What's Yours is Mine (What's Mine is Mine, too)

 

It always seem to me strange that people, using old dusty stories, yearn to take your land, or your city, or your home… and make it theirs.

Historical examples abound, right enough – from Gibraltar to Palestine; from Comanche Territory to The Ukraine; from Belize to uh, Olivenza.

There’s always somebody waving an old document, or maybe a rusty key. My great-great-great grandfather used to live here and then the government threw us all out and now look, we want it back.

The Moors have claims to Córdoba, the Moroccans want Melilla and the 1,200,000 Miami Cubans are the cause of the sixty-six year old US blockade against Havana.

If they come in and take over, will they let me stay? Is there someone with a better claim to my farm because of an old deed, or a tradition of what’s written in someone’s Good Book?

The Moriscos lost their properties in Sixteenth Century Spain and were obliged to head off to North Africa – where none of them had ever been before.

The true gibraltareños living in San Roque, worrying all day long about getting their rock back.

Those who had to flee from their homes thanks to the Spanish Civil War, still living grumpily in France or Germany.

Refugees the world over: war, greed and politics.

Then, if that’s not bad enough, it must also be very trying for the folk who live in a house to know that the bank wants it – because of monetary considerations (the rent, the mortgage, the new tower block that someone plans to build on the same site).

But we were talking about Olivenza.

Olivenza, also known as Olivença, is, says Wiki ‘a town in south-western Spain, close to the Portugal–Spain border. It is a municipality belonging to the province of Badajoz, and to the wider autonomous community of Extremadura’. It was Portuguese for a long time, but it was ceded by treaty to Spain in 1801 following a squabble. Presumably the locally defeated Portuguese burghers have been talking of little else since then, Bless them, fingering their old iron keys and maybe a contract or two.

Maybe there’re a few well-oiled flintlocks in a chest somewhere in the attic held just in case. Two hundred and twenty years is but a moment in time, right?

And those 12,000 Spanish oliventinos who live there now? What to do with them – give them Portuguese identity cards and build a few flats? They’d rapidly become a nuisance.

See, Nuno Melo, the current Portuguese Minister of Defence (that’s to say: the man in charge of the Portuguese army) is now claiming Olivenza (or Olivença) because you know: the treaty/schmeaty.

For España for once, the shoe is on the other foot.   

By the way, some idiot from the Vox party stole a breeze-block from Gibraltar in 2014 and it’s now taking pride of place in the foyer of that party’s head office in Madrid.

The Gibraltarians want it back.

Maybe the Portuguese could help…

These Days, Fun can be Expensive, Inconvenient and a Fraction Drawn-Out

 One of the questions now being asked, now the local fiestas, celebrations, concerts, rallies, expositions and sporting events are largely over, is this:

Who exactly do they benefit?

The apocryphal story from the mid-sixties is told of my mother stomping down to the main square from our apartment by the church wearing her slippers, dressing gown and a hand bag – with which she slugged the mayor shouting ‘turn the music down, I’m trying to sleep’. 

In those days, there’d be a few strings of bunting, a local pop band, the bar doing a brisk trade, and the old deaf-and-dumb lady, la muda, selling cigarettes (single, or a half- or full pack), along with Bazooka Joe bubble-gum and wax matches, cerillas from a tray hanging from her shoulders. The families would dance together – small children up to the oldest grannies, all holding hands and bobbing around. There were songs like La Chica Ye Ye or the grisly Las flechas del Amor…

Brandy was three cents a tot. A small glass of a kind of red wine which would make one’s teeth rot was even cheaper.

They were different times. The only visitors would be family who had emigrated to Barcelona or France or Germany. I remember a family known as los marseilleses, who would come for a few days around that time in their Citröen Ami, look down their noses at their country-cousins, and then disappear again.  

There’s the World Day of the Tourist coming up in late September (when they’ve all gone home again), but in our town, neither this nor the non-existent Day of the Foreign Resident are pencilled in. No celebration as such, even if we are here all year long putting money into the economy. Mind you – I think there’s another Saint’s day which pops up around then.

These days, as we’ve all seen (only too vividly) the fiestas are a joy for the shop-keepers who will obligingly stay open until late, but there’s not much pleasure for the locals. Even if one does attend, and has a pricey beer at the metal chiringuito raised in the square (next to the deafening dance-band), who ya gonna talk too? Who ya gonna dance with? So, what with the visitors all enjoying their last few days of the holidays, the instant traditions taking up the usual parking spaces (medieval market anyone?), the far-from cheap drinks and tapas or the ride on the roundabout, I’ll take vanilla.

They’ve even extended them an extra day or two, since one can never have enough fun.

In the old days, maybe a neighbour owned a black and white TV and would kindly leave his window open for the curious, at least for the football game, but now everyone has a huge flat-screen with a hundred channels and a fridge full of beer. Why go out, say the vecinos, when one can be dazzled at home for free?

It comes down to this – a local event can be for the local people, or, if it’s the summer and you are in one of Spain’s ‘Most Beautiful Villages’, then it’s for the business-folk and the tourists. The visitors will all have to sleep somewhere – and for that we have the Airbnb hosts and the hotels, all rubbing their hands.

The Residents don’t stay in them; and for that matter, they don’t buy souvenirs either – making us very disappointing as customers.

And if we do need to drive into the centre to join the festivities and see the fireworks, where can we park that's not a half-hour walk away?

So if something is a bit expensive, yet perceived as cheap by the tourists, then that’s the price of a fiesta without the people it is meant to be for (and, one way or another, who paid for the music and the bunting).

Or who knows? Perhaps we are just getting old.

Meanwhile, and sad to relate, there’s no one left prepared to stomp down to the fiesta at three in the morning, waving her handbag, to tell the mayor to go and pull the effing plug.

Editorial For Late August (the well was running dry)

Each week I write Business over Tapas and send it out to subscribers. It comes with plenty of useful news about life in Spain, and a well thought-out editorial. I've lived here for most of my life and edited and directed a number of newspapers, both in English and Spanish, between 1985 and 2008. 

But sometimes, there's not much to write about...

...

August has just about made its apologies and left, bringing us Welcome September – which is the best month of them all. The weather (should be) perfect, warm but not killer-hot. The sea will be just right and there’ll finally be some room on the beach.

The subject of la turismofobia will be dropped (at least until next year) and the children will all be back in school.

For journalists and hacks, there’s the renewed prospect of writing about Spanish politics – that effervescent mixture of insults, betrayals and some occasional improvements (or at least, changes) in our lives.

And then the autumn slowly creeps towards us, bringing a freshness to the air and the garden. We can go for walks once again in the campo or along the paseo marítimo. Maybe drop in somewhere for a beer, where the barman remembers our name and is once again pleased to see us.

September is a good moment to start new adventures, and maybe pause to see what the others are writing about:

So, here’s the intro over at that new costa magazine ‘Spain By Jingo’:

Welcome to our coolest month, September, where it’s blissfully hot and groovy.

We enjoyed the thrash during the summer, but now thankfully, they’ve all rushed home again, leaving us to enjoy the peace and pick up the pieces.

We hope you enjoyed our local fiesta last week. We had a go on the dodgem-cars, which reminded us a lot of the roundabout along the beach in front of the hotel.

Seriously though, here in Spain we drive on the right.

In this exciting edition, with some brand-new advertisers for you to meet, we have Beryl’s nail extensions on P.9 and also three and a half ways to cook a chicken with Gillie on the same page (Ok, Ok, the full-page advert from an offshore financial adviser that was going to go there fell through at the last moment – we think he got arrested. We pulled his article too, just in case…).

Peter Grubshall is back with the riveting story of his move to Spain with ‘From Gloucester to the Costa’.

With our fiendish quiz on P.14 (all about Your Favourite Country) and our guide to useful words in Spanish in the Back, we are sure you’ll have a fab month.

Andy and Lucía.

...

(I leave you wondering - what is your favourite country?)

The Best-Kept Secrets in Publishing Aren't Secrets At All

 

Churning through the media articles every day to find material for my weekly bulletin about Spain, I often find pieces which are designed to make the reader go past the title and into the text – surrounded as it is with advertisements, pop-ups and, of course, the EU’s insistence on asking us if it’s OK to place cookies on our phone or computer every bloody time.

Then along comes the text that says: ‘We notice you’re using an ad-blocker…’

Damn right I am.

But despite all this, yes, I have decided that I want to read about ‘We’ve Found the Best Village in Spain’. So, open the stupid link, already!

This is called click-bait, when they don’t tell you the very vital thing you wanted to see in the headline, which is why you have to click into the story. Usually, they’ll get around to the subject in hand in the third or fourth paragraph, after you have hurdled a long diatribe about Spain’s wonderful unknown and unspoiled pueblos, a couple of adverts for shoes, shirts, or a merry cruise to Norway and an insistent request to subscribe.

The problem often being that – I guess if enough people read the article – which may have started out life somewhere else (Google has an uncanny trait of rumbling unoriginal material) then when you take the plunge and finally arrive at the destination itself, at least for lunch and a look-see, it’s going to be full of fellow-readers and, well, sorry to tell you, but – thanks to the recent media-exposure – I’m Afraid You May Need to Book!

Annoying for those who bought a place there some years previously, precisely because it was off the beaten track.

These ‘beautiful’ or ‘best kept secret’ articles are easy to write (thanks Wikipedia!) and they fill a space. How many times have you seen a picture of that street covered by a huge rock in Setenil de las Bodegas (Cádiz) or that embarrassing pueblo in Málaga they painted blue?

Right now, there are endless stories of ‘a pretty village in Spain where they want to ban tourists’. Above all apparently, the ones who take ‘selfies’, according to one gloomy home-owner. Often called ‘The little Mykonos’ (by absolutely nobody except copy-editors, I suspect), the village – Binibeca Vell – is in fact a 1972 urbanisation on the edge of San Luís in Menorca. And it’s probably not looking its best after those heavy rains last week.

See, it gets full of visitors, which is no doubt a treat for the local souvenir shop, but it is kind of a nuisance for everybody else.

There may be lots of money in tourism, but it doesn’t get spread around as fairly as it might.

The alternative is to tell the locals to stay inside so as not to inconvenience the cruise-ship trippers (as happened on the Greek island of Santorini the other day), or close the local bar (as reported in a pueblo in Galicia – ‘We don’t want any Madrid tourists here giving themselves airs’, explained the owner in garbled Galician). A fellow from Barcelona says that in his city, ‘We don’t walk in a straight line any more, we dodge’. Over in Santiago de Compostela, the locals complain about the pilgrims – ‘it’s like Easter every day of the year’.

How about Peñiscola, in Castellón? Eight thousand people live there, and there are 25 visitors for every resident. ‘Excuse me, coming through…’ (My own Mojácar is in sixth place according to the media report).

No doubt the city fathers would prefer wealthy tourists – the ones who spend and tip lavishly – while not so much the other kind, who drink a few beers and are sick in the fabled village gardens. Or, worse still, the ones who spray-paint an esteemed foreign resident’s eleven million dollar home. But, sad to say, you can’t really have the one kind of visitor without the other, unless there’s a fellow in a uniform at the gate. Also – wealthy people don’t necessarily behave themselves better.

Tourism is either packing as many sights into a short vacation as one can (‘If this is Tuesday, this must be Belgium’) or spending the holiday in one single place, usually to relax and get pissed. Both have their merits and – evidently – their issues.

But, don’t we have a right to two holidays away each year? (We can except us foreign residents in this instance, with a car-trip across Spain or a weekend in a Parador. For one thing, we don’t tend to travel in packs).

The point is this: would Spanish tourists suddenly come to your town in the UK or Germany and behave in the same way – and if they (by some miracle) they did – how would you feel? A thousand drunken Spaniards in Hatfield (dubbed as ‘The Most Boring Town in England’) wearing Gibraltar Español tee-shirts and singing loudly and tunelessly as Henry over at The Red Lion gleefully fills them up with more drinks.  

So remember, as you scan the blogs and news-sites for fresh and interesting places to visit:

‘Your vacation spot is somebody else’s home’.

A Little Dab Will Do Ya

 Two things to know about me – I’m blind as a bat… and I like bats.Well, any critter really. 

The bats come from finding eleven of them stashed in my curtains in my bedroom early one morning while of a tender age and still living in Norfolk. Cute little things. None of them bit me as I shooed them outside.

Here, there are no curtains to speak of, and the usual critters hanging upside down from the rafters tend to be geckos. Nice and friendly – like the bats, they enjoy a fresh mosquito to munch on.

Now, this thing about being short-sighted. I got my first pair of specks when it became apparent I couldn’t see the writing on the blackboard. In fact, I couldn’t even see the blackboard.

I was given some horn-rimmed glasses (we call them glaffas in Spanglish) and thus equipped, I went through my formative years, leaving the school choir when my balls dropped (it was a mutual decision) and finding new and interesting pass-times, some of which involved my specks inappropriately steaming up.

Horrid things. Wandering around looking out of a pair of magnifying glasses from the wrong side while covered in spots - that, and being made to wear shorts. It's a part of my life which I try hard to forget.

When it came the time to cautiously making myself available to the Gentle Sex, I thought I would switch from my specs (now much scratched) and try out instead some fashionable blue-tinted bottle-bottomed contact lenses.

Which have stood me in remarkably good stead ever since.

The other day, while preparing myself for the evening’s adventures ahead, I was to be found taking a shower in the family hip-bath. My eyes, like the rest of me, were naked (and pink).

And what is that down near my feet, thrashing about and hoping to escape the water. I reached down to rescue it – it was a panicking gecko, poor little guy. But wait, let me just get a little closer to have a better look. I dropped onto all-fours and held my face a few inches away…

Before letting out a shriek and abruptly abandoning the tub.

Bloody thing was a giant centipede.

The Ice-cream Tart

The Spanish have so many wonderful things going for them, that I can only lament that I spent the first thirteen years of my life living elsewhere.

My parents felt the same way, and loaded up the car in Norfolk for what would become a one-way trip south back in 1966.

And he we are - or at least, here I am (my parents having duly succumbed many years ago, surrounded by friends, to one of what used to be Spain's greatest attractions - coñac at five pesetas a tot).

I live quietly, having learned a few vital lessons about life here:

Never lend your money to friends, or start a newspaper - which comes pretty much to the same thing.

Steer away from brandy.

Never keep the nub end of a joint in your car's ashtray (long story).

Always order the tarta al whisky after a good lunch.

Spain's Whisky Tart is a sort of vanillery helado thing, with a few crushed nuts and a bit of sponge, and a miniscule squirt of hootch to add flavour. Imagine that - an alcoholic ice-cream!

When you order it in one of this country's one million better restaurants, then the maître will bring a bottle of scotch and either baptise your desert in that generous devil-may-care way so typical of the Spanish, or even leave the bottle next to your plate for you to drown your bowl of ice-cream a tu gusto.

As a young 'un, I used to have the flan with a tinned peach for pud; good in its way, but nowhere close to a whisky tart.

In fact, I think I'll indulge myself right now - the essay needs a picture, right?

Hot Summer Nights

 Gosh, it ain’t half hot.

It’s so hot I’ve got a towel wrapped around the pillow. The window is wide open and the screen has been checked (somehow, the little buggers still manage to get in to the bedroom and bite. They probably carry wire-cutters within their dental array – the mosquito’s answer to the Swiss Army Knife).

The noise from the passing traffic and the odd summer concert drifts through the curtain and refreshes me – it’s come that I can’t sleep until I’ve heard that particular summer song at least twice.

It’s dark, apart from the moonlight and the little red and green glows from the television switch, the extension cords, the mosquito plug-in and the electric clock which winks throughout the night (it’s more trouble to get up and reset it following the regular power-cuts that plague the barrio). If I wake up for a pee, which I do around 3.30am, the room glows like the approach to a small provincial airstrip: and I half expect a small follow-me airport vehicle to escort me to the loo.

Maybe detour past the fridge to drink some cold water on the way back to Runway One.

I pull the fan a little closer to the bed and fall back into my pit, now damp with sweat. Try and get back to sleep, but maybe check the Facebook first. Maybe read for a spell (I much prefer books to the television). Maybe spray the room and scratch for a bit.

So hot. I’ve taken to having two (or even three) cold showers throughout the day. I haven’t done that since school all those years ago. At least there’s no one here to flick me with a towel.

An hour has passed, so I’ll try and sleep again. The concert has stopped, but there’s an owl on a nearby tree that lets out a liquid hoot every fifteen seconds. I noisily shut the window – maybe he’ll take the hint.

I look again and now it’s 7.00am. I’ll get up and make myself a toast and coffee.

While that’s going on, I’ll have another pee and brush my teeth.

I’m told by the fellow on the TV that I have bad breath, so I go for a quick gargle of mouthwash, making my tongue look like I’m a lizard-person. The product has a child-proof lid on it, which means that it won’t fall open by chance in the shopping-bag, or indeed in the bathroom. I too need both some wire-cutters and some patience, hard to do when I’ve just heard the toast-launcher eject my breakfast onto the kitchen floor.

Outside, it looks like it’s going to be another nice day.  

Dodgy Phone Calls: Spam, Whistles and Con-artists

For some reason, we are getting lots of telephone calls in these times from unknown numbers. My Android phone is good enough to say: ‘watch out, this is probably a spammer’ which is ammunition enough for me to press the ‘refuse call and block number’ button.

It used to be someone from a cheap-energy company wanting you to switch out of Endesa, or maybe a salesperson from some dodgy newspaper or magazine hoping for your business. These days, it’s likely a robot which is checking to see if anybody is on the other end of a phone-number. If you do pick up, it lets out a cheerful little beep, and hangs up.

Yes Boss, we’ve got a live one here.

The numbers are collected and sold – either to spammers, crooks, thieves, con-men, or that fellow who wanted to sell you a cheap health insurance.

In my phone memory, I have several calls refused by me in the last few days as ‘Llamante no deseado (sospecha)’ and others as ‘Fraude (possible)’.

There’s a new service I’ve found, a kind of reverse phone number directory for fraudulent callers called ListaSpam. They say they have a list of over a million crooked phone-numbers between Spain and Latin America. You can download their app – free – and your phone will automatically bounce any of these bogus callers.

ListaSpam is a simple dot com, so let me look up some of the calls I’ve had recently:

The number 951125163 from Málaga has been checked 22 times by unwilling victims.

The number 624156344 has been checked 205 times, and has four complaints.

The number 613592067 has been checked 297 times, and has four complaints

The number 613889843 has been checked 337 times, and has two complaints.

The number 625028220 has been checked 504 times, and has seven complaints.

But the prize goes to 951823073, checked 5,835 times, with seventy-one complaints.

All these numbers, plus others, have called me in the past week, even though I’m on the Lista Robinson – a useful register of numbers not to be called by importune sales-folk or telemarketers. It has saved me a large number of calls, and if they get through to me and I say I’m on the Lista Robinson, they’ll say they’re sorry and hang up. If they don’t, then I hang up. It’s evidently not fool-proof, but it helps. If you do speak to them, tell them that you intend to make a denuncia to the AEPD – the Spanish protection of data agency (they are acting outside the law). They’ll disconnect soon enough.

So how do they get my number? Maybe someone at the electric company or the town hall is making a few euros on the side selling a list of phone-numbers to people with wonky accents.

These spam calls are something new, probably starting – in my case – about a month ago.

Right now, between Facebook (‘Oh, I do love your posts, would you please be my friend?’), sundry texts about small debts I’m said to owe to Tráfico or the electric company or my bank (what was your pin number again?) as sent to Messenger, and then the email spam (I now get 20 or 30 of these each day – usually to tell me I’ve won a prize), I’m getting more junk than real calls from friends and family.  

Today (Saturday) I got a call at 2.00pm, as I was settling down to a sandwich, and then another at 3.00pm, just as I switched on the news. It’s like they have a sixth sense to call at an inconvenient moment. The phone warned me both times and I blocked the numbers at once.

Say, that wasn’t you calling was it?