The AVE from Granada to Alicante

A piece in Sunday's Ideal on the high-speed train route, known as the Mediterranean Corridor, which is pretty much stopped: 'Currently, the corridor progresses in four speeds.  Between Cartagena and the French border a conventional gauge line exists and the Government is committed - and has already tendered sections - to implement the third rail that will allow the circulation by the same route of European gauge trains, enabling a greater alternatives in the Levante from 2016. Between Alicante and Murcia, the works of the AVE are going well. There is a commitment from Mariano Rajoy that the first high speed train will arrive at the terminal of Murcia train station in 2015.  

For the Murcia-Almeria section, things aren't so good. There are hardly any works currently underway. The sections which were being built have now been completed. And there are no new tenders laid down despite the fact that here in Almería there is no railway alternative - as there is in the rest of the Mediterranean corridor - and, therefore, this is the only section that stops trains from Algeciras reaching Barcelona along a coastal route. And finally, the Almeria-Granada section, whose feasibility study has been publicly shown, has yet to be approved and continues with studies on the environmental impact of the route, being the most delayed of all the sections there are in the corridor'.

The Almería to Murcia route, half built at least along the Almería to Vera section (picture), has stopped work entirely and the section won't receive more investment until 2020, by which time we shall all, no doubt, own personal flyers... The interest paid on this section, by the way, stands at four million euros per annum. Nothing better to spend our money on - like the abandoned Albox to Huércal Overa motorway or the equally dead double-lane Vera to Garrucha road, where work hasn't continued since 2008?

Lastly, a critical piece in the Spanish press notes that every time a passenger takes a ride on the AVE, he is subsidised by the tax-payers. Wouldn't Almería do better with an ordinary train service, that served the province, rather than an expensive and potentially underused bullet train?

Later: The national budget for 2014 supposes 100 million euros for the railways for the Murcia-Almería Mediterranean corridor, according to La Voz de Almería. The section will be finished, claims the paper quoting the Government, in 2018!. The PSOE are giving a date - las cosas como son - of 2025.

Later: An item in Ideal (16 October) says that the work on the Almería section of the AVE are currently at 60 million euros over budget... A mere bagatelle!

Anniversary for the Priors

This is Len and Helen Prior. Their house in Vera was demolished 69 months ago by some shits in the Junta de Andalucía, and they have lived in their garage ever since, with hosepipes, batteries and candles. Last night, they celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary...

The Rather Brief, yet Exceedingly Independent Republic of Albox

(Taken from La Voz de Almería this morning)...

At the end of the 19th century, Albox was a town unknown to much of Spain, and therefore to the world. Until 1891, that is. The nearest railway station was a two-day trip and an outdated industry of wool and fabrics for farmers made it possible that many families managed to live frugally. Nevertheless, the population - close to 11,000 people - meant the town was booming and its wealthier citizens could spend time in one of the two casinos that the town boasted, or enjoying a show in the theatre.

At the time the Mayor was José Antonio Mirón Jimenez. "Conservative and influential", according to Miguel Ángel Alonso, a local historian who has rescued one of the most picturesque events of the history of Albox and revives this story of the times...

Local elections complied with the requirements of the time, that is, they were heavily controlled by the local poobah, whose motto would be: "For friends we have the favour and for enemies we have the law." Which worked very well for Don José Antonio. The mayor (they used to call people like this 'El Cacique') ruled thanks to the vote of the wealthiest residents. In particular, to a coterie of 54 persons, who thanks to the specialized voting system of the times were all those who dictated who would occupy the Mayor's office.

But in 1890, a new national party called the Partido Liberal Fusionista revolutionised the political landscape by introducing universal suffrage to Spain. All men over 25 years could vote in the elections. Coinciding with the modification of the voting rules, a humble resident of the Albox neighborhood of Locaiba, Andrés Pio Fernández, ran as a candidate for the elections of February 1891. The conservative mayor never believed that his opponent could pose a threat. However, he was quite wrong and was soundly defeated. The people speak, although their voice is not always accepted with pleasure (nice quote from the Voz article, couldn't resist). But then, the morning after the election day a storm of people surged through the streets waving sticks, guns and swords. Yet, worse than the weapons they were carrying were their banners: "Long Live the Federal Republic of Albox!". At the head of the mob was none other than the defeated former Mayor.

Don José Antonio (now, where have we heard that name before?) and his accomplices proclaimed a "universal declaration of independence and a brand-new country" which would have "nothing" to do "with Central Government in Madrid". The experiment, based and inspired by recent events occurring in Cartagena (they declared independence from Spain on July 1st 1873 and entered into a five month war with Madrid) didn't last long in Albox.

After two days "of terror", the provincial Governor realized that what looked like a joke had little humour about it, so he proceeded to send the Civil Guard troops to regain control. Twenty one rebels were detained, although they were soon released. It was the end of the first - and short-lived - Federal Republic of Albox.

The Online Story of The Entertainer

The Entertainer Online - News for residents and friends of Mojácar. Updated regularly. Large non-commercial list of useful links about Spain. Since September 2002.

___________________

The Entertainer Online is a blog which goes back to 2002. The webpage - or rather a webpage called 'The Entertainer Online' - as the Internet version of the newspaper 'The Entertainer' which I ran from 1985 to 1999 - goes back further still to March 1996 (here's one at the 'Wayback' dated from November 1998). I think we were about the first foreign paper in Spain and maybe the sixth Spanish one to have an Online edition.


Here's an article from the Webpage from 1998 (how much of it remains true today?):

Living in Spain - the Foreign Residents

While figures for the foreigners living in Spain are hopelessly inexact, it is known that 1,200,000 properties are registered in Spain as belonging to foreigners. This figure gives an approximation of 3.6 million foreigners, at three per property, with some relationship with the country. Surprisingly, the Spanish authorities themselves appear to be indifferent to the numbers, and even to the income derived from this group. If we accept the low figure of 600,000 English speaking residents on the Costa Blanca and in Andalucia, who each spend £1,000 per month - a not unlikely figure which includes a percentage of their house and car price, their taxes and purchases - their annual spending power would come to £7,200 million (*about 9 billion euros as of 15 yrs ago). All brought in as foreign exchange.

The Spanish authorities would be well advised to consider this form of 'tourism' and to encourage its growth.

For a foreigner, living in Spain is now far easier than in the past, particularly for EU citizens. 'Work permits' and 'residence permits' are now just a formality, since all Europeans have the right to live and work where they will inside the European Union. However, the majority of foreigners who live in Spain are, of course, retired. They have lived a full and fruitful life elsewhere and have decided to retire to what can only be described as the warmest, safest and most comfortable part of Europe - the Mediterranean coast of Spain and her islands. They live in or near the small towns dotted along the coast, away from the cities, and evince little interest in returning 'home' again. Those that do eventually move, move inland into the 'real Spain' - to the Andalucian hinterland or elsewhere.

The Mediterranean coast of Spain could be likened to southern Florida twenty years ago - a place of opportunity, beauty and tranquility (well, it's a lot prettier!). Many foreign-run businesses now operate along the coast and in the islands with everything from dentists and doctors to English food supermarkets, realtors, builders and, um, newspapers. There are theatre and choral groups, clubs, associations, golf, bowls, water sports... life need never be dull. Spain itself is a fascinating and beautiful country to get to know, and residents make keen travelers. Certain foreigners have already voted in local elections, and by May 1999 - the time of the next local vote - all European citizens resident in Spain, and possibly all non-Europeans as well, will be able to vote. This will give the foreign residents a greater say in how their community is maintained and developed, as well as better protection from the occasional town hall 'excess'.

Communications in Spain have improved dramatically in the past few years, and there is now a coastal motorway that runs from the French border, down through Barcelona and Valencia, and along the Costa Blanca and Costa de Almeria. This motorway will soon be completed on down to the Costa del Sol and Gibraltar. A second motorway through Granada currently connects with Málaga and continues to 'the Rock'. The rail-system is adequate, but slow, with the exception of the high-speed AVE link between Madrid and Seville (and on to Cadiz). Air-links are good, with airports in every main city, plus Gibraltar, although it must be said that the Almeria airport is a 'horror'.

Prices in Spain are average, with both housing and labour rather cheaper than elsewhere, and clothing, cars and gasoline rather higher. The weather, however, is better here than anywhere else, and that's the main thing.

Lenox Napier

Early Pictures from the Mines

The story of the mines in Serón (northern Almería) has been put into a book called ‘Las Menas de Serón. Fotografías de Ramón de Torres, 1915-1916. Colección fotográfica familia Cervantes-Párraga’ which will be presented in Serón on September 6th together with a photographic exhibition of around 50 pictures titled ‘Las Menas. Patrimonio minero. Las imágenes perdidas (1915-1917)’.
The photographer is interesting, as new details about him surface. According to local historian Juan Grima, the man came from the village of Bayarque, and was called Ramón de Torres Rodríguez. After a few years working locally, recording the miners and other jobs, he moved to New York in 1920, opening a studio in Manhattan and becoming well known there. He died in 1948.
The book will no doubt also be available at the Vera gas station (all useful local historical books, plus the excellent annual El Axarquía magazine are there) or at the Mojácar newspaper shop at the Fuente.
The 'El Almería' newspaper has two more pictures.  The presentation of the book and exhibition is on September 6th, from 8.00pm at the Casa de Cultura de Serón.

Divided by Three

The Germans have announced the official birth, that is to say, the bureaucratic approval, of a third gender, which is to be called intersex - a term used to describe people whose genetic variations confer both male and female physical attributes. So far, we are divided here in Spain between H and M, which isn't (as I thought when I complete a form in triplicate recently) 'Hembra' and 'Macho' but rather 'Hombre' and 'Mujer'. 'M', it turns out, is neither 'Masculine' nor 'Man' and you should be careful where you leave your cross. This may all be a plan to confuse us, but more likely it's just a quirk of the language. There are, at least, the two sexes or genders in Spain, which is enough to put the English off learning the language, since we pretty much manage with just the one, and that just on Saturday nights after a curry.
In German, the language is artfully divided between masculine, feminine and a third gender, which I'm told is neutral ('der', 'die' and 'das'). The Romans had the same thing going with Latin, and I was often beaten as a child for overlooking this useful fact, and it will not surprise me to learn that, despite Putin's best intentions, the Russians have a trinity of sexes as well. No doubt some local expert in tourism can confirm this for me.

The new third sex of the Germans is the official recognition of those people who, at the moment of their birth, having looked anxiously down their little bodies and not having much liked what they found there. They are born of a sex, yet they belong to another. Thus, now in Germany, there are three sexes. That is not such extreme news: Mojacar during its bohemian golden years had at least seven.

Now Bradley Manning, the soldier who revealed all of the military secrets of the Pentagon, has announced through his lawyer that he would like to change his name to Chelsey, in the unfounded hope that he will receive hormone replacement therapy during his lengthy stay at the Guantanamo prison to help him with the repeated sex on offer there. One shouldn't joke.

Curiously, despite their known freedom in these matters, the Spanish have said that there is no plan to follow the Germans into the vagaries of a third gender. The Church probably have a poor opinion on the subject as well.

Interestingly enough, there is a small group of saints who could represent this new collective. Two very accepted by the gay community are St. Sergius and St. Bacchus - for historical reasons that we won't go into here - and many times gay marriages take place under the protection of these two. Another is San Sebastian. Another still, celebrated by the Catholic gays, and it might be better to sit down to read this, is San Agustín de Hipona, in English, Saint Augustine of Hippo: bishop, doctor and the Patron Saint of Mojácar.

For lesbians, things are more difficult. I thought I had found an appropriate one when I happened upon 'lesbians from Santo Domingo' in the Google, but it turned out to be an advertisement by some followers of Sappho living in the Dominican Republic. Nevertheless, further research eventually produced Saint Brigit for the girls...  

All very interesting, but this isn't about homosexuality, but the trauma of being caught in the wrong body. Perhaps Saint Wilgefortis, known in Spanish as La Santa Liberada, is the most suitable: a woman who grew a full black beard so as not to marry a Sicilian. It is possible that she merely needed the same therapy as Chelsea Manning, but to keep everything simple, they crucified her instead. 

But, no doubt, Spain is right. Otherwise they would be obliged to fill the calendar with saints who suffered not only from their faith but also from their other more carnal 'rare feelings'. The chaos of still more festive days in the calender would be unimaginable since each fiesta  lasts anything up to a week, and frankly, there are no available dates left...

Agosto, Santos y Música

At the moment, I write a few articles in Spanish for a couple of local newspapers - Actualidad Almanzora and El Indálico - here's one from this week's El Indálico:

Agosto, Santos y Música

De alguna manera, agosto es el mes donde finalmente amanece en nosotros la convicción de que el calor ha durado demasiado tiempo, de que hemos sido maltratados y molestados por demasiado turismo - con sus colas, caravanas, ruidos y descuidos-, donde las noches han sido demasiado largas y donde todos los profesionales a los que necesitamos consultar por alguna razón apremiante – abogados, doctores o políticos – han cerrado sus oficinas y abandonado nuestro entorno para irse a algún lugar de vacaciones pagadas con nuestras pelas: como las Seychelles, Miami o la República Dominicana.

En agosto, muchos de nuestros vecinos cosmopolitas vuelven a Gran Bretaña o a Alemania para ver a sus familias, para escapar del calor (estamos en 'Alerta Naranja' hoy) y para tomar una jarra decente de cerveza. Así que no hay nadie conocido con quien podamos hablar excepto los propietarios de los restaurantes y bares, quienes están de todos modos demasiados ocupados para parar y hablar con nosotros.

Agosto es un buen mes para quedarse en casa. Flotar en la piscina y enviar a los jóvenes a hacer la compra. Leer, ver la tele. Nadar otra vez.

En Mojácar, el temible mes de agosto termina con su fiesta popular. El santo local, en nuestro caso San Agustín (patrón de la sangría, los edificios feos y los pelotones de bici), se celebra con una bebiendo, bailando y con mucha pólvora, como en todos los pueblos de España. 

La duración de las fiestas españolas se extiende según el tamaño y la riqueza de la ciudad a varios días o incluso más. Almería ciudad solía tener una bacanal que duraba diez días (con todo esencialmente cerrado, sus abogados todos en Nueva York de compra o esquiando en Nueva Zelanda, y los oriundos y visitantes vestidos de traje de flamenco y dedicados a comer gambas y pasarlo bien). Ahora, con la crisis actual, se ha reducido la fiesta a tan sólo nueve días. Naturalmente, todo el mundo está histérico por esto, aunque al menos las corridas de toros, los grandes conciertos y un montón de fuegos artificiales permanecen todavía.

Aquí en Mojácar, hasta este año, nuestras fiestas sólo han durado cuatro días, alrededor de la fiesta patronal del santo, cuyo día es el 28 de agosto. Ahora, con los tiempos evidentemente mejor, tendremos cinco días de fiesta. No habrá corridas de toros, pero mucha música por supuesto, y un montón de cosas que explotarán en los cielos a altas horas de la madrugaba. Noches hasta altas horas y música a todo volumen. Bailando en la Plaza. No duermes mucho esa semana...

Pero lo bueno es que, justo después de que se retire para guardar el último cordel de banderitas de papel,  el día siguiente, agosto se despide y entramos en septiembre, el mejor mes del año.

Almería Con Gas

We had gone to Almería to visit a friend with a horse-ranch. Loli keeps other creatures as well, sometimes breeding them, including donkeys, coatimundis, ostriches and whatever this is. After an enjoyable visit playing with the livestock (in the extreme heat of the Almería sun), we turned for home. The car wouldn't start at first, but I was insistent. What was the alternative? Walk?
Eventually we moved off. There's no air in the SEAT, the button has broken. The little electric window control chose the moment to fall from its place in the door to a more comfortable post somewhere inside the door, so we took off with just the passenger window open. The car began to judder and lurch somewhere outside Retamar as I remembered in a rare burst of clarity that, back at the BP station, I had lovingly put twenty euros of unleaded petrol into our old diesel.
Bugger. The car eventually shuddered to a halt on the side of a fast but sparsely used road. How nice that the first four cars to pass were from Tráfico. They helped me put up a warning triangle, squeeze into a fluorescent red pajama top and to find a place down the road with telephone coverage. What was my insurance company? Something beginning with the letter V I thought, or possibly Z. They left me to it. After a call, I discovered the insurance people began with a G, for Seguros Generali. Splendid people, if a trifle slow. They fixed us up with a tow-truck and, three hours later, we were back home, having taken the trip in the cab of a friendly grua with air-conditioning.
It could have been worse. The Mojácar mechanic asked me with a knowing smile: 'trying to speed up the car with sin plomo?' and pumped the offending petrol out of the motor into a handy tank he has. Didn't charge me anything either for the job. Once again the car returned to its normal state of slavish efficiency and the fellow at the petrol station fixed the window controls while we filled the tank.
The bird? That's a peachick.

The Neighbours

Well, will you look at that. The neighbour has gone and put up a fence just beyond our gate, a barrier rather than a boundary (it's just a straight piece of fencing) with the apparent sole purpose of stopping us taking our horses out off our property (and bringing the horse-feed in). What strange people.

Market Strategy

We have been doing some research into marketing. Perhaps lower the price to attract the attention of the jaded public. Say, that'll do it. Put out our basic '50% off everything' offer in large letters, en ingles también,  so everyone will see.
Then, just sit back, and watch the money roll in.
Hold on though, what was it that we were selling again?

...And The Winner Is:

This blog has occasionally chastised Spaniards for looking for English-speaking clients without inconveniencing their British neighbours unduly by asking them to cast an eye over their Google-Translate induced transliterations.
Well, here's the winner, from an Alicante beach-bar.

England and Almería: Under One Flag

The top one is the Almería flag and the bottom one is the English flag. Proof, if proof were needed, that we are all one and the same. It's either the Cross of Genoa (Almería) or the St George's Cross (England). Well, it's prettier than the Andalucían flag... green, white and green.

The Bunny Sentinel

There's a ménagerie of animals chez nous, including a number of birdies, a rather useful egg-producing chicken, pairs of dogs, cats and horses and, finally, a rabbit called Bungus. Bungus is getting on in age, being in bunny years up there with Methuselah, numbering eight hundred, eighty and eight. About ten in real life. He lives in a cage with every mod con, including a view. Rabbits here can't touch the floor, or straw, we know from long and bitter experience, as they will catch myxomatosis and die in some agony. So, Bungus lives in the nearest thing to a bubble, in this case, a cage on a table outside.
His teeth have gone from his years of crunching bunny food and he now likes to gum a little lettuce in the afternoons and to snack rather heavily on bread in the mornings. Bread from that fine bakery Mr Bimbo. He gets two slices. This produces a certain amount of waste, with helps explain our ant problem.
Bungus came from Pamplona. We were there, many years ago, and we needed a hospital companion to help out when I was unable to offer my bedside presence between several horrible operations being suffered by my wife. 'I don't mind their attentions,' she said, 'as long as I can have something furry to hold'. Oddly, a teddy bear wouldn't do. The hospital agreed to a conejo, as long as it stayed in its cage.
We cleaned his cage yesterday, filling a garbage bag with junk, and replaced the flooring with a number of newspapers carefully collected the day before. Bungus is a conservative rabbit, and doesn't like change so it took a while before he allowed us to reach in and tickle him.
Now, he's watching the gate, chewing quietly on a favourite nut. He'll thump his back leg if he needs anything.

Mojácar Costa

We were just driving out of our track to turn onto the road towards the village. A car stopped in front of us broadside on and an old man got out. He looked like he came from the North.

-Disculpe, ¿Dónde está la playa?. As usual, when a Spaniard asks someone who is evidently a foreigner - I'm tall, blond and burnt red, he follows up his question with a surprised nod. I've talked to an extranjero!

Well, I answered, it's down there, back the way you came. But the only other turn, he said, takes you up to the village.
No, go down to the gasolinera and turn towards the beach there at the roundabout. There's a sign that says 'Carboneras'. 

He looked like he didn't believe me. Well, this is Mojácar I said. 

The turnoff to the beach at the gas station is headed up by a roundabout, and the beach itself is behind a last hill, so it is easy enough for a visitor to get confused. There's no sign. 

Our local businessmen meet sometimes for a red-prawn and pink wine lunch at the Parador, those that can tear themselves away from their their markets selling Chinese nick-knacks and provocatively decorated tee shirts, and they argue contentedly about their small-holdings. The main business of the pueblo, putting a family member into the town hall and ushering in a rubber-stamp absolute majority, was concluded shortly before the last elections. Now, they worry about smaller things - who is going on the trip to Andorra (we are twinned with a city there for no discernible reason beyond allowing up easy access to our 'offshore' bank accounts by coach); how to keep the rents high when no one can afford to pay them; how to avoid paying local taxes and how to get so-and-so's son into the football team. A few uneasy jokes are made about dominoes - the noise of them irritates the mayoress, who is trying to ban noisy and drunken nights on our beaches. Small things. 

'Mojácar Tourism, the promotion of', is left to others. If they want to promote our hotels, built on a stretch of land running towards Garrucha, and away from all our commerce, well, that's fine. No one goes there, there's nothing except cheap package, full-board tourists, either foreign or national, wandering in a daze between their remarkably ugly hotels - tourist factories - and an abandoned beach in front. There's a camel ride for the adventurous.

One thing about life that both the local and the foreign population know, package tourism is a waste of space, and we have some space to waste. Up on the Garrucha Road.

Our own beaches, sign-lit at the roundabout with the 'Carboneras' sign, are much more fun. There is a number of eccentric beach-bars which have flourished since Mojácar's days of Bohemia in the sixties and seventies (frustratingly still run mainly by forasteros) and a collection of good restaurants, bars, ice cream places and an excellent Government-run Parador. The restaurants, despite the tourist department's insistence on the contrary, do not prepare ajo colorao, migas, pelotas and other rare and obscure eighteenth-century fare, for the twin reasons that there is no demand for them and, the preparation for these dishes is rarely taught in international cooking schools. But then, we aren't going to promote the forasteros and their businesses here, even if most of the budget comes from outside. 

So, an idea which will cost nothing, but might improve visitor rates. The Mojácar beach is treated by the local government as just another area, a bit like 'La Fuente' or 'El Casco Viejo' or 'Las Huertas'. It is, in fact, rather more. It holds about 90% of local business and, including the urbanisations stretching behind into the hills, has about 90% of our entire local population. 

Give it an identity. Call it 'Mojácar Costa' as if it existed as a resort. Put up a sign up outside the Gas Station.

Mojacar, the Foreigners and an Old Article

The photo comes from one of those hopeful Spanish magazines that circulated in the eighties, magazines in English but firmly controlled by Spanish writers and editors. After all, who knows more about the expats than the experts? The mag was called Mediterranean Magazine and was sold at 300 Ptas, a sort of journeyman's version of Lookout.
Issue Nº 2 appeared in June 1987 and it ran an article about Mojácar titled: 'Mojácar, from conflict to dialogue, by Juan de Dios Mellado. The beautiful town of Mojácar has gone through hard times. Several controversial issues led the foreign residents to openly confront the municipal authorities, but a dialogue has now been reached'.
Juan, by the way, remains an expert on tourism and is featured in an article in La Opinion de Málaga recently on the publication of his book, 'Los Años Dorados de la Costa del Sol'.
Juan Morales was the mayor in those days (champion of the first moción de censura in Mojácar's turbulent political history). On the foreigners' discontent with the Town Hall's plans he says: 'Maybe at first there were communication problems on our part', he admitted, 'but it wasn't our fault. A lot of these resident foreigners live off to themselves. When we've called them to meetings, they haven't bothered showing up'. The two issues of the time were the construction of a Paseo Marítimo (now half finished and looking remarkably good, but with the new powers of the ecologists, it's unlikelt that it will ever be completed) and the so-called ring-road through the urbanisations on the beach which was, at the time, planned to take heavier traffic, particularly Carboneras industrial trucks, through the area quickly to connect with the future motorway to Cartagena. This as we know, has been successfully stymied by the local residents now for over 25 years.
The article continues with a hopeful note: 'Juan Morales greets foreigners who have lived in Mojácar for years: 'It's possible that now, with the foreign property-owners association, we'll be able to hold regular meetings to deal with problems that might affect them directly', he says. 'Up until now, that hasn't been possible. They live isolated lives. Whereas it's not true that there's real conflict, it's also true that more dialogue and interchange will be good for us all''.
Here's a quote from me (as editor of The Entertainer): 'It's not easy to break down the lack of communication and the resistance to dialogue. Both sides are at fault. The Spanish administration doesn't believe in the role that residential tourism has to play, and the foreigners prefer to keep to themselves in what is little more than foreign ghettos'.
A year later, with Bartolome Flores in power, things hit a new low as the mayor was persuaded to demolish the old fountain and its surrounds (down at the foot of the village) for a new modern, marbled magnificence designed by a scion of the new Junta de Andalucía. I remember a sign held by an indignant Brit which caustically read '90,000 pounds to wash my knickers' (a reference to the old tradition of washing ones' clothes in the fuente). The following demonstration up in the Plaza Nueva turned into a riot, with an arrest and several broken heads. It also proved the downfall of Charles Baxter, hitherto fêted by the locals as a TV personality. A mojaquero said afterwards - it's not that we don't agree with the foreigners about the fuente, it's just that we don't think they have the right to say anything...'.

Have things changed much in a quarter century? In many Costa towns, there are Foreign Departments run by the Town Hall (employing real-life, gosh-for-goodness foreigners!) such as (and just on the Costa del Sol) in Estepona, Mijas, Marbella, Nerja, Fuengirola, Competa, Benalmádena, Coín, Frigiliana, Manilva, Monda, Benahavís... and many towns celebrate Foreigner, or Europe Day with a fiesta, after all that's where the money all came from! (Día de Europa, by the way, is this Thursday 9th May). Mojácar, though, remains defiant. There are now more forasteros than mojaqueros on the padrón, but the massive number of town hall employees shows a very different picture, where with the one exception of Leslie (lost and ignored in the Municipal Gallery), everyone else is locally born and often a visibly keen voter of the current corporation. There's not much integration or even participation allowed from the marginalised foreign inhabitants of Mojácar. There's no longer a 'Foreign Property-owners Association' (there's a very good one in Albox, the AUAN), but Mojácar does have a PSOE-controlled business association with some foreign participation and a German president and there are a couple of minor foreign-dominated political parties, the MPSM and the CE.

So, has anything changed in 25 years and will Mojácar be, for the first time ever, celebrating this Thursday's Día de Europa?. No, actually!

An Old Picture of Carboneras

 

I've been contributing some photographs of old-time Mojácar folk to a page on Facebook, pictures which have been in some boxes upstairs for many years and are of some interest, if only to see what we used to look like thirty years ago. The page is called Mojacar Golden Years if you are interested.

Today, in one particular box, I found this, an old watercolour from Paul Becket. It's a portrait of Carboneras painted in 1964. Paul was one of the first foreigners to settle in Mojácar, together with his wife Beatrice. They were our neighbours in the Huertas below the Pueblo.

Discover Mojácar (It's Just Around the Next Corner)

Mojácar wants tourists because it wants their money. To get these tourists, it's fashionable (while at the same time apparently considered to be useless) to make promotions here and there. Well, here anyway. While I have not actually counted them, I would say that there are around twenty 'Come to Mojácar' posters artfully posted somewhere around the municipality, as if we might believe in some way that the Tourist Department was doing a wonderful job of promotion elsewhere.
Sometimes the promotions are in Spanish; other times, in what passes for English, but isn't, they aren't.
Not content with the 'Dump on your Plate' school of promotion for those who can read English (known outside of Google translation as 'the poop in your soup group' - which has the advantage of avoiding having to invite foreign native-language speakers to participate in the feeding-frenzy), the sale of our small and increasingly irrelevant resort to the larger world has gone from the Domino Theory of Fame for All the Wrong Reasons (See The Times, The Independent, the BBC, and a number of Spanish national dailies enjoying a joke at Mojácar's plans to control noise down to a squeak), via the 'only souvenir ever brought home is a multa from the traffic police' (this in a tourist town with several hundred bars and restaurants, where drinking a glass of water is hardly an option), to a complete loss of plans or ideas for where this community might go. What are we promoting here? The chance to fill our street with a caravan of cars and buses, just to fill a few cash registers? Is that it?
Added to this, we have the freezing out of all forasteros, particularly foreigners, by the town hall - as if we are suddenly the problem rather than the solution.
A speaker in the plenary session earlier this week discussing the point about controlling the noise in Mojácar said that we live from tourism - both the relaxed and the party-time sorts ('turismo de descanso y turismo de ocio') - which rather obviously don't like to share the same apartment. This is the applied wisdom in our town, a resort with just one two-lane street running in parallel with the Mediterranean. Cheap hotels at either end and a clutch of bars and restaurants in the middle - controlled, generally speaking, by murderously high rents.
In our badly planned town, which enjoys probably the easiest winters in the whole of Europe, most of those hotels, bars and restaurants alike, are closed outside of the summer season.
There are of course three types of tourism - the relaxed restaurant and bed by midnight type, the noisy down to the disco and back for a party type and then the bleeding obvious make a fortune for the town long-term visitors or residents type, which generates most of the income here, known fatuously in Spanish as 'residential tourism' - the type that buys a house, a car, white goods, food and clothing. That pays municipal taxes. That appreciates and respects the town and the surroundings, that wants the best for Mojácar; that has an investment, an interest in the future of our community. That would like to participate, to integrate and... to help improve the reputation of this town. But we will never ever find the Town Hall spending anything on promoting that sort of tourism.
In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, 'Ich bin ein cateto'. No hold on, it was his other remark I was thinking about: 'Don't ask what Mojácar can do for you, rather, ask what you can do for Mojácar'!

Internet Piracy

A note from Reuters begins with: 'Spain is working on a new anti-piracy law which will be robust enough to keep the country off a U.S. watch list of copyright violating countries, Education and Culture Minister José Ignacio Wert said'.
Education and Culture. So, downloading a film, a piece of music or a book is illegal according to the minister of education or culture, unless, of course, the owner is paid. A service has been provided, and even shared (if I invite a few friends around), although nothing has been consumed. 
So, in the case of a movie, who gets the money when I buy a ticket? Keeping it easy, let's say the producer, the director, the star, the cinema and the taxman. Not the extras, or the cleaners - they've already been paid (probably in black money at that). Now, where do the producer, the director and the star each put their twenty million dollars? I'm guessing that, as often as not, it will be placed in an offshore account, where the money is rather obviously not used to help the State.
But, no, it's me they are worried about. 
I have the choice of seeing a movie and paying, seeing a movie and not paying, or not seeing a movie. I could pay to see the film, but it's not available here where I live, neither in Spanish nor in its original language. Well, I can wait a year I suppose. Or I could grab a plane and fly to London and see it in the West End. Perhaps it will be on the TV in a couple of years time, courtesy of the Mars chocolate people. Perhaps I should buy a TV.
I hope that it's good.
So, if the copyright owner and the star and the producer aren't going to get my three euros (which is what, in the end, I'll have to pay the fellow on the street corner who has black-market copies for sale on DVD), what's the difference to them if I see the film or not? You see, if it's good, I could at least recommend it. If it's crap, at least I won't be writing to them and asking for my money back.
But all of this is of small account. The larger question is whether the Government, José Ignacio and all, are working to represent the interests of Spain and the Spaniards, of the dissemination in general of education and culture... or of Hollywood.

Another Rubber-stamp Plennary Session in Mojácar

There was another pleno - town hall meeting - yesterday in Mojácar. There were originally six points, which were reduced to five after the temporary removal for another day on the chilling idea of the Mayoress to control all noise (taking this idea as literally as one might) from the daily grind of life in our eccentric community. While Mojácar should be a bit quieter than Butlin's, a place it increasingly resembles, it seems that there must be a balance. Indeed, the balance is very much ignored here, with rock-breaking machines now immersed in the second of the Mayoress' three big projects to transform the village and, more importantly, spend the six or seven million odd that the previous town hall got from selling a chunk of land from Macenas back to the promoters. Who since went bust.
The remaining points were to grant the taxi drivers an increase in their fares; to spend money on a taser for the local polis; to build an electric knob so that cars can't drive up to Rosmari's underground car-park which hasn't opened as yet, anyway - nine months after completion; to spend the councillors un-awarded Christmas bonus on children's scholarships and to support a dog shelter for the Micar Valley.
The main point of the meeting, presided of course by Rosmari and her absolute majority, was to begin on the third great project, being the evisceration of the Plaza Nueva and the remodelling of the viewpoint - the mirador - which is in a parlous state. The plan being to turn the first into another underground car-park and the second into another ayuntamiento.
The rubber-stamp councillors, missing from the photo above since they are seated to the right, were quick to shout 'aye' on every point, including this project to keep the town essentially under the rock-breakers (boom boom boom) for the best part of the entire legislation, noise and dust notwithstanding.
A new town hall, which we evidently don't need, should be built where the people who need it happen to live and located where they can easily gain access. Ninety percent of the population of Mojácar live on the playa.
The picture shows Angel Medina from Ciudadanos Europeos (left, next to Jessica Simpson), now back at his post in the opposition: The mayoress Rosmari Cano, can just be seen to the far right..

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