Semana Santa

As we know, Semana Santa, Holy Week, is a long and agreeable holiday. We spend it on the beach or in the bars. A few of us might dress up in purple and perhaps even go to mass. But for most of us, it's a welcome week off work and a chance to relax.

Might even meet someone.

The Opportunity for Change

We are in the days of the 'pre-campaign', as defined by the rules which were quietly changed this past January. You can't put up your posters yet - although there are several in Mojácar for the delightfully named UM party, covered by tarpaulins to uphold the law, but just as effective for anyone who lives here and saw them in their glory for a month or two. 'Capacity', they say. 'Oh yes we can'...

Meanwhile, the main parties in the country, the national ones, have their opportunity. They will be on the television with their business as usual, their scandals and mutual accusations (carefully not mentioning anyone else, since, like most countries, we have the politics sewn up in a two-party system). Then, there are the 'routine' meetings when the party leader or a minister (or equivalent) is chewing a microphone in public, talking, naturally, about state affairs... not the upcoming local elections - that wouldn't be right. There are autonomous elections in many parts of Spain as well, where the non-Spanish Europeans are not invited to vote, but thankfully, Andalucía is spared that. Here, our autonomous elections are held with the national ones, in the hope that the eternally ruling PSOE-A gets in again. Since the autonomy is ruled and run from far-off Seville, it won't make much difference here anyway.

In the towns, the smaller parties must wait. We gossip and plot our modest campaigns as the larger parties look over their war-chests and order their billboards and teeshirts from Madrid. It's the calm before the storm. The mayors may have handled the voting list, but we shall get copies of them next week.

But what does this advert from nolesvotes mean? Don't vote for the establishment. It's about the institutionalised corruption in Spain, the sell-out to Hollywood ('Ley Sinde'), the 'war' on Libya (with Spanish munitions flying on both sides), the five million unemployed, the protection of the bankers, the alternation (and mutual protection) of the two parties, plus the CiU in Catalonia. 'Without your support', says the association, 'the big parties have nothing'.

Here in Mojácar, with the PSOE in collapse, the peril for our town comes from the local PP, who have not only mismanaged and affronted our citizens for the past four years, on their return to power, they are planning to eviscerate the square beside the church, making a pointless underground car-park for residents: a park for 37 cars. Will the workmen stop as they dig through 4,000 years of history as treasures from the past are unearthed? They didn't the last time with Gabriel, when ruins and graves were found in the Plaza Parterre, neither the time before with Bartolo while chewing up the surrounds by the Castillo. And all for what? Several million euros of scarce Town Hall money misspent. This party builds 'Padel Tennis' courts on the beach at a premium, without there being any demand or interest. The football stadium wasn't cheap either, even though we don't have a team yet. The Art Museum, switched expediently to a gallery earlier this month, has now been closed.

It's time for a change. Choose a party that reflects the make-up of your community, a party with a proper mixture of Spanish and 'European' residents. A Town Hall should at least reflect the make-up of its citizens and should, like the nation above it, be responsible to them - not to self perpetuation and outside interests.

Spell Me Right, Por Favor

If I am faced with a word or name I'm not familiar with, I copy it out carefully. I expect most of us do. However, foreign names are considered slightly frightening by many Spaniards. Too many letters or not enough. In today's newspaper, Helen Prior becomes Hellen. Even a simple John becomes Jhon or even Jhonathan. There was once a brand of Spanish denims called Jhon Jeans. I may have an old pair somewhere. My dad was called William, or rather more often, at least in print, Willian. My own name is pretty simple, but even after being here for 45 years, people can get it wrong. There's a mention of me in a book published by the diputación de Almería, about how I ran a newspaper in this province during fifteen years. So much for posterity, they've spelled my name wrong.

Perhaps this explains why everyone is called Pepe or Paco. In fact, when I was a kid, the local people used to call me Pipo.

I guess it's all to do with concern over the spelling.

Local Elections: May 22nd

I suppose there is a natural reticence in getting involved in local politics – or even going as far as voting. We’ve all either heard, or indeed volunteered, the various excuses of ‘it not being our place’ or ‘we don’t know the candidates’, either of which are really rather an admission of ignorance and a lack of enthusiasm for one’s community. Go and meet your neighbours! Find what you like and identify what you don’t. It’s now your community and it’s worth making the best of it.
To the comical line about how the natives are restless, as the fireworks are exploding, the megaphones are honking and the crowds are cheering, I would answer that we are not in some South Sea island uneasily wearing grass skirts. We are not colonials – this is our town: our future.
There are different issues that incite different people. Those unfortunate enough to live in an ‘illegal house’ (there are literally thousands of families in this position in the Almanzora Valley) would be wise, if they could, to vote for a party which offers solutions, rather than creates and exacerbates the problem. Other people want more sports facilities or perhaps residences for the elderly; they might want more discothèques and less police presence, or maybe the very opposite. It’s all about politics (and in my examples here, age and inclination).
There are the two main parties in Spanish politics, the PSOE – mostly responsible for the ‘illegal houses’ problem; and the PP, which favours and champions ‘land grab’. One is nominally socialist, the other, in theory, conservative. However, in local politics, it’s all about local personalities and local issues. Our mainstream party candidate for example is aware of the local issues and, despite pressure from ‘head office’ in far-off Seville or even farther-off Madrid, will seek to provide local solutions. At least, so one might hope. In reality, small town politics is often about local personalities, families and opportunity. We call it ‘clan politics’. We can ignore all of this and we will in turn be ignored.
Otherwise, it is better to participate, join in and integrate. Sooner or later the parties must open their gates to fresh ideas and finally face the loss of their baleful family influence. The community becomes the stronger and this in turn creates wealth and jobs. Property prices would even rise with the demand from buyers and potential settlers – because who wouldn’t want to live in a harmonious and well-treated town?

The Bonfires

We used to have a number of pine trees in the fields around the house. They were planted originally by my father about forty years ago. He was a keen tree-planter, he said, because there weren’t any in this part of Spain. Trees, that is. Or planters, come to think of it.
He would drive up to the village fountain with several large plastic bottles that started out life holding industrial chemicals (for the swimming pool – the water came by truck). Fill them up then lug them out of the old Renault and over to the seedlings. In the end, there were about 500 trees, almost all pine, and quite a few of them festooned with a type of disagreeable caterpillar which regularly makes its presence in the pages of the ex-pat press. More because of its rash-inducing hairs and its processionary characteristics that anything it might do to the unfortunate pine tree.
A brush fire in the high hills of next-door Turre a couple of summers ago was improperly put out and a second fire duly caught a week later and rushed down the hill, across the valley and into our municipality, burning, among other far more important things, our five hundred pine trees, along with their resident caterpillars as well.
So, two winters on, the trees are dead and dried up, ready for some attention. They fall like skittles in the wind, their roots rotted away. I have a hand saw and have been pruning away at the smaller trees as and when the house needed firewood, but now, with the trees falling in any direction, crushing whatever is underneath, some friends have come by with chainsaws: some wood for them, some for us.
For the past three days, I’ve been burning the remains of the forest – the small branches, fir cones and other detritus – in some large bonfires. Here, you should get your burning permission first, unless you intend to have a good brush-fire and burn down the neighbourhood (don’t get caught – an Englishman in Granada recently cooked half the province and got fined ten million euros).
In the old days, you went to get a licence from the local police, but now, a special fellow from the department of the environment shows up twice a week (although not on any set days, unfortunately) to give out exactly the same permit. Several of us were waiting for him last Monday. Our policeman phoned to ask where he was. He said he couldn’t get a car to come in that day.
So, I’m using an old permit. It’s not as if anyone is going to check.

The Queue

There's a graffiti outside the Centro de Extranjería in Murcia, the place where, from nine to three, five days a week, scared or patient or bored foreigners must queue for hours in the hope of getting their work or residence papers. It says 'burocracy or apartheid?'.

Oddly, the pintada has been there for at least five years, the time I've been going past to get to the train station.

Either the ayuntamiento de Murcia is very lax about painting over the scrawl... or perhaps they agree with the sentiment.

Being a European with my passport and absurd A4 - ever since the Ministerio del Interior took away our 'tarjetas de residencia' (I'd been a resident in Spain for 40 years - alas no longer!) - I sympathise with the poor North Africans and South Americans as they patiently wait in line. Reading the graffiti.

The Odd Job Woman

Long time Mojácar resident Struan Robertson (owner of 'The Time and Place') has written a thriller available from Amazon. Just type in 'The Odd Job Woman' for details.
A thriller set in expatriate Mojácar, when an English odd job man answers a call from an isolated villa to open a locked deed box - he also opens a deadly can of worms and soon discovers that life will never be the same again! Both a whodunnit and a thriller, the action is nonstop and full of twists, leading to a final denouement set against a backdrop of British expatriate society along the coastal strips of southern Spain. This book is for anyone who likes thrillers - while its eviscerating look at life on the Spanish Costas will appeal to everyone who has ever been there on holiday, lived there - or thinking of moving there...
Struan says: 'I've been writing most of my life but never seriously tried to get published before; except for this book. I'm now half way through another thriller, also set partly in Spain, where I've been living, on and off, for the last thirty years. I'm also writing a memoir. I was brought up on a Scottish Highland sheep farm. Went to sea when I was seventeen and stayed there for the next fifty odd years - except for ten years as airline flight deck crew. Er, that's it..!'.

N:B - book available only at amazon.com (not amazon.co.uk)

A Solution for Mojácar

Well, the Town Hall has spent a fortune on the two large empty squares up by the church in the village. The Mayoress wanted to build an underground car-park for 37 cars at a cost of two million euros (around 60,000 euros per car) and says that there were lots of ‘takers’. The Town Hall has spent around 250,000 in buying the rather mungey Loro Azul bar and apartment (where I first lived in Mojácar in 1967 for a couple of years) so as to presumably knock it down. They spent another 42,000 euros on a study to build ‘several municipal buildings’ in the area, although without any plans as to what they might, eventually, be used for.
The whole, rebuilt area, with its car-park nestled safely under it, would, naturally, find space for the much missed Arco de Luciana, a stone tunnel under a nearby bar where a Moorish virgin threw herself to her death after her gallant Captain perished in battle. Or, at least, she might have if the tunnel hadn’t of been built in 1910. Hey, in our town we sell 'fantasy' (witness the Moors and Christians spectacle).
Luckily, there was a schism in a recent pleno, and the lunatic project was dropped – at least until after the next elections. In short, those in favour of an underground car-park, sundry non-specific buildings and a racetrack through the pueblo, vote for Rosmari and the Partido Popular. Those against, don’t.
In another pleno, held on March 11th, the Council decided to offer a modest 3,000 euro prize to anyone who could come up with a sensible idea for the area. Here’s mine.
First of all, I think that it would be a good idea to improve the looks of the pueblo. We could encourage those who live there to improve their surroundings and we could bring fresh ideas to repair the village and, in short, make property there more attractive and perhaps even a ‘good investment’. To do this, we need to return a ‘theme’ to the village, which would clearly be to make it look more ‘ Moorish’. Some arches, overhead beams, ‘ Moorish doors’ with their curves, their charm and their mystery. Lucinda’s Arch should be returned, but it doesn’t really matter exactly… where. It can be in any spot which would be improved by a romantic, arched Lover’s Leap. We shouldn’t build two squares (and underground car-park) around and on the back of a centenary tunnel knocked down by a mayor and ignored both by him, and the three of four that followed. Thinking back, it was just a narrow tunnel outside two bars where people used to piss.
The front of the pueblo, the Plaza Nueva (so called, by the way, as it was built in the Seventeenth Century) is the commercial entrance to Mojácar. It’s pretty attractive, although could be improved. However, it’s where the trucks and suppliers must park to maintain the pueblo and its shops and bars. It has a good ‘look-out’ point, the marbled ‘Mirador’, which unfortunately needs to be urgently replaced or repaired. Perhaps it could return to its earlier function of a two storey car-park… for about thirty cars.
However, the main parking for Mojácar remains around and at the foot of the back of the village. There’s a considerable walk to regain the Plaza Nueva. Most people don’t and won’t visit, even though the pueblo is the lodestone of the area. We love Mojácar pueblo, but we stay on the beach.
To repair this, the pedestrian entrance to the village, the route taken by residents, shoppers and visitors alike, can easily be the same Plazas de Frontón and de la Iglesia. All that is needed is a short vertical ride from the ample car-park below. This car-park, now thankfully relieved from having a Wednesday fruit and vegetable market, has a large number of parking spaces. There are further parking-spaces in other next-door fields and levels. By bringing pedestrians up to the village with a mechanical lift, to be decanted into those upper squares, the whole problem of a pedestrian village is largely resolved. With these two upper squares turned into either gardens or, please, slightly ‘upmarket shops and taverns’, Mojácar could once again regain its pride of place as the leading destination and residential attraction for the area.
Could I have my 3,000€ now?

The Headless Jesús

It seems that a lightening strike decapitated the Vera Sacred Heart yesterday. The ten metre high statue was erected in 1949 on the Cerro de Espiritú Santo, the hill which overlooks the city and which was also the centre of a previous Vera, destroyed in an earthquake in 1518.

The mayor has promised to return the statue to its former glory as soon as possible.

La Cutreza

¡Ay, que gusto ir a comprar en Mojácar donde siempre uno está asegurado de encontrar prendas y otros recuerdos de calidad! "Hay un pelo entre mis dientes y no sé de que coño viene". Muy poético. "He follado en Mojácar", "Me han jodido en Mojácar" y luego, "Mojácar - ¿A ti, como prefieres tu polvo?"

La verdad es que, hasta subimos el tono de nuestras triquiñuelas, no vamos a subir el tono de nuestros visitantes.

Tenemos tiendas que venden las camisetas en las fotos, tenemos tiendas que venden sombreros mexicanos (no se sabe porqué) y tenemos tiendas que venden navajas, muñecas horteras y productos "Made in China". Luego, siempre puedes hacerte un tatuaje o ir a Garrucha a comer pescado. Lo que no se note mucho en nuestro pueblo, que una vez fue el más bonito de la provincia, es vida. Quizás esto cambiará después de las elecciones.

Perfectly Welcome

It was to be a quiet party, just five or six of us. Maude had baked a cake and John had bought a bottle of champagne. There were a few beers and some sodas in the fridge and I had lit the barbeque ready for my speciality of burnt sausage à la birthday boy. Furthermore, in case my older sister Rachel, who works at the tourist office, could make it, we had some roast potatoes and a salad prepared – she’s a vegetarian. I went to put on some quiet music on the CD player.
Just then, a large blue bus stopped outside our house and people began to disembark. Rachel seemed to be there with them, shouting some instructions. The mass of people began to swell towards our gate. I ran over to see what was happening.
“Rachel, what on earth are you doing?”

“Well”, she said, “they’re tourists. They’ve come to join in. Could you take their picture?”
And so it is. Tourism today is so ubiquitous, that any fiesta, celebration, public event or exhibition must somehow cater for the visitors. Often at the expense of the locals, for whom the event was designed. While the bars, restaurants and knickknack shops all make out like bandits during these affrays (or at least, should), the local people will find themselves relegated to the ‘second row’ or even unable to attend at all.
Take our late summer fiesta. The four day long San Agustín fiesta is a very enjoyable thrash that seems more concerned with its commercial element than its social or religious one. Not only are the shops open until all hours, but a large number of out-of-town vendors come along to see what they can earn. The attractions are staged in a relatively small part of the municipality, so the bars and restaurants who failed the ‘location location’ test will not get much out of the affair (besides paying for the fiesta handbook). Lights are put up and taken down again, bands are hired and fireworks are let off. Is all this effort for the residents – or for the tourists?
The mainstays of commerce are industry, agriculture and tourism. There is precious little of the first two here and so we are obliged to cater for the third. I think that some of our shops sell needlessly vulgar tat – perhaps reckoning along the famous line of ‘pile it high and sell it cheap’ of Jack Cohen – and cheap Chinese souvenirs may attract cheap Chinese souvenir hunters. I’m not against tourists – unless they stand in my way – but I’m against hordes of them. Why not cater for less but wealthier tourism – Monte Carlo rather than Benidorm? We could make our town look nicer and even attract a wealthier type of visitor. After all, the Parador is a better hotel than the Pueblo Indalo.
So, the question is this – why does the tourist office advertise a local fiesta? Is it to help the citizens, or to help the shopkeepers?
In fact, sometimes it is clear that the public fiestas are just private affairs. We have two of this type, the Día de la Vieja and the Romería de San Isidro - both town hall picnics in the country where tourists and even non-local residents are simply not invited. Perhaps because there are no commercial advantages to doing so.
It is an axiom that, before you invite your friends over to your house, you clean the place up. Dust, wash, air and plump and even sometimes even paint, plaster, repair and rebuild. Then you feel better, proud of your home and ready to receive. The visitors come away favourably impressed and satisfied. Shouldn’t our resort receive the same consideration? Why not make our town look nicer and more attractive so the tourist will like it better? (To say nothing of how we might like it better as well). There’s plenty enough to be done. Meanwhile, by all means, give them their free paella, but save some for us.

This article isn’t about just Mojácar, but it’s clear that the pueblo itself is a kind of magnet to the area, a magnet which we all acknowledge, but don’t bother to visit…
Benidorm, by the way, works very well as a tourist destination. It takes a massive proportion of all British visitors to Spain and serves them well. It has a grid-system of streets leaving everyone close to their destination and also close to the beach. For residential tourism however, you will have to go to equally wealthy nearby town of Altea (which has just one large hotel).
My story at the top of the page? Well, here’s a true one. Barbara was hosting a small party on the hill behind the village. She and her pet cow along with some friends were celebrating San Fermín. The running of the bulls – or rather the trotting of one very affable pet cow called Petite Suisse. There was a picnic and some gypsy friends played the guitar, passed the bottle and sang. Some walkers joined in, eating and drinking with the group, while everyone vaguely thought that someone else must have invited them. The walkers, it turned out, thought that it was a town hall funded fiesta. So what – they were made perfectly welcome.

Rural Tourism

Here’s a piece that caught my eye (from the local daily newspaper): ‘The Comarca of Andarax has enough natural resources - scenic, cultural, economic, agricultural and gastronomic - to exploit a model to attract new tourists…’
A touch inelegant the text, perhaps, but it was the best that me and the Spellcheck device could do between us at a moment’s notice.
Tourism is the answer to all of our ills. A quick morning presentation, a chat with the local minister or councillor, a glass of ‘vino español’ and a tapa or two from the local ‘School of Gastronomy’ and all is suddenly well. We shall create jobs and be wealthy. The tourists are coming.
Spain has a touching belief in its own skill in attracting tourists, after all, it’s the world’s second-most visited country. No, hold on, fourth.
Let’s say that there are two sorts of tourists. Those on a short holiday to the beach, here in Spain (because it was cheap… or because the neighbours came last year and liked it… or because of the sun and the beach and the… no. I’m kidding: it’s because it was cheap), and those who are here for a longer period, perhaps with their own car, who perhaps even live here.
The first group are here for a brief time, to have fun. They may be customers of a tour-operator, flown and bussed in to some hotel in some – and who cares which – resort and they will be glad to be away from their desks, or their machines, or their shovels. Their contact with ‘gastronomy’ (as the Spanish like to call it when using what they fondly imagine is English) is no more than the odd meal outside their hotel and a non-fatal exposure to the catering service within.
If those visitors wanted ‘culture’, they wouldn’t be staying on the coast of some random tourist region: they’d have flown to Granada, or Seville, or Cordoba, or Madrid or Valencia. Barcelona even; but not, I think, the region of the Comarca of Andarax. ‘Two weeks on the beach, with paella, beer, girls and… Oh… within striking distance of the Comarca of Andarax’, said Mr Jones to the nice lady at the desk…
The main village in the Andarax is the agreeably pleasant mouthful of Canjáyar. The Junta de Andalucía, of course, won’t let anyone build in this village of 1500 inhabitants (falling every decade since 1901) so attracting full-year ‘residential tourism’ is out. In short, it’s down to the trippers. However, I really don’t think that it will be easy to tear away the visitors to our fine hotels along the playa to persuade them to come along and visit or even to buy its local wine or olive oil.
Perhaps the national tourist industry will be intrigued. They come from the cities for long weekends, and have a whole month off in August. Maybe they would want to drive up to the hills of the lower Almerian Alpujarra to have a warm day’s visit (up to 45ºC in the summer) and a bowl or two of lamb and chips with some local wine (they bottle a good one in Laujár, another pretty village in the area - see photo above).
I am sure that the initiative to attract tourism, and therefore money to the Comarca of Andarax is a good one. The ‘turismo rural’ hostals in the hills up there will be full. Tens of people will be visiting during the summer months.
Meanwhile, along the coasts of Spain, tens of millions of visitors will be slowly turning pink under the omnipresent sun. The buses will be turning on their diesel engines and the hotels will be unpacking their frozen dinners.
Another day, another dollar.

Alan Simpson

Alan Simpson died the other day, on his way home at lunchtime. He was one of the Mojácar 'old-timers'. We gave him a good send-off at the local cemetery, where he joins more friends than a person should decently lay claim to.

Here's something I wrote together with Emilio Aramburu which appeared in our local daily La Voz de Almería:

Alan Simpson murió en Mojácar el domingo 6 de febrero después de una caída fortuita. Alan, conocido por igual entre los mojaqueros y extranjeros por su sobrenombre ‘Alan One Wine’: el hombre que tomaba un vasito de vino en cada bar en su diario deambular por las calles del pueblo de Mojácar. Llegó por primera vez a estas tierras mojaqueras en 1968, camino a Inglaterra desde su guarida en Azila, en la costa atlántica de Marruecos. Los pocos forasteros de entonces estaban congregados en la plaza de Mojácar, tomando el sol y no menos brandis. Ambas cosas estaban igual de baratas y agradables. Para Alan el viaje a su país terminó aquel día. Nació en Inglaterra en 1930 y tuvo la fortuna de sobrevivir a una bomba alemana que cayó sobre su casa en los últimos meses de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, sufriendo la deshonra de ser sometido al examen de sus heridas por el médico, mientras permanecía, asustado y desnudo, tendido sobre un piano bajo la nieve. Comandante en la Guerra de Corea, ganó una medalla por salvar a una tropa de un campo de minas. Después de la contienda siguió en el Oriente, en Malasia (durante su guerra por la independencia). Viajó como explorador en Nueva Guinea, en una canoa de madera en compañía de unos cazadores de cabezas, durmiendo bajo las estrellas junto a los fardos de los "trofeos humanos" de sus compañeros de viaje. Más tarde, determinado a no volver a su país natal, viajó por el África tribal y el Sáhara -donde conoció a Wilfred Thessiger (muchos años después, Manu Leguineche escribió un libro sobre el destacado explorador, pero no antes de consultar unos apuntes con Alan)- antes de encontrar trabajo en África Occidental. Allí comandó una tropa de seguridad de 650 hombres en Sierra Leona para proteger los campos de diamantes, que luego fueron la razón por la guerra civil que duró veinte años en aquel sufrido país. En Ghana llegó a ser jefe de policía y, después, minero de oro, plata y estaño. Estuvo en Zanzíbar en una revolución y vivió en Marruecos, antes de inclinarse por lugares menos peligrosos. Tras vivir alternativamente durante años entre Marruecos y Mojácar, finalmente eligió su residencia definitiva en esta última localidad en 1990 y, desde entonces, ha sido siempre apreciado por todos sus convecinos, que, por su afabilidad, discreción y cortesía lo han considerado un verdadero ‘gentleman’. Hace unos años, escribió un libro, Naked in the snow (Desnudo bajo la nieve), en el que recogió todas sus anécdotas y vivencias por el mundo, terminando con algunos capítulos sobre esta población almeriense. Ahora descansa en el cementerio de Mojácar junto a muchos amigos lugareños y "expatriados" que, desde hace casi medio siglo, eligieron esta tierra para vivir para siempre. Goodbye, Alan. One wine for you.

The Spanish Mess

Spain is not doing well. Unemployment is up at astronomic levels – certainly beyond those that sparked the great depression in the early thirties in America. Our own numbers are carefully massaged anyway, with those who have never worked, plus those who have given up trying to find a job, no longer being added to the dismal pile. The answers to this situation, besides creating futile ‘public’ jobs here (we have more ‘funcionarios’ than manufacturing workers in Spain), is to continue to pay fourteen or even fifteen months wages per year and to make it as hard as possible to fire anyone (and therefore chancy to hire anyone). The unions defend the workers all right – but only those in work. A new plan by the Government to extend the number of years of work before any reasonable pension kicks in is met by this comment in El País: ‘how can I collect all these years of employment to be able to deserve a pension… when I can’t find a job?’
We now hear that Germany – whose economy is now in positive territory - is offering jobs to Spanish university leavers. Well, those kids can’t find them here.
I’m clearly not equipped to write about such lofty subjects as national economies, but I have noticed that the unemployment rates are lower in Northern Spain and higher in the South.
So let’s look at Andalucía.
Our government, both the one in Madrid and the one in Andalucía, has changed the way Spain does business. You could say that the country has gone from ‘macho’ to ‘manso’ (tough to weedy) in the last seven years. You can’t speed, you can’t smoke, bullfights are all but banned, drinking is controlled and frowned upon, you can’t walk your dog on the beach, you have to observe the boy/girl boy/girl rule in your political parties, the Internet has fallen under Government control, European residents cards have been abolished (meaning, of course, that we are now obliged to carry our passports and a special police form) and all public buildings must be wheelchair accessible. All very commendable for a modern industrial state, but not much use for, at least, Andalucía, whose main industry is tourism: selling the sun and the beach to foreigners.
In Andalucía (unemployment at around 30%), tourism is controlled at a level which, of course, actively discourages tourism. The experts about tourism are the hoteliers, who are in reality, merely experts about hotels. Tourism here means package-tourism, even though this year’s visitors may choose some other destination next time: cheaper, boozier or just ‘different’. Here we have a new breed of controllers (and their bean-counters), and the old ways have gone. The regional government has, for example, taken over the control of our beach-bars. Now these bars, essentially a shed erected on the sand that sells cold beer and spitted sardines done on a fire, must be policed to within an inch of their life, with permanent installations, yet be dismountable come mid-October. Outside of Mojácar, which somehow continues as a bohemian resort (although not for much longer), we bring our sandy customers to places made of stainless steel, with conformity in design and waiters in white shirts and black bowties. San Tropez prices, too.
Jacinto Alarcón, the old mayor of Mojácar who pretty much invented the place, long before anyone in the province had thought of tourism (which might be defined as ‘bringing in money from outside, in exchange for goods which stay here’), had an idea. He wasn’t particularly interested in the summer visitors, which stimulate the local economies just as long as they are around, as much as he was in earning all-year-round income for his community. Money flowing in from abroad in a steady stream of wealth. He came up with a slogan for Mojácar ‘Veranee aquí el invierno’, which inelegantly translated means: ‘Summer your Winter Here’, or perhaps even a play on words – ‘Summer staying All Year’.
Today, half a century afterwards, Mojácar in the winter remains distressingly quiet. We haven’t been able to promote our winter sun. The summer one, after all, takes pretty good care of itself.
But let’s remember those killjoys in the Andalucía Government, who not only encourage alcohol controls outside the bars and restaurants, and smoking inspections inside them – thus rather destroying our reputation for a pleasant holiday destination – but who are concerned about poisoning the year-round settlements for retired people (who spend vast gouts of money in exchange for some peace and quiet) by threatening them with demolitions, and obliging them to live with hosepipes and noisy diesel generators.
The European youth, at least, the educated ones, are heading north for jobs. Europe’s seniors, who could bring in wealth and create employment here in the South, are being put off by blind politics.
Unfortunately, jumping off the ledge on a ground-floor window doesn’t solve anything.

Mojácar Movies

They used to shoot films in Mojácar, back in the 1950s and through until the 1970s and in the days before the place was trashed. In all, about a dozen were made. The most famous one is 'Sierra Maldita', a film made by the ‘rojo’ director Antonio del Amo in 1953. The story tells of a ‘barren’ girl who lives in the dry and miserable top half of the ‘Pueblo de Arriba’ and her suitor, who comes from the fecund bottom half of the same township, where there is water and the girls will make better wives. He courts the heroine, has a fight against the baddie with axes while out in the forests preparing charcoal, and eventually wins the girl’s hand… and has lots of babies. It’s not bad, actually. The ‘top half’ of the pueblo was shot in Mojácar (the ‘bottom half’ in Níjar) and you can see the broken-down state of Mojácar in those days, when the population was only around 600 souls, and the film crew had to leave their transport in the river-bed and take donkeys up to the village!
‘El Beso de Judás’ (directed by Rafael Gil) was shot the same year in various locations, including Mojácar, Pulpí and Aguilas (All looking something presumably like Jerusalem).
In 1962, ‘Marcha o Muere’ (‘Marcia o Crepa’ original), a flick about the French Foreign Legion with Stewart Granger, was shot partially in Pulpí, Cuevas and Mojácar (Lawrence of Arabia was being filmed elsewhere in Almería at the same time).
Twenty three chapters of an American TV show called ‘The Rat Patrol’ were filmed in Almería in 1966, including scenes in Mojácar.
Robert Siodmark directed his 'Custer of the West' in 1966, filming in Almería with some scenes in Mojácar. My Dad met the star, Robert Shaw, in the Parador hotel and was apparently rude to him in the lavatories. I’m sure they are both sorry now.
'Fliegender Sand', a German production, was filmed partly in Mojácar in 1967, and a Spanish/German co-production called ‘Cantando a la Vida’, about a Eurovision singer who has disappeared, starring Massiel, was filmed the following year entirely in Mojácar.
In the seventies, several films were made in Mojácar, including Orson Wells’ ‘Treasure Island’ in 1972. My dad lent him an old Renault 4 and a driver, Michel Meynard. The two hit it off and spent most of the film – a wretched picture shot on ‘Treasure Island beach’ along the way past Macenas – drinking. They would play checkers with glasses of brandy and anis with the deal that you drank your enemy’s pieces.

'The Final Programme' was filmed partly in Mojácar in 1973, a rather obscure SciFi film by Robert Fuest and starring Jon Finch (who made several films in Spain around that time, while residing in Mojácar).
Silvio Narizzano, a Canadian who lived in Mojácar for many years, made ‘The Sky is Falling’ (‘Las Flores del Vicio’) with Dennis Hopper (who, I’m afraid to say, my dad kicked up the arse in a bar one night). The film was remarkably bad and was shot in Mojácar and Bédar. Here’s the storyline from ‘imdb.com’: ‘Chicken, a desperate hippie junkie living in a small Spanish village, is finding it difficult to separate fantasy and reality. This isn't helped by the villagers practising magic and child sacrifice, or his involvement with a group of boozy ex-patriates lost in their own dreams and regrets’. Silvio didn’t like my mother much, and named one of the characters after her.
‘Night Child', a psychological horror film with Mark Lester (he had found fame with ‘Oliver’) and Britt Ekland, was shot in 1974, partly in Paul Polanski’s house (Ric’s older brother). The film was directed by Andrés Vicente Gómez.
Finally, apart from a bad porn film shot in a hotel room of the Moresco, and an advert for chocolates (a fleeting glimpse of our house as the hero arrives '...because the Lady prefers ...Black Magic'), the seventies closed with four chapters of the popular Spanish TV series ‘Curro Romero’ being filmed locally in 1976 and 1977.

Some material from here.

A Plan for the Village

This is a notice from the Mojácar Town Hall. It says that since the 'underground car-park projected to be built in the village next to the church has received the 'go-ahead' from the 'Culture' Department from the Junta de Andalucía in Almería, the Town Hall wants to know who is interested in acquiring a parking spot and to please leave their name at the Town Hall.

If there is enough 'places' sold, the building can evidently go ahead, and the money spent would be recuperated in part. This 'refreshed' money could then, presumably, be spent wherever necessary...

Too Many Youse

You know how I sometimes complain about how 'they want our business... but won't give us any back. Not even in translation. Not even a beer'?

Well, let's meet down at the 'Loungue Bar' and I'll explain it further...

Mojácar Parties for 2011 Local Elections

*Updated a few times!!

In 2007, 13 parties presented candidates for the local elections. This was something of a record (the people from the Guinness book were said to be very excited). ‘Lots of parties’ of course favours the ‘most voted’, in 2007, the Partido Popular got five councillors out of the thirteen seats contested. They joined a quorum with Ciudadanos Europeos, GIAL and, for some reason, Asamblea de la Izquierda. This year, so far we have five confirmed from before, plus at least three new ones and maybe also another one or two from last time.

The parties from 2007:

1.- LEVANTE SOSTENIBLE DE MOJACAR (LEVANTE SOS. MOJACAR) 1 JOSE LUIS ARTERO GARCIA

2.- ASAMBLEA DE IZQUIERDAS (A.Iz) 1 CARLOS SALVADOR CERVANTES ZAMORA

3.- CIUDADANOS EUROPEOS DE MOJACAR (C.E.M.) 1 ANGEL MEDINA CHULLIA 2 LENOX SCOTT NAPIER

4.- PARTIDO INDEPENDIENTE DE MOJACAR (P.I.MOJ.) 1 MAATI EL OUARDIGHI EL IMANI

5.- PARTIDO POPULAR (P.P.) 1 ROSA MARIA CANO and ALBERT WALDEMAR WERNER SCHRÖTER

6.- PARTIDO ANDALUCISTA (P.A.) DIEGO GONZALEZ

7.- PARTIDO DE ALMERIA (PdAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA

8.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE) 1 PHILIPPE KIRSCH GOMEZ

9.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA DE ANDALUCIA (PSA) 1 JUAN ALFONSO LOPEZ RODRIGUEZ

10.- PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO DE MOJACAR (PDM) 1 GABRIEL FLORES MORALES

11.- GRUPO INDEPENDIENTE POR ALMERIA (GIAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA

12.- IZQUIERDA UNIDA LOS VERDES- CONVOCATORIA POR ANDALUCIA (IULV-CA) 1 FRANCISCO RUBIO SANCHEZ

13.- MOJACAR NUEVA (MN) 1 ENRIQUE JOAQUIN GARCIA MAURIÑO LORENTE

14.- Mojácar 2000 (decided not to present a candidature)

Some of the above have gone and some others have started up. Here’s my list (so far). There may be errors, but I don’t get paid to do his – and those who do, clearly can’t be bothered:

Local elections May 2011

3.- CIUDADANOS EUROPEOS (C.E.) (name shortened) 1 ANGEL MEDINA CHULLIA, 2 LENOX SCOTT NAPIER

5.- PARTIDO POPULAR (P.P.) 1 ROSA MARIA CANO, Diego García (was GIAL)

6.- PARTIDO ANDALUCISTA (P.A.) New Candidate

8.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE) Manuel Zamorra (new)

12.- IZQUIERDA UNIDA LOS VERDES- CONVOCATORIA POR ANDALUCIA (IULV-CA) Miguel Egea (new)

13.- MOJACAR NUEVA (MN) 1 ENRIQUE JOAQUIN GARCIA LORENTE (maybe)

New Parties (Confirmed):

UPyD ALBERT SCHRÖTER (was PP Ind)

Unión Mojaquera 10 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA (was PAL) and GABRIEL FLORES MORALES (ex-mayor, was PDM)

Mojácar Positiva Se Mueve Jessica Simpson

?? Diego Gonzalez (was leader of PA) Diego confirms that he is seeking a new party to lead.

Gone: Mojácar 2000, PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO DE MOJACAR, PARTIDO DE ALMERIA, PARTIDO INDEPENDIENTE DE MOJACAR, LEVANTE SOSTENIBLE DE MOJACAR, ASAMBLEA DE IZQUIERDAS, GRUPO INDEPENDIENTE POR ALMERIA, PARTIDO SOCIALISTA DE ANDALUCIA.
.... ....

Nine or maybe ten parties (if I haven’t missed something). The likely winners? The PP of RosMari will do well, Ciudadanos Europeos and Union Mojaquera 10, will make some gains. The IU, the PA and perhaps Mojácar Positiva… The PSOE has problems, the UPyD is an unknown force (with some support from ex-PSOE people - and presumably the Mojácar business bureau), the Mojacar Nueva is (sorry!) a joke… Mojácar politics eh?

Another Hospital Visit

My wife is up in the City, looking after an aged relative over at the hospital. The relative is not long for this world and my wife has to be there the whole time. So she can’t be here, which I don’t like. Barbara has been on hand for five days so far, sleeping on a metal deckchair and I am told (rather pointedly) that there haven’t been many visitors. She can’t go very far and, she admits over the phone, she can’t have a smoke outside the hospital any more, as the new paternalistic rules from our leaders (All Hail!) mean that she has to actually leave the hospital grounds and parking lot presumably to be lost in the city somewhere before she can light up. There’s a new fellow with an important looking badge and wearing a snap-brimmed hat whose job it is to patrol the parking lot, chasing out smokers.

No wonder employment in Andalucía has risen slightly this month.
I can’t drop everything and go in and see her (and not just because of the typical male aversion to visiting hospitals). The old family car is in the knackers and, anyway, I have to look after five dogs. We have… one dog of our own… and the aged relative has four. I am using a lot of bleach and water along with a cheesy old mop to try and keep the place clean. In my opinion, several of the dogs should be ‘outside’ at all times.
Somebody has just offered to lend me a car.
If this gets out, I see that I shall have to come up with a convincing excuse…

Later: things have gone downhill. My son finally lent me his car, a real piece of crap from the SEAT people. A month ago, Barbara had put the puppy into the front seat of this same car, closed the door to get her purse from the house, only to find that this awful pile of crap had automatically locked itself. We had to break the window to get in and release the frightened dog. The key was on the front seat. It was a 'long weekend' and it took a few days before we could even order a new window. Well, bugger me, if the same thing didn't happen this morning - on another fiesta (of course). My fault this time.

The puppy is starting to dislike cars and I am wondering how many car-windows are broken by their owners? Nine out of ten? What a piece of shit car.

Later still: The following day, somebody else called to lend me a car, which turned out (to my horror) to be another SEAT - the same model. Well, I needed to go to see my wife so I put the ignition key on a bit of string around my neck so as not to be caught out by SEAT's little surprise design-flaw again. You know, having a bit of string attached to the dashboard makes it a bit difficult to drive - but I made it. Stoopid car.

And Finally: I received this from a friend who has just been giving an interview to a British television company.

I read your blog about the Seat, And thought I would tell you this story.

ITV arrived in our garden on Friday at 9.00. They followed their normal practice of putting all the equipment in the back of the hire car, battery packs, boom mikes, cameras, etc.

After discussing what they wanted to do, they went to the car to get out the gear. Only to find that the last person to go in the boot had shut the hatch and all the doors had locked.

A mad dash to SEAT in Vera, did no good and they ended up smashing the back window, The hire company wanted the car to go back to the rental company in Malaga that day, but after negotiations it was decided that Lorca would be OK as long as it was returned immediately. On a two day shoot this was the last thing they needed.

I sent them your story and have received a response:

This is BRILLIANT. I have forwarded it to everyone here. At least we are not the only ones to have fallen into SEATs evil plan! We all feel much better after reading this.

A Winter Visitor

My wife was making a lot of fuss the other day – some story about a snake in the house. She had seen it come through the back door and given it a wallop or two as it disappeared behind a bookcase. Nuts, I said, snakes don’t crawl about in the winter, they are cold-blooded animals.
She must have been seeing things. Women are always a bit peculiar about snakes and one has to humour them on these occasions. I took the bookcase apart – of course there was no nest of crazed serpents there plotting our downfall (although a few interesting books I hadn’t read for a while, plus a lot of dust).
Anyhow, yesterday afternoon, a snake came through the same door. I saw it and, having in the past watched all those shows made by the Australian naturalist Steve Whatwashisname, grabbed it by the tail and, as it hung there writhing energetically, I danced about shouting Snoike, what a beautiful Snoike.
It was a metre-long grass snake as far as I know, although and despite there not being any poisonous snakes around here, one never likes to be proved wrong – especially by some maddened viper.
Anyhow, I put him safely somewhere in the garden to cries coming from inside the house:
Now, can you have a proper look behind the goddamn bookcase?