Residents

A recent article from Rafael Yus Ramos in El Observador talks about that Mecca for tourism – the Costa del Sol. But, he says, it's not a tourist destination so much as a place where foreign people live. What the Spanish authorities, lost for a better description of the vast numbers of us extranjeros, and both unwilling and incapable to treasure our input and value to the community, describe weakly as 'residential tourism' before quickly turning to other topics and ignoring us. 
We should almost feel flattered that they have decided to tax our properties elsewhere in the dreadful Asset Tax (for which they have no reason). Here's Rafael:
'...When you drive down the N-340 road which runs along the entire coastline of the Costa del Sol, what catches the eye are not hotels, but the huge number of homes built, many of them forming large residential communities on the outskirts of the original towns, with slightly odd workmanship on the homes. But, who lives there? They are just people who reside on the Costa del Sol: not native people that work there, but rather elderly Europeans, people who were seeking this place for its quietness, the gentle climate and the good health services available...'
Rafael prefers to describe his foreigners, not as residential tourists, but rather as immigrants.
So, he asks, 'are these residents 'tourists' in the genuine sense of the word? The product under offer, a house, is it a 'tourist product'? Finally, is this the best solution for the local economy?'
But there are few observers like Rafael, and the foreign residents (and the comparatively massive amount of money they brought with them) are mixed in and forgotten as a small and unimportant part of Spain's love affair with tourism.
My question – how much does Spain spend on promoting tourism? And how much does it spend on looking for foreigners to become residents by buying into the country? Has it ever dawned on anyone that a resident, here for 365 days, who has bought a house, a car, a washing machine and is keeping the local businesses open during the winter months - is worth rather more than a visitor who is here for five days and may as well choose Portugal next year.
Another article out last week on the subject of the foreign residents, comes from Valencia's Levante. This one is titled 'The Foreign Residents don't want to integrate' and deals with the Marina Alta, where foreign residents apparently practice 'auto-segregation'. - 'The difference lies in making a living. "Labour migrants" reach the Marina Alta impelled by necessity, while the "residential immigrants" arrive with their life already arranged. The first strive to integrate. But the second stay as tourists and "barely seek any relationship or services from the host society"'... 66% of the citizens of the municipality of Teulada-Moraira are foreigners, says the article sententiously.
There is a point which is being lost: when you sell a car, a tee-shirt, a souvenir or a plate of food, the buyer leaves with it and takes it somewhere else (if only in his stomach). But sell someone a house next door, and, hey presto, you have a new neighbour. Sell five hundred nearby houses to five hundred British families, then you can not be unduly surprised when the neighbourhood suddenly starts to change from a quiet Spanish area smelling gently of anchoas to a ghetto of sunburned Britons marching around wearing shorts, sandals and socks. And lastly, my friend from the Levante newspaper, remember this: We are all Europeans now.

Party Contributions

Following revelations of the Luis Bárcenas accounts which appeared in part in El País a few weeks ago, the Partido Popular has come in for a bit of friendly ribbing. Suggestions of 'brown envelope' money passing hands and, somewhere behind it all, some irregular party contributions from major businessmen involved in construction, makes it all sound a bit like we are living in New Jersey. No doubt we shall all settle down when the two investigating judges (currently and inexplicably at loggerheads) are able to show that it was all just a big misunderstanding.

The Spanish Bomb

The ABC newspaper ran an interesting story on Sunday about Spain's atomic bomb program. This was following an obsession of Francisco Franco to build a bomba and, perhaps, toss it at somebody. One of the reasons that Franco wanted the bomb, says José Lesta, who has just written a book called 'Claves ocultas del poder mundial', was to join the select club of the veto-wielding powers in the United Nations. Furthermore, having this technology at hand would have made Spain, and Franco, a geo-strategic power in Europe. Lastly, says the author, the availability of an atomic bomb would have given Franco enormous clout over his eternal enemy Morocco, especially since, in the Spanish Sahara, he had a perfect location for atomic tests.
By order of the Caudillo himself, in 1951, a select group of scientists and military leaders under General Juan Vigón opened a secret project, now known as the 'Junta de Energía Nuclear', whose job was to provide the country with a nuclear arsenal. Soon, following Vigón's death in 1955, an even more obsessive commander took over the project, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco (better known as Franco's chosen successor, until he was assassinated by ETA in 1973). The Americans unconsciously participated by donating money towards Spain's nuclear energy program and with their help, Franco and Carrero Blanco opened in Madrid the 'Centro Nacional de Energía Nuclear Juan Vigón'.
Spain had all the ingredients to make a bomb, and it had the science. All it needed was one final explosive key element, plutonium. The French were willing to help, and a joint Franco/Spanish project, at Vandellós I was opened: Spain's first nuclear power station was a reality. The USA was not a supporter of this development and asked both France and Spain to sign a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which De Gaulle and Franco both declined to do. 
In the 1960s, Spain had the technology, the scientists and the wherewithal to make a bomb. She could produce around 200 kilos of military-grade plutonium. Spain is Europe's second largest producer of uranium and, with the accidental loss of four USAF nuclear bombs in Palomares, Almería in January 1966, the final ingredient fell into Spanish hands - the trigger device. 
The Americans were once again unhappy with developments, and Henry Kissinger flew over to Spain to meet with General Franco, the future king Juan Carlos de Borbón, and, in a long and acrimonious discussion,  with Carrero Blanco. It was the 19th December1973. 
What was said has never been disclosed, but, less than 24 hours later, Carrero Blanco was dead, blown up  and across the roofs of Madrid in his armour-plated Dodge. With the Admiral's passing, and the evidence of American disapproval, the project for Spain's atomic bomb languished. 
Eventually, Felipe Gonzalez signed the non-proliferation treaty in 1987 and Spain's dream of an atomic bomb was at an end. 

OK, the bit about the CIA blowing up Carrero Blanco seems rather unlikely... 

Juan Guirado Remembered

I live in a town in southern Spain, famous for its stark white cubist beauty. Famous, that is, among artists. The town is Mojácar, ruthlessly clasping the final hill in a fall from the high Spanish mountains behind, overlooking a bland and unexceptional beach. The town has narrow streets, far too narrow for modern transport, just wide enough for a donkey and its load. The colours are harsh and primary under the strong sun: blue, white and brown. At night, before the terrible sulphur lights were installed to smash the mystery and romance of the darkness, the shades and shadows from the moonlight and the odd light-bulb would cloak the town in an ambiguous romance. No wonder that many outsiders came, their senses alert for poetry, story, magic and mystery. And so on a corner or a roof, an artist finds his angle, his view or his inspiration and pulls out his crayons or his brushes.

Mojácar has changed since the artists arrived... and ultimately left again. Romantic arches, old buildings and emblematic corners have been torn down in favour of ugly shops, souvenir stalls and neon-lit pizza houses. The old fountain was pointlessly remodelled twenty years ago, a small number of indifferently built homes were recently razed, and a small, expensive and ultimately useless underground car-park covered by a granite plaza were built in their stead. High and greedy rents keep away the dilettantes. Mojácar, like her artists, has suffered.

Juan Guirado was never just another artist, even among the tradition of those who were inspired by Mojácar – this cubist Moorish town that has always been so unappreciated by the local population. Like the town itself, he was unique

My first memory of Juan takes place in a nearby village, when the artist, myself and a young local journalist were, for some reason, standing around near some seminal event – the opening of a new and relentlessly modern looking plaza, I think. A local politician came over and said hello. He took my hand and then reached hold of my elderly companion. Juan's mouth dropped open in apparent shock and he ran to a nearby spigot to wash his hands in a pantomime of horror. Well, we laughed. Juan Guirado didn't like politicians, bankers, priests or lawyers, or 'catetos' – village thick-heads. He would arch his fingers into a grasping and ugly pose, peel back his lips, and show us how they were chasing after your vote, your money or your soul. Some of his paintings would show this same bunch of predators, looming and squirming under his palette.

We called him 'El Maestro'. He had a rich and rewarding life. Not a wealthy one, but a busy one. The type of life that looks like it must have been a lot of fun to have led. He had spent several years in Australia, painting (of course) and working odd jobs in the 'bush'. He had forgotten most of his English, but had a few phrases that would sometimes pop out of his mouth, invective in a heavy Australian accent. The Maestro was a man who painted a lot, or drew pictures, always with some story or message hidden within the lines. This became evident in a series of cartoons that appeared in El Indálico, a local monthly newspaper, where a cartoon of two vultures evidently feeding over the flesh of Mojácar would enter into Faustian dialogue.

Juan drank too much: brandies, beer and wine, and didn't look after himself very well. He smoked Ducados, holding the cigarette between his thumb and his first finger like soldiers do. He didn't drive and travelled by bus or sometimes transported by a friend.

In his studio – I knew two of them, the first in Mojácar the next in Vera – there would be piles of paintings. Piles. The current one would be on an easel and a home-made frame was at hand to put on top for effect. He sometimes did portraits – strong and forceful pictures. Following another passion of his, he painted bullfighters in their suits of lights. There were landscapes, harsh views of Mediterranean ramblas or orchards. But, above all, there were his special views of chaos, produced in a singular and fascinating technique, scraping the colour into the canvas. Magnificent.

Mojácar has been the home to many artists, although they have sold few paintings there. The Indalo, the stick-man that birthed a group of artists called Los indalianos in the 1950s, artists that kicked the town into the attention of the European bohemians, attracting investors, painters and a patina of culture while making it in passing the richest per-capita town in Andalucía, is now a provincial logo for cucumbers.

For el Maestro, that was a terrible thing to see.

Iberia on strike

You see, they can spell it right when they want to...

Where Else is Safe

Helen and Len Prior have just received (or rather, will one day receive) a small payout from the Government as an apology for bulldozing down their home in January 2008. Half of the settlement, naturally, to go to their lawyers and procurators. As is only fair. The balance, 15,000€, not much in the great scheme of things. No doubt, the public boycott of Spain as a retirement destination will continue with the same enthusiasm as before. (Note to Self: I'll have to check with the Daily Mail about this).
Has Spain lost a staggering amount of foreign divisas, billions in lost sales to Northern Europeans, losses too from the regular transfers of pensions that the retirees bring to their moribund pueblos in the sticks? Has one small demolition in Vera, crassly mishandled yet largely unknown to the greater Spanish public, managed to divert the Brits, Norwegians, Germans, Swedes and Irish from buying a home in Spain? In short: is Spain's loss  France, Cyprus or Portugal's gain?
Certainly, the statistic of 300,000 homes, declared a posteriori as 'ilegal' (once the cheques had cleared) by the Junta de Andalucía (who, we are asked to believe, didn't notice them during the process of being built), has helped make Spain a pariah in the buying-a-home-abroad stakes.
So - sick of the cold, the prices, their family, the price of gin and the underlying threat of violence - where do the retired go to live, to enjoy a glass of wine from their terrace as the sun quietly sinks behind the dusty hills? I thought to check up on numbers of Britons (as a start) living in Cyprus, France, Portugal and Italy. So far, it appears that there are 60,000 in Cyprus (which sounds, from my brief research, ghastly) and another 200,000 in France (the British in France don't live in compounds or single-nationality  urbanisations as many of us do and, as I remember, they don't mingle or speak to each other at all if they can help it - even in their fractured French). I'm still working on the other shangri-las since a 'moderator' put the kibosh on my question on an ex-pat forum 'How Many Brits live in Your Country?' for some reason. Probably works for the Spanish tourist board...
The Guardian has been working on a similar idea, I discover. 'Where Do People Live?' it asked recently.  The survey included Poland and dropped Portugal and Cyprus. It gives the current official number of Britons living in Spain: 390,000 - a calculation made from the number of Brits who have inscribed themselves on the town hall registries (el padrón), which, as we all know, is pretty incomplete. No doubt Brits in other countries are more responsible... the Guardian puts the numbers in France at 150,000 and 29,000 in Italy. Germany enjoys the company of 104,000 Britons apparently. I'm sorry, Poland? 764 persons.
My research into France has so far thrown up a web-site called 'Don't Move to France' which is self-explanatory, if a little surprising, and there are several sites about Cyprus that are worth reading. So, as I wait for more information, I reflect that perhaps Spain isn't so bad a place to buy a home after all, as long as potential buyers do their homework.

Goodbye Pete, Hello Cal

This is a narrow street in Mojácar called - at least for thirty years or so - Callejón de Pedro Barato, now clearly renamed as the more prosaic Calle La Cal. It was christened 'Pedro Barato' by Cheap Pete, an American who lived here during the seventies and built El Palacio, the building in the picture to the right, which Pete opened as a restaurant.
It's a fact of life here in Mojácar, a town whose every vestige and sign of wealth comes from the legions of foreigners who have settled here since the sixties, when the town was little more than a mass of attractive rubble, that the swollen guiri population (now over sixty percent) must be treated as forgotten second-class citizens, whose only function is to pay their taxes. Unlike many towns in similar circumstances on the Costa del Sol or Costa Blanca, there is no 'Foreign Department' in the Mojácar Town Hall, much less one staffed by foreigners. In fact, although there are over 150 funcionarios in the Town Hall in a town of around 8,000 inhabitants, none of them are British.
The politics of the town is to look for cheap brief-stay tourism (there isn't any at this time of year), trying to pack badly designed and ugly hotels located on the far end of the beach, hotels that bring no business to the larger community. At the same time, ignoring residential tourism, which brings in large amounts of money all year long - as more enlightened towns like Marbella, Mijas, Fuengirola, Altea and so on are perfectly well aware.
The foreigners in Mojácar are getting squeezed and many wish to leave. It's understandably hard to sell their homes as there is no demand (because the town businesses are only concerned with tourism, and are generally shut during the winter, leaving the town with little or no social cohesion). At the same time, massive and eagerly raised rents on properties held by sly locals are keeping many shops, bars and restaurants closed... sometimes all year round.
One day though, we shall all be gone and, like Cheap Pete before us, we shall be removed from the history books and forgotten.

It's Not What You Said (It's The Way That You Said It)

 The Almería Better Business Bureau (which takes a few euros out of your taxes if you are self-employed) is - and one can only suppose this - meant to drum up business. One of its jobs is to provide a poster which compliments the well-feared 'complaints book'. Two or three complaints from the public and you can be up for a nasty fine. For years, the poster (forget the syntax and wonderful translation) had a spelling mistake, which was the word 'establishement'. As all long-time foreigners know, Spanish institutions never employ or ask a native-speaker to check their prose, and far less these days with the google-translator, although I suspect that, in this case, they've kept it artesanal.
So, it was nice to see that they finally fixed the problem. Oh, wait.

How Do You Stop This Thing?

We had our first holiday in quite a long time, two weeks in the American Midwest over Christmas and the New Year. Unlike most everything else - from the cars to the portions of food - the horses there are smaller, which I think is just as well.
Leaving the sanctity of the office in our home in Southern Spain, where I spend so many hours fiddling about on the home computer, writing up stories that attract my attention, translating texts, preparing and finessing a new weekly summary of Spanish finance politics and housing issues for foreign property owners (Business over Tapas) and otherwise misusing my time with the keyboard, it was good to change gears and, thanks to the kindness of my American hosts, drive an automatic for a change.
I suppose as we get older we get stuck in our various ruts: comfortable with our own opinions, thoughts and prejudices.
There was the story that Old Tuborg once told me.  'I lived all my life in Ceylon. They filmed the Bridge over the River Kwai on my land and I wouldn't let them blow it up until they'd paid me the money for building the damn thing for them. The people there are nice, but odd. Every day I would have a boiled egg for breakfast. Then one day, my servant bought me a fried egg and put it in front of me. For forty years, I said to him, you have brought me a boiled egg every morning at 8.00. Why have you now suddenly brought me a fried egg? I thought you liked them, he said. I had to let him go after that'.
Living in Spain is fun and sometimes challenging. It's worth spending as much time as you can mixing in with Spanish culture, language, history, food, people, society and places.
That means, for me, getting off my backside and making every day different from the last. I never liked boiled eggs anyway.

So, Who Were the Girls?

Here's a picture from a thread on Facebook called Mojácar Golden Years - my Dad, me and two friends, taken in The Indalo bar in Mojácar Pueblo back in around the mid-seventies. The Indalo wasn't the prettiest bar in the world, but it served the main square and, as we can see, had an inside for those cold coffee mornings.
Of course, they knocked it down eventually and made some crap souvenir shops instead.

Raven

Good times ol' buddy.

The Russians Are Coming

The cliché of all bona fide estate agents, 'the green shoots of recovery', is beginning to resound again along the costas as properties are being snapped up by foreigners. Paying usually in cash, the buyers have been doing their homework on the Internet and they are buying cheap discounted apartments by the hundreds. An estate agent in Benhavís (near Marbella) says that sales have increased in the past year by a satisfying 220%, precisely because 'prices have fallen by up to 70% from 2006 levels'.

This time, it's the Russians who are buying. To not put too fine a point on it, the Spanish Hacienda is hardly bothered by where the cash comes from, as long as it's coming. One or two bed-roomed apartments in the resort towns and estates of the Spanish coast are in demand, usually those going for under 100,000€ .

Other nationalities too. The British are still shy, having seen too many 'Paradise Lost' TV shows and read too many articles about Len and Helen Prior, now cresting their fifth anniversary in Vera among the ruins of their home. But the Belgians, the Germans and the Scandinavians are all waking up to the perennial offer of good weather and cheap real estate that Spain is once again able to offer.

These homes being sold by the agents are doing the major banks little good however. The typical toxic promotions now held by the new 'Spanish Bad Bank', the Sareb, were built as apartment blocks in and around the country's major cities. The Spanish, thanks to the extreme crisis, can not afford to buy them, while the foreigners simply don't want them. Barrios on the edge of a bus line in Madrid or Seville will never be the haunts of Europeans or Russians, who would be as out of their depth in an all-Spanish environment as if they moved to Glasgow.

Other foreigners are putting up their hands for apartments as well; but this time, they like the City. In Alicante, for example, Algerians are snapping up second homes. It's just a twelve hour ferry to Oran. A notary in Alicante is on record as saying that some 25% of all house registrations under his pen have come from Algerians, while a local agency called Tecnocasa claims that well over half of its sales since July have gone to Algerians.

However, it's the Russians who are buying the most. According to Masa International, Spain is seen in Moscow as the fashionable place to have a holiday home: in fact, there are now 250 agencies in that city who specialise in Spanish sales. While the Spanish have never quite understood why foreigners like 'to stick together', crafting Spanish towns and resorts as far as possible into mono-cultural conurbations, like the Germans with Mallorca or the British with their Fuengirola or Mojácar, it's clear that the Russians prefer the Costa Dorada. The agency Europa Dom in Tarragona claims that 75% of all their sales are to Russian buyers.

All of this said, with green shoots in the newspapers and Russian language menus in the restaurants, the vast majority of homes bought in Spain this year are far removed from the Coast and have been acquired by Spaniards.

Bethune: Canadian Hero

'He gave all he could, all he had, to the betterment of the people of the world'.
 The Canadian doctor Henry Norman Bethune, acknowledged in a leading article in La Voz de Almería (Nov 4th) called 'El canadiense que salvó vidas durante la huida desde Málaga a Almería en 1937' - The Canadian who saved lives during the retreat from Málaga to Almería in 1937.
Norman Bethune is best known for 'his service in war time medical units during the Spanish Civil War and with the Communist Eighth Route Army (Ba Lu Jun) during the Second Sino-Japanese War. He developed the first mobile blood-transfusion service in Spain in 1936. A Communist, he wrote that wars were motivated by profits, not principles' (Wiki)

'After the capture of Malaga by the military rebels, terrified by the news and the speeches that General Queipo broadcast from Radio Sevilla; on February 7, 1937 a large convoy consisting of about eighty or a hundred thousand people flee in the only way possible: towards the capital of Almería. Consisting mostly of the wounded, women, children and the elderly, the panicked column is pursued by Moorish and Italian troops and bombed without mercy by German aircraft. From the sea, the fascist navy zeroed in like as if were target practice. The walking column was slaughtered without the smallest glimpse of humanity' (Historian Milagros Soler).

The Doctor from the International Brigades, who had developed a new kind of live-saving mobile blood-transfusion unit, was a popular and useful addition to the Republicans, and he is remembered in particular for helping to succour many people along the 350kms track between the two cities.

'We had spent an hour in Almeria', he writes in a book recently released in Spanish called 'Las Heridas’, 'long enough to obtain a bite of hard-to-find food. The small seaport had been bombed by air and blocked from the sea. One could feel the hunger in the streets. A kid took us to a bar, but it was completely saturated with soldiers, all eating the same mixture of thick smoky sludge. When we left again, the streets were full of people. The news about the fall of Málaga was spreading'. 

Together with a photographer, Hazen Sise, Bethune set out in his truck towards Málaga. Before he had gone very far, he began to encounter refugees.  'In place of what should have been the road, I could see twenty miles of human beings gathered as one. It was all thick with refugees, thousands and thousands, tight, falling against each other... It wasn't a defeat, it was a collapse'.

The Doctor emptied his truck of medical material and told his friend to drive as many people as he could - forty children and two women in the first load - to Almería 'and to stop for no one'. For four day and nights, Sise transported as many refugees as he could as Bethune tirelessly treated the wounded on the side of the road. 

Almería itself, with no wheeled transport left to help, was being bombarded by Franco's forces. 'Finally the attack passed', Bethune says in his book, 'but the dying and the dead remained'.

One of his most well-known poems was published in the 1937 July issue of a Canadian magazine:
And the same pallid moon tonight,
Which rides so quietly, clear and high,
The mirror of our pale and troubled gaze
Raised to a cool Canadian sky.
Above the shattered Spanish troops
Last night rose low and wild and red,
Reflecting back from her illumined shield
The blood bespattered faces of the dead.
To that pale disc we raise our clenched fists,
And to those nameless dead our vows renew,
“Comrades, who fought for freedom and the future world,
Who died for us, we will remember you.”

 On February 7, 2006, the city of Málaga opened the Walk of Canadians in his memory. This avenue pays tribute to the solidarity action of Dr. Norman Bethune and his colleagues who helped the population of Málaga during the Civil War. During the ceremony, a commemorative plaque was unveiled with the inscription: "Walk of Canadians - In memory of aid from the people of Canada at the hands of Norman Bethune, provided to the refugees of Málaga in February 1937". The ceremony also conducted a planting of an olive tree and a maple tree representative of Spain and Canada, symbols of friendship between the two peoples. (Wiki)

An hour-long film of his life is here .

Story by Amber Napier

The Quiet Life

Well, here's the dog. Morning gallop. A bowl of rice and cookies works wonders. Nothing to worry about.
No one is going out at the moment, the hotels are closing for the season, the bars are empty and many of the shops have thrown in the towel after the rents went up. We are all living a simple life these days (apart from a close relative who owes me money but instead appears to have bought himself a fancy new truck). No doubt the economy is in safe and capable hands and everything will be fine and dandy again in a few years from now (ahem!); but meanwhile, the only thing to do is to follow the dog's lead.
And make a run for it.

Bédar Looking Good

Bédar looked good today, with the sun shining warm rather than hot. A few people were out, wandering the streets, buying bread in the panadería or drinking a coffee in the bars (now for some reason all located up at the beginning of the village). The recent rains seemed to have been a blessing rather than a curse, and the scorched hills are re-sprouting, just five weeks after the fires.
I think that perhaps a small quiet town without hotels or beaches or campsites has a lot to recommend itself.

River of Waters

The Río de Aguas today, living up to its name for once. In fact, the rain has been so heavy in the hills above Mojácar, the river is in flood and...look! Its good kayaking weather!

The bottom photo was sent by a friend who lives in Pueblo Laguna, a place that always gets it when it rains. See all the cars! In fact, back along the coast to Mojácar, the beach is covered with so much driftwood and mess from the riverbed that any chance of cleaning it will take some major work. When it rains it pours.

The last picture, taken with a phone, is downtown Pueblo Laguna, where the houses are currently 'very cheap'. 

A Small Plague in the Garden

There used to be a nice Canadian show on the television about the delightful critters that live quietly in the garden. A slow and friendly voice helped us as we wandered around a giant Canadian garden looking under leaves and behind rocks. Pleasant-looking bees worked feverishly to please the cameraman as the plant-life went through its various routines: flowers, seeds and pods. Small rodents galloped aimlessly about in the undergrowth as some muted music accompanied the friendly talk. Oh! to live near a Canadian garden and to follow the dragon-flies.
Here in Mojácar, we use a Californian gardening book. It has most of our flowers and shrubs, but it is understandably light on the subject of the local fauna that flitter from bush to bush, or in the case of our latest guests, from root to root.

These are the shrews. They dig tunnels through the brick-hard dirt which features as the garden-bed in our establishment, tossing up occasional piles of earth and moving in a direct and uncompromising way towards the new hedgling I've put in (a small but one-day mighty hedge to remove the view currently offered to us by our neighbour). These shrews: topillos or musarañas, (nobody seems to know) have only been around since the Mojácar fire of three summers past. They feast on rootlets: fresh, juicy, crisp, tasty rootlets. I may not have a green finger, or is it a thumb, but even I know these fellows need to go.
To the shop on the beach, which offers me rat poison (now, that can't be right), and so on to the Ramblizo in Antas. Readers may know this store, which has everything for hunters, riders, pet-owners, prospective pet-owners, gardeners and I haven't even made it to the upstairs yet, where there are kitchen goods, televisions, fly-traps and screwdrivers. It's a sort of Farmers' Dream (with a little Something for the Housewife). Anyhow, they gave me a Jumbo-sized box of what turned out to be rat poison again. Stick a bit down the tunnel and stand back. Hmmn.
My father was known in Norfolk by his neighbours as The Eichmann of Moles. When a molehill appeared on the lawn (it was a fifty acre lawn and, as I remember, it needed a lot of mowing), my dad would stick a metal trap down the centre of the mound, with appalling results. But there were other equally grisly ways of dispatching a mole. It appears that moles are hemophiliacs and therefore, a bit of broken glass on the floor of their run will cause them to bleed to death. There are gases which can be pumped down their highways, and a horizontally placed British milk-bottle will allow them in, don't you see, but not out.
So this afternoon, I was watering and fending off the mosquitoes (I don't think they will be spraying for these pests, since the tourists aren't here and us: we've already voted). But then, I found my latest plant, filched only last week from a public seed-bed, was surrounded by a pile of earth. In went a small stub of rat-poison. Take that, you little swine. 

Plug Ugly

There's an old bath up at the stables that does for a drinking basin for the horses. It started out as an old, empty and rusted out tub with the plug 'ole missing, but a trip to the ferretería on the beach soon fixed that. For a couple of euros, half an hour's work and a skinned knuckle, plus some cementing and a bit more work, the old bath had became a handy trough. Another trip down to the ferret to get a longer piece of hose (it was either that or move the bath somewhere nearer the tap) and all was well. The bath filled up, didn't leak, and the horses got their drink.
As it happens, one of the nags is a playful brute and one day, it pulled the plug out of the bath and emptied it. This means, apart from the mess, that there is no water until someone comes by and fixes the problem. It turned out to be me and, casting about for the bung, I found a half chewed bit of hard rubber tossed under some straw, chewed and perforated too.
Back to the hardware store. Can I have another plug... this size please. The plug was flattened and hard to measure. Take a 48 and a 54 said the lady, one of them will fit.
As it happened, neither did. One was too big, the other too small. The smaller one is now in our bathroom at home, having taken over from an old and manky bung we've had for thirty years. The new one, with a shiny metal back to it, has rusted already.
So, back to the shop. Look señora, you sold me the unit, so you must have a plug that fits. No comprendo, she answered. When in doubt with angry foreigners.
So, to another shop. This one is the ferretería from Hell. It's a giant and wildly overstocked place where shoppers get lost. You can sometimes hear their pathetic shrieks late at night as you drive quickly past. The quality of the merchandise is highly suspect, boxes with bits missing, old stuff made in countries that no longer exist, wooden hammers that break on the first whack... and I don't like going there without a piece of string and a guide-book.
Their plugs are down in the eighth aisle, turn left, second aisle, right and right again. I eventually discover, a little later that morning, that they don't have anything except 48s and 54s either.
I went back to the first shop. Sell me another unit please, I said, with a spare plug.
We've run out of units, she answered with a certain satisfaction, I think you bought the last one.
So, to the next door town of Turre and its ferretería. 
The story about the horse, tee hee, and could I buy a unit with a spare bung, por favor.
Yes I could.

A Spoonful of Sugar

The government of Mariano Rajoy is hoping to have been seen to be quick and eager to reassure Brussels that Spain may be wounded and in pain, but that the cure is already underway.

The ordinary rate of IVA has gone up to 21% (following a rise last year by the PSOE of 16% to 18%), school-books have gone up in price with a massive tax increase (just in time for the school year), higher prices on public utilities have been allowed (including the electric company, Endesa, making its prices the highest in Europe) and even the poor funcionarios, Spain’s three million strong public servants, have had to wave goodbye to their Christmas bonus. The Minister of Justice is tightening the abortion rules to strict church limits and many file-sharing sites (video pirates if you prefer) are being closed down. Around 160 bank-sponsored evictions are being carried out each day.  The poor have not been forgotten, with the special 400 euros handout introduced by the socialists being returned for a further six months, although under strict new conditions.

A recent survey asked if Rajoy should spend more attention on solving the unemployment crisis – also the highest in Europe, with some provinces standing (or rather ‘sitting down’) at 35% - and less on trying to fix the prime rate and appease the bankers in Brussels.

Perhaps, indeed, with all the vinegar, Rajoy should be considering a small bonus to his subjects, a sop to the masses, a bit of good news to treasure during this dark autumn and winter to come.

There was a hint of raising the speed limit on the motorways – but instead, they lowered it on the byways, increased the police presence everywhere and, in a move designed to send the tourist market reeling, the new head of Tráfico has recently said that she wants to see ‘zero alcohol’ on the highway code as soon as possible.

So far, the best the PP thinkers have come up with has been a putsch on the public television and radio of any newscasters and interviewers thought to be meddlesome. The good news is - they’ve put bullfighting back on.

Some opposition politicians and intellectuals are talking of insurrection (as far as they can – a new law has been passed making encouragement to violent protest, even on Facebook, a crime punishable by two years).

The answer to this, according to Cayo Lara, the General Secretary of the Izquierda Unida (the Far Left alliance) could be to imprison a banker. ‘Spain’, he says, ‘needs to have the image of a banker behind bars’ he told Europe Press, adding that ‘the banking fraternity doesn’t need to walk on a bed of roses and that those responsible for ruining many thousands of people and contributing to a blood-bath of public resources should be held to account’.

The Government however refuses to hold an enquiry in Parliament on the origins of the current crisis and, apparently and despite alarming accounts of massive public fraud, no banker appears to be at risk of losing their liberty.

On September 25th, a protest called ‘Occupy the Parliament’ will be held in Madrid. It will be a test of how far the public is prepared to show their impatience with the current crisis.

Bédar Fire

A brush fire broke out near Bédar on Saturday around midday, threatening the village and burning at least 400 hectares of mountain growth. The fire reached the edge of the village, which nestles in the sierras above Turre and Mojácar, and then headed westwards towards some smaller settlements. The town was evacuated on Saturday night by police order, and many people were obliged to sleep in the sports pavilion in next door Los Gallardos. The fire, one of three that appeared around the same time (two smaller fires in nearby Vera and Antas) appears to have been intentional. No word of damaged property as yet, but the fire, by noon on Sunday, was still active in the higher hills.