How Many Brits? Ask a Statistician!

Two stories recently about Spain come from Time magazine and The Telegraph. The first provides a ‘conservative estimate’ putting the British in Spain close to 850,000 souls, while the second tells us of ‘an estimated 761,000 Britons living in Spain’.

Who makes these estimates we hear so much about?

What about The Courier, a local newspaper from the Costa Blanca? They say the Britons on the padrón (registered in the town halls) across the province of Alicante have fallen from an impressive 131,000 of them back in 2013, to just 14,000 now.

The population figures used by the Spanish (and no one else) come from the National Institute of Statistics, the INE. According to them, there are 263,029 Britons living in Spain. No arguments, please, that’s the number.

This painfully exact number comes from information provided by the town halls, as coming from their register, the padrón. It used to be a useful guide, for Spaniards, as, if they left one municipality for another, there would be an automatic adjustment in the register, but this is no longer the case today, as many Spaniards have found work abroad, but continue to be registered as local. For foreigners, the padrón is even less exact, and now the rules state that we must re-register every five years, as Europeans, or two years, as simple foreigners.

But what is a ‘resident’ – someone who lives here full time, or partly, or has two homes, or has been away for some time but remains on the padrón for whatever reason? The exact number becomes more and more suspect. And what of those who don’t register, afraid that they will somehow be put onto some other list, perhaps to do with the tax-people? The town halls like to inflate their population register, as it means more licences, more services, more funds. Again, more flubbing.

Furthermore, with the new tax law, the dreadful Modelo 720, where one is expected to declare one’s worldwide holdings – how many foreigners have simply thrown in the towel and left Spain for a more welcoming country like Portugal, or have returned in disgust to their country of origin? Then again, why own a property in Spain if you can no longer let it without enormous inconvenience?

So how many Britons (or Germans, or Dutchmen) live in Spain? The padrón is not the answer; perhaps a better way would be to check the contracts with the electric companies. But that is not the way of the Statisticians.

The Spanish Animal

Spanish society is becoming wound up in another battle – this time it’s not about employment, honest politicians, nationalism, sexual equality or vice – but rather for the status of animals. It is centred on the bulls, naturally enough, since Spain is one of only a few countries in the world where you will still find la tauromachía practiced, but also increasingly around the ethical treatment of other creatures.

For example, should feral cats be neutered?  They infest certain barrios and towns, particularly in tourist areas where they are fed by well-meaning residents. The law in Catalonia says that they can’t be poisoned as they are considered ‘companion animals’, so the choices are a costly neutering program (the one that gets away will have numerous kittens) or simply doing nothing, in the hope that they’ll move away (they won’t). The rest of Spain appears to leave the problem and solution to the local municipality.

Abandoned dogs are not left in colonias as the cats are, but are rather taken to shelters where they may meet their end in 72 hours, although some regions have banned euthanasia and the animals are presumably kept there, perhaps forever. There are some 110,000 dogs abandoned each year in Spain, and we have all seen the touching adverts of the forsaken dog on the road saying ‘I would never leave you’.

Other animals seem to be under the protection of Seprona (a unit of the Guardia Civil) and some species will be considered ‘invasive’ (the raccoon for example) and will be trapped and destroyed.

And so, the bulls. There is the traditional corrida loved or hated (or ignored) by Spaniards –illegal now in a few parts of Spain (probably for political rather than ethical reasons) and then there’s the much less formal bull-baiting, known in Catalonian as ‘correbou’. This is some form of bull running – usually a local festival of questionable taste. A recent story much in the news this week has two protestors filming at an event being violently set upon by some supporters. Were the protestors – known as antitaurinos – justified in provoking the supporters or not? – the Reader must decide for him or herself. Another more famous antitaurino, the Dutchman Peter Jannsen, who sometimes jumps into a bullring during a faena, is putting the participants in danger (as if there wasn’t enough already in the bullring). So, are the animal-rights people guilty of sometimes choosing an animal’s life over a human’s? Perhaps so.  Another question to consider: Should an ‘anti’ have the right, either moral or indeed legal, to interrupt a lawful activity paid for by a crowd of enthusiasts?

There’s even an animal-rights political party in Spain called PACMA (Wiki), which, if a little light on general policy, is firm on anything to do with animals. It naturally wants bullfighting banned. It pulled 220,000 votes in the General Elections in December.

So, are animals to be eaten, worked and kept as pets, as seems to be the traditional role for them, or should they be treated as Beings trapped within a ball of fur, but with human feelings and rights?

The last word goes to a bullfighter called José Antonio Morante de la Puebla, who, faced with an antitaurino protest in Ronda last year, said ‘I’m a bullfighter, not a murderer’.

The British Expats: The Challenge of Brexit

 It’s hard to know how many Britons live in Europe. We may be as many as 2.2 million, or as few as a mere 1.6m. Nobody seems to know, and frankly, neither figure seems important to those who ‘stayed home’. All those Britons living in Europe, forgotten except when it’s time to plan the summer hols. Otherwise, except for birthdays and Christmas, you don’t seem to like us much and, if you’ll forgive me from making the obvious point, neither do we have much time for you lot. Normally, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation, if it wasn’t for the Referendum, coming up in late June.

The British people, plus for some reason the Gibraltarians, are allowed to vote on this, but many of the passport-carrying Brits in Europe are not, thanks to a thing called ‘the fifteen-year rule’. This despite what a ‘Brexit’ (horrible word) would do to us. We would no longer be fellow ‘European Citizens’ in our chosen countries of residence, if such a thing were to come to pass, just some more foreigners.

It’s odd how nobody knows how many we are, living as we do in Europe. To take an even larger view, it’s suggested that there are as many as twenty million Europeans living in another EU state than the one written on their passport. But no one knows or cares in this admittedly anal Super-state we inhabit, where every sheep and goat is chipped. This is because we don’t have any political representation in Brussels: there’s no spokesperson for our group, nor even a champion – for a collective which is four times the size of the population of the Republic of Ireland.

We wonder what might become of us. Those of us who work in the EU might need to get work-permits. In Spain, where I live, the unemployment is famously high. Would the Spanish authorities hand out those sought after work-permits as if they were sweets? Probably not.

How about visas, a stamp in one’s passport every six months? For me, this would mean a trip to Gibraltar (have you seen the queues?) and, if Spain with the enthusiastic help of the (by then) ‘other Twenty Five’ decided to annexe the Rock, then we would be talking a regular visit to Tangiers.

We would probably need new Residence Cards, which would mean having a decent income from abroad (from the UK normally, we don’t all have accounts in Panama) and an enforced trip to the Spanish embassy in London.

Our European Health Cards would be valueless. Currently, the Spanish health service bills the British NHS (and vice versa) monthly for all and any medical issues and procedures. This would stop.

Those of us with British pensions would find that these would no longer be adjusted for the increase in the cost of living (as happens already to those who live outside the European Union).

We would lose our right to vote (and be voted for) in local elections here in the EU in our town of residence. So bang goes my plan to become the local mayor. We wouldn’t be able to vote in the European elections either - not that it ever meant anything, since the candidates are all nationals, and have as little interest in the émigrés that live among them as the British appear to do . It’s a small point – most of us don’t bother to vote for the MEPs, since they – and the system – do nothing for us. But for once, we would like the politicians – any bloody politicians – to listen to us. We are Europeans. We also fought and contributed towards the civilization of Western Europe.

I suppose we could take out local nationality. That would make for some good reading in The Times: ‘The British Population Fell by Two Million Last Year’ (luckily, they all lived abroad).

The fiercest worry comes from what London would do following a Brexit. The key issues are plain enough to see – exports (not expats) for the ‘Stay’ group and immigration for the ‘Leavers’. Thus, if everything went to shite, the two million or so Europeans in the UK – studying, working or living, would find themselves in line for the chop. You can’t throw out your Commonwealth foreigners, your Indians, West Indians and Pakistanis, so you would be concentrating on the Poles, the Bulgarians and the Estonians (who, no doubt, all take your jobs and your women). With them would come the rest of them: the French, the Germans and the Spanish (there goes your only decent restaurants). And, if you make residence hard or impossible for them – what would Paris, Berlin and Madrid do to us? If we were all deported back to the UK, those two million of us, would you find housing, jobs and some money to keep us going, or would the remaining immigrants you hold to your British bosom be obliged to build Quonset huts for all of us rather hostile returnees over on Salisbury Plain?

Would we get the vote returned to us?

It’s odd that the British should ignore us so. They will happily fly halfway across the world to defend 2,900 Falkland Islanders, but at the same time, we expatriate Britons, who live quietly in Europe, will be discounted as traitors, drunks, un-persons and old fools who should have seen this coming. Just wait until we all come home.

The AVE is an Expensive Toy

Down in Almería, an area which has never had much of a train service (just the slow daily creak to Madrid via Linares) and with its second provincial line closed down in the eighties (through Albox and Zurgena and on towards Pulpí and Lorca) through lack of public interest, it’s a wonder that the Almerians should be so keen on having a high-speed train: an AVE. Is it for the kudos, the high demand from passengers, or perhaps just another link to be completed in a secondary route across the country? The longest twin tunnel in Andalucía – currently bricked up (to keep the shepherds out) as we debate whether to reduce the eventual service from Almería to Murcia to just one line of track (and when will they build the AVE the other way – Almería to Granada?). Now in the northern part of Almería, the Government is collecting up the tortoise population (a silly distraction, say the PSOE as the ecologists nod their heads wisely, thinking of their next European subsidy) and organising the local expropriations so they can build another bit, and slowly the whole behemoth struggles forward a bit more. By the time it will be finished and ready to use (with yet more tickets subsidised by the taxpayer), for goodness’ sake, we’ll all have personal fliers anyway.

But the AVE is about Modern Spain’s place in the world: its search for international respect. TV journalist Jordi Évole asked Mariano Rajoy about this in a recent interview:

Rajoy: What country in the world has a railway infrastructure like ours? (…)

Évole: Sometimes the trains run a little empty (…).

Rajoy: Yes, yes OK. Empty maybe. But, we’ve got them!

The issues with the AVE are of course, its cost and its worth. The cost is astronomical – We read of 70,000 million euros so far (here) with another 27,000 million planned in the short term. Each kilometre of track costs an average of 11 million to build and 150,000€ per year to maintain. Of course, it’s only money wasted – and the political value is high (see here).

Does it bring extra wealth to the cities it serves? An article here says ‘no’, noting that hotel stays have actually fallen in provincial cities thanks to the service – whereas the Nation’s airport service can be seen to improve local tourist income. Two articles from a year ago – one found at El País – both manage to say the same thing: ‘A study concludes that no Spanish AVE line is profitable – demand will never be enough to cover the investment’. The ABC is not any more cheerful: ‘Spain is the country with the most kilometres of AVE per inhabitant, but also with the least passengers’.

So why do the politicians fight each other to obtain ever more kilometres of track? Because of their promises to the electorate, or their high plans for their provincial capitals, or perhaps just for the opportunities such huge sums of money might suppose?

Not Much Change at the Boticario

I read somewhere the other day that the Medio Ambiente people had recently done some work on the fabulous Parque El Boticario near the Almería airport.  I visit it quite often and enjoy walking around the 14 hectares of Almerian botanical life. Well, there's now one resident duck, so I could probably say 'Almerian natural life'. The duck is a newcomer, as the dried-out pond grandly labelled as 'Almerian Wetlands' by a rotting sign, has gamely filled with water and, item, one duck.
There was some small evidence of a visit from the environmentalist gardeners. I may have seen a hose. Perhaps a brief visit, as there still is much to be done. There are for example no flowers or small plants (Almeriapedia claims 75,000) and not much in the way of shrubs either (there should be 2,000). The gardens of El Boticario were presented to the public in 2005, but, since neither the town hall of Almería nor the Diputación wanted the privilege of watering and maintaining them, the parque stayed under the control of an unwilling Consejería de Medio Ambiente, based in Seville. So, the gardeners went, the silly seniors exercise machines rotted and those plants susceptible to disease or thirst duly keeled over dead.
It's a beautiful park, with few people to wander through it. It's also a perfect example of how our ecologists are interested only in funding and not, unfortunately, in la naturaleza.

Cut and Paste: The Entertainer

A friend was cleaning out some apartment on the beach and, among other old Entertainer memorabilia, found this lying around. The date is February 5th, 1987.
The Entertainer was the first local newspaper in English (preceded only by the Talismán - a monthly magazine started by Vic Nicolas). It was printed variously at La Voz de Almería and La Crónica from its inception in 1985. The earliest copies were taken, each page in its folder, to the girls at the printers who would type everything out again into a ticker-tape device for printing on an old and dreadful King-Press. Mistakes were easy and often - since who can type out pages of stuff in a foreign language? Later we were able to make our own pages on a light-box in our office in Mojácar with the technique of cut and paste - as in this picture here. The completed page would be photographed on a giant camera called a Repro-master and the negatives, retouched (again on the light-box) would be taken to the printers. Later still, we acquired a Macintosh and were able to do desktop publishing, retiring both the camera and the light-box  - a large glassed table with tracing paper and some light bulbs behind for a strong yet defused light to work on. You can see what a page looked like before it was filmed and touched up.
Not many copies of the 720 weeks of The Entertainer survive. I was visiting the hemeroteca (the library) of the Diputación in Almería earlier this week (a place full of fascinating archives, including Almería's first ever newspaper, from 1823). The librarian gave me a list of missing numbers of both The Entertainer and its sister publication Entertainer en Español. I told him that when the paper passed from my control, the back issues were tossed into the trash. Anyhow, if anyone has any old editions, please let me know.

Papers, Por Favor

Many of us 'old-timers' here in Spain had a residence card (a very useful document - similar to a Spanish id card). These were taken away along with our 'residencia' in around 2009 and, in substitution, we were given a letter from the police (i.e. the Ministry of the Interior) to carry around at all times with our passport as proof of identity. Silly and impractical. The letter itself states that 'as an EU citizen, the bearer has the right of abode in Spain'. However, in the calamitous event of a Brexit, we would no longer be 'EU Citizens', and therefore the letter would no longer be valid. Non-EU citizens can be 'resident' in Spain, and no doubt we could try to obtain a new 'residencia'. This could be easy, or hard, depending on the Ministry of the Interior, which would be influenced by two considerations.
1, which party or coalition will eventually take control of Parliament in Madrid and
2, how will London treat its no-longer-EU migrants and students.

The Fall of Mojácar

The Fall of Granada: King Boabdil gives the keys of the City to Isabel and Fernando

If we explained to a Briton, for instance, the full story which is merrily celebrated as the Moors and Christians festival in June, which is based loosely on something more than a Christian army clutching a bottle of rum making its way up to the Town Square, then there might be a few surprised looks.
Muslim and Christian Spain spent a few centuries in wars between each other, but it wasn't necessarily Moors against Christians, because in those times, Moors fought against Moors, Christians and Muslims united against Moors and vice versa - because these weren't wars of religion but rather of political struggles in which all were fighting to conquer new territories and to increase their power.
The 'Catholic Kings' - Isabel and Fernando - were set on conquering new lands from the Moors, and looking to take the main prize: the city of Granada. To do this, they planned to take the coastal land in order that the Nazari kingdom of Granada could not be helped by the Muslim armies from the various states of North Africa and thus to edge ever closer to the city of the Alhambra Palace.
And so let us put ourselves in the historical moment of the last years of Muslim era in Mojácar, or Moxacar as it was known then. Things were developing well; In 1486, the Catholic Kings had occupied the lower plains of Granada: Loja, Illora, Moclín, Montefrío and Colomera. The following year, they took Vélez Málaga and Málaga itself.
The Christian forces turned their attention in 1488 to the province of Almeria, with attacks from the border area with Murcia - principally from the frontier town of Puerto Lumbreras. The following towns, with the dates not always certain, would fall to the Christians: Vera and Cabrera were taken on June 6th, 1488, then a few days later - between the 10th and 13th June according to sources, Mojacar, Cantoria and Huércal; between 10th and 20th June, Vélez Rubio and Vélez Blanco both fell to the superior forces; while Nijar [Nixar] and Huéscar [Huisca] were collected a few days later. With these achievements the maritime border was closed, which prevented possible aid from Africa. The following year, 1489, the unstoppable armies were still moving towards Granada, having subdued a large number of towns, which in geographical order from east to west were: Baza (December 4th 1488),  Serón [Soreo] (December 18th, 1489), Purchena, Gor, and finally Almería [al-Miraya] which surrendered on December 23rd, 1489.

The Christian troops were based at their headquarters installed in the Real de Antas, ('Real' means 'Royal') and on June 10, 1488, leaders, headmen and alcaides from the whole region flocked to surrender to the Catholic Kings, yet the commander of Moxacar was not among them. This alerted the Christians since Mojácar's strategic situation together with its considerable number of inhabitants was one of the significant towns of the region. the Catholic Kings sent, as a measure of prudence, an embassy led by Captain Garcilaso to Moxacar with an invitation to surrender. Today, there's a memorial cut into marble at the Mojácar fountain to recall the visit.
On June 12th 1488, the town of Mojácar with its forces surrendered and in exchange Isabel and Fernando granted the town the title of Ciudad - city. It is recorded that the Moors were immediately expelled from Mojácar. They were allowed to go to Africa or to settle in the hills behind Turre: in Teresa and Cabrera, where they founded 'Mudéjar' communities. Mojácar was repopulated with a hundred Christian families from the kingdom of Murcia. These people - principally from Lorca - are the ancestors of most of today's Mojaqueros. The coexistence between the Christians of Mojácar and the Muslims of Turre, Teresa and Cabrera was not easy. The loyalty of this colony was shown in the 'War of Las Alpujarras', when Aben Humeya attempted to re-establish once again Arab power in Spain. After the defeat of the Moriscos came the final expulsion of the Moors - although we do not know if some of them were baptized and remained in the area as converts.
In 1530 Emperor Charles V received such support for the house of Hapsburg from Mojácar that the city was awarded the coat of arms of a two-headed eagle. Later, Philip II added the slogan: La muy noble y muy leal ciudad de Mojácar, llave y amparo del Reino de Granada: 'The very noble and loyal city of Mojácar, key and guardian of the Kingdom of Granada'.
The story has it that the interview for the surrender of Mojácar was held at the Fuente, between Captain Garcilaso for the Christians and the Muslim leader Alavez who was asked for the surrender of the town.
According to legend, this is his reply:
    I'm as Spanish as you, my people have over seven hundred years of living in Spain and now you tell us to leave. I never raised arms against the Christians; I think we should be treated like brothers, not like enemies and we should be allowed to continue to work our land. But know this: before I surrender like a coward, I will die like a Spaniard.
True or not - with this agreement Mojácar left behind forever her Muslim past, although the Christians did not take long to break their word to respect the property, culture and customs of the conquered and this soon led to the War of the Alpujarras, but that is another story .......

 This article is a translation of a piece called La Toma de Mojácar por los Cristianos written for QHM by Eduardo Sánchez Cervantes.

Córdoba Riders

Córdoba is a splendid city. I went there in a bus with a group of friends this past weekend to visit the old riding school, the Caballerizas Reales de Córdoba, built apparently in 1570. Most of our crew from Almería were students from the Albero Centro Ecuestre anxious for their special lesson at the hands of the expert instructors at the school. Following a long morning on horseback (heels down, back straight etc), we were treated to an exhibition in their indoor ring.
Me? I was just along there for the ride.