Put some Brits Together, and They'll Start a Newspaper

 It’s a funny world – the expat press.

Over here in Spain, there are a small number of both Brit free-sheets and paid newspapers, all solemnly ignored by the national advertisers. The free-sheets have more locally-sourced adverts (they have to cover their costs somehow, and the printed copy is about a euro a pop these days). Does anyone read those adverts, or simply gloss over and past them?

The pay-for newspapers can probably spend a bit more on copy and rely a bit less on promotions. I also don’t doubt but that their print-run is far smaller. One of them, the weekly Costa Blanca News, has a copy price (August 2022) of 2,70€. It’s been going since 1973. Another one, the daily Majorca Daily Bulletin, as the ‘Iberian Daily Sun’, was going as far back as 1969. The oldest of them all is the monthly Guidepost (since February 1958) out of Madrid and still ‘published continuously and unfailingly from then onward’.

I ran a weekly for a while called The Entertainer during the eighties and nineties, eventually learning that there is no honor among thieves and that it's hard to pay off a large mortgage (for printers bills) when there's nothing coming in.

An English-language daily started in Madrid called The Standard back in 1992. It was a serious 'European' kind of newspaper, priced I think at 50ptas. The paper, once again ignored by the national advertisers (they seem to prefer to go through media-buyers who then take an annual cash return called un rappel from their chosen publications), folded after just forty days. 

Indeed, not only do the larger advertisers stick to the tried-and-true (did you ever see an advert for a leading car company in an expat newspaper?), the so-called institutional advertising - propaganda bought and paid for by the provincial, regional and national governments (to keep everybody in line) - never appears in the foreign-owned newspapers - English, German or Dutch. The few smaller agencies that will deal with the foreign press like to pay out typically on 120 days (the printer likes his money after 30 days). 

There are quite a few of these newspapers and magazines about - some large with others being a spot more modest. On the Costa del Sol, there’s the Sur in English, a Spanish-owned freebie in operation since 1986 (it began as a couple of pages once a week in the local Spanish version, to later expand into its current dominant position). Two others of note are the biweekly free newspaper called The Olive Press which at least uses journalists and professional writers and produces some investigative journalism; and finally the downmarket Euro Weekly News (which self-importantly claims that it is known to its readers as The People’s Paper, although it’s more often referred to as The Weenie). This particular free-sheet has featured Leapy Lee among its columnists for the last twenty years or so. The notorious Mr Lee pumps out a far-right tirade about the United Kingdom each week, evidently to the approval of the publication’s readers. This paper appears to mix up its content without much attention to where or what it is on about, rarely providing much useful news about Spain, preferring to entertain the readers with a fruit-salad of filler, dogs, puzzles and lottery winners. Perhaps you read it: perhaps you wrap the fish in it. 

Put it this way - you are not going to pass the current affairs test put out by the Instituto Cervantes as a step towards gaining Spanish nationality if you only source of information on this great country is The Weenie. 

There are some glossy Costa magazines past and present (Lookout 1964 – 1986 was the best I think) and various what’s-on guides, plus a couple of English-language radio stations and, of course, lots of Internet news and help-pages, blogs, vlogs (video-blogs) and other sites.

All, with the exception of Business over Tapas and a few of my fellow bloggers, decorated with endless and aggressive advertising. At least one has to patiently sit through an advert on the radio. In print, you merely skip past it.

It’s certainly true that, these days, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper putting out one’s copy there on the World Wide Web than it is taking it down to the printers, so – I dunno – perhaps at least on Facebook we could forego the click-bait?  

Good Cheer, and Watch Those Polverones!

 Christmas in Spain. At least down where I live, it doesn’t quite ring true like the old traditions in England. There’s no holly or mistletoe (acebo and muérdago) to leave on the shelf or kiss the maid under. Come to think of it, there’s no maid either. The tree looks a bit out of place as well, and some of us settle for the dried flower from a century plant, una pita, bedecked with a ribbon or two.

I just have the one Christmas card this year to put on the – well, the chimney-piece if there was one. It’s from my old nanny from when I was a child in Norfolk (it’s almost sixty years since I’ve last seen her). It has a snow-scene and a short poem in a rather wonky metre. It was posted in late October and I gather that it must have travelled about fifty kilometres a day to reach me in Almería a mere seven weeks later. Well done our friends at Correos, and don’t forget the seasonal tip for Mr Postie!

The thing is, the old traditions don’t really have the same thrust over here. For me, Deep and Crisp and Eeeven only works with Domino’s Pizza! I suppose one can buy Christmas Pud at the English shop in our local market town, and douse it with brandy, but I’ll pass on that, thanks. The turkey is fine, although my Spanish family prefers plates of jamón serrano and gambas.

I think they may have a point.

We have plenty of cakes here though. The Roscón de Reyes is as delicious as the polverones are terrible. These floury morsels are quite impossible to swallow, even with a seasonable glass of anís. I wonder - do the banks still offer this interesting combination to its customers (usually consumed before one see one's balance)? I will have to go down and look…

Carol singing in England for me as a child was a quick couple of verses of ‘The First Noel’ followed by mince pies and some warming toddy. Then off to the mansion at the other end of the lane for a repeat. Here we are regaled ceaselessly throughout the entire season by villancicos: horrible songs pumped out all day long through the Nation’s municipal and supermarket loudspeakers as performed by cute little choristers and their noisome piping voices.

Dressing up as Santa Claus is just silly. He wears a heavy red outfit with cap and mittens, while our local temperature is in the high twenties thanks to Global Scorching.

I think just a red tee-shirt would be quite enough to go with the ho ho ho.

There’s no Christmas stocking here, and indeed the whole presents-under-the-tree thing is another foreign import. I suppose that, reeling as we are (or will be) from not winning the Christmas lottery, something in gaudy paper to unwrap on Noche Buena – Christmas Eve – might be a good idea. A kind of consolation gift.

The small presents given out by the Spanish for January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany – usually falling on the day before school begins – don’t quite hit the spot.

I was once one of the Three Kings – the blond one of course. All went well as we arrived in the town square in a dumper truck but when the first, rather fat child sat on my knee to receive a dinky-toy, he spotted that under the heavy makeup lurked a guiri. He let out a quite improper shriek, even though I explained that all three of the Reyes were indeed foreigners. From afar.

The best thing about our Christmas season, and you will notice it in the photos we send to our families and friends in far-off England, is the fact that we are all wearing tee-shirts under a warm blue sky.

Could there be a better gift than that?

Madrid's Barajas Airport

 My own experience of galloping through the Madrid airport with my wheelie-suitcase last week, with eighty minutes to disembark at the international end of the huge installation, go through immigration (as a non-EU foreigner), take the underground train-link, the security inspection and then the race through the garish duty-free corridor and onward for the local flight at the other - furthest - end just in time to join the back of the queue as they boarded the Almería flight, makes me anything other than a fan of that dreadful airport. 

It seems that I’m not the only one: From El Español here: ‘How the Aeropuerto Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas is no longer the best airport in Europe in just one year: it has dropped 30 places’. 

I remember the first time I landed in Barajas, back in the sixties. I had arrived on a flight from London on a BEA Comet. The airport was - of course - much smaller then, and certainly friendlier. They had a free cinema to while away the time before one's next flight. I shouldn't be surprised to learn that more than a few travelers, enveloped in the comforting arms of Disney, consequently missed their connection to Rio.

Those who didn't fancy the cinema could sit on a sofa rather than a metal bench, sturdily designed with arm rests to stop one from stretching out for a time-consuming zizz. Not many of us carry a book any more, and one can only stare at a mobile phone for a limited period. No wonder we untidily lie on the floor with our suitcase for a head-rest. 

They even had large paintings on the walls in those times to lull away our anxiety.

The bar was cheaper too - with prices only twice what they should have been. And you paid the waiter, not a machine. 

Security didn't exist, beyond the odd bored-looking cop. Now, and this happens in all airports, we must waddle through a metal detector while holding up our trousers: our diminutive suitcase pitifully opened by some creature with rubber gloves asking what's in this lead-lined box? It's me teef mister. 

As for flying with a proper suitcase which can hold more than a single change of clothes, well they charge extra these days don't they? 

But times change, and airports grow as they must cater to evermore clients. The Barajas airport now handles some 50,600,000 passengers every year besides me, and probably couldn't care less how happy or otherwise their customers may feel.  

So, here I am. The plane has stopped and the seat-belt light is off. Everyone has stood up, stretching after the cramped nine-hour flight and now they are now taking their cases down from the overhead lockers and standing around in that narrow walk-way looking impatient. 

Naturally, I'm at the way-back of the airplane - and there's just one hour and twenty minutes to go before my connecting flight.