DE ANDALUCIA.
.... ....

Nine or maybe ten parties (if I haven’t missed something). The likely winners? The PP of RosMari will do well, Ciudadanos Europeos and Union Mojaquera 10, will make some gains. The IU, the PA and perhaps Mojácar Positiva… The PSOE has problems, the UPyD is an unknown force (with some support from ex-PSOE people - and presumably the Mojácar business bureau), the Mojacar Nueva is (sorry!) a joke… Mojácar politics eh?

Another Hospital Visit

2011-01-05T03:37:00.000-08:00

My wife is up in the City, looking after an aged relative over at the hospital. The relative is not long for this world and my wife has to be there the whole time. So she can’t be here, which I don’t like. Barbara has been on hand for five days so far, sleeping on a metal deckchair and I am told (rather pointedly) that there haven’t been many visitors. She can’t go very far and, she admits over the phone, she can’t have a smoke outside the hospital any more, as the new paternalistic rules from our leaders (All Hail!) mean that she has to actually leave the hospital grounds and parking lot presumably to be lost in the city somewhere before she can light up. There’s a new fellow with an important looking badge and wearing a snap-brimmed hat whose job it is to patrol the parking lot, chasing out smokers.

No wonder employment in Andalucía has risen slightly this month.
I can’t drop everything and go in and see her (and not just because of the typical male aversion to visiting hospitals). The old family car is in the knackers and, anyway, I have to look after five dogs. We have… one dog of our own… and the aged relative has four. I am using a lot of bleach and water along with a cheesy old mop to try and keep the place clean. In my opinion, several of the dogs should be ‘outside’ at all times.
Somebody has just offered to lend me a car.
If this gets out, I see that I shall have to come up with a convincing excuse…

Later: things have gone downhill. My son finally lent me his car, a real piece of crap from the SEAT people. A month ago, Barbara had put the puppy into the front seat of this same car, closed the door to get her purse from the house, only to find that this awful pile of crap had automatically locked itself. We had to break the window to get in and release the frightened dog. The key was on the front seat. It was a 'long weekend' and it took a few days before we could even order a new window. Well, bugger me, if the same thing didn't happen this morning - on another fiesta (of course). My fault this time.

The puppy is starting to dislike cars and I am wondering how many car-windows are broken by their owners? Nine out of ten? What a piece of shit car.

Later still: The following day, somebody else called to lend me a car, which turned out (to my horror) to be another SEAT - the same model. Well, I needed to go to see my wife so I put the ignition key on a bit of string around my neck so as not to be caught out by SEAT's little surprise design-flaw again. You know, having a bit of string attached to the dashboard makes it a bit difficult to drive - but I made it. Stoopid car.

And Finally: I received this from a friend who has just been giving an interview to a British television company.

I read your blog about the Seat, And thought I would tell you this story.

ITV arrived in our garden on Friday at 9.00. They followed their normal practice of putting all the equipment in the back of the hire car, battery packs, boom mikes, cameras, etc.

After discussing what they wanted to do, they went to the car to get out the gear. Only to find that the last person to go in the boot had shut the hatch and all the doors had locked.

A mad dash to SEAT in Vera, did no good and they ended up smashing the back window, The hire company wanted the car to go back to the rental company in Malaga that day, but after negotiations it was decided that Lorca would be OK as long as it was returned immediately. On a two day shoot this was the last thing they needed.

I sent them your story and have received a response:

This is BRILLIANT. I have forwarded it to everyone here. At least we are not the only ones to have fallen into SEATs evil plan! We all feel much better after reading this.

A Winter Visitor

2010-12-31T23:35:00.000-08:00

My wife was making a lot of fuss the other day – some story about a snake in the house. She had seen it come through the back door and given it a wallop or two as it disappeared behind a bookcase. Nuts, I said, snakes don’t crawl about in the winter, they are cold-blooded animals.
She must have been seeing things. Women are always a bit peculiar about snakes and one has to humour them on these occasions. I took the bookcase apart – of course there was no nest of crazed serpents there plotting our downfall (although a few interesting books I hadn’t read for a while, plus a lot of dust).
Anyhow, yesterday afternoon, a snake came through the same door. I saw it and, having in the past watched all those shows made by the Australian naturalist Steve Whatwashisname, grabbed it by the tail and, as it hung there writhing energetically, I danced about shouting Snoike, what a beautiful Snoike.
It was a metre-long grass snake as far as I know, although and despite there not being any poisonous snakes around here, one never likes to be proved wrong – especially by some maddened viper.
Anyhow, I put him safely somewhere in the garden to cries coming from inside the house:
Now, can you have a proper look behind the goddamn bookcase?

Radio Costa 105.6FM

2010-12-23T02:42:00.001-08:00

Hey, a new local radio station for Mojácar and the surrounding area:

No disk jockeys, waffle, filler, joke telephone calls, yatter, piffle and tripe. Just a giant play-list of good music (for English and Spanish-speaking listeners).

Say 'No' to Egg Nog

2010-12-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

There's nothing quite like flopping into one's favourite armchair at the end of a hard day's work, kicking off one's shoes, switching on the telly for some mind-numbing shite and opening a nice bottle of honey rum. Or perhaps cinnamon brandy. What say we all have a round of coconut nasty?

You get my point. There is almost no barman in Spain who knows how to make a cocktail, so instead, they dream up these sweet and sticky mixtures in the forlorn hope that someone will not only buy a bottle of some yellowish and glutinous krème, but will return, fresh-faced and smiling a few days later, and buy another.

I asked our local hostelier, an Italian, to make me a gin martini. I should have known better. I got served a large glass of Martini (e Bianco) with a cherry in it molto bene. Then he stood around, with an intrigued expression on his face, to watch me drink it. Could I have a glass of gin to go? I said.

Spain does have a cocktail (un coktel) which is the Cuba Libre. It's rum and coke. Known for short as 'una cubata', it now means any hootch with a fizzy mix. Gin and tonic, vodka and orangeade or even whisky and cola (uurrrp!). I have even been asked (I briefly barred) for a creme de menthe and lemon Fanta.

This may be why the Spanish are not known for public drunkenness - a couple of those babies and you just want to crawl off and die.

So there is an untold number of varieties of booze on the shelves behind a bar. Most may be for decoration - I assume you don't drink much Green Chartreuse or Triple Sec or Licor de Amor (it's purple - I think that's all you need to know) - while some of them are merely cheap imitations of better brands. Which explains the 'unfillable' tops to the bottles: which often need a smack on the bottom when opened fresh. You really don't need a shot of sticky coffee cream on your cuff.

So we come to a new drink, launched today in Cadiz. It comes from a Granada destiller and is called Licor de Crema de Turrón, a sort of Nut-Nougat Cream Liqueur. The photograph in today's paper showed a table with various half-filled glasses of the drink, a few bottles and whatever promotional material seemed appropriate, and a small number of youthful looking entrepreneurs with that slightly wistful look that people get when they know that - somewhere - they may have overlooked some small but vital point to their business plan.

I should just add here that I am grateful to my friends who have gathered round at this festive season and have kindly brought me a Christmas bottle or two of 'good cheer'. So far (and there's still a few days to go) I've been given four bottles of scotch and two of brandy. No 'hierbas' (lemony aguardiente which will lift your head off) , no Calisay, melon liquor or, thank goodness (and fingers crossed) nut-nougat cream liqueur.

To which I raise my glass to the good taste of my friends, neighbours and readers.

Feliz Navidad.

Oldies but Goldies (a Rave from the Grave)

2010-12-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

I saw that Captain Beefheart has died today. Don Van Vliet was a Frank Zappa collaborator and floated around in some of those peculiar albums in the mid sixties. He was pretty bonkers, but was remarked for being able to sing his way up and down four and a half octaves, a bit like Uma Sumac (What, you’ve never heard of Uma?). As Captain Beefheart, he made some records before turning to painting. He lived in the Mojave Desert for the rest of his life, spreading colours. I have one of his records – Mirror Man – and I’m listening to a cut on YouTube. (‘Tarot-Plane’). Bonkers.
Captain Beefheart was the inspiration for ‘The Head-bangers Show’ on Radio Indalo put out most evenings by Martin (or ‘Tino’): I think I’ll call him ‘a gentleman who had fallen by the wayside’. Heavy stuff and lots of vinyl, mix with some fine Moroccan hash and a roll-up. In those days you cut your terbacca and grass seeds or mixed your hash all on the cardboard cover of the record. Try that with an MP3.
I ran a Sunday afternoon show on the same radio, which was based in Mojácar in around 1988 to 1995 perhaps, and would bring up a load of albums and some cassettes, strategically wound to the right song, all in a large sack over my shoulder as I thundered up the Mojácar hill on my motorcycle with Arlo Guthrie sitting on the back. The regular crew would decamp, leaving the radio station at some considerable risk. The program was called ‘The Entertainer Show’ (for some reason) and had some good jingles, plus the occasional participation of Mike Connolly, another Mike, Ric (who did helicopter noises by bashing his chest while reading out fake traffic reports) and Brendon. Antonio, as well: a fan from Bédar who would bring a crate of beer for each show, plus a ham bocadillo for me, compliments of his mum. Sometimes I’d let him do dedications. Towards the end of each two hour show, it would get progressively harder remembering which side of the record to play, which lever to push and what on earth was going on.
The music would be – at the very least – a cracking mixture of oddities. None of that anodyne best-songs-ever crap which plugs up our ex-pat radios these days in turgid clichés. Horse with No Name, Life in the Fast Lane, Stairway to Heaven and Sugar Sugar. Spare me.

Old Cap’n Beefheart had the right idea.
And now he’s gone: will they let their hair down on Spectrum and play one of his tracks just this once?

L-R Mike Connolly, The old Entertainer Truck and me with a beard and a cigar.

Name Calling

2010-12-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

Taxi drivers always have trouble in countries where they change the names of things. Prithee take me to such and such on the 'General Mola' became the day after Franco keeled over, please take me to the 'Principe de Vergara'. The General was an old mate of the Spanish führer's and no one can remember who on earth the Prince was. Somebody nice, no doubt.

Name changes in Spanish streets, public buildings and so on are indescribably popular, especially when there's something better to do. No doubt President Zapatero is working hard on this. Well, we know he is.

In Mojácar, the absurdly named 'Centro de Artesanía' has now become 'Centro de Usos Multiples' (I think. I have to admit I still use the old name). The improbably called 'Avenida de Horizon' (after a soon-to-fail British tour-operator, which almost managed to take the town with them) has gone. What the avenida was called before, I simply can't remember, but it's nowdays... no wait... it'll come to me in a minute...

We just call it 'The Road up to the Village'.

So, you say to your taxi-driver 'it's in the road after the old purple church' and hope that he will understand. In Madrid, they often affect not to. 'Take me to the Plaza Mayor', said my father years ago, when there weren't many foreigners in the Spanish capital. My father was very tall, red-headed and covered in freckles, so it was an easy jump to suppose that my dad was an extranjero. It therefore followed that, since the taxi driver didn't speak extranjero, there wouldn't be much point in listening. 'Plaza Mayor' repeated my father several times, while uncomfortably bent in the back and trying to catch the driver's eye in the mirror.

Eventually, as the driver was nudged left, right and straight-on by his increasingly indignant passenger, they arrived in the most famous square in Spain. The taxi driver, pleased with his service, turned to my dad and said 'Señor, we call this Plaza Mayor'.
So we manage as we must, with street names and even statues falling out of favour (there's a warehouse full of caudillos somewhere). Back in Mojácar, apart from a couple of large roughly-fashioned rocks cemented on top of each other and known at the time as 'Pepe's Erection' (now sadly demolished), the statuary has been spared. We have bronze Mojacar maidens picking stones out of their shoe in various key locations (I think the artist had a buy-one, get-one-free deal going) and another one, in brick and ceramic, on the highway at Los Gallardos (no, that one's gone, knocked down in Bartolome's reign). Then there are the Indalos, including the one overlooking the modest roundabout at the fuente, a stainless steel one-legged and priapic monster with a space helmet (a fine justification for the local belief that they came from somewhere special).

But, back to streets. In Mojácar, we have streets named after every nation in Europe: Calle de Rumanía, Calle de Portugal, Calle de Francia and so on. Every nation except Britain, or the UK or the Reino Unido or however the hell we call the old place these days. England I might have said. Now, despite about 40% of the entire population being sons of the accursed Albion, we don't deserve a street. Not even a little alleyway. Not even, just for a few short months, between presidents of the diputación or something.

There are also no streets honouring the foreigners who 'discovered' or 'brought back from the brink' the small and humble town of Mojácar. Well, there's one - Pete Pages (a short, fat and merry 'antique' dealer from Brooklyn) put up a sign in the narrow lane next to his shop about thirty years ago for 'Calle de Pedro Barato'. Cheap Pete street.

A lane, I should point out, far too narrow for taxis.

Otherwise, there's nothing around to remind us of the great characters who moved here from other countries in the years gone by - bringing life, soul, a strong thirst for cheap brandy and tolerably bulging wallets.

So we are enthused to hear of a new name change. This one is going to be for a square, the one in front of the town hall with the big tree in the middle. Come to think of it, I'm not certain it even has a name. 'Town Hall Square' or something. Anyhow, it will soon be baptized with the rather foreign sounding 'Plaza de Walt Disney'.

Luckily, Wally was really a mojaquero (well, prove that he wasn't), so we are not breaking too many rules, beyond the one about 'good taste' perhaps.

But please, spare us a statue of Mickey Mouse.

Puppies For Sale

2010-11-24T12:06:00.000-08:00

It’s a two-hour drive from home to puppy heaven, and I’m not too sure about the directions. My wife has the paper with some vague notes I’d got off the phone, but, hey! We’re here nonetheless. Press the buzzer! Open the gates! Conchi will be with us in a moment. She’s taking pictures of a clutch of baby cockers.
She welcomes us in, together with a pack of chattering briards. Hi, make yourself at home, I shan’t be long.
We bee-lined for the nursery.
The crèche was warm, damp and knee-deep in puppies. Well, it would have been if Conchi had opened up all the cages. In one, eight puppies were with their mother, a terrier. In others, the young ’uns were by themselves as their mothers were taking the waters outside. In a box on the floor, more puppies mewled and grunted as a matronly basset hound looked on fondly.
Conchi bustles in. she smiles and drops to the box where our puppies are. On your knees! On the floor!
I was assailed by a generous selection of juniors all either wagging anything that occurred to them, or if younger still, shyly mouthing an outstretched finger.
It’s such a delight to spend some time with puppies. This time, without guilt or remorse. These little chaps have cards, tattoos and pedigrees. I’m not going to argue the advantages here of a breed puppy over a tattered inmate from the pound. It takes all sorts. They all need loving.
A kitten watched gravely as I handled a puppy. Turn it over and see if it trusts you, someone said, so I did.
Outside, more young dogs in caged runs, with still others running free. A couple of Chihuahuas politely asked if they might nibble on something small as some doves landed on the roof of the nearby bungalow and cooed at the bedlam below. Out came the finger again.
We are sat in a comfortable office in a house with wooden floors and open windows just outside Elche, the town famous for its stone carving of a mysterious queen or goddess from ancient times. But this is canine country. Conchi Valenti, the owner of DaSilva, is a licenced breeder of a selection of different breeds of dogs. She grooms and kennels her extended family and sundry guests and she somehow still finds time to go on the show circuit. Everything is clean and ordered. She has help from her parents and a friend, as long as they follow her notes. She was off that very afternoon to the Azores in search of another silver cup for the collection on a sideboard in her office. Pictures of past champions are pinned to the wall and the phone buzzes regularly with questions, orders and advice from her extended listing of customers and acquaintances. The clatter and yelps of her wards echo through the window.
We are here to buy a puppy. We’ve chosen two (one of which…) and we’ve paid a deposit. We’ll be back when the litter is six weeks old.
(The New Entertainer July 2006)
... ...
Now, four years later, we found ourselves in the area and so we dropped by to visit with Conchi. Things are the same as before, except the sideboard of trophies that was in her office has become an entire wall.

DaSilva. Elche, Alicante. Phone 96 545 35 36. Conchi speaks Spanish and German. http://www.perrosdasilva.com/

Future Imperfect

2010-11-20T02:34:00.001-08:00

It’s a well-known fact that Mojácar in 1960 was in such a state, with only 600 inhabitants, that there was a plan to incorporate the ‘town’ into the municipality of Carboneras. The pueblo was moribund, with anyone remaining considering joining family that had long before fled to France, Catalonia, Germany or even the USA, Algeria, Morocco and Argentina in search of a better life. Franco famously didn’t like Almería and there was no government help for the area. Mojácar itself, was a crumbled down village with no road access until the late fifties: no agriculture, industry, tourism or art. In fact, the first hotel was opened in 1962, a seven room establishment built over the town’s only bar, the Hotel Indalo. We stayed there for several months in 1966.
The town was ‘discovered’ by a few intellectuals (as the Spanish offhandedly called them) in the early sixties and a small group of artists moved in. Good light, inspirational countryside and cheap prices. The town was grateful. Some monies were wired back to the pueblo from overseas. Otherwise, there was nothing. The mayor during the sixties, Jacinto, together with a few ‘forasteros’ (outsiders), began the process of bringing Mojácar back from the brink. He gave away houses to those who would rehabilitate them, promoted Mojácar and its symbol, the Indalo, and, after forcing his subjects to whitewash the brown weather-beaten town, won for the community a prize in 1964 as a ‘Pueblo Blanco’. People slowly came to live in Mojácar and the town grew and prospered. Crass tour-operator politics slowed down Mojácar’s growing reputation internationally as a bohemian destination and the pueblo was forced to squeeze its way forward under the mismanagement of a series of greedy and self-centred mayors. Parts of the town were demolished without reason and an ‘Artisan Centre’ was built with government funds (Mojácar has no artisans). New and odder public buildings have been erected since for political or profit-driven motives. Some of them finally get opened; others merely rot in the sun.
The town still lives from money that comes in from outside. There is still no locally born artists or producers. Only building or service industries stimulated by the ‘forasteros’ and their purses. Mojácar has grown from the 600 inhabitants of fifty years ago to around 10,000 today and there are many summer-homes, huts, noddy houses and garrets built for profit which add to the burden on the shoddy infrastructure during the short summer season. The town sells Chinese-made nick-nacks in endless souvenir shops and the beach caters to outsiders and their money. The mojaqueros have become wealthy. They keep their money safe for the future.
Mojácar’s luck was not that outsiders would want to import so much money, or buy so many homes, or come to live there in large and yet respectful numbers, or even that they would allow the local people to continue to mismanage their town through the ayuntamiento, the town hall. The luck was that it was able to expand so precipitously, long before the introduction of the autonomous government of Andalucía, whose venal politicians based in the capital city, Seville, would make huge efforts to stop any other eastern Almería town from following Mojácar’s example. Thus those interior towns, again without any future, without industry, agriculture or tourism (they are not located on a Mediterranean beach, but rather in the dusty hot foothills of the Sierra María or the Filabres) are unable to turn to the obvious source of building retirement homes and creating local wealth and life for themselves. The Junta de Andalucía not only says ‘no’, but has cynically and disastrously called for the demolition of 12,000 foreign-owned homes in a dozen pueblos. Mojácar has not been forgotten by these thugs however, as the junta’s planners are determined to build a useless, pointless and absurd artificial city of 70,000 inhabitants (no one can even guess where these people will come from) between Mojácar and the surrounding pueblos to the north. The ‘Llano Central’ is like our Artesan Centre from years back. There’s a profit motive perhaps, but there’s no logic beyond greed. Perhaps a strong local government could still turn the tide into a better direction, but the forasteros, who now run to about 75% of the population, sadly aren't interested.

Remembrance Service in Mojácar

2010-11-14T09:50:00.000-08:00

Old soldiers and their families met together today to honour their comrades at the British Legion Remembrance Service at the St Pascal Baylon Chapel in the tiny hamlet of Agua de en Medio (Mojácar). Father Hugh Broad of the Anglican Chaplaincy in Costa Almería & Cálida officiated at the dedication of the Mojácar BR.3485 Standard. Angel Medina, the vice mayor of Mojácar (3rd from right) represented the ayuntamiento on this solemn day.
They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old; age shall not weary them, nor the years condem. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.

Picture: James Tudor-Pole

Papal Visit to Spain

2010-11-08T02:13:00.000-08:00

The Pope was in Spain this past weekend, with the first day in Santiago de Compostela and the second in Barcelona. The Pope's theme was a bit more religion would be nice in this (so very) laical country. Not as many people turned out to see His Holiness as was expected, so it's a very great pleasure to have this picture of Zapatero sharing the stage.

The Llano Central. No, They've Not Forgotten!

2010-11-06T05:08:00.000-07:00

There are only two surviving Spanish language free papers in the area, the always excellent Actualidad Almanzora and another one, that mirrors the PSOE’s positions, called the Nuevo Levante. You can find this second one in town halls.
Here’s more or less what it says in its October edition about our future, as seen by the socialist brothers from Seville and their pet project for this area, the imaginatively called Llano Central (Central Flatlands).
This project, surprisingly enough still going strong, and despite the enormous damage done to our province and its reputation abroad by the Junta de Andalucía’s planners, is to build an artificial city, the forth largest in the province, with 35,000 homes and fifty hotels, all in an area of fifty square kilometres located between Mojácar, Turre, Bédar, Los Gallardos, Antas, Vera and Garrucha. This area, currently a flat plain which has never been settled, from the Neolithic age forward, is to drain off all building licences from the aforementioned towns to allow this exotic new city to be built. Who will live there? Certainly not the vast number of wealthy retirees from Northern Europe who, as things stand, wouldn’t touch Almería with a bargepole. Spaniards? Why ever for. But wait, the answer is coming.
The project has 3,680 million euros of, ah, public money to be spent on this dearly needed city in the sticks. Building it will require 95,000 workers, of which around 2000 are already here as locally unemployed. The rest would have to come in from outside and, as I see it; stay here in their new apartments in the Llano Central which they will be building.
And then they can open a Rumanian embassy across the road.
A city without museums, noble buildings, parks, beachfront (it’s several kilometres inland), but with fifty hotels! a city under the orders of seven town halls, but without one of its own. So wait a minute, who on earth is oing to want to holiday in such a place, where the sound of drills and the view of cranes and cement lorries would be the main entertainment?
Where would the sewage go? Ah, right. Don't answer that.
So why build it? I think that the ugly word ‘profit’ must figure in here somewhere. The worthless land – fifty million square metres – of the Llano Central will have substantially gone up in price. You bought some at the right time I hope? Then there will be certain juicy contracts. Another reason is that the high-speed-train which will whizz through the city four times a day, stopping in a station to be built on the edge of the local market town of Vera (and slowing down the Almería – Murcia schedule) will need the justification of a steady stream of people disembarking, like something out of the Klondike Gold Rush.
The combined population of our seven towns above is about 25,000 people – and we want to bring in another 70,000. At least the family-run town halls will be watered down a bit in a generation.
The Nuevo Levante is enthusiastic. ‘This will become the motor for tourism in the Levante in the years to come. As the beaches are cleaned up (the Ley de Costas has 200 metres from the sea for public land and 500 metres for hotels), we are compensated by the Llano Central’.
Yay.

How Little Boy Kitty Lost his Meow

2010-11-02T02:23:00.000-07:00

Here's a story written by Barbara.

We had bought our old cortijo some time ago. It was very cheap, perhaps because the superstitious local Spanish thought that it was haunted. Somebody had been shot against a wall during the French occupation. It is a large and gloomy house with small windows and has a good sized garden which we both enjoy working in.
One day, something fell out of a tree straight into my husband’s arms. When I asked him what it was, he took a look and said 'a little boy kitty' and that is how he got his name. Little Boy Kitty was no normal kitten, he was completely black and tiny with the softest fur you have ever felt and he knew from that very second that he fell from the tree that my husband and this house were his. He wandered around with all of the big dogs and other animals without a care in the world. He knew this was going to be home. As Little Boy Kitty began to grow he also began to speak, or meow, about and to everything and everyone he could find. He became particularly verbal at meal times especially if you were late, according to him. He would weave in and out between your feet, tripping you up and meow to the point that you felt like throwing him out of the door. When I say that he was no normal kitty, I mean it, he never just curled up in a ball and went to sleep or did any of the other things cats normally do; no, he had to stretch out on your chest with his arms wrapped around you like a big hug and he always put his chin right under yours and looked at you with these adorable eyes so you didn’t dare move him. There he would stay until you had to go to sleep, and that is when we finally started to put him out of the bedroom at night, so we could roll over and get some sleep ourselves. As he grew he became more and more verbal. When you would come home he would have to tell you all about his day and who had been mean to him and what bird he had tried to catch, all before you could get the groceries into the house. If we would go away for a few days, when we came home, it was hours of telling us everything that had happened. After a few years it really became quite annoying, his insisting on breakfast while you were in the middle of fixing it. He just never shut-up. Then one day he just lost his meow. He would open his mouth but no noise came out. He was waiting for me at the door as usual and was weaving in and out of my feet waiting for breakfast but there was no noise. I checked his throat and him but there was no meow. It was gone. We looked everywhere but it was nowhere to be found. It had been about a week and still no meow. One day when I went upstairs I saw, sitting next to me on the bed a huge, and I mean huge, bull gecko, one of our house-lizards that usually live behind the paintings. I didn’t want him to sit with me so I told him to shoo, very politely. He was so fat that he couldn’t hold on to the walls or ceiling anymore, without falling, splat onto the floor again, so he had to stay on the floor or bed. He had no intention of moving from his comfortable position on my bed so I became a little more insistent, when all of the sudden he just looked up at me in a deliberate way and said MEOW. WHAT A SHOCK! I came running down stairs to tell my husband. So we finally found where Little Boy Kitty’s meow went to and to this day Little Boy Kitty still gives us hugs and is still trying to tell us about his day, but he is completely silent and fortunately I haven’t seen that big bull gecko again and I hope I never do.

Scorpions in Paradise

2010-10-31T10:56:00.000-07:00

The other day, we squirted bug-spray under the desk in the office in case there were any fleas or spiders about and this morning I found a dead baby scorpion. Which leaves the question: Where's Mama?

In the campo, we have our fair share of scorpions, which scuttle under the doors into the house and, in a sense, either get you or get got by you in an unending war between them and us. If they get you first, they are very painful indeed, although they leave no discernable wound. It will hurt like fury - like a burn with bits of broken glass under the skin, in powerful throbs through the limb - for up to eight hours. There's not much you can do with the pain, which comes from a neurotoxin - a poison which attacks the nerves. There's a time of pain and then, it slowly goes away. It leaves no after-effects at all, unlike a spider or centipede bite which may cause the wound to fester. The worry is, of course, that baby scorpions, twenty or fifty of them, cruise around after birth on the back of Mama scorpion, until they are old enough to wander off... and be found by me under the desk in our office.

Today, I'm keeping my shoes on.

The Garden

2010-10-23T23:59:00.001-07:00

I’ve never had much interest in gardening. My mother planted ours and would spend her time pruning, seeding and planting. She would want special earth and would buy flower pots from far-away Albox (this, long before the first British home-buyer ever appeared there). My father planted a large number of trees in the field behind and above the house and would water them with big plastic bottles filled at the fountain and lugged up there in his little Renault.
The property, to begin with, was fed water from a tank and a pump, filled by the water-truck from Turre. Much later, we got mains water from a company called Servamosa and, when that company became a part of the current water supplier called Galasa, all of the 10,000 public shares of Servamosa, shares that each family or business held in our pueblo, worth 500 euros or so each (we had nine), were – whoops! – lost in the best Spanish tradition.
Never mind, we had water, and for many years a gardener, Cristóbal, who squirted everything with enthusiasm, explaining that ‘of course the flowers fall off when you spray them, they’re flowers’. Cristóbal fancied himself as being the wise old Son of the Soil and would laugh as my mother lost her temper with him, ‘But Señora, how can you know? This is Spain!’
He had another problem, being partial to watching the women as they lounged around the swimming pool. One time, a scantily clad house-guest marched up to my father to complain that the gardener had been peeking at her while she was having a shower. My dad threw her out, claiming that it was much easier to get another house-guest than it was to find another gardener.
But that was then. My parents both died and, after I married, I took over the estate.
In fact, as far as gardening was concerned, the estate pretty much looked after itself. Between the rare rain that falls here and the even rarer moments of me watering with an increasingly leaky hose, the garden was obliged to make its own way. The smaller stuff died out and the stronger plants survived and spread.
Twenty agreeable years passed and the garden was by this time violently overgrown and, in the opinion of one of the larger pepper trees, in need of a miracle.
In the summer of 2009, a brush-fire raced across the entire municipality, pushed along by a high wind. The garden got its miracle all right, and I was left with a sad mixture of charred firewood, soot, dead trees, charcoal and smoking stumps. We lost several out-buildings and some neighbours lost their homes and the cars. The Spanish authorities reacted magnificently – by doing absolutely nothing at all.
But that’s why we love it here. They only remember you when they want something.
The garden needed lots of work and, now matured (and in need of daily exercise), I took to clearing the place up. A year later, it goes on, with me sawing down dead branches or trees, planting, pruning and watering the survivors.
Oddly enough, that pepper tree was right, it does look a lot better now.

Turrón

2010-10-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

When does the run to Christmas start? In America it comes after Hallow'een, which apparently is the second biggest commercial earner in the year. The 'trick or treat' festival, now beginning to arrive in Spain, thanks to the Corte Inglés and other forward looking merchants (like Klaus on the playa), brings some rather odd behaviour and is currently the target of the Catholic Church, which prefers the night before November 1st to be used to honour the dead. But Christmas is already beginning its run, with tables of delicious 'turrones' in the supermarkets. The basic 'turrón', a sticky nougat from Alicante, has now morphed into a hundred different bars of nut, cream, marzipan, dried fruit, chocolate, cherries glacé, rice-paper and booze which are meant to last, presumably, until nearer the end of December to be consumed along with the frightful 'polverones', dusty sweets of flour, anís and sugar, which make up the first onslaught of Christmas glee.
I've just treated myself to an entire bar of chocolate-covered marzipan with bitter orange lumps - well, I didn't get a holiday this year - and am now seeing stars.

On Charity and Solidarity

2010-10-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

It’s probably different in the big cities, but here in the sticks, it’s quite rare for a ‘son of the village’, who has done well with his life, to put something back. I know there are exceptions, like the man from Bédar who made a fortune in Barcelona and sent funds to build a small park in his pueblo, or the man from Aguas en Medio (a tiny hamlet in Mojácar) who sent money from the Pacific island of Guam to build a church locally. There are some few unsung heroes who help the disabled centre in Vera – Asprodalba – or other beneficial ends, but it is not common. Those who have struggled up from poverty are probably more concerned with staying as far away from that condition as they can, rather than risking the wrath of Lady Luck by sharing a tiny proportion of their money with anyone else.
I suppose, when it comes to ‘caritas’ – charity – everyone suspects, with some degree of certitude on their side, that most donations in Spain are promptly stolen. It is clearly a cut-throat business and commissions on subsidies are usual. There is, in fact, a small industry in matching hand-outs with charity organisations, for which the agents take a standard 20%. There are cases, mainly in the days of the Felipe Gonzalez government, of large charities being in the news for all the wrong reasons – from the director of one of Spain’s biggest charities selling off an entire city block which happened to be on the books, and pocketing the lot, to an improbable accident in a lift shaft (at the headquarters of a very wealthy blind association). Then, nearer to home, there was the case of the Sahara children due to come and stay in Lubrín one year, only the accountant took off with all the money. Another example: an Almerian charity that places the disabled in low-paid jobs, and charges them 20% (it seems to be the ideal figure), for life!
The Britons, who live here in their tens of thousands, are in contrast, generous with charity, although almost all of it goes to animals. There is no ex-pat newspaper without its page of free adverts for shelters and pet charities, its associations of feral cat sterilizers and articles on dogs in extremis. Yet we find nothing about the old, lonely and penniless members of their society, fallen on bad times or living under the threat of a hard-eyed banker or lender, or a calculating ‘healer’ or ‘companion’. Is there a human equivalent to the PAWS shop, where queues of people bring second-hand clothing, books and unwanted treasures to be sold off and converted (one imagines) into dog food? Perhaps the implicit ‘thank you’ is easier to read in an animal’s eyes.
So, one might want to keep charity a little closer to home (if I’m not quoting someone out of context). The Mormons know about this, they ‘tithe’ themselves 10% and happily give it to the poor.
Here in our pueblo, where a serious amount of money has come into the hands of a few families, who keep it, apparently, under the bed, there is almost no suggestion of returning a bit to the village that made them rich. There are no theatres or parks, or gardens. There are not even any park-benches with a small brass acknowledgement of the munificence of some Elder. Several families, poor as mice a generation ago, now control fortunes of fifty million Euros each. One woman, known for short-changing her customers (she still has a small shop), claims rents of 75,000 euros a month. Her ambition can only be to make it up to 100,000 a month.
In April, three of our local people shared 65 million euros in the Eurolotto. They promptly abandoned our town and are now, presumably, living in the Bahamas and complaining to the new-found servants that they can’t get a decent paella there. How many park benches, children’s parks, churches or theatres have they managed between them for their home-town? None. The nearest thing you will find to charity in our pueblo is the swollen number of workers at the town hall. Some are professionals but many others are merely there to provide them with a wage. How generous. However, when its election time, they will not be forgotten.
Our town is like a tired old whore – everyone wants to take something from her, but no one wants to buy her flowers.

Beggars Can't be Boozers

2010-10-07T05:50:00.000-07:00

Times are hard. We have a beggar installed outside each of our supermarkets these days. Each one of them appears to have his patch and of course, he'll have a dog. Except for the old Romanian woman at the Co-op who looks like she just ate hers. I've seen little old ladies come out of a shop with a piece of meat saved for the hound (and a scowl for its master). It's hard being a beggar - especially with the new hard-to-climb-into dustbins we now have serving our community. So, to be a beggar, the first thing you will need is a friendly looking dog; and the second thing is a good stomach.
And remember, most of us are just a paycheck away...

Money doesn’t take you far,
A shop, a store, a mart, a bar,

So looking for the cheapest link
I chose a shop to buy a drink

My pocket full I entered in.
To buy a jug of Spanish gin

I picked a brand I didn’t know
It cost the lot, I turned to go

My bottle in a plastic sack
I toddled out, my mind turned black.

I left that market in a fog
And saw a beggar with his dog

The man was holding out a cup
I tipped my jug and filled it up

Can I share it, asked the mooch.
Of course you can’t – it’s for the pooch.

The Entertainer Online

2010-10-01T05:28:00.000-07:00

The Entertainer Online is eight years old. Mostly true, it's full of news from Mojácar ('a real nice place to bring your children up') and the rest of Spain, with comment, snark and politics. There's also the best collection of non-commercial links about Spain (blogs, forums, news, politics, food and so on). You should check it daily.
The webpage comes out of 'The Entertainer', a weekly free newspaper that started in 1985 and ran until it was taken over in an interesting way I'm not, legally, allowed to write about. Here in Spain, that's nothing new.

Chris Takes His Medecine

2010-09-26T22:10:00.000-07:00

We were talking yesterday of some of the old times and I remembered this story about one of the many differences that exist between Spain and the UK; and while we should celebrate and encourage those differences - after all, Spain is a wonderful place to live and Britain isn't - this particular item may not be the finest example in Spain's quiver of attractions and curiosities.
I refer to the humble suppository.
Chris had long hair and a thin moustache. He favoured pink shirts and kept his things in an off-the-shoulder handbag. His girlfriend was a pretty looking Danish girl and was sat beside him on a train chugging slowly north towards Granada. They had arrived in Mojácar that summer of 1968 in a purple mini-moke, a type of low-slung jeep. Chris was a writer doing research on Carlos, a murderous ex-bodyguard of Trujillo, the assassinated dictator from the Dominican Republic, whose disgraced minder was now running a beach-bar in our quiet resort. According to my dad, Carlos made a good Cuba Libre and one should always try and forgive and forget.
Chris’ research, once he got around to it, involved a few talks over a glass of rum with Carlos about his ghastly experiences as a torturer, inquisitor and bodyguard and Carlos, a short black fellow with a nasty look to him, must have taken offence at one of Chris’ questions on one occasion.
Or perhaps he just had a hangover that day.
The jeep was found, smashed to pieces.
Chris and his girlfriend, Gitte, decided to take off to Granada for a week for some research and a release from the volatile Carlos. On the way to the train, Chris visited a farmacia to get something for a cold he’d picked up.
We are in the train again. It’s just left Linares where it had stopped for lunch. In those days, the conductor would go through the carriages asking what everyone wanted to eat and would then phone through to the station, where twenty seven portions of meat and fifteen of fish would be waiting, chips, salad and wine, together with a small plate of membrillo (a lump of quince jelly) for ‘afters’.
Back on the train, Chris sniffled again and remembered his package from the chemist. He opened it up and extracted a metal-foil wrapped bomb-shaped item. The carriage, drowsy from its lunch, watched with mild interest.
Chris had never seen a suppository before and, as he peeled the foil off the plug (principal ingredient: cocoa butter), he decided he couldn’t eat it so, after a moment’s thought, decided to ram it up his nose.
The carriage stirred in anticipation. ‘No’ said some old girl in black.
No?, thought Chris. Perhaps, since it’s a streamer, I should open another. He placed the second suppository, with its agreeable smell of cocoa butter, into his second nostril and sat back. The two suppositories dangled slightly from his nose and he had to hold them in place. His girlfriend tittered suddenly and the carriage, released, burst into laughter.
The man sat facing Chris lifted himself partway from his seat and made an explicit motion towards his backside. ‘Aquí’, here.
Chris, his face the colour of his shirt, excused himself and went to find the lavatory. He told us afterwards that he could see the tracks flashing by when he looked down the pan, and that there wasn’t really enough room to comfortably continue with the medicine.

Our Version of Local Politics

2010-09-17T00:35:00.000-07:00

Years ago, some people from Murcia opened up a new bar on the beach. We got to know them – I think through their children knowing ours – and had a party there on one occasion. They didn’t do much business as a rule and the local people wouldn’t use the place. One day I asked Paco why he never had a sign outside the front door which would, it seemed obvious to me, help with the trade. ‘Oh’, he said, ‘the mayor told me that I could have a sign but only if I militated in his party’.
Should I make that clearer? In our small town some twenty years ago, if you wanted to get ahead, you joined the political party of your peers (although not, necessarily, your persuasion).
Have things changed in our Almerian pueblos? Well, sure, you can join the party you want, or none at all if it suits you, but answer me this – how will I know if you voted for me?
Politics is not a thing to take lightly. The future of your family can depend on how you vote. The local pretenders for positions on the council are generally there for reasons which have little to do with ideology and much to do with personal motives. They obtain power over their peers knowing that power is not just getting jobs or rewards for one’s friends, as much as sticking it to one’s enemies.
So the local people live in trepidation as deals are struck behind closed doors and, as often as not, governments fall with ‘transfugas’ (turncoats) crossing the floor with their pockets unexpectedly full. Our town has had four ‘mociones de censura’ (motions of censure) since the mid nineties. So who can you trust?
You vote for a list in Spain, the top few names get in, while the tail-end doesn’t. But one of the people near the top might be persuaded to change his allegiance. It’s just ‘politics’ of course.
There are a number of ways of attracting votes – since that’s the game we play. A five hundred euro bill is fairly persuasive, or a simple reminder that your rather useless cousin works in the town hall… at least, for the time being.
Our small town, with bitterly divided local power-seekers, united only in their worry of a non-captive ‘foreign vote’, pushed out thirteen parties in the last local election (a Spanish record) and looks like surpassing that number for the May 29th local elections for next year. Of course it is clear that an excess of strange little parties only favours the largest one, in our case, a party forced into a four-way coalition and, numbering among its voters, a better than 40% postal vote from, of all places, Argentina. It seems that the grandsons of our emigrants from the time of the Civil War still hold local citizenship.
Foreign voters are now divided into the newly enfranchised South Americans, the ones from Ecuador, Peru, Colombia etc who migrated here in search of a better life a few years back and now work for minimum wages in our hotels and kitchens – and will no doubt have a ‘boss’ to help them make up their minds politically; and the rather more complicated ‘European’ foreigners, who so easily could be a threat to the status quo, with their ideas of transparency, honour and civic pride, but luckily no one has had to take them seriously. Most don’t/won’t vote and those that do can be seduced into voting for a party ticket with some fellow called John or Bill way down the list where he acts as cannon-fodder, a useful shiny toy with no hope whatsoever of getting into the town hall.

Poubelle Lane

2010-09-03T12:09:00.000-07:00

August is always the worst month in Mojácar, with the queues, the tourists, the controls, the not-very-clean seas, the heat, the morning-after mess and the endless fiestas, and yet, a mere day passes, and it’s September: the best month.
It’s now a bit cooler, the sea is warm and reasonably empty, you can park once again and the barmen and shop assistants are suddenly pleased to see you.
Oh, and there's room in the dustbins for a few dead soldiers, a dead canary (heatstroke, we think) and a Welsh milking stool with a leg missing.
There are a few things I wanted to write an illustrated piece about, but my splendid little Olympus camera has had an attack and I am either back to the old days of wrench and click, followed by a trip to the shop to get my film developed, or am in the market for a new digital doodah. Camera Vendors - please come by the house tomorrow and show me your wares.
I wanted, in particular, to take a picture of one of our splendid new dustbins. Curiously, they are different from the old ones and, as such, need a new type of truck to load and empty them. Somebody, somewhere has made a killing. But while these new dustbins which infest the several towns that make up the larger community aren’t as easy to access as the old ones (try putting a smelly bag of kitchen garbage through a flap which only opens a few inches), the new location of these ugly grey containers leaves something to be desired as well. Apparently, the old ones used to be loaded ‘end-on’ to the trucks, while these ones are emptied ‘side-on’, which of course explains the new fleet. But, with this new approach to the bins, they have been distributed in a way to make it easier for the dustmen rather than for the punters.
We now have one at the end of our road, where there are no houses. The effect is to turn our small area of paradise, our ‘Spangri-la’ if you will, into a bit of a dump.

Almería 'de Fiestas'

2010-08-23T04:03:00.000-07:00

We went to the opening yesterday of this summer's Almería fair ('fiesta') which lasts the usual eight days. Give the Spanish their due, the bigger the town (or the town's coffers), the longer and jollier the Saint's Day becomes. A few years ago, Almería would run to ten days of party, concerts, fun fair and bullfights, but now with the recession ('¡ay!').
Yesterday's opening at what is known as the 'feria del mediodía' went on as these things do, for several hours with horsemen and carriages going up and down the main street of the fairground, while showing off, passing the day, drinking and being photographed by me and a few others. There was no particular focus, or formal parade, just people dressed to the eyeballs doing their piece. The gentlefolk and the gypsies were immediately identifiable with their different customs and characters. I went off and had a beer in one of the stalls while they got on with it - a beer and a tapa (Almería is famous for having the best and biggest tapas - a small plate of fingerfood - in Spain). The fairground fills up later on, after the bullfight in the bullring at the other end of the city. Yesterday, it was a special with rejoneadores, mounted bullfighters, which is a sight to see. One family we met at the horse event was carrying on to the bullfight (7.00pm) and then back for a late night thrash at the fair.

Did you see the lady riding side-saddle... and the work in Loli's horse's mane?

Chicken Lidl

2010-08-21T08:59:00.000-07:00

I think there used to be a sort of super-chicken on the cartoons, he would roll up the feathers on his arms and say something like: 'I mean i'm gonna, I say, I mean I'm gonna knock you down'.

Anyhow, and since I can't afford a holiday this year and tell you about my adventures at the Zoo in Paris, here's a picture of our rather pugnacious chicken, which runs all the animals in the Yard (except my son's girlfriend's dog, which had gone for a walk when this picture was taken). The reason for her strength, a kind of fowl version of the Popeye legend, is because she eats dogfood.

The eggs are tasty, mind.

A Warm Summer

2010-08-14T00:29:00.000-07:00

There was an article in the paper a few days back about how seventeen countries across the world have reported the hottest July on record (well, we include the Solomon Islands, but you get my drift). Moscow is as hot as Madrid and chunks of the ice surrounding Greenland are breaking off the glaciers, floating away south with a few startled penguins on board and, presumably, melting. The sea has already risen a milimetre.
We shall be on the front-line of the playa one of these days if this keeps up.
It has been horribly hot this summer, although we have been spared any 'brush-fires'. The house has thick walls and small windows and has a terrace designed to catch any spare breath of wind. Even so, we have to sleep in front of a fan and I wrap a towel around my pillow to keep comfortable. It is worse inland, away from the coast (one town, Écija, reporting 48C the other day), which is why most people would like to live near the sea and why the 'Ley de Costas', Spain's mad coastal law, will be reviewed by the government this autumn.
Then... last night... it rained. The temperature fell a few degrees and a slight wind started up. I could hear a slight groan of pleasure from the garden as the first drops fell. Perhaps we'll make it though the summer after all.

Barbary Pirates

2010-08-05T00:46:00.000-07:00

I am reading an old book about the Barbary Pirates that used to terrify the coastal villages of Southern Spain. Mojácar, for example, was built on a high hill a kilometre inland, with a good escape route up the mountains behind, in case of attack.
The pirates, following on from the traditions of Islam, together with a sense of outrage after the Fall of Granada, were based in various port cities along the ‘Coast of Barbary’ in North Africa, primarily Algiers, Tunis and Oran. They were a loose alliance of North African Moors and Turks from the Ottoman Empire and they preyed on European shipping and coastal towns, with their attacks stretching as far north as Ireland, England and even Iceland in search of slaves or ransom.
The corsarios lasted well into the early nineteenth century and Wikipedia notes – ‘Pirates destroyed thousands of French, Spanish, Italian and British ships, and long stretches of coast in Spain and Italy were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants, discouraging settlement until the 19th century. From the 16th to 19th century, pirates captured an estimated 800,000 to 1.25 million Europeans as slaves…’. Another fragment from the same source is interesting: The Americans fought two ‘Barbary Wars’ (1801 – 1805 and 1815) after ‘Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures in 1800’.
It gives a better idea of the importance of the old stone towers along our stretch of the coast to warn the local people of sightings of pirates.
The book, in old English print, refers to the treaties at the time between various European states and the Dey of Algiers (1719), with the latter saying ‘that the Barbary Corfairs, being born Pirates, and not able to fubfist by any other Means, it was the Chriftians Bufinefs to be always on their Guard, even in Time of Peace’. The book is called ‘A Voyage to Barbary for the Redemption of Captives’ and tells of how monies were collected by a French charity in 1720 to sail to Algiers to ransom as many Christians as they might. I have just read of how a French ship had been taken off the coast of Barcelona by Ottoman Turks the year before and towed towards Algiers only to be sunk in a storm off Morocco and how one ten-year-old French-girl was sorely treated by the local mountain-men before being ransomed to Algiers, to be ransomed in turn back to the French.
The French expedition eventually returned (in 1721) to Marseille with 62 'Slaves' bought from Algiers and a further 45 from Tunis.

Unbelievable But (Maybe) True

2010-07-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

The narrow donkey track - the one that goes up to Tito's and a few other houses in Mojácar pueblo, has been widened to fit a car as seen in this picture. The culprits are the promoters (whose crane has blighted views of Mojácar for the past three years). The plan is to have cars driving up and down this narrow ramp into a parking for the apartments being built there - even though it's on 'relleno', rubble, and looks rather dangerous.
But, how can cars turn upon themselves in a narrow one-way street, the only access to Mojácar? Well, you build a roundabout in front of Zaida and have traffic going counter-current on that section of the road. Then, of course, those cars leaving the narrow ramp, unable to see the road below them to their right at all, will have to pray that no one is coming.
Of course, we'll also lose a few parking spaces along the way...

What does the mayoress and the town hall architect think of this?

It's wonderful. Good for one promoter at the expense of an entire community.

Now that's how we do things around here.

Later: I'm told that the promoter 'misunderstood' the permission and that the Calle San Sebastian will not be open to traffic and furthermore that the town hall has threatened to put a 'no entry' sign there. Well, time will tell...

(Note - I've added the word 'Maybe' to the headline)

This is Not Americaaa...

2010-07-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

The following essays which have appeared on this blog have been ordered to be removed or amended by an injunction from the Vera Court!

Removed:
Vulgar Stories From Marbella - March 2010
The Cyber Squatter - September 2009
Title and essay - October 2008
Tits on Page Three - September 2008
Title and essay - February 2006

Edited:
Old Glories, December 2009, was edited to remove any offence to the judge.
Blevins Franks – Independent Financial Adviser - March 2008, was edited to remove any offence to the judge.
The title of an essay written in July 2007 has been changed to ‘A List of Surprising Websites’ and part of the content has been censored to comply with the order from the Vera Court.
Blimey - May 2006 has been edited to comply with the injunction from the Vera Court
The Entertainer, a Couple of Bits – April 2006, was edited to remove any offence to the judge.

Monday: my lawyer has appealed this ruling.

No 'comments' please, but you can write, suggest, ask, inform or advise me on this subject at my email lenoxnapier (at) gmail (dot) com.

A Very Visible Complaint

2010-07-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

I remember an Iveco truck that used to drive around here years back with a sign painted on the roof air-spoiler which said 'Este camion es una mierda'. This truck is a piece of crap. The sign must have worked as the truck eventually disappeared from the roads and the driver was duly seen with a new one. I hope he preferred it.
Perhaps the owner of this Peugeot has a similar idea. I saw the car parked in Almería on the weekend...

A New Friend

2010-07-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

Hands up anyone who knows what that thing is picking lice out of my hair.

Property in Spain

2010-07-12T11:45:00.000-07:00

There has been a certain amount of excitement among the Northern European settlers in Spain after the head-on critical attack on President Zapatero from a rogue MEP during the plenary meeting in Strasbourg to close Spain’s six month presidency of the European Union. The attack came from Marta Andreasen, an MEP for the Euro-sceptic UKIP (an odd party perhaps for Ms Andreasen, a British citizen who lives in Barcelona and who has a marked Argentine accent, but then the Über-Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan was born and raised in Peru and he doesn’t seem to think much of foreign politicians either). Andreasen compared Zapatero’s treatment of the mainly British owners of ‘illegal homes’ as approaching something dreamed up by President Mugabe, the Zimbabwean despot. There’s a video of her comments and Zapatero’s indignant answer here.
This comes after the new housing tsar for Andalucía, the ex IU mayoress for Cordoba Rosa Aguilar, said in a recent meeting in Cadiz that there are 300,000 illegal homes in Andalucía.
And God knows how many more in the rest of Spain.
There are in fact three different problems that home-owners, whether Spanish, European or foreigners must face, although oddly, most of the ‘victims’ of these problems turn out to be Britons. The three (essential) problems, misunderstood unfortunately by both Ms Andreasen and Mr Zapatero (if he cares) are ‘Land Grab’ (a popular concept where property is expropriated and the owner charged for urbanisation costs for his remaining stake, all for publicly sanctioned commercial reasons), ‘Illegal Homes’ (homes are planned, built, marketed and sold – almost always to Northern Europeans - and only then found to be illegal, thus leaving – apparently – hundreds of thousands of property owners in a extended state of doubt, stress and judicial uncertainty) and lastly the ‘Ley de Costas’, the Coastal Law which started out as a military order to allow clear fields of fire on the Nation’s coast and beaches. Now, while no one is clear on the rules (which vary from one municipality, owner, authority and situation, to the next), the Coastal Law can mean that no one can build within a certain, variable, distance from the water-line unless the rules are bent, ignored or, in some cases, satisfied with a fine. The 1988 version of this law will, apparently, be debated in the Spanish parliament this autumn, so maybe some sense will finally be made of it.
But let us return to Andalucía and the housing tsar Rosa Aguilar. Her predecessor, recently removed from his job after masterminding the demolition of one house in Vera, Almería, in 2008 – and causing a hullabaloo across the world (oddly enough, even in Zimbabwe during their elections) – had talked of homes being ‘ilegal’ and ‘legal’ and something very andaluz between these two extremes: ‘alegal’ – which would translate as something like ‘illegalish’. An elegant solution where everyone wanders off and talks about something else. Unfortunately, many of the illegal houses don’t have water or electric connections and, not being registered officially, the owners can’t pay property taxes or, of course, vote.
Rosa Aguilar thinks that the answer might lie in forcing the owners of these properties to pay urbanising costs which, at least in Chiclana where she made the remarks (a town with 15,000 illegal homes or more), costs per household would be in the region of 40,000 euros. Meanwhile, she has set up a Citizens Forum with a number of women’s groups (for some reason) to ‘establish a permanent dialogue between the Andalucian Department for Housing and Public Works and social groups’.

Later (June 20). The consejera Rosa Aguilar was in Albox today and met with members of AUAN and agreed to the association joining the 'Citizens Forum' from September.

Communication Breakdown

2010-07-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

Our home is in sight of the Moviestar antenna on top of Mojácar’s hill, yet none of our mobile phones work inside the house. Some friend tells me that this is because we live in a Faraday Cage (which is stupid). Nevertheless, whatever the reason, and I’m thinking ghosts, coverage drops down to nothing once inside the house, which causes me all kinds of crackingly amusing little problems as the result of not knowing that someone has just rung, and consequently either missing a call or having to answer them back at a future and sometimes less useful time. The phone I have will, if I get the buttons pressed in the right order, allow me to hear a message but will not retain the number of the caller so, if I don’t write it down on the first instance, it’ll probably be lost. I need to wear glasses to read the little dial on my phone, which takes pictures, movies, emails, games and other obscure services and yet is designed for eagle-eyed boy scouts and won’t work in any meaningful way inside our house.
So, I go outside to dial. This sometimes doesn’t work either and a few people have complained about me walking down the street (of a very quiet unlit neighbourhood I might add) in my underwear while swearing at my mobile phone.
Also, I can climb onto the roof and this sometimes works and, of course, othertimes doesn’t. No, I’m not going to dress to phone – not until I buy one of those Ipods with the little camera in it.
So anyway, I have had three calls in the last couple of days. They were all received while both my useless phone and I were in residence and were therefore not answered. These calls, as the recorded messages leave me to believe, are from a friend who wants to meet me on Friday for dinner. Now, the last call included the information that the local house-phone where my friend is staying was down but that not to worry because the cell-phone number was such and such. That’s right. A ‘cell-phone’. I would have to call an American mobile number just to confirm a chicken n chip night out which was going to cost less than the phone-call itself. So, biting the bullet, I went outside with a pen and my glasses and punched in the one two three messages with the irritating voice (‘you have received a call today, at three thirty five and a half…’) to hear the message again and write down the number. But as usual, and I’ve climbed a tree for this, no coverage at all.
My webpage is bust today as well. I write a blog about Spain and have some interesting points about Zapatero’s summation of his six-month presidency of the European Union and the attack against him delivered by Marta Andreasen (see here) but the page is down. Perhaps Moviestar has bought my Russian server.
God, I hope not.

A New Indalo for Mojácar

2010-07-01T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Indalo is a straight-backed figure with open legs and extended arms holding a half-circle over his head. A totem that started out as a protective agent that kept any bad luck away. Perhaps the half-circle is a rainbow or some kind of umbrella that keeps off the tempest, the thunder and the odd lightning-bolt.
The Indalo has been connected with Mojácar since the dawn of time and is more properly called ‘el pequeño hombrecillo mojaquero’ or ‘the little Mojácar man’. A crude painting over a door or perhaps some stones artfully laid in the ground to create the figure, people used it as decoration and for good luck. It is true that there is a poor copy of the figurine scorched on the wall in an underground grotto together with other cave-man daubs in the mountain village of Vélez Blanco, but our noble totem is clearly older – perhaps a rendition of a visitor – an early tourist perhaps – from another land.
By the 1960’s, re-christened as ‘Indalo’ by a group of Almerian artists based in and inspired by the singular beauty of our pueblo, the figure was easily recognisable across Europe, both as light gold jewellery and as a heavier cast iron decoration, as the Mojácar Man. We had one of the latter type bolted to the grill on our car and another one stood on the chimney of the house – sorting out any bad-tempered demon that dared to come close.
In around 1988, the mayor of Mojácar allowed an advertising agency in Almería to exploit the Indalo for various ends, and a new and somehow more modern version, by now a hump-backed totem twisted by a withered leg – the sort of thing that the Spanish artist Miró would no doubt approve of – soon appeared as the image for the entire province. Mojácar was rewarded with a brand new logo by the agency, a sort of mountain squiggle with a sun above it. Most original in a country like Spain. It didn't last any longer than the next 'moción de censura' when the mayor and his pals were ousted in a 'palace revolution'.
So we returned to the Indalo, unwillingly sharing it with the other 102 municipalities in the province, together with the region's tourist board.
But now, a new version has arrived to complement our medieval town with its narrow streets and stark white houses clustered on a steep Moorish hill under the clean blue sky. The entrance to our town has been dignified with a new roundabout crowned with a fresh interpretation of our good-luck totem. A one-legged figure in a permanent state of semi-tumescence.
But, ignore that. Look at its head.
This one makes me think of visitors from the stars. Perhaps that’s what an Indalo really is, a space-suited figure from the Planet Clunk.

a History of Mojácar

2010-06-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Mojácar comes from the Arab name ‘Muxacra’, which comes from the Roman name ‘Mons Sacra’. This ‘sacred mountain’ refers to a pyramid shaped hill which is just below the current site of the town. The hill, now known as ‘Old Mojácar’, has an Arab water deposit on its summit, innumerable ruins on its approaches, bronze age remnants about its feet and the dry river ‘Aguas’ to its rear. Whether it is in fact the old settlement of Mojácar is perhaps unlikely, as the current location is sited on the front of a range of mountains called the Sierra Filabres which extend way into the interior – a much more defensible site with available water and retreat routes. The town overlooks the Mediterranean at around 400 Metres above sea level and a kilometre inland – making for good defence from corsairs. Settlement here can be traced back to the beginning of history, and include Phoenicians, Greeks, Trojans and the Icini (the original ‘Beaker People’).
Mojácar was a fortified town in the Moorish era, and fell to the Christian Kings – Isabel and Ferdinand – in 1488. Everyone was promptly slaughtered. Or left in peace, if you believe the plaque located at the ‘Moorish fountain’ (built in 1930 with channelled water from a fountain behind the town). The town regained its strength during the following centuries, after being re-populated with Christians from nearby Lorca, and became the local capital during the following centuries. The town, according to a 1912 encyclopaedia, had a ‘castillo inmutable’, which means an un-knockdownable castle, and a population for the 1910 census of 6,000 souls. By 1960, the population has dwindled to 600, and consideration was underway to absorb Mojácar into the municipality of Carboneras. Worse still, somebody had knocked down the castle.
The Civil War had undoubtedly taken its toll, Mojácar being enthusiastically ‘Red’, and many had been obliged to take off for foreign climes after the Nationalist victory. The water table had also fallen after strip farming practices in the hills had removed all the vegetation. By the early sixties, there was some tomato plantations on the beach, and little else.
Mining in the Bédar hills had been re-introduced by the British in the late 19th century – mainly iron and copper – and some small industry had made its way seawards, with a rail-head in next door Garrucha, and heavy strip mining further along in Cuevas. A small community of Europeans had settled locally, and Garrucha – essentially the only way in or out, as there was no roads in to the area – became the foreigners’ capital. By 1930, there were even Dutch, German and British consuls in the port town.
Mojácar passed much of this by, although in 1915, a British citizen in Garrucha bought and piped much of Mojácar’s fresh water over to Garrucha, where he sold it to the townsfolk. Mojácar’s main claim to history during this period was the birth on December 5th 1901 of José Guirao Zamora to a local ‘loose woman’ in the small and nearby farming hamlet of Campamento. The father was a local gad-about and future solid citizen, sewing his wild oats. The child was taken to Chicago by the mother, and adopted by the Disney family. You’ll know him as Walt. Well, so the story goes. Another story, perhaps with more bases in fact, was the departure of Pascual Artero from Aguas Enmedio (another local hamlet) in the 1930s to the Pacific island of Guam, where he provisioned the American army during the Second World War and inherited the nickname of ‘The King of Guam’. Luis Siret, a Belgian archaeologist operating in the area during the twenties, is credited with ‘discovering’ the local totem – the Indalo – amongst prehistoric drawings in a cave in Vélez Blanco. The name comes from the first bishop of Alméria, Indalecio. The totem however – a stick figure holding a serpent over his head – can be traced back in Mojácar at least as far back as the sixteenth century, and it was known as the ‘hombrecillo mojaquero’. It’s probably a fertility goddess, but who knows.
In the early sixties, the provincial ‘Gobernador Civil’ promoted a local man, Jacinto Alarcón, to be mayor. Jacinto managed, with nothing short of genius, to turn the town’s fortunes around. A group of artists (including Canton Checa, Jose Luis Perceval and Rafael Lorente) had ‘discovered’ Mojácar – a brown cubist village in ruins as the 1954 ‘Sierra Maldita’ melodramatic film shows – and founded an art movement named after the Indalo, calling themselves the ‘Indalianos’. Jacinto encouraged their activities, and hit on the idea of giving away land or ruins to those who were prepared to come and repair or build. By the end of this project, around 1965, many well known characters and wealthy people had taken up the offer, including bullfighter Antonio Bienvenida, diplomat Sir Michael Adeane, actor Charles Baxter and concert pianist Enrique Arias. Soon, others followed, and with prices to laugh at, Mojácar had become a small but well-known bohemian colony by the end of the decade. Future property handouts to various soon-to-be senior socialist politicians, like Julio Feo, Jose Bobadilla and Alfonso Guerra (later vice president of Spain) helped the town’s fortunes.
The crash of two American nuclear armed planes over nearby Palomares in January 1966 brought Manuel Fraga Irribarne, the then tourist minister, to Mojácar, where Jacinto persuaded him to build a Parador hotel and to dub the (by this time painted) town with the ‘White City of the Year’ prize for 1966. A never heard of before or since award. Greed and poor planning by those who followed Jacinto brought the tour operator Horizon to the town, and poor quality hotels, cheap package tourists and get rich quick apartments soon helped Mojácar’s growth while trashing her international status.
Today, Mojácar has around 8,000 full time inhabitants, with perhaps another 15,000 summer visitors. The village remains attractive, with narrow ‘Moorish’ streets, stunning views and cubist architecture: while the beach has expanded into the main business of the community, and stretches as a solid line of hotels and apartment blocks from Garrucha to well past the Hotel Indalo, with new projects being built at Macenas. Some basic infrastructure is now going in, like a ring-road behind the beach urbanisations (well, one day) and some parking for the village. Desultory talk of a theatre (the old one was demolished in the ‘seventies), and a cinema (ditto) may bring culture back to the town. Meanwhile, an art museum and a public sports centre and swimming pool have been completed but remain tantalisingly unopened.
While poor politics (and indifference in civic affairs from the foreigners) has complicated Mojácar’s appeal, the beach, weather, location and social life remain attractive.
English is the most spoken language of Mojácar today, followed by ‘mojaquero’ (an impenetrable form of Spanish). The local school is about 50% foreign. Finding work as a foreigner is hard, much beyond house-cleaning and bar work, although many set up their own businesses. Spaniards don’t generally patronize foreign business, and rarely employ foreigners. It’s best to live here on income from abroad. There are many ex-pat clubs, theatre groups and associations here, and making friends is easy. There is not much inter-cultural strife, and the warm weather and easy going lifestyle soon soothe away any anxieties.

The Lord of the Flies

2010-06-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

The weather has been strange this year, with more rain falling here since Christmas than you could experience on a long Irish weekend. It’s either something fairly terminal to do with the global warming or, just possibly, a situation caused by my own foolishness. A few months ago I finally installed an automatic drip system in the garden. It’s rained off and on ever since.
Whatever the cause of all the rain, the result is the same: more mosquitoes than ever. The town hall claims that they have been out spraying with some miracle product but, as anyone could tell them, if it’s available, it won’t work. You might kill the odd fritillary, causing the Green Party to swell its ranks to unseasonable levels; thus propelling ever more eccentric rules through Brussels and bringing down the World As We Know It. The mosquitoes, though, are impervious.
Anyway, the last few days have been hot, too hot to mess about with spraying.
The mosquitoes approach, whine briefly about your head for entirely dramatic reasons, and then settle on an exposed bit of skin. Fifteen minutes of itching being quite enough to keep one awake – anticipating the next bite.
I use a plug-in device called Fogo which more or less keeps them down, apart of course from the gung-ho types that thunder determinedly through the window, without a word of advice, and manage a quick meal before the cloud of blue gas whacks them. How bad it may be for humans is a question for another day, although it’s rumoured to be made out of the same stuff that Saddam was meant to be hiding in his umbrella tips. The dog has certainly developed a nasty cough and now sleeps upside-down on the ceiling.
This aromatic insecticide doesn’t stop flies though. Nothing, during daylight hours, stops flies. They seem to take over duty from the mosquitoes while managing, somehow, to be even more irritating. The mosquito, dispensing vile and fatal disease with every bite, at least has a point to it. You can look on it fondly as a kind of tax for the thousands of benefits of living in southern Spain. A shot of blood in payment for the good life. The fly though, has no reason at all. It doesn’t eat any of your spare bits, unless you happen to be seriously considering death. It just likes to sit on you and brush its feet. Which – as it must know - is very irritating. There is never two of them brushing away on your nose, always just the one. If you manage to flatten it, which takes reactions on a level with Schumacher’s, then the next one will come along and do duty. Why not two today in exchange for none tomorrow?
The Chinese are well known for killing flies with their trusty Mao-swats. Ten flies a day or a spot of re-education, was, I understand, the rule for many years. It must have been fun: ‘I saw it first, Mrs Lo’. Fly-swats are immensely satisfying things, after all, except for the mess they leave: and the fact that, until October, it’s Too Bloody Hot to go whacking away at flies…
There was once a rather graphic campaign about cleanliness in restaurants, which went something like ‘…and the fly lands on the food and regurgitates a small dollop of its stomach full of digestive enzymes onto the meat to liquefy it. It stamps the vomit well into its food before sucking up the resulting cocktail back inside with its proboscis. Bliss! Then it's your turn…’.
So the only thing to do is to wish upon a star, or rub a bottle with a genie in it. Please Mr Fairy, make all the flies go away. I don’t care about those beautiful creatures that rely for their survival on flies, like swallows, trout, lizards, frogs and fly-swat salesmen, it’ll be worth their passing into history just to see the flies go.
You have to be a bit careful with genies, of course. I saw a fellow yesterday who had had a run-in with one. He had obviously asked for gold. He was wearing two ear-rings, a heavy necklace, bracelets, rings, all made from gold, plus a Rolex watch. He was standing in front of me in the supermarket, bare-chested and with a rather droopy looking family. Perhaps he was happy, although his wife was staying carefully just out of reach. She had a slightly glazed look of approaching panic about her.
Flies are the most wretched of creatures. They are the Volkswagens of the insect world, boring, ubiquitous and charmless. I recently found a giant moth on the terrace, about three inches long, black and brown and with a death’s head design on the top of its thorax. This particular strain is the largest moth in Europe. If you pick one up, it will let out a tiny scream. I showed it to the children who were all captivated apart from one lout who kept a respectable distance and said, ‘does it bite?’. A moth? It sucks nectar down its long hollow tongue while flying in front of a flower (it weighs too much to settle). A few years ago, there was a ‘plague’ of these giant moths in some town in the interior of Almería. The newspaper write-up on the event was entitled ‘The curse of the monster flies’.
Flies in ancient times materialised from thin air. They popped into existence, jus’likethat. The Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub, another name for the devil, was responsible for them.
So I am getting tired… but I must wait until dark… and the arrival of the mosquitoes, the night-children.

A Few Friends

2010-06-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

I’m sat in our office, a converted bedroom I suppose in our rather large house. It’s the kind of house that wanders slightly, one room decants indecently into another. Small windows and thick walls keep it cool. There was never any architect involved with this house, so the ceilings are a bit too high and no one can say for sure just how many bedrooms there are.
Which is why it was easy making this particular one into an office. There’s even a single bed in here in case I get lost and need a rest.
Only, the dog usually gets there first.
The walls of this room are heavily decorated by paintings, as is most of the rest of the house, even the kitchen, as artists have always been welcome here. Paintings are useful to cover the walls and add a mood to a room, but an old farmhouse in the campo has another secret reason for hanging posters, canvases and sundry other memorabilia on the heavy walls. This is to do with the small creatures that live behind the paintings, scampering sure-footedly from one to another or calling for a mate with a small series of amorous belches.
The local Spanish think that they are dangerous in some obscure way and have little time for them, but the ‘salamanquesas’ or geckoes are fine little fellows. They eat the flies and the mosquitoes. One has just galloped along the wall in front of me, ignoring the fact that it’s vertical, and has harvested a slightly surprised looking daddy-long-legs.
Sometimes they attract the attention of the cats, or one of the two duendes that live in the secret spaces between the walls of this house. The duendes are the ‘little folk’ that torment the innocent. We leave bits of bread and milk out for them and they generally leave us alone. When a gecko is faced with real danger, he will release muscles in his tail which will obligingly fall off and wriggle for a while, allowing – with luck – the more important bit of the creature to scamper back behind a handy landscape. So, some of our lizards have a missing tail, or are in the process of growing another one.
So, the geckoes and I help each other out. I attract the mosquitoes and they keep the duendes amused.

The Red Palm Weevil

2010-06-01T01:04:00.000-07:00

According to the ever-faithful Wikipedia, 'The red palm weevil, Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, is a species of beetle. It is relatively large, between two and five centimeters long, and a rusty red colour. Its larvae excavate holes up to a metre long in the trunk of palm trees, and can kill the host plant.'
This nasty beetle comes from Asia and has been working its way towards Mojácar since the eighties. Well, here's one that made it here this morning. It is about an inch long and was marching up our palm tree with a hungry glint in its eye. It flew off after having its picture taken, but it got a snoot-full of bug spray before the photo-shoot so its mischief should be at an end.

Where is Pamplona?

2010-05-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

Over the last few years I have sometimes had reason to visit Pamplona (or ‘Iruña’ as it is in Euskera). Signs in Spanish to this city going through the Basque Country are non-existent (for reasons one can only imagine). But I now know the way (essentially – head for France and turn right – or, if you get really lost – ask a gendarme).
Pamplona, by the way, is considered by the heavier members of the Basque independents as being the capital of Euskadi even though it’s in Navarra - a province (and one-stop autonomy) that stands on its own. Euskera is the second official language (anecdotal note).
I was in Pamplona in a cyber-café, full of young Turks bashing away at the keys, passing the time by writing a letter to The Diario de Navarra – a rather staid and boring daily from the Correo group.
‘Does anyone here know how to say ‘where’ in Basque?’ I asked. No, they didn’t. ‘Guys, I’m writing a funny letter to the Diario. I got lost in Vitoria and asked someone how to get to Pamplona – so, I need to say ‘¿donde está Iruña?’ to make my point. Now, I’m not a linguist, but I can say ‘donde’ in Italian, German, French, Greek, Portugee, Spanish and English. So, since you lot (there was about twenty people in the shop), since you lot, I say, are in a bi-fuckin’-lingual province, how do you say ‘donde’ in Basque?’.
Somebody took pity on me – ‘In Navarra, no one speaks Euskera outside of the mountains’, I was told.
Can you imagine such a conversation going on in Catalonia?