Take the Train

 The best thing about the train is that it will take you into the centre of the city. You won’t be dumped in some stainless steel and marble airport half an hour or more – by taxi - from the downtown.

Living in Almería – one of the cities that has waited patiently for about twenty years for a high-speed train to take us somewhere, indeed anywhere… we have either had to get in the car, or on a very uncomfortable and slow bus, or take the trouble to buy an air-ticket, or climb aboard the one existing slow train – there's only one train station in the entire province, and that's in Almería City: a line which meanders across the landscape before eventually hooking up with civilization in Linares (Jaén) and so on northwards or alternatively west to Seville. 

The problem with arriving by car at your city destination is increasingly - where to leave it? 

There never was much in the way of railways in Almería, beyond a few mining routes built with foreign investment in around 1900 – now all since lost beyond the elevated rail-head in Almería City (now restored and converted into a tourist attraction) known as el Cable Inglés.

Trains are the best, because one can wander around in them – pop into the bar for a brandy and to read the paper. Even seated, one can stretch one’s legs. There’s no baggage issues either. Bring along a full suitcase, why don’t you.

Many years ago, taking the Sleeper to Madrid was, if you’ll forgive the pun, just the ticket. The carriage, built in Birmingham in 1948, was sturdy and comfortable, and one was delivered on Platform One in Madrid’s Atocha railway station at seven in the morning – the perfect time for a coffee and a bun before taking a taxi to one’s appointments.

Trains are better than airplanes, and if they are fast, then there’s little more to be said. Downtown to downtown without taxi rides to and from the airport – plus one is doing one’s bit for the struggle against Global Warming and one's Carbon Footprint production.

(A pop singer called Taylor Swift who leads the pack in air-rides with almost 8,300 tons of CO2 emissions in 2022 might want to take note. Take the train, Child, we’ll wait).

Trains then, will deliver one feeling refreshed while other forms of transport lean towards leaving one nervous, washed-out and irritable.

They say that Almería – poor forgotten province in the south East of Spain – should finally have its AVE (tren de alta velocidad española) by 2026.

Until then, By Jove, I shall be staying home on the couch and reading some well-illustrated travelers’ guides.  

Walt Was Here

I first came to Mojácar in 1966 with my parents who bought two apartments here (I’ve just found the escritura) for – apparently – 90,000 pesetas: that works out at just 260 euros per apartment.

We lived in the one upstairs with the three bedrooms and a roof terrace and rented the downstairs one to Michel for 1,000 pesetas a month, which he could never afford, and he would generally stay for dinner on rent-night instead.

One of the stories I heard (when not in school in the UK, polishing my Latin) was that a local woman had fallen into disgrace around 1899 and had taken ship to the Americas to hide her shame. She ended up in Chicago and found employment with the Disney family and after she died giving birth, the child was adopted by them.

A mere 25 years later, Walt Disney’s climb to fame began.

This seems unlikely as she wouldn’t have written home saying – I’m about to give birth to Walter (not an easy name to say), who will one day be a household name.

Furthermore, the Mojaquero version has it that the child was called José Guirao Zamora and that his dad was the Mojácar doctor of that period – who also apparently suffered from prescience.

Not that the family hasn’t always strenuously denied the tale.

We would tell of the two FBI agents asking to see the Church Registry sometime in the fifties, so as to keep the matter secret (why we would think that they must have come for Disney if it was a secret, is a secret). The twist is that all the documents were destroyed in the Civil War so no one could prove anything one way or the other.

It was all a good story, and while the Disney Corporation would tremble in outrage at the suggestion of their Founder being a Mojaquero, there wasn’t anything much to prove that he wasn’t.

Well, except for a birth certificate (which has never been found) or a Certificate of Baptism currently on display in the San Francisco Disney museum (‘Walter Elias Disney: 5 December 1901).

The old mayor of Mojácar Jacinto Alarcón once told me the story of Walt Disney. In his version, he and Diego Carillo (the village doctor) were once reading a magazine which had a picture of Walt Disney in it. ‘Coo’, said Jacinto, politely dropping the ñ, ‘he’s the spitting image of you. I bet you’re related to him’. 

Thus, after another round of Anis del Mono, was a legend born.

All Good Stuff, one might say, and we can’t dine out on Gordon Goodie the Train Robber (he had a beach-bar in Mojácar) for ever.

When asked if he was from Mojácar – so the story goes – Walt himself replied ‘Who knows…?’

Despite the fact that if he was, he certainly never came back – unless he was one of those FBI agents, of course.

So, fifty or sixty, or probably seventy years later, the Mojácar City Fathers have decided that, well, yes: Walt Was Here.

So now we have two enormous murals in the village, vast wall paintings of Mickey Mouse welcoming the tourists to come and buy some souvenirs. There’s to be a Plaza de Walt Disney and even a Walt Disney festival to be held in late November (unless they hear about it in San Francisco).

One little town in Andalucía has painted itself blue to accommodate the Smurfs, and now another has grown a pair of huge mousey ears – to please the shopkeepers.

The Curious New Laws Regarding Pets

 

I imagine that most of us have had a pet in the house since we were of the tenderest age all those years ago.

I certainly did.

What was yours called?

No, don’t tell me, or I’ll have your password figured out.

Now we read that, while some of the Animal Welfare Law hasn’t yet been ratified thanks to a conspicuous lack of government, other bits of it have. We don’t need to take lessons in how to entertain a pooch (which we have done, as above, since we started. After all, one is pretty much there with Walkies, Din-dins and Down Boy!).

But, let’s see – one can no longer take the dog out to go shopping and leave him tied to a post outside while we pick up a box of milk, some chocolates, a tin of dog-food and a free English-language paper (to wrap it all up in).

There’s anything up to a ten thousand euro fine if you are caught. More, probably, if your mascota (the Spanish name for pet) bites the nice policeman during the inevitable altercation.

To cure this problem, supermarkets have beggars which sit, slumped, outside the entrance. For a small consideration, they’ll be happy to look after Fido and you will be able to shop at your leisure.

Maybe throw in an extra tin of Chum for the hobo’s dog, or indeed a frosty can of beer for the deadbeat himself.

We must now take more care and not leave our dogs in the house alone for long – or chained up outside either.

Felines have a bit more liberty, as is only proper, but run the risk of returning home through the upstairs window a few grams lighter that when they left having been caught by one of those peculiar catch-neuter-release people that are always leaving food out for the feral cats.

There is also a list of pets which we just flatly aren’t allowed to keep. It’s easier just to note the few one can – which pretty much comes down to dog, cat, ferret (who on earth keeps a ferret for a pet?), tropical fish and that thing you shouldn’t get wet or feed after midnight.

All this, plus the looming dog insurance at around twenty-five euros a pop (while a very good idea as any postman will tell you), which may be beneficial to our furry (or scaly) friends as the legislators provided; although I rather think that there will be more than a few accidents or inexplicable losses of surplus critters of one sort or another reported in the inside pages.

Some causes in Spain remain sacred, and hunting dogs and fighting bulls, of course, need not apply.       

 

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El Comercio has an exhaustive list of the new Animal Welfare Law do’s and don’ts here.