No Comprendo

Mojacar's strange rush towards the town hall continues. Soon, the high-electioneering period begins where the posters will be literally stuck to everything, wall, tree, door, truck and stone. They will all say 'Vota por so-and-so' and will have some clever slogan under the candidate's grinning phizzog. 'This Time it's Us' or ''For a New Beginning' or 'Please Leave your Money under the Table'.
No doubt crookedly inclined voters will vote for crookedly inclined parties.
There are other concerns.
Of the 'European' vote, one party has no less than twelve 'foreign' names on their list - almost all Brits. However - none of them speak Spanish. How are they going to vote in the town hall meetings? How are they going to work up there at all? Yes, we need 'Europeans' in the ayuntamiento, to be able to speak English to the public, but they will need to speak Spanish as well to be of any use.
I don't think in a modern Spanish town with half the population being British a 'no comprendo' is going to be of much use in the town hall.

Strange Candidates

There seems to be a lot of fuss about the transfugas - those politicians which change parties (usually causing the government to fall as there's not much point in doing it just for a laugh). Whether they do it for personal consideration or not I can leave to the Reader's judgement.
The correct thing to do if you find yourself in disagreement with your party is to resign and allow the next name on the party list to take over your position. After all, the fact that you are in the town hall as a councillor is because people voted for your proposals...
Of course, with the exception of Angel Medina, no one has left their post to 'go home' in living memory, and the entire province is full of 'transfugas' and betrayals as a result.
In Mojácar, of the seven transfugas currently in the town hall, six of them are on various party lists for this month's elections, and lead no less than three of them (PP, PDM and Levante Sostenible).
The PDM (Partido Democrático de Mojácar) in fact, is a good chunk of the current town hall under a new flag. The first three names on it being Gabriel Flores, Maria Asención Morales (both chucked from the PSOE) and, in third place, Jose Luis Cano (chucked from the PP). I can't see this group getting enough votes to put Maria Asención back into power - much less Jose Luis Cano! Or am I guilty of wishful thinking?
So - who is going to vote for a transfuga?
What is he expecting to get out of it?
A promise?

Later: I read (El Mundo 5 May 07) that the PDM has got its own Brit on the list (at number eleven!). Keith Bradley who had time the other day to offer this quote: '...(in the last twenty years) I had never seen a government as efficient as the one led by Gabriel Flores during the past two years'.

13 Parties Listed

Well - here they are:-

Listas presentadas elecciones municipales 2007:

1.- LEVANTE SOSTENIBLE DE MOJACAR (LEVANTE SOS. MOJACAR) 1 JOSE LUIS ARTERO GARCIA 2 JUAN ANTONIO GRIMA CERVANTES 3 ASTRID SCHRÖDER 4 CATALINA DEL ROSARIO GARCIA GONZALEZ 5 JORDI FERNANDEZ HERNANDEZ 6 MARIA ANGELES RIOSALIDO RAMOS 7 RAFAEL REYES CUADRADO 8 MARIA HERNANDEZ FLORES 9 IAN SUMMERS 10 MARIA ELENA SAINZ DE ROZAS PALACIO 11 MARIA JESUS GARCIA GONZALEZ 12 MARIANO LOPEZ RUBIO 13 MARIA DEL PILAR RIOSALIDO RAMOS SUPLENTES: 1 FERNANDO HINOJO PEREZ 2 ANA MARIA NORIEGA PINILLA 3 FRANCISCO QUESADA FLORES

2.- ASAMBLEA DE IZQUIERDAS (A.Iz) 1 CARLOS SALVADOR CERVANTES ZAMORA 2 SERAFIN ALARCON LOPEZ 3 FRANCISCO MONTOYA FLORES 4 VICTORIA VIRGINIA ANTON HERNANZ 5 PAULINA ANTONY 6 DOMINGO GABRIEL CARRIQUE BELMONTE 7 JUAN ANGEL MARTINEZ ALONSO 8 ROSARIO DUARTE ROMERO 9 FARZIN FARZAN NIA 10 MARIA ISABEL SANCHEZ REDONDO 11 PEDRO QUILES DOMINGUEZ 12 TOMAS CHAMORRO MUÑOZ 13 MARIA ISABEL CULEBRAS POZA

3.- CIUDADANOS EUROPEOS DE MOJACAR (C.E.M.) 1 ANGEL MEDINA CHULLA 2 LENOX SCOTT NAPIER 3 JENNY LOUISE HAYES 4 PAULA ESTEBAN DEL RIO 5 CARLOS SAN JULIAN BLANCO 6 ISABELLE NATHALIE VERONIQUE BES 7 DANIEL WILLIAN NAPIER 8 MAUREEN SYKES 9 ISABEL AZNAR FERNANDEZ 10 ALEJANDRO CUCKSON MARTINEZ 11 MARCELO JORGE SUAREZ-BRAVO NOVAS 12 BLANCA MARIA MORERA ORTIZ 13 ANGEL MIGUEL CIFRE LAPEYRE

4.- PARTIDO INDEPENDIENTE DE MOJACAR (P.I.MOJ.) 1 MAATI EL OUARDIGHI EL IMANI 2 MARIA ANGELES GUIRAL SANCHEZ 3 REBECCA LOUISSE GRAHAM 4 JUAN DIEGO CANO ARTERA 5 MARIA DOLORES HARO REYES 6 JAMES PETER MILLINGTOM SUCKLING 7 LINDA FRANCINE VAN GINDERACHTER DE RIJCH 8 ANTONIO JOSE GALLARDO SAEZ 9 ION VASILE DINU 10 ALBERTO SORO BELTRAN 11 IRENE SCURRAH 12 JOSE FERNANDEZ FERNANDEZ 13 SORAYA EL OUARDIGHI SAEZ SUPLENTES: 1 CRISTOBAL SANCHEZ LOPEZ 2 MARIA DEL MAR GARCIA MORILLA 3 JENIFER GIL BELTRAN

5.- PARTIDO POPULAR (P.P.) 1 ROSA MARIA CANO MONTOYA 2 DIEGO CARRILLO GONZALEZ 3 MARIA LUISA PEREZ LOPEZ 4 ALBERT WALDEMAR WERNER SCHRÖTER 5 ISABEL ROSA MONTOYA LOPEZ 6 SANTIAGO RODRIGUEZ MARTIN 7 GONZALO MOSCARDO PEREA 8 ROSA MARIA MORALES GARCIA 9 ELENA STAN 10 DENNIS GEORGE MORDEN 11 LUIS VALERO GONZALEZ 12 VALENTINA MIR ALLES 13 ISABEL MARIA FERNANDEZ SANCHEZ SUPLENTES: 1 VICTOR LUIS HERRERA BLANCO

6.- PARTIDO ANDALUCISTA (P.A.) 1 DIEGO FRANCISCO GONZALEZ AGUADO 2 PEDRO MANUEL MONTOYA MORALES 3 EMMANUEL AGUERO LECLERC 4 FRANCISCA MORALES CERVANTES 5 ISABEL ZAMORA BARON 6 JOAQUIN FRANCISCO SAEZ SAEZ 7 FRANCISCO FLORES ALONSO 8 HAZEL KAY MCGRATH 9 SARAH MARIA SMITH 10 SALVADOR BECERRA GIL 11 RAUL GARRIDO SEGURA 12 MAGDALENA QUIÑONERO GAZQUEZ 13 MARIA DEL CARMEN PEREZ LLORIS SUPLENTES: 1 JUAN FRANCISCO LOPEZ RODRIGUEZ 2 RAFAELA MARIA FLORES MONTOYA

7.- PARTIDO DE ALMERIA (PdAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA 2 JOSE MANUEL PADILLA VIZCAINO 3 LUIS GUILLERMO JIMENEZ JIMENEZ 4 JODIE FRANCES ESQUER 5 MARIA BELEN GARCIA LOPEZ 6 MATTHEW JAMES SHATFORD 7 JOHN MICHAEL AMPLEFORD 8 FRANCISCA CANO PARRA 9 DANIEL GONZALEZ LINNITT 10 ISABEL SAEZ CASTRO 11 LIVIU ARMIE 12 MARIA DEL MAR LOPEZ LOPEZ 13 PEDRO ZAMORA BARON SUPLENTES: 1 ANTONIO JESUS PEREZ CARRIQUE 2 MARIA JOSE GARRIDO VIZCAINO 3 URSULA CRISTINE HORCK

8.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA OBRERO ESPAÑOL (PSOE) 1 PHILIPPE KIRSCH GOMEZ 2 FRANCISCO AGUSTIN MARTINEZ HARO 3 RYMA HUSSEIN EL AHMED 4 LEONARDA GOMEZ BONILLO 5 JUAN SANCHEZ RUIZ 6 JUAN FRANCISCO GALERA MORENO 7 ADELA MARIA FLORES ZAMORA 8 JORGE SIMON ORTIZ CARRILLO 9 ABEL ABARKAN ORTS 10 MARIA DE LOS REYES MEDINA FLORES 11 CARLOS PIÑERO FLORENCIO 12 ANTONIA MARQUEZ GALERA 13 JUAN JULIAN GULLON ALONSO SUPLENTES: 1 JUANA MARIA MARTINEZ HARO 2 ALFONSO ANTONIO VILLANOVA CARRERO 3 YOLANDA ANGELES PARRA RIDAO

9.- PARTIDO SOCIALISTA DE ANDALUCIA (PSA) 1 JUAN ALFONSO LOPEZ RODRIGUEZ (PSA) 2 PEDRO SUAREZ RUIZ (PSA) 3 MARIA LUISA DE LA FUENTE QUAGLIOTTI (PSA) 4 MARTIN ADAN CASTILLO (PSA) 5 SONIA SUAREZ TAMAYO (PSA) 6 ANTONIO CAMPOY PEREZ (PSA) 7 FERNANDO MARTINEZ GONZALEZ (PSA) 8 AURORA RUIZ MARTIN (PSA) 9 IGNACIO LOPEZ DE LA FUENTE (PSA) 10 MARIA LUISA LOPEZ MATHESSANZ (PSA) 11 JUAN JESUS JIMENEZ DE LA FUENTE (PSA) 12 GILDA RAWSON FERLUGA (PSA) 13 JOSE FRANCISCO NUÑEZ MARTOS (PSA) SUPLENTES: 1 ERNESTO OBRADOR IBAÑEZ (PSA)

10.- PARTIDO DEMOCRATICO DE MOJACAR (PDM DE MOJACAR) 1 GABRIEL FLORES MORALES 2 MARIA ASCENSION MORALES RAMOS 3 JOSE LUIS CANO RODRIGUEZ 4 GINES TORRES FLORES 5 SUSANNA EMILY HALL 6 MIGUEL GARCIA CAMPOY 7 JOSE MARIA RUIZ FLORES 8 VIOLETA RUEDA GUAREÑO 9 CONCEPCION LUGARDA GUILLEN TORRES 10 ESTEBAN ANTONIO DUARTE GONZALEZ 11 KEITH BRADLEY 12 SHIRLEY ANN ALMAN 13 YOLANDA PATRICIA PARRA NIEDERHAUSER SUPLENTES: 1 SALVADOR DOMINGO VIVES LOPICCOLO 2 LINLDSAY MCBRIDE 3 DIEGO QUERO GARCIA

11.- GRUPO INDEPENDIENTE POR ALMERIA (GIAL) 1 DIEGO GARCIA MONTOYA 2 ANGEL CORDOBA BLANCO 3 WIELAND CLEMENS ECKLER 4 JUANA CASTRO FLORES 5 CRISTINA SANDU 6 JAMES MARLIN BRYCE 7 SARA SIROLLI 8 FRANCISCO ALACID MELCHON 9 MARIA JOSEFA IBAÑEZ GARCIA 10 FRANCISCO JAVIER SERRANO FLORES 11 JORGE MANZANARES PINO 12 DAVID BELMONTE CORTIJO 13 CONCEPCION CARRASCO GUTIERREZ

12.- IZQUIERDA UNIDA LOS VERDES- CONVOCATORIA POR ANDALUCIA (IULV-CA) 1 FRANCISCO RUBIO SANCHEZ 2 JOSE LUIS LLORENTE PEREZ 3 ALEJANDRA LOPEZ SEVILLA 4 AINA KUCINSKIENE 5 JOHN GRAEME STEWART 6 MARIA DEL PILAR RAMOS MARTIN 7 INDALECIO RUEDA GARCIA 8 NICOLAS LUQUE VILLEGAS 9 EUSTAQUIO ARCOS MUÑOZ 10 MARIA IBARRA GALERA 11 AMPARO DIAZ RUBIO 12 SERGIO GARCIA PASTOR 13 JAVIER DE SAGARRA CHAO SUPLENTES: 1 ANTONIO JOSE VILLEGAS GIMENEZ 2 EVANGELINA MUÑOZ PERAL

13.- MOJACAR NUEVA (MN) 1 ENRIQUE JOAQUIN GARCIA MAURIÑO LORENTE 2 RUTH GREEN 3 JAVIER SORIA DIAZ 4 MARY ELLEN PATRICIA WESTON 5 ROWLAND STEPHEN BEECHENER 6 MARIA DEL CARMEN MALDONADO LOPEZ 7 DENISE JANE GROOM 8 DONALD WILLIAMS 9 EDMUND PATRICK MCCRORY 10 BARBARA JOAN BIRKS 11 JEAN PATRICIA BANNER 12 DAVID BRACE 13 EILEEN MCCRORY SUPLENTES: 1 MICHAEL FRED GROOM 2 MICHAEL WESTON

Thirteen parties - two choices. A modern and healthy European town, or another four years of anarchy.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

The parties are now ready for your support and your votes. In Mojácar, according to the Boletin Oficial de la Provincia, there are thirteen.
Remember, when looking at a party under these conditions, concentrate on the top names on each party's list. No one in Mojácar can be reasonably expected to make it into the government if his name is sloshing around the bottom. Such a person might garner a few votes for the party, but clearly they are just foot-soldiers there for the top names on the party list.
You can scroll down to an earlier post regarding the Mojácar parties.
I'll add here that Mojacar Nueva has the most foreigners (practically the whole list), but with two in the top four names. Most of the full list is mono-lingual in English.
Ciudadanos Europeos de Mojácar also has two foreigners in the top four (me and Jenny Hayes at numbers two and three), and four more later on...
Levante Sostenible has one (Astrid the Veterinaria at nº 3). The Partido Popular has Albert Werner at nº 4. The PAL has one at nº 4, and the GIAL has Wieland Eckler at nº 3.
Other parties have the odd foreigner at the waaay back, including PSA (one at 12) and the PA has two at 8 and 9. The PSOE has none at all.
Whether 'foreigners' - that is non-Spanish Europeans - are the way forward or not, it seems clear that a town hall with 135 workers in it where not one of them speaks English, in a town where half the population only speaks English, is certainly not the way forward. European candidates need to be bi-lingual and have a full understanding of Spanish issues, society and so on. I hope that can be said of all of our European candidates

House Sales Plummit

The construction companies on the Spanish stock market are in free-fall after the penny dropped recently about the lack of sales in Spain.
Locally, one can point to ‘land grabs’, ‘condemned houses’, ‘off-plan homes’, greedy commissions (up to 50% in some cases – you will have seen their brightly decorated cars), unfinished homes, mortgaged homes and other frauds. Sales to foreigners being one area where we have seen a fall over this time last year.
Sales to British buyers across Spain, incidentaly, have been running at around 70,000 per year.
The larger picture is, of course, the extreme increase in house prices nationally, with an average annual increase of around 20% - which has now been proven unsustainable in the long run.
The first construction company to ‘wipe a billion euros’ off its books in one day, on Monday this week, was the Valencian constructor Astroc. Others immediately followed suit.
According to a recent report, the building companies are hocked to the banks for 250,000 million euros (December 2006) – which is the equivalent to 25% of the PIB (GNP). Some 30% more homes are being built that are being bought, according to ‘Ahorro Financial Corporation’, putting at immediate risk some 200,000 jobs.
Locally to the Baja Almanzora, it will be interesting to see which Estate Agents are here for the long picture - 'in good times and bad' - and which were just after some fast money.

What's the Hurry, Henry?

(From The New Entertainer, June Edition 2004)

I was walking down the street the other day, minding my own business, when (out of an orange coloured sky) a car hooted behind me which practically gave me a heart attack. What's the hurry?
It's not like there's any room on the pavement for me to walk which is why I understandably choose the street. The pavement is full of trees, cracks, holes, dust-bins, ONCE stands, chairs and tables, parked motorcycles, telegraph poles, telephone booths, low flying shop awnings (duck, or lose an eye), an old iron bench, a half-filled skip, prams and trolleys, visitors from the north (who evidently don't know the rules), shop signs, accordion players, traffic directions and postcard stands. Many motorists have parked at least two wheels on the pavement, which varies arbitrarily from several metres wide to the width of a hand. Some flagstones and cornerstones are missing. A dusty square hole suggests a departed tree.
A pavement, in Spain, is rather like the tile skirting in a room: it's there strictly for show.
So there I was, walking down the street, dodging the pedestrians, cars, motorbikes and ice-cream carts when this car honked behind me! Not that I took any notice.
The cars are double-parked down the High Street, the Calle Mayor, some with their emergency lights on giving the impression that the drivers will soon return. A bus disgorges passengers from the middle of the street while the traffic waits with more or less patience behind. A motorbike with several passengers takes to the pavement. Its exhaust pipe appears to be missing.
In front of the bank, work-men are inexplicably painting a new zebra crossing. They will just do half the street (protected by red cones) this morning and perhaps they will return tomorrow to do the rest. Perhaps not. There's a zebra crossing on the other street which was never finished, as if the diligent street-crossing pedestrian will be obliged to give up his object in mid-flow, or perhaps he'll pass obligingly through into another dimension. Like most of the people in the scene, I am only faintly interested in what the painted white stripes are for: a decoration...? a service...? Do children try just to walk on the stripes for good luck?
In Almería city, the town hall has painted them in attractive red and white bands. The opposition councillors are complaining: they should just be in white. Preferably a white that fades after a few weeks...
A family of gypsies is standing on the pavement now, just opposite a zebra crossing. Are they thinking of using it, or is it just a comfortable place to stand. The traffic hesitates slightly in doubt. But no, it's just a variation of the companionable group standing on a street corner, chatting away agreeably while, inadvertently, breaking the flow. Who's in a hurry anyway?
Seduced by the white lines, a visitor lurches into the street. Streets are indeed for crossing, nobody disputes this, but the white lines are not there to make you forget to look at the oncoming traffic, or to forgo waving a rolled up newspaper at it. A car pulls to a halt as the visitor heads blindly across the street towards the souvenir shop: the car behind swerves and accelerates past the first one, narrowly missing the opportunity to make the 'sucesos' page of the provincial daily. The nearby municipal policeman, shocked into inaction, decides it is time to go and have a quiet nip in the English bar. Perhaps he won't have to pay.
I am sat at a nearby table under a spreading tree, trying to ignore a panhandling dog who somehow thinks I might share my tapa with him. Buggeroff I tell him, flapping my paper in his direction. Shame tuts an oily Englishwoman at a sunny table nearby. The dog edges hopefully towards her. It growls at an approaching street vendor clutching several miracle spanner kits and a fishing rod. Looky looky, he mumbles disconsolately at the Englishwoman as the dog edges him off.
I get up to pay, to find that someone has picked up the bill already. The bank manager... the cop... or, surely not the barman? He's an Atletí supporter.
A wave of horns echoes down the street as the double parked cars take their inevitable and regular toll. It's a perfect moment to amble across to the shade and check out the blind man's lottery results. Money back or try again! A bicycle has been chained to the bench in front, slowing the pedestrian traffic down still further. I'm not too judgmental about this, seeing as the bike is mine. I release it from the bench and we slowly walk along the street towards the port and the prospect of a fish lunch. I'm not in a hurry.

Feng Shui at Astrid's House in Mojácar

Sevillana (Endesa) has been busy the last few days erecting pylons across the rambla from Mojácar. The mayor, D. Gabriel Flores, together with his team of buffoons, appears to have done nothing about this situation.

Wake up! Wake up!

A couple of Parties Selected from Wikipedia

There are now 3,099 political parties in Spain, with 30 new parties being registered every day last month. This means there is now one for every 10,000 inhabitants.

Here's a couple of them (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia).

Citizens for Blank Votes (Ciudadanos En Blanco) is a Spanish political party.
In Spanish electoral law, a distinction is made between valid votes, blank votes (votos en blanco) and null votes. Blank votes are interpreted as correctly executed votes for "none of the above", and consistently about 2% of votes are blank. Voting "blank" is not the same thing as abstaining, and so it has been argued that blank votes should be recognized as legitimate by apportioning empty seats in representative bodies according to the number of blank votes. Abstainers, the argument continues, exclude themselves from the democratic process and so need not be recognized in this way.The platform of Ciudadanos En Blanco is that, if elected, their candidates will leave their seats vacant, until such time as the Spanish electoral law is reformed to recognize blank votes in the manner described above. At that point, the party will have no more reason to exist.

The Overwhelmed and Annoyed Citizens (Ciudadanos Agobiados y Cabreados) is an extraparliamentary Spanish political party.
They are principally annoyed at the justice system in Spain.
Not to mention overwhelmed.

Vera becomes a City

José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, the president of Spain, has recently bought a bungalow on Vera Playa for a modest 440,000 euros. Actually, it’s not very big, at 120 square metres, and it used to belong to an Englishman who no doubt took a tidy profit. The problem (according to Interviú – a racy Spanish magazine) is that Vera is planning the largest re-zoning of territory in Spain, with an estimated 400,000 new neighbours to lean over the wall of Zapatero’s pad to ask if they can borrow a cup of sugar.
The magazine estimates the profits for the builders of the Vera urbis of 115,000 homes, countless hotels and golf courses, at around 8,000 million euros. To do this, Vera needs to become a special ‘zona estratégica’ to ignore the strict new building rules being brought in by the Junta de Andalucía. The magazine reckons that if the plans put forward by the eight surrounding town halls were to be approved, then the Baja Almanzora would be, in a few years, the largest urban concentration in Spain – larger in area than Madrid.
Of course, there’s not enough roads, water, electric and – if we keep on putting up basketball courts – then beaches as well.
It’s the politicians to get to make these decisions, sometimes with a little help. One builder taken away recently by judge Baltazar Garzón's tax police, had this written in his computer: ‘if we get what we want, we shall pay XX 35 million and a further 15 million for the party’. Pesetas, perhaps.
The dry ramblas – river-beds – are filling with houses and shopping malls. Flooding is inevitable. You want green space? How about the space inside the roundabouts? That’s green (according to the Vera town hall planners).
Unlike 94% of the entire municipality of Vera – to be under brick and mortar.

The Record Books

Ah - Mojácar. Always different.
The politics here are different as well.
Take the 2003 elections. Out of an electorate of 2500 voters, we had nine parties to choose between. Thirteen seats and nine different parties. It could only end in tears.
And so it proved. Currently, at the dog end of the legislature... and four years down the line... we have ended up with just six councillors in the ayuntamiento of which - lemme see - all six of them are considered 'transfugas' or 'deserters' by their respective ex-parties. Yep, we have an entire government representing precisely nobody.
But wait, there's more.
I'm working in a political group which will hopefully bring in the forasteros and extranjeros into local politics. It's called Ciudadanos Europeos de Mojácar. See the website. Now, together with the CEM, these are the following groups and parties.

CEM Angel Medina and me as 'number two'.
PP with Rosmari Cano
GIAL Diego García
Partido Andalucista with Diego Marullo
PSOE briefly with Beatriz Gomez - now to be led by Beatriz' son Felipe
Asamblea de Izquierdas with Carlos Cervantes
Partido Democratico de Mojácar (a catch-all party of transfugas)
Partido Independiente de Mojácar with Maati (town hall weenie)
Partido Socialista de Andalucía (Pedro Suarez from the swimming pool shop)
Mojácar Nueva with Enrique the Eccentric
Partido de Almería with Diego the Petrol Station.
Izquierda Unida with Patxi Rubio.
Partido del Levante Sostenible (comes from Levante sin Cables) with José Luis Artero (the non-aligned councillor who famously brought down the Carlos Cervantes government two years ago) .

Solidaridad

There's an arresting looking picture that is on the blogspot for the CEM, http://ciudadanoseuropeosdemojacar.blogspot.com . If you don't vote, then you can't complain! The local elections are upon us and it is important that the foreign residents who have the vote inform themselves about the different parties on offer (most foreigners can vote - those from the European Union plus the Norwegians, who are over 18 and on the padrón).

The CEM is a local party, as its name suggests, just for Mojácar. With enough support, there will at last be European councillors in the Mojácar town hall.

Bah Humbug

So why would the increasingly soviet government of Zapatero push through its ‘most important piece of legislation’ just now, after two years of running the country? The legislation in question is to give women equal rights (very laudable). However, to produce this new set of rules just now, just before the local elections of May 27th, when one of the points is that women should hold at least 40% of the list of every and any party. That's cynical.
Wonderful, say the women, who will immediately award a gold star to the socialists.
It’s only fair, say the men, who will give a silver star to the socialists.
In fact, it’s absurd. The voter will vote according to his conviction. A party without any women candidates won’t receive much support from the general public - anywhere in the Christian world.
To manipulate the very voting process is vile and disgraceful. A group will select the best and most qualified people they can – regardless of sex.
Hey Mr Zap, what about women priests or female Masons? How about female footballers (forty per cent of Real Madrid would be nice). Are you going to move against them as well?
There is an answer to those political groups who had prepared ahead of this idiotic new law and are a bit top heavy with the men – you can now declare yourself a woman without a ‘snip’ or indeed a psychologist.
Yes, in soviet Spain, that’s a perfectly legal solution.

Whatever You Want

Batasuna advierte al Gobierno: 'Sin Navarra no queremos nada' The title says that Batasuna, the 'socialist', nationalist (and illegal) party that is the political wing of the ETA wants to add Navarra - an independent state with little interest in either Marxism or rebellion - into its fold or 'no deal'. Now the government is falling over backwards to be able to say to the voters - 'look, we have tamed ETA!' and, to this end, has allowed a terrorist called Iñaki de Juana Chaos to be sent from his prison sick-bed to a hospital in the Basque Country and from there to home detention once his health improves from his long and agonising hunger strike (remember Bobby Sands). Iñaki is remembered for having murdered 25 people in his heyday.
The Basque extremists reckon that - since Navarra was not only part of the Basque Country from 1006 to 1035, together with three French provinces - it should be returned as part of a package. Furthermore, they think that Pamplona (the capital of both Navarra and the right-wing Opus Dei catholic organisation) must be the capital of this new, Marxist state.
And Zapatero wants to talk to these people.
Encouraged by events, ten prisoners in Almeria's unpleasant prison El Acebuche have now said that they will go on a hunger strike until they are sent home to Mum.
In other news, the president's new (written) nickname comes from how you pronounce ZP in Spanish which is 'zeta pe' or rather ZETAP. Very clever...!

Pamplona will be the host of a public protest against the neighbouring nationalists' claims of annexation on Saturday 17th March. The ZP govt. doesn't think we should go...

Media Monopolies

That great apologist for democracy, the Zapadente of Spain, has cajoled the Supreme Court into changing its rule about radio and television licences. The idea was, no operator could have more than 50% of any one market but, don't you know, the free market economy should take care of that. Well, mix ‘free market economy’ with politics and you get the chap who supports your government receiving all the licences and the advertising revenue that goes with them. So, in the PSOE nación of Andalucia, the Ser gets the lion’s share of the radio stations (they were even given ours by Chaves, forcing the COPE Mojácar to re-tune elsewhere). In fact, in Andalucía, thee are hardly any COPE stations – and the few that survive are on the Medium Wave (not under Seville’s control).
Now, new licences are available – thanks to the government – in, uh,… just the PP controlled towns and cities throughout Andalucía. Guess who is going to get all those nice new licences.

The Ser, by the way, belongs to Spain’s answer to Murdoch. He is called Jesús Polanco and he appeared on the scene at the same time as his friend Felipe Gonzalez. Polanco also controls Canal Digital (Canal Plus satellite TV, the only satellite system in Spain), ‘El País’ the leading newspaper, many other newspapers and magazines (‘La Voz de Almería’ being one of the seediest); ‘Santillana’ children’s school-books (plus, of course, the content therein), Channel Four TV (‘La Cuatro’), and massive businesses and media monopolies in Latin America.

Some New Apartments

Poor Steve - that's his house, the white one you can hardly see to the right of the crane. His land is rather easier to see - it starts on the other side of the huge gash in the valley there and wanders off behind. Of course, he can't build as much as a bee-hive there, while the front bit is the second stage of a mass of apartments (off scene to the left).
The Seprona people (the branch of the Guardia Civil that deals with 'the destuction of the natural habitat') put him on to 'Costas' which deals with coastal and river-lands. This, claims Steve, is a dry river bed, a 'rambla'. You can't build in a dry river bed because every ten years or so, it becomes a raging wet river-bed for a day or two. Well no, he was told, it's a 'barranco' - a 'ravine'!
Except his bit.

The Strange Case of the Murdered Mayor

There was a board-game on the shelf, a game I hadn’t seen in years. If I tell you that Colonel Mustard was found, dead, in the library with a bloodied candlestick lying next to him, you will probably remember the afternoons sat on the floor all those years ago, surrounded by your family and friends, as you struggled to unmask the murderer.
I’ve forgotten if you used dice, or cards, but the game was called Cluedo.
In Spain, murders are usually as humdrum as they are anywhere else. Usually it’s a family member and the case is quickly solved. Sometimes it’s a terrorist, whether from the Basque Country (ETA), from Catalonia (Terra Lliure) or, as it appears, from North Africa as in the case of the 11th March 2004 bombings in Madrid.
Sad little murders performed by frustrated husbands or scheming step-mothers; together with dreadful killings committed by enraged and disturbed individuals to make a political point. Murders where the victims are usually unknown to the killers and the only criterion is ‘how many can I kill?’
However, Hercule Poirot would have been pleased this winter by the murder of the mayor of Fago, a tiny and forgotten village in the far north of Spain, located at the end of some sorry track high in the Pyrenean province of Huesca.
Fago has just thirty inhabitants and all of them were initially under suspicion after the mayor was found dead, in a ditch, with four heavy-bore shotgun wounds to his head and face.
There were many different motives as well. Miguel Grima had held back on hunting licences, had stopped the village bar from putting out tables and chairs and had upset the local farmers as well.
So one night, as the snow lay quietly on the hills around, a few sharp explosions woke the villagers.
On the death of the mayor, the nation’s press came to the tiny village to search for details. A gruesome murder and a handful of suspects. Was it Mrs Purple, who said she was in the kitchen… or Father Black who was in the church? Perhaps that vixen Miss Pink had something to do with it, or the postman, Mr White, or, as he clearly prefers to be called, Señor Blanco.
The police were also much in evidence, taking down the details of everyone’s alibis and checking the corpse and the crime-scene for clues.
The general feeling gathered by both the press and the detectives was that no one in the tight-lipped community cared for their alcalde. He had been mayor for more than a decade, and had managed to be involved in some fifty court-cases against his fellow villagers or the occasional home owning ‘week-enders’ for all kinds of spiteful reasons. There was no one to mourn him and, as one villager, loosened by a glass or two of wine, suggested to a Daily Telegraph correspondent - ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’.
The murder of the Partido Popular mayor occurred on January 12th and three weeks later, after the nation had been pulling out its collective hair in curiosity, a man stepped forward to take the blame. I did it, said the PSOE candidate for the village’s top job.
Santiago Mainar has been in prison since the beginning of February, and was briefly seen by the public as he was transferred to the provincial clink. ‘I’m innocent’, he shouted, to the evident frustration of the police.
A week later, another man turned himself in, claiming that he had pulled the trigger of the shot-gun: one-two, one-two. He was quickly released. ‘We have our man’ said a police spokesperson, unconvincingly.
The case is still open and the details remain elusive even if the motive is clear. But then, everyone had a motive. Perhaps they cooked up the whole plot in the bar (at an inside table). A bottle of blood-red wine and a few glasses. A whisper from a little girl. ‘Daddy, I found this game’.

Sevillana v. People Power

The electric company Sevillana was stymied in its attempt to raise a pylon on private land behind Turre on Tuesday 13th February. A band of labourers were erecting the offending pylon when the owner of the land and a group of people from Levante sin Cables Aereos arrived and 'took possession' of the field. You can see from the picture that this particular piece of land had been ploughed ready for planting a crop. As the two sides took position, a company engineer called the police and eventually a stunning twelve of them arrived. While a few people were quite excited by what was going on, the general feeling was calm, although a crop-dusting helicopter working the area passed overhead spraying something over the company - probably Nembutol.
The scene reminded me of a book called 'The Milagro Beanfield War' where a developer needs to run a large water-pipe over a smallholder's field of beans.
Eventually, the day was taken by the protestors and the engineers were sent away by the police, who agreed that their expropriation papers were not in order.
On the following day, Sevillana were once again sent off the land by the police, as they still didn’t have the right documents. By Thursday 15th February, The engineers were looking for other activities as a judge in Seville failed to give Sevillana a judicial order to remove the protestors from the land. A victory for the 'little guy'.
On a more serious note, the overhead cables are coming. The lack of available power (!) means that those delightful new apartments being built along the Mojacar coast cannot be occupied as they can't receive a new electricity licence from Sevillana (part of Endesa, the company due to be sold to the German E.On soon). The solution to the shortage of power is to build another line - eleven kilometres with at least 42 massive pylons, 25 metres high, stretching from Los Gallardos to Mojácar, running over private land, near houses and along the riverbed below the mountain town of Mojácar, disturbing the view.
The simple answer is either to build the line underground or indeed to bring the power on another line from Carboneras where Spain's fourth largest (and dirtiest) power station is located.The regular surges and snaps in the local electricity current are due, says Sevillana, to them being right on the brink of a meltdown. This is patent rubbish, as the amount of power used at this time is considerably less than during the summer months and Sevillana is just playing a game of brinkmanship.
Another tactic, according to press reports, is for the company to encourage the developers to make representation themselves, arguing understandably that their buildings or urbanisations need electricity.
Since, of course, Sevillana acts as a monopoly, it is hard to go up against them and the company has become used to steamrolling over any complaints.

Levante without Overhead Cables

The LSCA 'Levante sin Cables Aereos' is run by the well known local historian Juan Grima. The lawyer for the group is José Ramón Cantalejos, who is on record as saying that some landowners might have paid an ‘under-the-table’ fee to move the line away from their estates. The group has an English branch which is chaired by Jeanne Henny and she encourages as many people as possible to join. ‘Only with numbers will our voices be heard’, says Jeanne.To join in, contact Jeanne on lscaextranjeros@aol.com or fill out a membership form (available from The New Entertainer in the Radio Cope tower at the Parque Comercial on Mojacar Playa or at the Campsa Petrol Station in Los Gallardos), with fifteen euros membership fee.

Between the threat of expropriation and demolition of homes, the overhead cables, the water line in Sopalmo and, eventually, the trench between the coast and the hills which will house the AVE high-speed train, it is increasingly evident that the local residents must take an interest in the local infrastructure and become involved in their municipalities, their politics and their future.

Sopalmo Protest

Sopalmo is a tiny village between Mojácar and Carboneras. Today it was the scene of a protest against the water company, Aguagest, which wants to run a mains water pipe from the Carboneras desalination plant, straight through the village, and to build a large water deposit just above. As Spanish watchers will remember, a water deposit just above a centre of population can be dangerous, as happened in Melilla a few years back, when nine people died after a prefabricated wall in the the water deposit gave way - see La Semana November 1997(http://www.lasemana.es/037/soc.html ). Today, the protest went off peacefully and one can only hope that the publicity will have some effect. Curiosly, Mojácar is under threat from various large companies - Aguagest, Sevillana (who wants to destroy the view from the village by building a line of pylons), various shady speculators (as usual), and the government (who wants to devide the entire valley into two parts, the left and right bank of the AVE high speed (no stops) train).
Strong government is needed!

Second-rate

It's hard work this new version of Blogger.
Ahem. About the axe-head. I bought it in a weak moment from a large ferretería on the beach (who everybody who knows, knows who). As usual, it was made in that bit of China that even the Chinese avoid, and after returning home with this thing, and following a couple of healthy swings against an intrusive branch, the neck of the damn thing broke and the flying axe-head nearly brained the dog.
I usually don't use this joker on the beach because he is the old style 'never give a sucker an even break' sort, and most if not all of his stock is rubbish.
Take the plastic skillet that, when I tried to lever a fried egg out of the pan, the skillet actually melted into the mess. The frying pan where the handle fell off (probably the weight of the egg and skillet mixture). How about the garden fork, where the tines bent backwards the first time I stabbed the earth with it. Or the anglepoise lamp with the springs missing (people often wander around the shop looking for bits missing from their own purchase, and they will feel no pain at all as they wrench a fresh spring, cog or whoojumy off of one on the shelf). Then there was the garden trowel where the handle fell off - turned out there was no metal bit inside the handle to give it any strength at all!.
I almost always go to one of the other ferreterias, and come home with reasonably good stock. But this place...

The Record Book

Mojácar leads the way once again! The town was the premier tourist destination thirty years ago and its totem, the Indalo, hanging from a gold necklace, was recognised as readily in the Kensington High Street as the Faubourg St. Jacques. The town’s name was known throughout Western Europe, even though no one knew what province it was in. Walt Disney came from Mojácar: Antonio Bienvenida the famous bullfighter had a home here. The one day vice president of Spain, Alfonso Guerra had a place as did the future president of Andalucía Rodriguez de la Borbolla. Famous Spaniards and some notable foreigners, together with a clutch of jolly bars and a well-founded reputation for fun made Mojácar the best known resort in Andalucía after Torremolinos and Marbella.
So, it took a while, but our inept political class eventually trashed it.
Soon, we filled the beach with houses, apartments and basketball courts, brought in the tour operators and sold the Indalo logo to the Almerian tourist board. We removed the statue of the mojaquera with her cántaros from the route of the new motorway (and, for several years, even the road exit signs for Mojácar). We overbuilt with no thought to the infrastructure and the beauty of the area; we dumped Walt Disney while – at the same time – we attempted to turn our small and agreeable community into an embarrassing copy of Disneyworld.
Soon, the pueblo, the real Mojácar of old, became so difficult to reach, that many people, admittedly attracted to the area because of the box-like white village on the hill, spend their time ruefully admitting that they never go ‘up there’ any more. There’s no parking, they say, and the town now sells little more than tee shirts and comical ashtrays anyway. Much of the old charm of the pueblo has been pulled down – the original arches that led out of the Plaza Nueva, the Arco de Lucinda, the old fuente, the old Castillo… Structurally speaking, the town hall appears to be decorating the pueblo in a similar ‘tee shirt’ style, with little winking coloured lights and sunken spotlights and orange street lights and some neon…
Our summer guests appear to be more concerned with graffiti than with history, with reproduction pottery than with art and with bathtub gin rather than a cocktail at The Laughing Gibbet.
So, from being not just the leader of the province in fame and notoriety, Mojácar has now slumped behind Roquetas, El Ejido, Almerimar, Aguadulce, Vera, Cuevas, Albox and probably Carboneras as well. It’s now ‘small fry’ which is why we don’t get much support in infrastructure from the Junta de Andalucía or the Diputación Provincial. Well done, our local politicians!
However, it is appropriately in the subject of politics where Mojácar has once again risen to the top, broken the mould and astonished the type setters at the Guinness Book of Records.
As readers may recall, Mojácar fielded nine parties at the last election (a record in itself) of which six groups received enough votes to produce our thirteen councillors. After various changes, betrayals, court cases and accusations of impropriety, the situation by Christmas was that the two councillors from the PSOE (although, without the support of the rank and file membership) were running the town with the help of three other councillors that had deserted their own parties (and their voters) in favour of continuing the agony that this legislature has become. How many voters do they think that they are representing?
At Christmas, Angel Medina resigned from the GIAL (one of the opposition parties) and actually…. Went home!
Well, nothing like that had ever happened before. A councillor resigning and giving way to a fresh face; instead of… taking another group’s shilling and staying on as a ‘turncoat’, a ‘transfuga’. Very twenty-first century! Where will it all end?
With Angel’s departure from the opposition benches, a new councillor, the next on the list, arrived to take his place. This was Matthew Shatford, the first foreigner to get into a town hall anywhere in Andalucía and the first, of course, for Mojácar.
This excellent news, to have a ‘European’ in a local council, must be tempered slightly by Matthew’s unconventional ‘first day in class’- where he left his party and crossed the floor to join the government of Gabriel Flores who now controls a rag-bag of six councillors – just one short of a majority.
The prize for all this is a large chunk of publicly owned land which the mayor is anxious to sell, to contribute towards old debts incurred by the massive fireworks, free pop concerts, lights and decoration of the past eighteen months. With still one person short of this prize, the mayor must turn to other sources to pay the bills. A previous mayor sold off the Indalo – perhaps this one could sign Walt Disney over to Vera…