You Still Can't Keep a Tortoise

 A couple of new laws in Spain are bringing some confusion and, as it were, teething problems. The Only Yes Means Yes law, designed to help protect women, has caused some rapists and abusers to have their sentences reduced on appeal – maybe by judges hoping to cause political issues, maybe because the law itself was poorly designed – and maybe simply a chance for the PSOE to distance itself from its associate the UP as we slowly approach the elections pencilled in for December (at the latest). We remember that the PSOE also studied the Only Yes Means Yes law and helped to pass it in Parliament, but appearances mean a lot when one is on the campaign trail.

A second law was approved last week by Parliament – the Animal Welfare Law – which is now in debate at the Senate for its final ratification.

This one is on the surface a good thing, awarding protection to our pets and our working animals – while, under pressure from the huntin’ community – excluding both hunting and livestock-guard-dogs and, as a nod to tradition, bullfights. The bible for the outdoorsy types is the magazine called Jara y Sedal and it naturally pulls no punches in its criticism of the new law. On the other side of the equation is the ‘animalist’ political party called Pacma which says the law doesn’t go far enough, with reference to the evident exclusions of protection for hunting dogs and the toros bravos.

In short, the law (which will shortly be published in the State Bulletin), says no commercial sales or private breeding for dogs, cats and ferrets; a brief (free online) dog-handling course for owners and compulsory insurance; no leaving domestic animals without supervision for more than a day (dogs) or three days (other pets); a list of approved-only species for pets; and no wild animals in circuses or parades.

 picture by Sedat Girgin

The evident point is that those who are unable to live within these boundaries will likely consider either abandoning or ‘euthanizing’ their spare critters.

Meanwhile, the Northern European residents, who will probably be massively in favour of this law, are busy agitating in the pueblos on the costas for dog-beaches, dogs on the bus and even dogs in the restaurants.  

How Many Foreigners Live in Mojácar?

As Mojácar gets the green light from the Junta de Andalucía for its PGO - its growth plans for the next few years - how is the population evolving?

Figures are always excruciatingly exact with the Spanish bean-counters, and usually wrong. Here we have the study as regards those on the padrón at January 1st 2022. Those not on the padrón (the town halls registry of inhabitants), plus all the short-term visitors and tourists, evidently are not considered. 

Also, we are fourteen months away from the beginning of 2022. Things will have changed.

Furthermore - a question - are those foreign children born in Mojácar considered as 'mojaqueros' or as 'extranjeros'?

The figures:

Born in Mojácar: 18.9% of the population: 1,424 (does this include extranjeros?)

From the rest of Spain: 27.39% of the population (2,062).

Foreigners: 53.69% (4,041). 

Of the foreigners, 53.1% are British - far ahead of Romania (4.4%), France (4.4%), Germany (3.7%) and Italy (3.2%). 

The Brits living in Mojácar number 2,147 souls officially.

 

The Neverending Chocolate Lights

Alright, hold onto your hat!
Mojácar will now keep their Ferrero Rocher chocolate Christmas lights up until...
February 28!
It gets worse
Next year, says the Voz de Almería: '...the Town Hall says that with more time to prepare, the proposal for all those who return to the municipality in the winter time will be much more impressive...'

 

Ask, And You Shall Receive (Maybe)

 

This one starts with a conversation on Facebook. Somebody posted a question along the lines of: ‘I’ve had it with the UK and I want to move to Spain, is it easy to find a job?’

Us old hands living in Spain for long, longer or longest were happy to post answers to this. Here’s mine:

‘The Spanish won't employ you over their own, or hire you over their own. That's assuming perfect language skills and all papers in order. Thus, you either find a foreign-owned business - a bar, English-language newspaper, real-estate office... or you self-employ. Some of us (and this is frowned on) seek to live by ripping off our fellow countrymen’.

This last bit set the cat among the pigeons.

It seems that I aren’t the only one who has learned through experience not to trust the first person who sidles up to me and says ‘What Ho, Old Stick, Can you lend me a few bob, I’ll pay you back when the cheque arrives from my parents’.

Because, you know, he won’t.

Not that one wishes to discourage those who seek to the leave the Old Country for a better life abroad.

And Life is, after all, an adventure.

Moving to Spain, an excellent place to live, is a good idea. It’s best to have money coming in from outside to keep one in gambas and albariño; perhaps a pension, or some regular dividends, or even a wealthy older brother who subscribes firmly to the aphorism ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’.

The second-best way is to find a job (like our intrepid Facebook correspondent) with the disadvantages and cautions listed above.

The third (minority) way is to try and snow your fellow countrymen, until such time as circumstances merit a swift departure for somewhere new and innocent.

Beyond being short-changed in a shop, the times I have been conned over my lifetime in Spain has always been by fellow-Brits. A pity really, but there you go. It’s not like it happened every day, but I’ve been living here a long time now…

No doubt the Dutch would say the same thing about their own countrymen, and amen with the Germans and the Danes.

There's a page on Facebook called ‘Named and Shamed, Costa Blanca’. This type of page, of course, can sometimes be counterproductive, and watch out for the legal profession when dropping a literary dime on someone. However, the content will help put us on our guard.

Returning one last time to the thread mentioned above, and how it’s always one’s fellow countrymen and never the Spanish who hand you a sob story or a cunning get-rich-quick scheme that only needs a bit of seed money; Amalia, a woman living in the UK, posted an interesting (bombshell!) observation: ‘I must say this also happens in England between us Spaniards’.

Huh!

Planning a Trip

The editor calls in a junior staffer, probably after a late lunch involving shrimp, and says, I want a story by tonight on three of Spain’s finest and least-known villages. Over the road, another editor, this time belching gently after a few too many glasses of beer, is telling his wife (the one who does most of the work) to get out there and find a few interesting destinations along the Costa Blanca, with some decent stock photos.

Maybe tie it in with an advertiser or two.

Another one, thinking of its expat readers, finds its latest copyist a job to do: tell us of the least-known Spanish cities and their manifest attractions. We find out that there are but three: Badajoz, Soria and Ceuta. They are, nevertheless, ‘some of Spain's most exquisite hidden gems’. The story merits a brief paragraph on each.

My own adopted town, Mojácar, has enjoyed thousands of pages of copy over Christmas as an Italian chocolate company decided to stump up for the Christmas lights (including its name charmingly blazed across the highest building in the town square). The mayoress is so pleased by the onslaught of visitors (all eyeing the fifty or more souvenir shops waiting anxiously for their trade) that she has extended the illumination until, at the very least, the end of January. Unfortunately, the destination’s tour hotels weren’t in on the plot, so they are all seasonally (and firmly) closed.

Meanwhile, the agency that runs ‘Spain’s most beautiful pueblos’ has chalked up another six for 2023, including Trevélez in Granada (a touristy Alpujarran village with good trout and jamón).

Looking for a beautiful village to visit? Trusty old Google throws in its hat with over six million results, including: ‘15 of the most beautiful villages in Spain’ - The Points Guy, ‘The Most Beautiful Towns in Spain’ - Culture Trip, ‘18 Beautiful Towns In Spain To Visit’ - Hand Luggage Only and from someone we have at least heard of: ‘Spain’s 30 most beautiful villages, as voted for by readers of El País in English’. Nice pictures: Mojácar comes in at Nº27.

Of course, one always wonders about readers’ votes…

So, as we fill the car once again, only to discover that the twenty per cent gasoline-discount has disappeared, and open the map to our chosen destination for the day, we hope (forlornly?) that it won’t be too full of coaches, tourists and screaming children, and that there will be a parking space somewhere near the restaurant that Tripadvisor enthuses so strongly about.

Spain has just over eight thousand municipalities, and some of them can count on a handful of nice villages all within the same parish. Níjar in Almería - for example - can boast the attractions of the Cabo de Gata, San José, la Isleta del Moro, Agua Amarga, Las Negras, Fernán Pérez, Pozo de los Frailes, Rodalquilar and even Níjar itself (plus another sixteen rather more humdrum settlements besides).

So, between one thing and another, those travel stories are a full job for an editor.

Name Calling (Update)

Taxi drivers always have trouble in those countries where they change the names of things. Prithee take me to such and such on the 'General Mola' became the day after Franco keeled over, please take me to the 'Principe de Vergara'. The General was an old mate of the Spanish führer's and no one can remember who on earth the Prince was.

Somebody nice, no doubt. 

Name changes in Spanish streets, public buildings and so on are indescribably popular, especially when there's nothing better to do. No doubt President Sánchez is working hard on this. Well, with all the current efforts to remember or honour certain parts of the ghastly Civil War of 1936 to 1939, we know he is.

Even the famous mausoleum with the gigantic stone cross - the Valle de los Caidos - has now been returned/switched/changed to El Valle de Cuelgamuros. In English, it's still called The Valley of the Fallen. It's off the beaten track somewhere in the mountains half-way between Madrid and Segovia. Ask your taxi driver.
 
To avoid getting the street wrong (if you knew what it was called anyway), you say to your driver 'it's in the road after the old purple church, just past that place which does the churros' and hope that he will know where you mean. This useful service, unfortunately, has yet to be added to the Google Maps.
 
In Madrid, the cabbies often affect to not understand. 'Take me to the Plaza Mayor', said my father years ago, when there weren't many foreigners in the Spanish capital. My father was very tall, red-headed and covered in freckles, so it was an easy jump to suppose that my dad was an extranjero. It therefore followed that, since the taxi driver didn't speak a word of foreign, there wouldn't be much point in listening. 'Plaza Mayor' repeated my father several times, while uncomfortably bent in the back and trying to catch the driver's eye in the mirror.
 
Eventually, as the driver was nudged left, right and straight-on by his increasingly indignant passenger, they arrived in the most famous square in Spain. The taxi driver, pleased with his service, turned to my dad and said 'Señor, we call this the Plaza Mayor'.

So we manage as we must, with street names and even statues falling out of favour (there's a warehouse full of caudillos somewhere).
 
In the UK it's easier, as the authorities have been wise to choose anodyne street-names which stand the test of time and political swings (unless of course the Greens get in). Here though, the first things that go when the new lot take over are the statues, the names of the avenidas and even the curriculum in the schools.
 
I feel sorry for the postmen. The address where I currently live is exactly the same as another colonia about a kilometre away. We get their mail and they get ours. Being the kind of neighbours we are, it all ends in the trash (which explains, Dear Auntie Bess, why I never sent you a receipt for your Christmas present).
 
In Mojácar, there are streets named after every nation in Europe: Calle de Rumanía, Calle de Portugal, Avenida de Francia and so on. Every nation that is, except Britain, or the UK or the Reino Unido or however the hell we call the old place these days. England I might have said. Now, despite about 40% of the entire population being sons of the accursed Albion, it seems they don't deserve a street. Not even a little alleyway. Not even, just for a few short months, between the nomination of the new president of the diputación or something.
 
There are also no streets honouring the foreigners who 'discovered' or 'brought back from the brink' the small and humble resort. Well, there was one - Pete Pages (a short, fat and merry 'antique' dealer from Brooklyn) put up a sign in the narrow lane next to his shop about forty-five years ago for 'Calle de Pedro Barato'. Cheap Pete street. The current mayoress, not known for her love towards the foreigners, recently changed the name (much to the confusion of the Google Map people) to the prosaic 'Calle Cal' - Whitewash Street.
 
Actually a lane, I should point out, and far too narrow for taxis.
 
Otherwise, there's nothing there to remind the current population of the great characters who moved to Mojácar from other countries in the years gone by - bringing life, soul, a strong thirst for cheap brandy and tolerably bulging wallets.
 
Nevertheless, and to prove me wrong, everyone is currently enthused to hear of a new name change. This one is going to be for a square, the one in front of the town hall with the big tree in the middle. Come to think of it, I'm not certain it even has a name. 'Town Hall Square' or something. Anyhow, the word is that it will soon be baptized with the rather foreign-sounding 'Plaza de Walt Disney'.
 
See, despite what they might tell you in Orlando, Wally was really a mojaquero (well, you can't prove that he wasn't), so they are not breaking too many rules, beyond the one about 'good taste' perhaps. And while the town hall doesn't appear to show much interest in its foreign population, it certainly approves wholeheartedly of tourism. 

But please, spare us the horror of a statue of Mickey Mouse.

More from Oklahoma

 I'm now home again, after a jolly month with the kids and grandchildren. How old I am getting! 

Mind you, a few years were shaved off as I drove at high speed across three states in a Porsche GT3 and later, coming back, a Porsche GT4 (this one has a stick shift). The cars were lent to me by a friend of my son's, none the less welcome for that. 

While not eating enormous dinners every couple of hours, I was also treated to a flight in a Cesna - a craft which is rather like a SEAT 600 with wings - over Tulsa and in to Bentonville in Arkansas for breakfast.  Another adventure was a day of chilly off-road driving in something called a RZR (it doesn't have windows) and eventually a Jeep. 

Then there were the huge Thanksgiving meals to wade through (Urrp!).

Many thanks to my kids and their friends for a fine vacation!

Travel Broadens the Mind

 It has been a while since I went anywhere much beyond the driveway. In the last four years, between the usual state of penury, a broken leg back in the latter part of 2018 and the Covid excitement where we were locked in (luckily, in our case, this included a few acres of stables filled with friendly horses, cats, dogs and chickens), we haven't been out.

There weren't many opportunities to head out somewhere. And anyway, those critters need feeding. 

It's true that in that period, maybe 50 months since we visited the Basque Country, we've been to San Jose for lunch a few times, twice to Granada to buy horses and another time to Guadix for the same reason; then there was a bus trip to Seville last year to see the horse-show (one boozy night in Dos Hermanas). 

So here I am, writing this in a town in Northern Oklahoma, right after the midterm elections (it seems that the Trumpers have been disappointed). I have a month here, staying with two of my kids, both outdoing the other to provide me with adventures. Tomorrow I shall be driving a Porsche GT3 to Eureka Springs in next-door Arkansas, where I shall meet fellow enthusiasts (assuming I get there, it's a couple of hours drive, even at full speed - and I'm used to managing something a fraction more sedate).

I'm an old hand on America - I've jetted in (or driven in, or once, floated in with the QE2), over my lifetime around nineteen times. But things are changing and there are a few twists, like Walmart closing at 11.00pm (it used to be open 24/7) and, sad to relate, the rate of exchange isn't very good these days. 

Most of the cars and trucks are as massive as ever.

I was surprised on arrival in the Dallas - Fort Worth airport to see posters regarding facial recognition. I haven't been in the USA in six years, but before I could hand over my passport the friendly immigration officer smiled and said, 'Why, hello Lenox, good to see you again'. Crikey!

Another thing that surprised me, especially as I live in an area of Spain full of plastic farms (los invernaderos) many of which are dedicated to growing marijuana, to find that it has been legalised in Republican, bible-belt Oklahoma, and that in our town here - of maybe 15,000 inhabitants - there are at least ten 'weed shops'. 

Who smokes that shit?

The weather has been good so far, warm and blue skies, but I'm told the rain and low temperatures are on the way (minus five celsius tomorrow morning). 

I hope that car has heating... 

Later:

I drove down in the GT3 (an automatic) and later came the other way in a stick-shift GT4. We spent the weekend having fun with some friends and drove around 800k deep into Arkansas and Missouri.