The Roundheads and the Cavaliers.

It's no secret that I harbour a strong dislike of the newspaper now known as The Euro Weekly (or 'The Weenie' to its detractors). The paper, which started out (both numerically and historically) as The Entertainer, took over its new name in
April 2002, three years after it was 'purchased' from me. To say that, from April 1999, I entered into crippling poverty, coupled with a 120,000€ mortgage on my house for old printing debts as an unexpected consequence, probably explains in some small degree my dislike of the product in question.
Here, though, I'm going to contrast The Weenie with another local English-language freebie, The Olive Press.
When I ran The Entertainer (1985 to 1999), it was meant to help both English-speaking readers (and myself, for that matter) learn more about this beautiful country we had chosen to live in.  Articles concentrated on Spain's gastronomy, its history, its culture, its attractions, its towns and cities, its people and its politics. The Olive Press, particularly in its print edition, leans towards the same philosophy.
The Weenie however, appears more concerned, after the obligatory front page piece culled perhaps from the local diario, plus a regular nod at the local dog-pound, to write about events in far-off England. The editorial this week, for example (Feb 27th), is about a row between several (unheard of) British pop stars at some event in London.
I think the reason for this is that the paper is eagerly read by British exiles, rather than expats (we won't worry ourselves here with those individuals who piously consider themselves 'immigrants', because they'll obviously only be reading El País and El Mundo). Exiles pine for their home, the fatherland, and tend to think that Leapy Lee is a superb columnist, while expats on the other hand are furiously enthusiastic for all things Spanish (bullfights excepted).

Beating the 52/48% by a large margin

Hard immigration to the UK: 76%

Two reader-opinions culled from recent Weenies support my contention of their readers' galloping support for the current political mess in the UK, faithfully reflected in the content. The paper, it seems to me, is ideally aimed at those who advertise full British breakfasts and who like to watch satellite TV shows (what will happen to that after the Brexit deal is sealed?). Otherwise The Weenie seems to strongly contradict its reason-to-be. Maybe I'm being harsh, but how much of the content is devoted to news from the UK; dogs, cars or beauty; or columnists who comment on the 'fings back home'?

 

Mojácar, Maui and Madness

Mojácar is becoming a rather odd place. It's turned from a sleepy village 'run by hippies' to an uneasy mixture of Disneyville and Butlins.
While the village is the Disney part, carefully scrubbed of anything authentic and re-invented with a strong-line in cheap souvenirs, the beach has been made over to sand and spade family tourism, perhaps in a nod to the powerful Catalonian-owned hotels that bookend the resort.
The latest reverse for the party-goers is the insistence on building a combination walkway and seawall, with a slightly pointless cycle-path attached (our lycra-clad bicycle guests prefer the road). To this end, a number of beach-bars (by coincidence, none of them under local management) have been or are being inconvenienced by having the pathway interrupting their simple access to the sea and, in the latest cases, having some of their space re-zoned by the town hall planners. This would mean, in the case of the Patio beach bar, losing about three quarters of its area and turning it into a kiosk. Bea, who has rented it for twenty years, has understandably pulled out. 
On Tuesday, the rather larger (and powerful) Maui was finally sealed by order of the Town Hall for noise contamination, and has been fined 20,000€ and a two-year closure (all arbitrary and illegal according to their lawyer). The Maui was the leading voice in the opposition to the 'Paseo Maritimo' the beach-walk so popular with the aforementioned sand and spade tourism.
In the village, the long-awaited new town hall building, with a lift and unbeatable views, located under the 'Mirador' (view-point) which appears to have melted and taken over most of the Plaza Nueva, remains unfinished after five years.
From this viewpoint, one can appreciate the so-called Valley of the Pyramids. In truth, there's only one, which is Old Mojácar, currently being dismantled by a team of architects who think that the village started there in around 900AD, which seems unlikely since Mojácar was known in the Phoenician times. The dig has 60,000€ of town hall money behind it for 2020, so no doubt they know more than I do, having merely lived at the foot of it for over fifty years.
The mayoress' autocratic views brook no dissension. She wants to control the town's future. We wish her luck from our new home, located down the road a spell...

And the Baby Makes Three

Here we are, on the step outside our little cortijo in the hills above Mojácar, Barbara and me and Baby Daniel, just three days old. The future was bright then, as it always is when you are young. Things went a little wrong later on, but that's another story.

Gloria and her Children

Coastal home-owners in Spain (British or otherwise) must now begin to look to the skies. The storm called Gloria visited us recently and left havoc along the beaches of the Mediterranean. One mayor of a Costa Blanca town is talking of not repairing the beach promenade as it will, he says, only get chewed up again by the next one. But if the beaches are washed away, or the sea rises a few centimetres, or increasingly habitual storms take away the sand and the beach-huts, what about the Ley de Costas, the peculiar coastal law that states that the playa belongs to everyone?

‘The Spanish Coastal Law (ley de costas 1988) defines a public domain area along the coast and a further zone where special restrictions apply to private ownership. The aim is to make the whole length of the coastline accessible to the public and to defend the coast against erosion and excessive urbanisation...’ says The Ibizan here. The idea is sound enough – to stop the wealthy or the hotel chains from putting up signs saying ‘private beach’, but the law also refers to houses which are close to the sea. They are seen as ‘lease-hold’ by the State (and the State wants them and will get them back in 98% of the cases mounted against it), and they may be used, normally without any major repair, for thirty years from official notification. A reform in the law from 2013 to grant extensions of 75 years was passed by the PP government, but so far, has not been tested.

As the shore moves inexorably inland, for the reasons stated above, a process known as climigration ensues, where societies must move their entire communities elsewhere. Not perhaps happening in Spain – apart from the Ebro Delta – but a worrisome sign of the future.  Thus the Ley de Costas moves with it, and as El Confidencial warns, ‘The unprecedented series of storms leaves thousands of houses on the coast open to the risk of expropriation’.  The rule is that the law considers in the public domain land that is within the limit marked by the highest waves of five storms over the last five years. Since 2017, the Mediterranean has already lived four ‘gota frias’ (now known as ‘Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos’ (DANA). One more heavy storm, and many apartment blocks, homes and businesses will be potentially open to expropriation by the State.

It’s no secret that the Mediterranean coast is heavily built up, with Málaga, Barcelona and Valencia having urbanised over 60% of their share, and it falls to our friends the ecologists to threaten the unspeakable: ‘We can’t call to demolish everything, but some things will have to go’ says a spokesperson for Ecologistas en Acción. Experts in ‘natural risk’ from the Official College of Geologists say the same ‘...to deconstruct the coastline to facilitate the natural reconstruction of the beaches as a measure to avoid future catastrophes such as the one generated by Storm Gloria...'. 

The Olive Press asks (with video) ‘Did Climate Change cause Storm Gloria?’

Or is it, perhaps, just a bad patch we’re going through.

  

Mojácar. What are we selling today?

The international tourist fair - FITUR - returns to Madrid in late January for its fortieth edition, and, frankly, everyone will be there. Will over 11,000 exhibitors looking to part potential tourists from their hard-earned dosh, the industry shows no sign of slowing down.
Oh, there are stories of places which have become so swamped with tourism that they really need to be avoided (unless one has a 'bucket list' or a death-wish), but the urge to travel, a kind of luxury available in centuries past to the wealthy few (or to unwilling soldiers), is now de rigueur. Travel, they say, broadens the behind.
The last thing the industry wants is trouble. Keep things running smoothly, complaints to a minimum and profits to the max. The best customer writes something nice on Tripadvisor and returns next year for more. So good to be an habitual.
The local businesses like tourism too. In fact, some 'beautiful' destinations change their identity to pander to their visitors. Just in Mojácar village alone, there are fifty souvenir shops, and none of those owners want to see the hordes diminish, even if the town, which lives almost exclusively off its foreign residents for eight months of the year, becomes slowly less of an ideal place to live. Local people now have enough funds to demolish their old home and put up some apartments. They'll probably rent them out (there are countless AirBnb offers in Mojácar) and move to live at La Fuente.

The Hotel Moresco is hard to miss

Our massive hotels which are so vital a part of a tourist destination slowly rot in the warm sun and are eventually abandoned at the stroke of an accountant's pen in Barcelona or Hamburg.
The Hotel Moresco is not a building which can easily be torn down, and it takes up a whole side of the village view. It's been closed since 2008 and now belongs to the Madrid Regional Government, who have (needless to say) other fish to fry. It is now a home to squatters. Hotels, once they've lived their purpose, can sometimes be converted to apartments (the Hotel Tío Edy and the Hotel Mojácar are two of these), but don't count on the Moresco being fixed. For one thing, there's no parking to be had. Along the beach at Macenas, another hotel - this one unfinished - lies abandoned. Like the Hotel El Algarrobico in next-door Carboneras, politicians will rub their chins... and change the subject. It's not a vote-catcher.
Hotels make money for their builders (and previous land-owners), but the company will be run from Catalonia, the meagre staff will be South American, the food 'catered' from Málaga, half of the package monies will remain in the country of source and that low low all-inclusive offer leaves the nearby bars and restaurants plain out of luck.
Mojácar politically speaking appears to prefers tourists who spend in the souvenir shops to residents who buy houses, cars and white goods, who pay taxes and services, who spend during 365 days in a year rather than for an average of five. Mojácar has actually shrunk in permanent population in the past few years by 22% since 2011.
The town also prefers bucket and spade tourism over youthful noisy party-goers. Who knows - perhaps they are right.  After all, there are twice as many local residents over 65 as there are under 20.

The Indalo figure looks towards Garrucha

Mojácar Playa today is like Butlins - safe, secure and sexless.
The one single road bleeds the traffic slowly up and down along the beach during the season like a bad case of cholesterol. Cyclists slow the flow still further, as they must peddle dolefully past the souvenir shops: their lycra trousers hold no pockets.
Mojácar's sewage problem is un-addressed, the beach bar issue is treated with a hammer.
The village itself is Disneylandia cute, charming and (as the Spanish say) cutre. There are a smattering of buildings remaining that are over a generation old - the rather ordinary church, the wonderful Torreón and the old Moorish arch under it; the cute Casa de la Canana museum run by the Russian couple...
The main square, known as the Plaza Nueva since the fifteenth century, has been corrupted, changed and destroyed in the past forty years. The small Hotel Indalo is long gone, the fantastic Aquelarre theatre is lost, the carpenters' with the arched street rising towards the church is now one of a swarm of poorly-built nicknack shops, often with huge display windows and signs in broken English: Tobbaco sold here. Worst of all is the spreading and apparently abandoned Mirador (with its future lift-shaft hood) and the three empty stories below of putative town hall and police station. 
In the village, what was bohemian has now become bourgeois. Perhaps one shouldn't mourn for the time when the impoverished local people were pleased for the custom, and proud of their pueblo, as viewed through our eyes.
In the long winter months, the stores are all closed and the residents gather in the few bars which remain open, or take the bus down to the supermarkets below. Nearby Turre, ugly and charmless, without a beach, hotels or souvenir shops, by contrast, is bustling all year long.
Mojácar is of course astonishing. It has a dramatic view which is hard to beat. The narrow white streets and harsh blue skies are a magnet for artists, or at least, they were. Now the Town Hall, which operates its own art gallery just above the remodelled fuente (it was going to be an art museum) puts on desultory shows and holds a modest collection of art in storage. But it possesses no paintings from the esteemed Indaliano Movement (who introduced the Indalo), or from the later masters who painted locally - Fritz, Beckett, Guirado, Coronado and so on. It's almost as if outsiders are not appreciated, except, grudgingly, when their wallets are open.
We home-owners have an investment in Mojácar. Properly managed, demand (and our investment along with it) will rise. If there are too many new apartments crushed into the landscape, then just a small handful of people take a profit and our properties are sidelined.
With the village, sensational looking if not beautiful, the seventeen kilometres of playa and the hotels placed, thankfully, at either end, Mojácar has a reason to be at FITUR: its job, to squeeze a kilo of rice into a pound jar. The promotion is done without foreign help or participation. The Golden Indalos have gone, after it was found that Ric Polansky, me, Beatrice Beckett, Pat Moroney and others were bubbling dangerously to the top, all of us having lived in Mojácar for over fifty years apiece. Indeed, if all of the foreigners left suddenly (thanks Boris), then there would be nothing left to show for our presence. No streets are named after us (the present administration has renamed Cheap Pete's alley - Calle de Pedro Barato - as Calle Cal). The largest extant sign honouring the forasteros is a small brass plaque outside the Pavana remembering an Irishman.
Now, the town wants to selectively remember its past, with some ill-judged evisceration of Old Mojácar, as we are told that it was the original settlement and inhabited during the ninth to eleventh centuries. What about before? Weren't the Romans here? Why would they live there when there's no water or escape route?
We celebrate our (slightly invented) history with an artful Moors and Christians parade and allow everyone to attend (far from the various festivals held at the fuente or the Artisan Centre, like the Vieja Remalona and the two of three romerias each year, plus fiestas in Sopalmo and now Las Paratas). Where's the International Day held?  
So, as the town hall spends its budget on staffers (loyal staffers), and tourist promotions, what of the future? One tragic demolition, or an act of terror, or a cholera incident or whatever, and the whole tourist industry crumbles. We residents, at least, will stay loyal, if largely ignored.
How many of our children - bilingual all - have ended up as local cops, or working in the town hall?
Mojácar is a special place for me - I've lived there for three quarters of my life - but it has changed. So have I, no doubt.

Going Cheap: One Castle!

Almería's Alcazaba was once put on the market by the City Hall. It must have been a bit strapped for cash when, in 1866, the castle and its 37 hectares of extension were put up for sale for 1,175 pesetas (seven euros), which even then, sounds a bit cheap.
The city wanted to expand in the direction of the castle and so the offer included the rule that anyone who bought it would have to demolish the hulk that crowned the hill behind Almería and haul away all the rubble. Tourism hadn't been invented yet and only a few nutters were enchanted by the historic or scenic value of the monument, described by Wiki as an XI Century fortified complex.
(The Alhambra in Granada was also ready for demolition more than once, and for Mojácar readers, their castle was demolished in its entirety in the nineteen forties and fifties).
The demolition clause proved the undoing of the sale, due to its prohibitive cost. Nevertheless, much of the old castle walls were successfully demolished in the late XIX Century.
The Alcazaba finally received protection as Monumento Histórico Artístico in June 1931.

Mary Jane

There will be few readers who don't have a firm opinion about marijuana, so I won't dwell on the mafia hoping it will never be legalised, or the medical uses thereof and so on. We'll leave the American War on Drugs, cranked up by Richard Nixon and now quietly imploding as more and more states legalise the consumption of cannabis, for another time.
Here, they reckon that 7.3% of Spaniards aged between 15 and 64 smoke it at least once a month. That's 2.2 million people (2017 figures). Which, in turn, is a lot of product consumed.
Since the consumers can't buy it in the estanco (where the Ministry of Health could guarantee the quality), they must either grow their own (apparently, one is allowed a couple of plants, hidden from public view, for private use), or buy it from Dave (not his real name) down in Chinatown.
In short, it keeps a lot of people in business. Not however the sort of folk that the Authorities should approve of. But there you go. A few get caught, a few more more make out like, er bandits.
Almería Hoy has an interesting headline this week: it says that 244 'narcos' and three tons of weed were decommissioned across the province in 2019.
We wonder how much survived the police raids and made it down to Dave.

White Rabbits

We are in that small space between Christmas and New Year (complicated slightly by the Spanish who insist on celebrating the Twelfth Night followed by school the following morning). We must face the disappointment of not winning a farthing on the Christmas lottery last week, together with the gloomy certainty that we also won't win anything on El Niño (drawn on January 5th), with a sense of inevitability, especially when we are repeatedly shown on the TV the people who won vast sums on their chosen numbers waving uncorked bottles of cava and looking just like the people did on the TV last time around. God, they are so undeserving.
I haven't enjoyed Christmas much this time to be frank, possibly because I was tricked by the calender hanging next to the computer (turns out it's from 2018) and so I missed the first day of December, and in consequence, my customary shout of White Rabbits, which brings - as readers will know - guaranteed perfect luck for the entire month.
And horrid misfortune if you forget.
My wife Alicia broke her leg on the first day, and has been in bed ever since. The national health, usually so good in Spain, was not up to scratch, and she had to wait ten days in hospital before she had an operation. So, she is running (a poor choice of word) ten days late on her recovery. I reckon it'll be San Valentín before she can get on her feet for rehabilitation and horseback riding both.
Amongst other disagreeable tasks, I have been obliged to take over the cooking.
This involves me receiving instruction called from the front room - Alicia is in the sitting-room supine on the couch - as I clumsily break eggs and stir the rice. Our diet has never been so varied.
The horses need attention as well: straw, oats, grain and so on, plus the shit duly shovelled. I have help for this, so don't have to get too down and dirty. Just an artful smear of poop on my cheek, and maybe a wet trouser-leg for effect.
I had asked for a small pension from the indulgent Spanish government back in February, but, as 'things from the palace move slowly' (a local axiom), I still haven't taken my seat on the gravy train a mere ten months later. In short, fourteen years of running The Entertainer (the precursor of The EWN) between one thing and another hasn't paid at all well.
Other misfortunes... well there were a few, but nothing which will survive into the early moments of January, when I shall be found standing on the roof, bellowing White Rabbits at the startled neighbours!

Pirates off Macenas

A 'londro' - the kind of merchantman that appears in this story

In the middle of the 18th century, the Catalonian merchantman “San Raimundo”, was heading for Cádiz loaded with wine. She had been anchored off Águilas (Murcia), waiting for better weather. On January 22, 1741 she set sail and soon after, a Moorish vessel was seen to be in pursuit. Trying to flee from her pursuers, she headed for land, running aground on the beach near Mojácar's Macenas tower. The patron Domingo Benapres and the crew jumped to the sand: "without time to save anything other than myself and those of the six men and the cabin-boy, three rifles, a life-boat, five oars, the two anchors and some bedding".
The Moorish pirates managed to re-float the ship and took it with the cargo of wine included; but for some reason, they left one of their fellow-pirates behind on the beach.
The following morning, the Mojácar troop, which had come out after being informed of the presence of pirates, found the Moor, seizing him, and shortly afterwards, they also located the eight Catalonian sailors.
Following the strict orders of the time to avoid the costs of contagion of plague and other contagious diseases, they began a curious caravan towards Vera, which Diego Soler, one of the soldiers of the cavalry troop, recounted: “From the Rambla de Macenas, the Company of Mojácar escorted the Moor to Vera by foot in this way: at the distance of a rifle shot, while a single soldier went before to show him the way. Following the Moor at a similar distance went the eight sailors, and finally the troop with their weapons, without allowing any mixing the one with the other, as had been ordered by their captain despite knowing that none of the sailors or the troop had been at any time close to the Moor”.
The military commander in Vera threw his hands to his head when he saw the caravan arrive and ordered them to return at once to the place of the encounter, to pass quarantine there.
Luckily, the patron of the merchantman was able to justify the evident state of health of his sailors, and, sending word to the warden of the fortress in Águilas, the quarantine order was lifted and the crew were given permission to return on the first ship that could take them back towards Catalonia. As for the Moor, he would have to suffer his quarantine and, following that, be judged for piracy.

From an article in Almería Hoy by Mario Sanz Cruz.

The Lost Art of Hay Surfing

Every farm in southern Spain has something called an 'era' which is a flat dirt circle, I think called a threshing circle in English, where the hay would be put after being cut with a scythe. A wooden board with rows of knife-like wheels underneath was pulled by a donkey and driven with long-reins by the farmer. Weight must be applied to the board in order to cut the hay, hence the children. There are actually several different boards with different types of knifed wheels for each phase of cutting. It was a very exciting time for the children when the farmer called them to come and sit on the board while he went round and round. It takes several days to cut the hay into small pieces and release the grain from the stalk. It is a sticky job, in the heat you get covered in pieces of hay and it is a bit like a ride at an amusement park, bumping up and down it is a rough ride especially when the hay is in the centre at the beginning, it gets to be a smoother ride as the hay gets spread around the circle. The board sometimes even flips over.

No harm is done because you just fall into a huge pile of hay. You must watch your fingers though and can’t hold on to the board for risk if being cut by one of the blades. When the threshing is done you must wait for a windy day and with a naturally grown pitch-fork, you throw the hay in the air. These pitch-forks grow on a tree in the shape of a fork and after being whittled down a little make the perfect pitch-fork. On the windy day, and after hours of repeating this procedure of throwing the hay in the air, the cut hay is on one side of the era and the grain on the other, it is quite ingenious really, each to be stored and used throughout the year. I would like to have shown you a picture of the pitch-forks but ours was lost. We have an era on our property and across the street is another era that is shared by three houses: it is communal property and doesn’t belong to any one of the houses but to all three. It is things like this that make buying land in Spain difficult. For example a long time ago your grandfather may have traded a donkey for the large algarrobo tree on the corner of his property, the donkey is long since dead but the tree on your land now belongs to someone else.

From Barbara Napier's Animo Stories here. 

Grand Projects

A friend from Madrid sent me this:

I ran Spain's largest free-paper (in any language!) back in the eighties and nineties. There were three editions: Costa del Sol, Almería and the Costa Blanca - I never got as far as the Balearics. Of course, a free paper doesn't mean the printing and distribution doesn't need to be paid. The idea is to put in lots of adverts (and some decent copy to make it worth while picking up). Thus the balance - the advertisers pay for the printing (and maybe a bit for the owner to buy a beer).
These days, with colour, the internet, competition, embarrassing self-promotion and a sprinkling of sharks in the world of the expat press, I'm sticking to just producing a few blogs instead. 

On the Road to La Matanza

It was one of those adventures that sometimes spring up over a beer. It seemed that old Antonio el Perejil (Tony the Parsley) had recently gone to his reward and had left his house to his son, who wanted to sell it.
The house was, apparently, quite close to Níjar, recently brought into the pack of Almería's Most Beautiful Towns (actually, there should be about fifty on the list), and up a track.
Into the Nowheres.
We drove into the pueblo to find the road which, as Google said, led to a walkers' path, was closed. Reversing down a narrow street and around the other way, we waved down an old fellow and asked him which was the best way to get to La Matanza.
A great name, no?  It's called La Matanza because this was the final stand of the Moors in the Níjar of the Reconquista, around 1490. 'Oh', says the old man, 'you mean Antonio el Perejil's place? He's dead you know'. 
Yes, we knew that.
'Well, you go out of town, along that road, then up this other one, round there you know and it's just a hop and a skip. I was there only a few years back, lemme see, well in around 1980 now that I think of it'...
I helped the old boy back onto the pavement and we pulled a u-turn and, as they say here, we abandoned Níjar.

The new road we found turned into a street and from there into a track, and then a river bed and then a track again. We were about ten kilometres along this route, by now with alarming drops on one side and cliffs on the other. Google had fizzled out and we were wondering whether to go on or turn back when a van arrived in a gentlr cloud of dust (you are never completely alone in Spain). Now my Spanish is pretty good and Alicia is from Almería, but we had trouble with the man who climbed out of the Renault to have a look at us. 'Gor and blast', he said 'La Matanza? It's just down there'.

The house is the higher one, on the right. It comes with forty hectares of land.

We peered uneasily over the drop. 'Of course she'll make it', said the man, looking appreciatively at our car, 'mine does it, no worries'.
We arrived at the house, which had some olive trees behind it and a courtyard to the right. One of the neighbouring houses (they were all empty) had solar panels and a full reservoir. 
In the Bad Old Days, during and after the Civil War, a place like La Matanza, an isolated clutch of a dozen houses, was probably a good place to be. It was safe, ignored and produced its own food and water. There wasn't much to do after night fell, especially if you had run out of candles, but one rose early there.
Now, there's no one left - apart from the man with the van - although he would be living back in the pueblo, where there's electricity, TV and a number of decent pubs.
A tired sign pointed back towards Níjar, at 4.5kms. That was probably the Google walkers route.
It was a cold and blustery day, so the pictures aren't as bright as they would normally be, up in La Matanza, which looked, we decided, like a modest version of Machu Picchu, but without the tour buses.

Sea views? Of course there are sea views!

It's for sale, if you're interested I'll mention you to Antonio's son. it's probably ideal for someone who wants to get away from it all and can't afford Algeria. 






 

Buy This Book

I was with my father in a dream last night. We were together in an office of some sort and I saw a bookshelf on my left. As my father was talking to the fellow behind the desk, I took down a book, thinking to read it. It was Ray Bradbury's 1953 classic Fahrenheit 451. I put it back. I had read it a long time ago.
The novel (as you probably know) is about a fascist society that burns books.
Maybe I have been thinking of the Vox party which is evidently doing well in Spain. Whether they are ready to burn books yet, they are certainly dangerous. Javier Ortega Smith, their Nº2, threatened the spokesman for the PNV regionalist party Aitor Esteban during a debate on the TV last week: ‘“Worry, worry I tell you. Worry, because when we can, we will abolish your party”’.
But dreams, apart from the ones that fascists invariably have, are more complicated than that.
I went in to the main bookshop in Almería this morning. It's called Librería Picasso. I thought I would treat myself to a new book.
In Mojácar, you can pick up (and I do) four or even six books for a Euro at the PAWS, the MACS and most other charity shops. Then in the Friday market in Turre, there's an Englishman called Tony who sells (re-sells) thrillers for 2,50€.
Between one thing and another, I am rarely able to afford the luxury of a new book for twelve Euros (that works out at seventy-two second-hand ones!).
The Spanish print their book-spines upside-down for some reason. You have to look at them cricking your neck to the left to check them out on a shelf, instead of going right as for English books. The Picasso people, however, blithely stack their all their books, Spanish and English both, leftly - which is a little tiresome.
On their English shelves (downstairs to the right), the first book I saw, its dust-cover flat against the shelf, was Fahrenheit 451.
Twelve Euros it cost!

Be What You Want

Much is written in the more pious sections of the Facebook short and succinct posts about whether we are ex-pats or immigrants.
The Spanish, of course, unaware of this delicate distinction, think we are all guiris.
You might think we émigrés had better things to worry about - will we be left in peace here following Brexit, will the pensions from the UK be frozen, will we still have European health coverage, and will they finally fire that awful Leaky Lee - but no, first we have to label ourselves in some way which can divide us still further, or place us in our inimitable British class system, now successfully exported to Benidorm.
Many of we Brits are against the word 'ex-pat', which is short for expatriate (ex-patria, out of our motherland) and prefer 'immigrant', nobly allying ourselves with the family of the corner-shop Pakistani in Lewisham. In truth, there are certain differences, since few of us open corner-shops, and fewer still learn to speak the local language, swat up on the Spanish constitution, its history, geography, politics, society and culture while dreaming about citizenship.
OK, so let us throw this in the ring: we are émigrés - we're never going back (unless we get deported following the Brexit shit-storm harr harr) - we live our lives here, but still congregate from time to time to speak our native language - English - among our fellow Brits. An immigrant is someone who takes out Spanish nationality. If you don't, you ain't an immigrant. That makes most of us Brits living in Spain, dwelling in English ghettos, reading The Weenie and watching Sky on satellite - ex-pats.
Expatriates. But really, call yourself what you want. Foreigner is fine. We are 'the foreigners'.
To take it a step further, until the numskulls in Westminster finally light the Brexit fuse, we are Europeans.

To Barbara

I am lying next to you, awake now while you sleep,
For death has just released me, yet in your dream you weep.
If only you could see me, so peaceful and serene,
But you must live a little more and carry on the dream,
A dream from which one day you’ll wake and see me by your side,
And know for sure that I’m still here and that I never “died.”
So now go on, be strong and look for me in wondrous things,
In the quietness of starlight and the warmth that sunshine brings,
And hear my voice to calm you, to say that it’s all right,
For I’m only here beside you, whispering in the night.
Of course you’ll cry, you’ll miss me, your very soul will ache,
But I am here, a breath away, waiting for you to wake,
So know that life is just a dream of love and fleeting pain,
And know I’m waiting by your side to love you once again.
—-
Life Is But A Dream
Paul Hayward

The Empty Villages of Spain

The authorities are worried, as more and more people move to the cities and away from their moribund villages in the quinto pino (the sticks). Small villages are losing their inhabitants and even drying up completely, ending as news items along the lines of ‘Entire Spanish village for sale’ in the newspapers.

Depriving them of services certainly doesn’t help – no bank, no pharmacy, no school, no town cop and even – Yarggh – no bar.

There have been some protests recently, as the villagers march on Madrid (waving their pitchforks).

But the politicians, keenly aware of the small (and evidently decreasing) number of votes in play, are not all that interested. The campaign ‘Teruel Existe’ notwithstanding (Teruel is a small and bitterly cold province, merrily ignored and avoided by all and sundry), the province has lost fifty per cent of its population in the past 100 years.

Alcontar (Almería) lost almost 10% of its population in 2018.

In Almería, over sixty of the 102 municipalities claim  a population loss: municipalities where the young have moved to The City to find jobs, romance and a decent tapa.

Those old houses in the pueblos are kept, as often as not, by the now-displaced owners who visit once a year (in their fancy cars) and they may still appear on the local padrón (to vote for their cousin Paco, of course). In short, the real numbers are even worse than the statisticians admit.

So, what to do?

Property is cheap enough in them thar hills, and as long as the ecologists or jackasses in the regional government don’t mind about foreigners moving in, providing jobs, money and a hankering for tinned beans in the local shop, there is a small gain to be made for the pueblo. A campaign perhaps? After all, the kids aren’t coming back, so we will need new (or rather, old) settlers to replace them. Imagine that, a Spanish promotion aimed at foreigners, but not at tourists!

Other settlers might be those poor refugees, washed up on Spanish soil. Go and till that land!

Sometimes, one of those peaceful villages could make an excellent old people’s home: a community benevolently run by the social services, with proper treatment for those who could benefit from country life under supervision.

The Government could step in, of course, and say – no town under two thousand without a bank, a chemist, a bus-service and a school!

And maybe, as some villages hopelessly die, amalgamate them into nearby municipalities. We don’t need on paper 102 communities in Almería if ninety would be enough.

The Moresco: No Takers

Nobody wanted to buy the Hotel El Moresco. It was put up for auction during September but there were no takers. Comically, the local PSOE had put forward a motion in the most recent town hall plenary session to say that the ayuntamiento should buy it, remove the squatters, ream it out (it's a ruin), condition it and re-open - all so that the village's fifty souvenir shops or more could have a little extra action.
Phew, that would have taken a bite out of the annual budget.
The Moresco started out as the Bellhaven, a hotel which was begun in 1966 and never completed. Horizon Holidays (our first package holiday) bought the hulk in 1972 and were then obliged to tear it down and start over. They built a huge behemoth with 294 rooms, great views, a swimming pool and a nightclub, but, er, no parking.
The nightclub was briefly popular with the villagers, as we tried to climb into the underwear of the British trippettes - with some success - while listening to the melodic shrieks of the BeeGees.
With Horizon going belly-up and being taken over by Clarksons in the mid-seventies, the hotel began to lose its lustre and the clients were starting to prefer the beach to the uncertain charms of the village. Most of them would walk out of the front door clutching their towels (and daughters) and would turn left - never once discovering the magnificence of the pueblo, a mere hundred paces away to the right.
A colourful businessman from Madrid eventually bought the hotel, borrowed heavily off it from the Junta de Andalucía, neglected to pay about half a million euros in property taxes to the ayuntamiento, closed the hotel down in 2008 and eventually lost possession of it due to other debts and obligations, passing ownership of it over to the Government of the Community of Madrid which, not knowing what to do with it (or caring) has now put it up for auction - with a reserve of 8,622,500 euros.
The Moresco is huge, and takes a large chunk out of the side of Mojácar. Demolishing it would leave a massive hole; replacing it with apartments would need a huge refit: how much would the apartments sell for, and where would the parking be?
Opening it again as a hotel - well frankly, who would stay there?