Planning a Trip

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

Maybe tie it in with an advertiser or two.

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

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

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

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

Of course, one always wonders about readers’ votes…

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

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

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

Name Calling (Update)

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

Somebody nice, no doubt. 

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

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

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

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

More from Oklahoma

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

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

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

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

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

Travel Broadens the Mind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who smokes that shit?

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

I hope that car has heating... 

Later:

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

When Money Meets Taste, There's no Competition

Mojacar is one of the Most Beautiful Pueblos in Spain. I have to say, I don’t know why: maybe it's an accolade you pay for.

The village itself is certainly dramatic, with white cubist houses (almost all of them new or rebuilt in the last twenty years) and narrow streets. The streets are too tight for cars, and the donkeys have all gone. There is little or no graffiti, which is a point in its favour, but there’s a gigantic hotel of 294 rooms which, from certain angles, takes up a large chunk of the view, and has been closed since 2008. It belongs to a private bank from Madrid which occasionally puts it up for auction.

Moving up to the main square, La Plaza Nueva, we find El Mirador, a viewpoint which is the roof of an unfinished building, meant one day to be the new town hall. It’s covered in tables, and served by three different bars. On it, there’s a square box, which will become the top of a lift-shaft.

The view is of the ‘Valley of the Pyramids’ as the Tourist Office grandly (if erroneously) calls it. The nearest thing to a pyramid being the hill of Old Mojácar, now seriously and permanently disfigured by enthusiastic archaeologists searching for the mummified remains of Walt Disney. The diggers have meanwhile found evidence of a ninth century fortification, along with a few shards of pottery and a hash pipe. Even the Tourist Office, which claims that Mojácar was once, in Greek times, known as Murgis Akra (taking us back an extra two thousand years) must realise that we are losing more than we are gaining by burrowing into the venerable old mountain. It was never a settlement, despite some temple buildings, for the obvious reason that there is no water there, its indefensible, there’s no place for the animals, and there’s nowhere to run… unlike the mountain half a kilometre away we now know as Mojácar (or its Moorish name of Muxacar). As to its age, I once found a Roman coin there dated from AD200, a thousand years earlier than the subject of the current dig.

Mojácar is, I think, dramatic. It has harsh colours (much prized by artists): the blue of the sky, the white of the architecture, the brown of the mountains and the red of the sunburned tourists. The village certainly has its attractions – beyond the innumerable souvenir shops with large picture windows, the neon bars and restaurants and the amusing ‘running man’ exit sign up past the church. 

Placed there, no doubt, just in case the Moors suddenly return.

The Fuente area at the bottom of the village is not worth more than a glance, and no doubt the judges for the Most Beautiful Pueblo in Spain were whisked smartly past the large urbanisation down there.

The beach, where ninety percent of the population resides (more properly described perhaps as ‘the coast’), has its pros and its cons, with a nice sea-view, low two or three storey buildings interspaced with a few massive hotels, and a large number of beach bars which have universally moved away from the temporary structures of yesteryear equipped with a fridge, some cold beers and a fresh sardine or two being scorched on a hotplate.

The narrow beach-road, built for a rather quieter time, is now to be reinforced with a second road which will cut through the urban growth behind the Front Line, and allowing further speculative building: as the municipality turns into a metropolis. 

Mojácar was a poor village, in a poor province, and there is little sign of architectural excellence beyond the drama of the glorious tangle of cubed homes (painted white in the mid-sixties by order of Mayor Jacinto). It was briefly a bohemian place for foreigners and Spaniards alike to hide from reality, but later it became a place for tourism, urbanisations, hotels, get-rich-quick-schemes and family politics. If massive walls had to be built, or hills sundered, or land expropriated and promises broken; then, in the name of profit, so be it. 

 

Winter is Coming

It’s likely going to be a tough winter in Europe, and one solution for those who can afford it – and there’s an oxymoron – is to head south to the Mediterranean.

We read of a new type of holiday – one that would need to stretch for six months to fully avoid the northern freeze – called ‘thermal tourism’.

Well, for the British the figure would be for three months tops to be exact, what with the Schengen rule of 90 days in any 180 for non-EU visitors to most of the Old Continent. November through February maybe. Still, it’s better than nothing.

While those living in the colder parts of Europe will be welcome to consider moving south for an extended period, the promotions are probably more centred on a couple of weeks holiday in the sun before returning home to chilblains, woolly hats and hot toddies. After all, we are talking here about the powerful hoteliers and their lobbying over at the Ministry of Tourism, rather than Ethel’s empty flat overlooking Garrucha harbour.

The Greeks and the Spanish are both working on their campaigns, as they welcome the chance to bring extra tourism out for the low season:  “Wanna feel 20 again?” asks one of the billboards slated to appear in London and other capitals across the continent. “With warm winter temperatures up to 20C, Greece is the place to be,” it proclaims, next to an image of an older couple lounging on a yacht, wine glasses in hand.

A senior Spanish tourist expert brings the clincher to the table when he says: “From what we’re seeing, people are realising that it’s cheaper to come here than it is to put the heating on at home”.

However, you should probably be laying in some firewood (or whatever the equivalent is in non-smoking areas) before you sign up: it’s going to be an almighty shock when you return to your chilly casa!