Luxembourg

A few days away from home, with the only Spanish contact - a book by Juan Madrid that I had bought at the airport in his names-sake city and a CD by Muchachito Bombo Infierno with which I intended to deafen a few foreigners.
Madrid (the city) had been, as always, good fun. Besides being taken to an expensive restaurant by my daughter who lives in the centre of our capital city, a restaurant that specialises in Peruvian food and is located in the middle of Chueca, the gay district (help! I think the waiter likes me), I also managed to fit in a visit to the FNAC shop in Callao (books in English plus a vast selection of music) and a side-visit to a woolly sock shop.
You see, together with my wife, I was off to Luxembourg.
Normally a trip like this, you want to have an idea in your head of where the country – or, apparently, ‘duchy’ – lies on the map. But who cared about that? It would fall to the pilot to find the place – we’d just sit in the back, as usual by the lavatories.

Luxembourg, pop 450,000 of which 42% are, apparently, foreigners.

I remember reading a few years back that there were so many foreigners in Luxembourg that they might, if allowed to vote, cause the Wrong Sort to get in. So the foreigners in Luxembourg, exceptionally, were promptly disenfranchised by European law.
It’s lucky that there are so few of us here in Spain – or, at least, so few of us who want to vote occasionally…

The weather was warm and sunny during our six-day visit, so the thermal socks that I had carefully brought were given to the maid at the hotel in the small town where we stayed. She said they were too big for her but that she’d send them home to Nigeria.
We were there for a wedding and a christening so we didn’t feel too lonely, with around 150 friends to help us through the 48-hour jag that the youth of today equate with celebrating. Oddly, I didn’t have much of a headache after I woke up the following day upside down in a ditch. It must have been the quality wines, champagnes, deathly Belgian beers and glasses of cognacs that we guzzled, together with the food.
I know one is meant to write nice things about food in Spain, but, hey, this was proper French/German/Belgiun/Lux food – a darn site better.
Food in Luxembourg is taken seriously. I sat in some restaurants that insisted on five courses before they’d let you go. All of them heavily soaked in cream and brandy sauces. Luxembourg is also remarkable for the size of its portions – rather like America. ‘Super-size me’ being no joke here. On one occasion, with the idea of getting out of the place on my own two feet, I ordered sole for the main course. Sole meunière: sloshed in butter. It didn’t work though - they brought me four of them, plus a side order of chips. This after I’d already consumed a bucket of soup. There were a few Chinese restaurants (‘all you can eat’ places) in town but, while I was working on my third sole, I noticed a party of Orientals come in and sit down at a nearby table. They must have been hungry: they went for the à la carte steaks.
Another tremendous meal – this time rather better – was a steak in sauce plus veg and mash, all cooked and served on a roof-tile, one of those curvy Spanish ones, called a ‘tuile’ in French. There was a metal holder on the table to balance it on. Good though. To get to that particular restaurant, located somewhere in the countryside, you had to pass through the Snug, shouting ‘bonjour’ as a sullen crowd of extras from ‘Straw Dogs’ looked you over.
A fly accompanied us throughout the entire visit. Wherever we went, there was just this one fly, casting about between the serried ranks of forks that threaten every diner or rubbing its front legs in glee on the breadsticks. Our friends, after some discussion, agreed that it must have come with us from Spain, although I christened it Zizi la Mouche. I think I finally lost it at the airport.
To battle the flab, our hotel had an exercise bicycle nailed to the floor upstairs, but I never saw anyone give it a spin.
Those mobile phones are clever. Mine called me up in the taxi and said ‘Welcome to Luxembourg’. Late the first night, a gent rang claiming to be an employee of Sevillana and asking for a modest sum. Oddly, his number was blocked so I couldn’t ring him back. From the police station.

The hotel was comfortable and – despite having to deal with three national languages, which is not bad for a country half the size of Almería – the owners were able to entertain me in English. The town, a small tourist dorp on the eastern border with Germany just over the bridge, is occasionally flooded by the rising waters of the modest looking River Sauer which generally flows quietly enough some ten metres below. When it does flood, around every ten years, there is a brief photo call and then everyone goes out in their Wellington boots and has a huge lunch to forget their woes. We walked across the bridge into Germany, stayed just a fraction under a minute, and then ambled back into Lux. The Germans, for their part, drive regularly over the Sauer into Lux to take advantage of the cheaper petrol there. There are daily traffic jams of German visitors looking to fill their tanks (no pun intended – a German joke is no laughing matter, etc).
Cigarettes are obviously less bad for you than they are in Spain as they are freely sold in practically every shop. The best idea we found in the shops – the supermarkets and so on (loaded with everything those supermarkets: everything!) – was the plastic bags. They won’t give you one, you buy one for three cents, or you bring your own. Fewer plastic bags means less trash on the sides of the roads. Actually, apart from a pair of thermal socks, I didn’t see any trash on the sides of the roads.
There are few if any real-estate offices there. My wife inexplicably goes looking for one every time we stray much further from home than Turre. Perhaps people don’t buy and sell property much in Luxembourg, perhaps it's the thought of having to move all those forks to a fresh kitchen chest, or maybe they prefer to use the pages of the local ‘Der Welt’ (printed in Luxembourgish – a language) to advertise.

The town where we stayed was founded by an Irish monk called St Willibrord who happened to be in the area sometime in 698 looking for a decent lunch, preferably served on a roof-tile. There are now some 5,000 people living there, with much of the town given over to pedestrian streets together with a large square, a monastery, a basilica and a school. Plus, of course, restaurants, tea rooms and cake shops. The mayor, who helped at the wedding, and who always wears a sash so you can recognise him, has another novel way of standing out in a crowd. Whenever he leaves the town hall, a group of gaily-costumed brass blowing musicians accompany him. I saw the lot of them several times making their way grandly down the main street, the mayor looking harassed and the band tootling merrily. ‘Boys, I’m just going out for some cigarettes and maybe a pear brandy, so you don’t… oh, very well then’ dit di diddly de dee..

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (or Groussherzogtum Lëtzebuerg if you prefer) is ruled amiably by Grand-Duke Henri, who amongst his other duties, will become the godfather of your seventh child, if you get that far. The duchy (I’ve just looked this up) is exactly 999 square miles or a rather boring number of square kilometres. Much of it, when not dedicated to banks or restaurants, is in fact countryside. The rolling hills, bright green fields (aahhh!) the cows and the dark forests were all very beautiful as I roared past them comfortably ensconced in the passenger seat of several expensive cars.

Next year, I thought San Marino might be nice…

Tourist Day

Today is the International Day of Tourism. Spain is, I think, the second tourist destination worldwide with over 55 million tourists wandering up and down the beach buying souvenirs, drinks and t-shirts. There are also a number of ex-tourists, now full-time residents in Spain who are buying houses, cars, furniture, televisions, food, clothing and coach-trips to Ronda. They pay taxes, buy gas, go to the dentist, use a plumber, see an occulist, etc, all year long. There are probably over a million and a half of them. There are foreigners here to do the ooffey jobs, the cleaners, the workers in the plastic farms, the trash collectors, the navvies and so on. Several million of them. Spain is a country with an admitted ten per cent of foreigners (probably fifteen in reality). Hotels, homes, campsites, renovated farmhouses, apartments, mansions and urbanisations built for the foreigners have brought untold wealth to this country.
Today is Tourism Day - the nearest thing we are going to get to 'Foreigners' Day'.
What's your town doing to celebrate?

Three Bites to the Cherry

There’s been quite a lot of traffic on the local Internet forums about whether or not to support British bars – or perhaps ‘British business’ in general. Some people argue that, since we are living in Spain, we should be supporting the Spanish. I wouldn’t be surprised to read somewhere that the Spanish are of the same opinion. However, we all need to make or earn or, at least, obtain enough money to keep us going, Spaniards and Brits alike.
There are, broadly speaking, three different types of Britons coming to Spain – if you consider this part of the Iberian peninsular as being ‘Spain’ since most towns around here now have more foreigners than they do locals. Three types. The first are those who live here on monies from ‘home’, perhaps a cheque in the mail from parents grateful to hear that you are ‘doing well over there’ and have no thoughts ‘of returning just yet’. More seriously, there are many of us who live comfortably on an income. They typically are retired and have time to travel around Spain, perhaps ‘Parador hopping’ or the occasional shopping trip down to Marbella or Gibraltar or maybe they prefer to spend their time at home, gardening or entertaining. This group, as far as Spain is concerned, is most welcome. They spend freely and they don’t ‘take away anyone’s jobs’. Say somewhere over half a million of them.
The second group is those who wanted to come and live here, perhaps sick of the modern society of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Sick of the dull grind where people grudgingly admit that ‘they manage’ with any apparent enthusiasm for their sad existence. They move out here, perhaps a little younger than the first group, in search of a better life. They will have to work here to live, perhaps a bar or some small business to keep them going. It is this group that attracts the attention of the forum writers. Should we support them or should we prefer the Spanish, they wonder.
I agree that this is a wonderful place to live and if – all other things being equal – a Briton opens a business then we should be glad to help and favour him with our business. Why on earth not? It’s hard enough here – Spanish clients are not generally going to come in droves, the taxes and stock are usually a bit higher and the rules can be a bit tighter. Witness the Brits who took over a bar in my pueblo. They were told they couldn’t use the terrace. A year later, now with local owners, the same bar is spread all over the terrace and halfway into the street.
Furthermore, there is always small teething problems associated with running a business in a foreign country. One evidently brand-new bar owner once asked me how to cook some sardines as his Spanish customer had evinced some interest in enjoying some with his beer. ‘Bloody hell’, I told him ‘not the foggiest’. I feel sorry now – he shut a few weeks later.
It’s a shame when people come out here, full of hope for a better life, with their children and their possessions, only to find that their plan for a small business will run up against indifference, jealousy, obstructionism or other trials. We should support them not just as ‘fellow Brits’ but as people who have made a gamble with life. They didn’t sit still.
The third group, small but always in evidence, is made up of ‘chancers’. They will be running on dry and without any thought to return to their country. They will live vicariously off the rest of us, either cadging drinks, working for a morning painting our wall, or perhaps, coming up with a small con.
However, they too are welcome. It sounds savage back there in Manchester.

Vera Sewage

The Spanish can really make something out of the oddest materials. Here - essentially - shit.

This is the view of this morning's presentation of the new and improved sewage station which is located in the Media Legua area in Vera. The Vera town hall want to make it larger and more efficient as there are now many more people living locally than there were when this, ahem, water-treatment plant was first installed in 1992. The water saved from the plant to be used for irrigation, golf courses and so on. The mayor came along today to 'plant the first brick' and to make a speech to the effect of what I've written above. Around four hundred people came to this quite surrealistic event - you may see the entrance to a marquee to the left, some cooks and barmen to the fore, some tables laden with linen, glasses and forks in the centre of my picture and that strip at the back is the sewage plant. Which smells like sewage plants do.

The reason for the interest is because the Junta de Andalucía want to build a still bigger sewage station, big enough to treat seven municipalities' worth of doo doo, at the same site. To do this, they would need to string yet another set of pylons and high-tension cables across some fifty different estates and, as the mayor pointed out today, the Junta's plan calls for the semi-treated waters from their plant to be sent down the (dry) River Antas and, uurgh, out to sea! The mayor is an excellent speaker, and in his remarks this morning, he never once criticised the Seville government, yet he gave the impression that they were fiddling in local affairs where they shouldn't. Finally, the mayor said that he had sent a registered letter to President Rodriguez Zapatero about the issue.

Mojácar has its own sewage plant, behind the go-karts to the rear of Garrucha. The other night, with a strange easterly wind, you could smell it in the Micar valley. A suggestion from the Vera mayor, made a few days ago, was to the effect that the Junta could perhaps use the Mojacar sewage treatment plant for its nefarious purposes.

The problem for the future, as a leaflet thoughtfully printed up by the Vera town hall explains, is that with the ever-increasing number of people coming here to live, there will be acute problems of water, sewerage, communications, electricity, services and the rest of it. In the case of sewerage, from Vera's point of view, the Junta's plan would be catastrophic with '24 million litres of brown water running down the Rio de Antas daily'.

Normally around here, sewage water is pumped out to the sea. Yep, 'fraid so.

The Trees. Won't somebody please think of the trees?

We were working on the subscriptions the other day, sat on the floor and covered in stickies. The most mundane and boring job of the whole lot – printing up those awful fiddly little sticky labels (that don’t like printers), wrapping up and putting on the right addresses to just under a thousand newspapers. If you don’t believe me you can ask the postmaster. Our Spanish paper, El Indálico, covers local events and runs a small stable of some good writers with insights into local events. Our English paper, The New Entertainer, does something similar. The Indálico has been going for about eight years, The Entertainer (in its current incarnation) for about four.
It’s probably not very impressive to a reader to know that we have that many subscriptions, but it certainly is to the other editors around here. They have no subscribers at all – who wants to read regurgitated stuff pulled off the internet or to check on old TV schedules?
One of the functions of a newspaper is to find its way into the historical library run by the local community – in this case, the hemeroteca of the diputación de Almería. We are the only local ‘free ones’ you’ll find there.
That’s right – one day some fellow will write his dissertation on us lot.
I was thinking about this again today as I saw some recognizable brand-name stuck within the mishmash of a truly dire looking rag, with a complete lack of form, lay-out, presentation or – probably – decent print run. Yea, yea, I know – it wuz ‘cheap’.
But, with the exception of the Carpet Baggers buying a new Porsche in Stuttgart on the back of their advertisers, the rest of us give you more or less the same deal. Cheaper means ‘less copies’ and no proper writing. Some adverts are going for fifteen euros. What kind of message are they signaling? Pile ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap. No art or literature here. More expensive means ‘better distribution’, ‘more copies’, ‘better sales’. It doesn’t mean ‘greed’ (except for the above-mentioned louts). For local advertising, the distinction is important, which is why none of us gets ‘Lamboughini’ adverts.
If you are an advertiser, you should be taking a vicarious pride in the medium where your business is presented. After all, you are partly paying for its production and costs. And on the other side of the fence, if you like or support that medium, then support their advertisers – choose them first!
I have to raise this subject because it’s getting quite ridiculous. There are more free English language newspapers and magazines, TV listings, phone listings, plus radios, websites, flyers, one-offs and oddities, than you can shake a stick at. All with their sales-crews rattling off numbers, statistics, exaggerations and absurdities. One newspaper says it distributes in Carboneras and Agua Amarga. No. Our two editions are the only ones that go there. We are the only ones that bother to tool up to Mojácar pueblo for that matter. Between our reputation, our distribution, our content and our subscription list, we are the best known and best respected local newspapers around here. We have lived here the longest and know the area the best. We shall be here next month, next year.
Probably still doing the bloody subscriptions one night a month, two or three of us sat on the floor with a bottle of wine and some classical music playing in the background.

Digital Plus - Spain's Satellite TV

I have the Spanish satellite system, the alternative to Sky and all its wonders. It’s probably not as good.
However, it has an ample selection of news channels, with – of course – a full quiver of Spanish newses (trust me on this – they are a whole lot better than any news channel I’ve ever seen in English). The news channels I get include CNN+, which is a full half an hour without interruption collection of national and international news - with almost no sports, chatter, invitations to see the webpage and other trite filler now so popular with the ‘matey’ English news channels. The other main news channel is the national RTE international news, kind of like the BBC. Besides this and the usual terrestrial channels – for if you want Andalucía’s Canal Sur noticias for example – we also have CNN, the BBC, Sky News (Gulp!), the ferociously right wing Fox News, Euronews (in any of about six languages), Al Jazeera in English and, for reasons best known to ‘Digital Plus’, a 24 hour French News broadcast exclusively in English. Someone must watch it.
In the entertainment channels, perhaps the system is weaker than Sky, but there are eight or ten film channels, including (whew!) French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese films since, happily, Europe is a bit less stuck on Hollywood than Britain appears to be. Sometimes in European films, you can’t even guess the ending!
These film channels will show the picture in Spanish or in ‘original’, which is usually English. They arrive on Spanish screens about the same time as they do on British ones, so we are watching ‘Transporter II’ or that peculiar film about snakes loose in an airplane at the moment.
Or perhaps not.
There are some documentary channels, some light entertainment such as Fox showing old Simpsons and new Boston Legals, AXN showing CSI and the insufferable JAG, a SciFi channel, a whodunit channel – pretty much all in English, and then a desperately unfunny ‘Paramount Comedy’ channel showing endless Catalonian sitcoms. We have the usual music channels, plus some latino ones. Cartoon channels, regional channels… Then there is the inevitably staggering number of sports channels.
Spanish television is different from the British, particularly in its lax respect for ‘18’ films, which are shown at any and all times. Good horror at lunchtime and, for that matter, cutesy kiddywink stuff at midnight. No telling.
Hard pornography is shown on weekends after 1.00am – guaranteed cheap, nasty and always hair-raising stuff. Make your own joke here.
There are lots of pay-channels with modern films, sports events and, inevitably, lots more pornography.
Advertising is reduced on Spanish satellite TV, but there is a certain amount between films and as interruptions on the documentary and light entertainment channels, usually advertising (Spain being Spain) condoms, French ticklers, flavoured condoms, KY Jelly and women’s intimate toiletries with a far from intimate flair. Then, we are also shown children’s absorbent lavatory paper adverts. Plus, to be fair, commercials from the Corte Inglés department store and even, occasionally, adverts for cars and second homes on the Murcian coast.
On terrestrial Spanish TV, the amount of advertising renders the whole subject unarguable. Twelve minutes per hour, minimum. A website called Puerta del Sol has this to say: 'If the 266,628 commercials shown by Tele 5 last year were played back to back, they would constitute 58 days of television'.
Coming with the package is the usual box and dish and, of course, one of those useful but silly controls which is soon covered in sellotape. It’s used by us to change the channel, the language and, of course, to switch off the noise during the National Geographic self-promotion advertising.
In my opinion, the choice and quality has gone down, slightly. One film channel that showed black and white creakers, ‘Clásico’, has gone, but, on the other hand, there are two TCM channels. The best documentary channel, Documental, is no more, and its replacement, Odisea, is only broadcast in Spanish or Portuguese. Again, some comedy serials, such as Frasier and Weeds, are only in Spanish.
So, since we don’t want to feel like exiles, living in Spain but with our hearts in England, we use and watch the Spanish system. Is it better? Yo que sé.

Trying to take a bullfighting picture

I went to the bullfight last Saturday - a jolly event in a temporary bull-ring set up on the beach. A rejoneador (pictured here having a well-deserved drink) and two bull-fighters going through their paces. It varied from everyone involved having fun to the usual gruesome endings. The crowd seemed appreciative enough of a fairly middle-rate show and insisted on the presidencia handing out a steady stream of ears.

The worst thing that a budding photographer like me had to deal with was not being able to see the little screen on the back of the camera because of the bright sunlight and therefore being obliged to 'point in the general direction'.

Really, this was the best shot!

Ric Polansky kindly sent me some pictures of the same event. Very good pictures at that. See them on http://www.torosbravos.es/

Well, c'mon, it beats football!

Yawwn!

A report in today’s El Mundo recommends having a good kip after lunch – known to residents and visitors alike as ‘la siesta nacional’ – or, in modern parlance, the ‘yoga ibérico’. Doctors recommend it for obscure medical reasons, common sense supports it as it keeps you off the street during the worst hours of the hot day and it’s even an institution that is gathering adepts in other countries. One can even read about having ‘a power nap’ in American literature. Just the ticket after a hard morning’s work, a couple of beers and a lunch.
Meanwhile, the European Union is committed to stopping the siesta and many multinational companies are now operating in Spain with a ‘nine to five’ philosophy. They probably make their staff sit on hard wooden chairs as well. The bottom line is always the cash. Spain considers that ‘you work to live’ and the Anglos, stiff with their protestant guilt ethic, say that ‘you live to work’. ‘Arbeit macht frei’, as a German philosopher once put it.
I suppose that the Spanish nine-to-fivers experience rather mixed results from insisting on this calendar as, while they may receive business from abroad after the two o’clock watershed, they won’t get many ‘walk-ins’ during those last hours of their working day. It can be quite a nuisance in Madrid when you wake up after a siesta, shower and then take a taxi to some office clean across town to discover that it shuts at five for the day.
Five is hardly a late hour in a country which rarely goes to bed before midnight.
Indeed, much of Spain’s business is carried out over a beer or a glass of wine, either during the leisurely lunch which helps make living in this country such a pleasure, or during the evening, when the office-workers slip next door to the local cafeteria for a beer and chat, perhaps with a client.
The Spanish say that most deals are made outside the office.
Between this agreeable state of affairs and the burgeoning Anglo presence in the business world, the battle lines are drawn.
Movistar, Telefonica’s mobile phone company, appears to have embraced the European working clock – at least, it has taken to sending me irritating ‘peep peep’ commercial messages round about three in the afternoon when I am usually fast asleep.
Another call around three o’clock yesterday came from some English local newspaper that obviously prefers the British work-schedule, wanting to talk to me about an advert I had placed in The New Entertainer. Not to buy something mind, but to ask if I’d like to advertise with them. For this some sales-girl from the Sol Gazette wakes me up…
It ruined that day’s nap entirely; as I was left wondering who else of my clients she was no doubt waking with her ludicrous sales-patter.
The Spanish siesta is an institution that has worked for hundreds of years and is based on the soundest of experience and principals. Oddly, I recently read somewhere that the siesta was introduced by Franco - probably written by some stringer for the telephone company. After all, if the old bastard invented it, it’s OK to give it the bum’s rush and adopt instead those miserable Anglo hours.
Oddest of all is in the erstwhile Spanish town of Albox, where, now re-christened as ‘All-box’ and taken over by ‘los ingleses’ - the British - business hours there are now strictly ‘nine to five’, with some select places running from just ‘nine to two’. I imagine the surviving hoards of locals, fresh from their siestas, casting around after five o’clock for something to buy, somewhere to go.

A List of Surprising Websites

(*The original title and first part of this article have been removed to satisfy the Vera court)

...such as http://www.lenoxnapier.com/.
http://www.theentertaineronline.net/
http://www.theentertaineronline.co.uk/
http://www.lenoxnapier.com/
http://www.lenoxnapier.net/
http://www.lenoxnapier.org/
http://www.lenoxnapier.info/
http://www.lenoxnapier.es/
http://www.lenoxnapier.co.uk/
http://www.lenoxnapier.eu/

...and if you spell my name wrong - as many people do, then - there are seven combinations of those as well:

http://www.lennoxnapier.com/
http://www.lennoxnapier.net/ etc, etc.

Exhibition

Our area has long been seen as attractive to artists, but here's a local artist born and raised here. The text is from Jeanne Henny.

This exhibition is journey through landscapes, from the natural park of Cabo de Gata, passing through Cortijo del Fraile (Cortijo described in Garcia Lorca’s well known work Blood Wedding), to the whitewashed facades of the salt mines, the unique vistas of Bedar, Tabernas and the film sets, the architecture of Morocco and others.
A personal style infused with Mediterranean light. An illustration with a touch of realism inspired by the simplicity of shapes and forms.
Manuel Gallardo was born in 1981 in Los Gallardos, Almeria. He is a self- taught artist and aficionado of photography and sculpture. His works were selected for various art competitions, such as Roquetas del Mar, Lucainena de las Torres, and Vera among others. In June 2006 he was awarded First Prize by the Deputation of Almeria in an open air painting marathon in Los Gallardos. He has exhibited some of his works in the Museum Antonio Manuel Campoy in the Exhibition Hall La Tercia del Casillo del Marqués de los Vélez in Cuevas de Almanzora. This is his first solo exhibition.

From July 28th to August 12, 2007
Monday to Sunday from 11am to 1pm and 7pm to 9pm
c/Medio s/n (next to the Youth Centre)
Bédar (Almería)

Give us a Sign

How often we worry about communicating. In Britain there are many different accents and slang, which help to breed a sense of belonging to a community as well as presenting a challenge to anyone outside it. Which is why the young need to re-invent themselves every generation. In Spain, there’s plenty of slang, but spoken Spanish is pretty much easy to understand wherever you come from, with the gypsy accent and the Cadiz accent being perhaps the hardest to grasp, although, apart from the dropped constanants and a few bits of slang, they are intelligible enough. The gypsies talk of their special language, Caló, but no one appears to know more than a few words of it. Rather like me saying something remembered from my Latin classes.
Yup, in Latin they call that table ‘mensa’.
To make things comfortably more complicated, Spain has some regional languages that are been encouraged – or so it seems to me – so as to bring the local politicians into the centre of power. We all know that the Catalonians have ‘Catalán’, the Valencians have ‘Valenciano’ (which is the same as Catalán, but don’t say I told you), the Galicians have ‘Galego’ and the Basques have something that has nothing in common with any other language: it’s called in Spanish ‘Euskera’, while in the Basque country, it’s called ‘euskaldunak’.
Then those living in eastern Almería have something even odder – it’s called ‘English’…
It seems a pity that everyone living on the Iberian peninsular, Portuguese and Gibraltarians included, couldn’t all speak one language, but there you go. In a generation, few people in Barcelona will speak more than broken Spanish, and fewer still of the Galicians will be able to make themselves understood when they take a shopping trip to Madrid.
And as for the Basques…
The other day, three young cousins of my wife arrived to stay. You know how it is; a quick email and they’re on your doorstep the following morning. They were backpacking around Europe for a month before completing their studies in a university in Washington DC. They spoke, of course, American.
Actually, they didn’t, because they were deaf. They signed in American: although they dropped their vowels, invented meanings, used their own slang and were otherwise difficult or impossible to make head or tail of. They signed too dam’ fast and they never stopped. Don’t talk with your hands full, I wanted to tell them at the dinner table. Here, try some of this…
Oddly, you begin to pick it up rather fast – or, at least, your own version of it, even as you wonder exactly who here has the handicap!
Of course, they would write things down for us and were great fun besides. Being energetic young kids, they drank and smoked like troopers and stayed up late with my son and his friends on the Playstation. With fingers like that, said the kids, it’s no wonder they keep winning…
On one occasion during their short visit, three of us: a Spaniard, my son and I, together with the three of them, went out for a boozy dinner – hands and fingers flying – in a pork and chips place on the beach, the other tables staring and wondering who we were, you must try the Licór de Pacharán and so on; and we followed this with a trip to our friend’s house where we drank a bottle of whisky, never stopped talking for a second, smoked ourselves blue and generally partied until dawn. Yet, all the while, you could have heard a pin drop.
The neighbours didn’t bang on the walls, we didn’t shout and bellow as we left round about sun up and the loudest sound would have been my stomach churning.
They went off to Madrid on the six o’clock bus to go to some important international congress of signing as delegates. Several hundred of them let loose in Madrid.
Blimey, that must have been a riot!

Greenpeace and the Illegal Hotel

Around thirty Greenpeace activists arrived in a dawn attack on the beach of El Algarrobico this morning, Thursday, and proceeded to paint in giant letters the word ‘ilegal’ on the front of the unfinished hotel there.
The Hotel El Algarrobico has been built – it’s almost finished – in a national park and is also on land controlled under the jurisdiction of ‘Costas’ the coastal agency where strict ‘no building’ rules apply.
How the hotel got as far as it did – even with the support of the Carboneras town hall (PSOE) – is a mystery. However, it was stopped two years ago by the Ministry of the Environment.
As to what needs to be done – no one wants to get their fingers wet. The price to the government would be at least 50 million euros to expropriate and demolish the installation, plus more money ‘to return the land to its previous condition’ – land which is/was scrub and cliff-face and certainly not worth much to regain.
The Carboneras town hall continues to support the builders, Azata del Sol, and they are trying to put things in order, an impossible task for this construction.
The unfinished hotel at 21 stories and with 411 rooms is considered by ecologists (including Greenpeace) as being the symbol of over-construction, illegal builds, greed and the rest of it. The Spanish Mediterranean coastline, according to the ecologists, has 66,000 illegal constructions, but nothing to compare with the Hotel El Algarrobico.

Hot, warm and cool

This is a strange summer - it's been hot, with that sticky and uncomfortable type of weather that leaves you in a bad mood (which only a cool beer or a refreshing swim can cure) and, sometimes it's been quite comfortable, like now.

The air conditioning in the office is on the fritz, but we are on the third floor with a few open windows. The air/con in the car needs re-filling (the kind of job I shall no doubt get around to sometime next November) and I've never got around to installing one at home. But with thick walls and small windows, the house takes a lot of cooking before it gets warm inside.

Anyhow, here's a nice piccy.

It'll cool you down.

La Sangre del Moro

This is a picture of 'The Moors Blood', taken on the way between Sopalmo (a hamlet west of Mojácar) and Carboneras. Perhaps this is where the final battle took place between the Moors and Christians all those years ago. Perhaps it's just an example of the rich and varied minerals in the rock hereabouts.

Mojácar Events for July and August

Mojácar once again has a busy couple of months full of events.
Forgetting the Punch and Judy shows, the stand-up comedians and so on, we have: Jazz concert with Blues Stress at 10.30pm on Friday 13th July in the Plaza Nueva. Latin music with Crema y Cacao at 10.30pm on Wednesday 18th July in the Plaza Nueva. Flamenco with Sensi Falan, Niño de la Manola and Gabriel Duré at 10.30pm on Thursday 19th July in the Plaza Nueva. Brass Band concert with the Mojácar Municipal Band on Friday 20th July at 10.00pm in the Plaza Nueva. Flamenco dance concert with Kebanna Company at 11.00pm on Saturday 21st July at the Artisan Centre (6 euros entrance).
Aljama dance group at 10.00pm on Thursday 2nd August in the Plaza Nueva. Friday 10th through Sunday 12th is the Sopalmo Fiesta. Concert with Isabelle Bes (belle chanson) at 10.30pm on Friday 17th August in the plaza Nueva. Municipal dance troupes at the Plaza Nueva each evening at 10.00pm from Sunday 19th August through Friday 24th August with, in order, Marcela, Julie, Alexandrine, Rosa Manuela, Fatima Perestrello and, finally, Gustavo Criado. The Mojácar fiestas will be held on August 25th through 28th.

The Aftermath

What do they say – something about ‘democracy being the best of a bad bunch’. Certainly in the USA, where the Republicans spend twenty times as much as the Democrats – who spend thousands of times more than the – oh, I don’t know – the American Socialists or something, in the USA, some joker like George Bush jr can win. I always think, when the talk turns to ‘democracy’, that the Americans are somehow pulling our legs, but I haven’t quite figured out how.
The money, of course. Here in our local elections, some parties apparently spent quite heavily to try for better results. One pueblo party sent an agent to South America where some fifteen per cent of the entire vote of that town happens to live. In fact, those ‘postal voters’ – people inscribed on the local town hall registry, but actually grandsons and daughters of those who left Spain after the Civil War – are considered key voters in certain local elections. Marvelous, isn’t it. These addresses are only (officially) released to the parties when it is way too late to send out campaign material, but – some people already had those details on file…
There is little doubt that a few years in public office can do wonders for one’s career and this is true the world over. Without any form of corruption, there are still many advantages available to the intelligent councilor.
As certain non-residents over there in Argentina were taking a bank-note out of an envelope and replacing it with their vote, other residents, nearer to home, were being denied their own rights. On Election Day, I was at the polling station wearing my Party-Badge and a few people came to me to say that they wanted to vote but were surprised to find that their names were not on the lists. I can only imagine that other people would have gone to other party representatives with similar complaints. It may just have been a few people involved and a few bits of paper mislaid, I charitably presume, although I later heard that in the Alicante town of Altea, the founder of Ciudadanos Europeos, Per Svensson, was unable to vote. How about those apples?
Even the stoutest defender of pueblo democracy would concede that there was some small manipulation or gerrymandering of votes in certain cases – with troublemakers or critics occasionally – whoops! - removed. In some parts of Almería, the ‘Europeans’ found that their names had been lovingly added to the 2011 elections, where, no doubt, they will one day make a difference.
I have met a few people who were offered money for their vote. One Spanish shop-keeper told me she had been offered 300 euros by the brother of one candidate and a similar amount by the friend of another.
One candidate in my town’s elections is said to have spent over a hundred and fifty thousand euros on his campaign, without obtaining a seat on the council. I personally think his candidacy was nothing more than a ‘red-herring’ to split the ‘foreign vote’. On the positive side, two foreigners are now in local government, Jim Simpson in Zurgena with the Partido Andalucista and Albert Shröter from the PP in Mojácar.
In another town nearby, the postal votes were apparently tampered with. All of the envelopes had been steamed open and the votes that were for other parties thrown into the trash – where they were later found. Judge’s decision: no action to be taken.
Back in my town, 75% of the Spaniards voted, where sadly only 40% of the registered ‘Europeans’ bothered to do so. Under European law, those citizens that had the nerve to have been born anywhere else in the world, like the USA, Ecuador or Argentina etc, of course couldn’t vote in our local elections. Let that be a lesson to them!
There were many reasons why our noble democratic process came under stress; but in the end, even though the route taken was not entirely the one recommended by those ancient Athenians who first put the idea into practice, the system worked and we got ourselves some new and evidently intelligent leaders.

A New Corporation

The new mayoress of Mojácar, Rosa María Cano, took office today. She has the support of her party, five councillors, plus three more from Ciudadanos Europeos, GIAL and AIz. In the photo, Rosmari raises her thumb in approval to her supporters. Standing behind (and towering over), is Albert, the first democratically chosen foreign councillor in Mojácar. Albert will be in charge of Mojácar's image.

Moors and Christians, Sunday Procession

The Sunday procession, where the multitudes of brightly costumed celebrants make their final farewell.

Moors and Christians - the first night

Some pictures taken around midnight as the Moros y Cristianos arrived. Bands, people, noise, costumes and fireworks.

Moros y Cristianos: Mojácar, junio 8 - 10

Moors and Christians

The Moors and Christians celebrate the story of Mojácar's defeat in 1498 and how the two sides managed to turn the event into a companiable 'draw'.
There will be a medieval market in the Plaza Nueva with animations, falconry, snake charmers and the odd firework.

Friday 8th June. The event starts in the pueblo at around 6.30pm, with the troops arriving (noisily) at the fountain at 10.30pm and from there up to the pueblo, where the opening of the celebrations is officially proclaimed. The six troops ('Kabilas') will then withdraw, around midnight, to their various 'barracks' about the town where great toasts are drunk, great noise is blasted about and festive bands of musicians join in the aimiable bedlam.

Saturday, 9th June. 6.30pm. Moorish troops land on the Playa de Descargador (opposite the Provenzal Hotel) with the merry explosions of blunderbusses. There will be 'a hawking show' (hopefully involving wild birds of prey) and a belly dancing show. A medieval tournament will be staged. Then, accompanied by some really heavy fireworks and explosions, the deafened armies will march towards the Parque Comercial. From 10.00pm, the barracks will once again be opened where great amounts of cheap liquor will be quaffed etc.

Sunday 10th June. From midday, a truly cacophanous number of blunderbuss discharges will be held on the beach as the two armies meet. The main parade - quite unmissable - will take place from the Plaza Nueva in the pueblo, going down the road to the fuente below, from 7.00pm.