The Trouble with Towels

It’s the simple things that catch you out.
Like towels.
We had spent a couple of nights after the Mojácar fire camped in the office on the beach. There’s a small pied-à-terre up in the tower above the office – connected by a twisty climb of around sixty steps – a room equipped with a superb view of the sea, the mountains and, on a clear day, Gibraltar. There’s a fold-away bed and a tiny bathroom with a cold-water shower. Perfect.
The tiny apartment has probably been the host to all sorts of excitement in previous years (although my lips are sealed) and a cold shower is no doubt just the answer after a long climb up all those steps. It hits you when you are out of condition – slogging up sixty steps, then having to go straight back down again for supplies. Yoghurt, beer, smokes, shampoo and towels: the usual iron rations. Unfortunately the towels that I bought from the supermarket a considerable distance below were those highly coloured ones designed for the beach which, being made of polyester, are guaranteed to be one hundred percent non-absorbent. You would do better trying to dry off (after that cold shower mentioned above) by rubbing yourself with a sheet of glass.
What is the point in that? A towel that might look the goods, but doesn’t dry! It’s like a friend of ours who once came out from England to stay with us. Pork sausages and tea-bags scattered among his valises. He had rented one of those old fashioned bathing costumes you are likely to see on Blackpool Pier naughty postcards. A sort of vest and shorts in red and white stripes. I believe it even had a belt. The label from the costume shop said ‘don’t get wet’.
In the end, we left him on the nudist beach.
Our new towels each have a label on them with the ‘ingredients’ listed, in their case, in the ten languages of the ten EU countries (and no doubt a few other places outside the control of the Brussels demons) where these remarkable articles can be bought. A non-absorbent towel, despite its unarguably good-looks, would probably be a non-starter in any cold northern country. You’re not going to sell many of them to the Finns, it seems to me. So the polyester content was merely written in those ten languages: same, same, same, one with an accent, same, something in Greek that no doubt sounds like polyester (come to think of it – it probably comes from the Greek anyway), polyester again and then, the Romanian maybe, to be a bit different, with polyesther. All, as noted, lovingly written on the little white (polyester) label. Think about it, it’s a truly international word! Ugly perhaps, but even the Hungarians have thrown away the opportunity to introduce a completely different Magyar word which meant the same thing. And you know how important it is to keep the language pure – and safe from foreigners.
It’s the biggest difference between the United States of America and the (one day) United States of Europe (plus Turkey and, with a bit of luck, Serbia). Language. Well, and towels. In the USA, everyone speaks some form or other of English. There’s a bit of French in Louisiana and some Spanish in Texas and New Mexico, but essentially, everyone speaks English – even when they don’t. The immigrants to the USA want to join in, to become ‘Merkens. Not the same over here in Europe at all. Half the people just in England don’t even speak English. If there are currently twenty seven countries in the European Union, there are a lot more official languages than that. All supported by different kinds of dim-witted bigoted regionalists busily and angrily pushing their own confusing (but frightfully old, antique, practically millennial) languages. A generous chunk of the Spanish flat-out refuse to speak the language of the motherland, unless, of course, they’re talking to someone from another weird bit of the country… they’ll use Spanish as a lingua franca.
I says: ‘Uggh’.
So thank goodness for polyester, a word that cuts to the quick of our confused linguistic mishmash; unlike cotton – a useful ingredient, I would have thought, to put in towels and other articles of clothing. Baumwölle, algodón, coton, bumbac, pamut etc.
I rang up the manufacturer. ‘Sí’, said a voice. ‘Sí’ I answered back playfully. There was no ‘Yes, good morning, Consuelo at the phone, Plastic Towels and Underwear Incorporated. How may I help you?’ Consuelo, a Spanish girl’s name that ends, confusingly, in ‘O’. No wonder we can’t get a handle on the language. Sheesh!
‘Listen here,’ I say, ‘why don’t you use a bit of cotton in your towels?’
‘Well’, she answers, ‘we could, but there wouldn’t be any room on the label’.
‘But they don’t absorb’, I say, the water pooling round my feet. ‘They’re no bloody use’…
The first towel, the one I got, a simple design in red… yellow, green, puce, pink, orange, mustard and ochre, would have been just the thing to tie to a flagpole on a low-lying island in the Pacific. How ever much Global Warming helped the ocean wash over the land, that flag would always be there, defiant, colourful… and bone-dry.

Last Days

Somehow, August is the month where it finally dawns on us that the heat has gone on for far too long, where we’ve been battered and bowed by too much tourism, where the nights have been too noisy and where everyone who we need to see for some pressing reason – lawyers, doctors or politicos – have closed their offices and gone off somewhere on holiday on our shilling: like the Seychelles or the Dominican Republic.
In August, many of our local cosmopolitans return ‘home’ to Britain or Germany to see their families, escape the heat (we are on ‘Alerta Naranja’ today) and to have a decent pint of beer. So there’s no one about who we know except for the restaurant and bar owners, who are all far too busy to stop and talk to us anyway.
August is a good month to stay in. Use the pool and send the kids out to do the shopping. Read, watch the telly. Swim again.
In my town, August ends with its fiesta popular. The local saint, in our case one Agustín (patron saint of sangria, ugly buildings and bad haircuts), is celebrated with a noisy piss-up. In Spain, a patron saint’s day is extended, according to the size and wealth of the town, to several days or more. Almería City (currently in its fiestas) used to have a ten day thrash (where everything was essentially closed and one dressed up every evening in flamenco costumes or a clean shirt and jacket and went out and ate gambas and got rat-arsed). Now, with the current crisis, it has been reduced to a mere eight days. Naturally, everyone is hysterical about this, although at least the top name bullfights and a few major concerts and a shit load of fireworks are still de rigueur.
Here in Mojácar, we have just four days of fiesta, starting this coming Thursday and running through Sunday August 30th. No bullfights, no name-bands but, of course, plenty of things that go bang. Late, late nights and lots of volume. Dancing in the square. You won’t be sleeping much later on this week…
But, right after the last string of paper flags has been cleared up on the following day, August takes its bow and we enter into September, the very best month of the year.

Strength in Numbers

There’s a new service on our local radio: it re-broadcasts a three-hour program from London put out, apparently, by the Sun newspaper. So now, those of us who live here can keep up to date with what’s going on ‘at home’. The latest gossip about those sterling characters that are too important to appear on such a channel, as re-told to the breathless costa-dwellers. The frothy mixture interspersed with bits of news, the weather forecast (for the Thames Valley no doubt), some pop songs, some politics-lite together with other wholesome and instructive entertainment.
Sometimes, living here is a bit like what one can imagine must occur on Pitcairn Island, the tiny and unapproachable island in the south Pacific, taken over 150 years ago by the mutineers from the Bounty.
‘Ahoy there Mr Christian, any news from London?’
‘No Mr Christian …’
Of course, there is one clear and obvious difference. Each year, crisis notwithstanding, our group is growing larger. More and more people are re-locating here, anxious to join in. Our children have often moved to Spain to be with us: in some cases, they’ve been born here. We may be grafting here, or we may be retired, but we will have worked hard in our past lives from wherever it was we left behind, to come here and to call this home.
We have many skills and countless experience and we are prepared to offer our help and advice to improve our new neighbourhood. So why don’t they ever ask us?
The longer we live here, the less important our old country of residence becomes. The less urgent to catch up on the latest activities of shallow and plastic characters that we only know of anyway from watching Sky television. How much future each of us has is down to fate, but there’s no doubt but that our future is here.
To be fully comfortable living here, we must know our way about. Not just the geographical constraints of our pueblo and indeed our province, but we must find out how things tick. The culture of Spain, the kitchen, the traditions, the history, its society and, as far as possible, its language. These are all crucial elements to living here in comfort and in peace.
But there is more, we must be satisfied with our own society. To describe ourselves as ‘Brits’ or ‘Expats’ or ‘ingleses’ or ‘guiris’ or some other slightly insecure or perhaps negative term, is a weakness. To think of ourselves as ‘colonials’ or ‘exiles’ (like our interbred friends on Pitcairn) or ‘immigrants’ or even as ‘future Spaniards’ are all wrong and perhaps even slightly absurd. The colonial works to become wealthy with the intention of returning home; the exile has his nose pressed to the glass, anxious yet unable to return inside. An immigrant is here to better his lot: to find work and dignity. As for us becoming future Spaniards, even those of our children who are born here will tell you that such a thing is not easy. We are, perhaps, ‘émigrés’, living here because we can.
Our lives here are fine. We live well. As long as nothing goes wrong, we have nothing to fear. We live almost in a different or shifted dimension from the Spaniards. We walk past them, but sometimes we suspect that we could walk right through them as if through a ghost. They are here and we are here, but we are not, quite, here together. We tolerate them, they tolerate us.
Which must be our fault. Our mistake. We say we must try harder.
In fact, the problem which our group faces is a different one. We have yet to create a ‘society’, or ‘an entity’. Being an ‘Expat’ doesn’t quite make the grade – it’s as if we used to be ‘a Pat’, but got demoted somehow. We need, it seems to me, to become proud of ourselves, of our group. In fact, we need to become a group. Believe me, the local people would not only understand, they’d treat us better.
There’s a word which a friend, Christine, brought to my attention which could work. Cosmopolitan. It would make things a lot easier. We could dispense with ungainly terms like ‘Europeans’ (does that include Spaniards, what about Americans?), the ‘Brits’ (what about the Germans, the Dutch and so on?) or even the ‘Extranjeros’? I am sure that the local Spaniards and the political institutions would respect us more, if we could leave aside the apathy and unite as a proud group, with fresh ideas, enthusiasms and energies for our towns and parishes.
Locally, society is divided not between the Spanish and the Foreigners, so much as between the Local Spanish and everybody else. The town halls are run exclusively by local people (with a few rare exceptions) and they are staffed exclusively by local people. In my town (Mojácar), we have well over 50% Cosmopolitans (I’m using that word now), yet all the public jobs go to the local, ethnic people. This is because we have been happy, in our majority, to allow this to happen.
In the old days, when there were but a few foreigners living here, we would look out for each other. The British embassy was never going to move a finger (its job is to promote British industry abroad) and the Consulate’s only obligation is to sell us another passport or extend some ‘home’ benefits to us abroad. When there were only a few of us, we would help each other out: drive those in need to hospital, translate for them, wine and dine them (as necessary) and join together when the chips were down to buy them a ticket out. Now, we are too many and we lack an identity. For this reason, perhaps, we have associations, clubs and circles. But, precisely because we are weak, apolitical and inert, we are picked upon. We are a powerful group. All the money that circulates here is (or rather was) ours. It came from elsewhere. We have homesteaded here because we love it, because we find it beautiful and peaceful. Yet, when some threat looms, we shrug our shoulders and, unbelievably, we put up with it.
Imagine what we could do, those of us who have the intelligence and the experience, whether we are Britons, Germans, Norwegians, Americans or Madrileños, if we became, truly, Cosmopolitans.

Stuck at Home

I've been stuck at home for the past week, after breaking my foot in some odd and pointless way. After the Mojácar fire went through the estate back on July 23 - 24, cornering for me the local charcoal market, I had been obliged to buy a whole lot of garden-hose and to tell the local water company that their hook-up was all burnt and melted. They fixed their pipe, but didn't replace the meter (free water while the sun shines!). So, with a hundred metres of hose and a wheelbarrow, I went on up to the top of the land to hook up the set for a good flushing. Maybe some of the five hundred trees planted by my dad back in 1969 would only be singed. So, first thing, I put my foot down wrong and fractured a bone somewhere. I went to the emergencia in town and then off to Vera for X-rays. Got wrapped up tight and sent to bed.
My wife has had to take over the squirting and soaking. Poor Barbara - no help either!
Yesterday I was lugged off to see Miguel, the chap in charge of taking note of losses incurred by the local landowners. I had prepared a list which didn't fit the proper reclamación so together we bashed out another one. This is for the Junta de Andalucía: sign here and here... and here.
Say, Miguel, how much is a forty year old pine tree worth anyway?

Property solutions in Sight, Maybe

Almería is suffering at the moment, with the famous ‘crisis’ beating down hard on the province. Unemployment is over 25% and house-sales, as we know, are non-existent. Although the Government (in the shape of us, the taxpayers) has bailed out the banks, the banks are quite determined not to lend us – or return back to us if you prefer – as much as a penny. So, don’t count on me for investment in the near future.
While we are probably all sick of the subject of ‘illegal houses’ which has catapulted this province to worldwide fame, I was disturbed to read the other day that the so-called six thousand illegal houses, after some counting by those who claim to speak in our name, has now been re-adjusted upwards to 11,000. No doubt, many of these homes – each one owned by an understandably concerned family – can be legalised by the same authorities that have deemed them ‘in an irregular situation’ in the first place. It may cost a bit to fix them, but, what are the banks for?
Oh, right.
Then there are those homes, a mere five per cent, which are – presumably – even more irregular than the house built by the Priors in Vera a few years back and which, like the Priors house, will all need to be flattened. Five per cent of 11,000? That’s 550 houses. They are probably right about some of them, like the ones that were built in a dry-river bed in Cantoria practically in view from the mayor’s window.
But, how will this play on the televisions of the world? Will this ‘putting our house (ahem) in order’ encourage the foreign investors to return to Almería, bristling with cheque-books, credit cards, euros, pounds and roubles?
The ‘Paradise Lost’ show, which features Cantoria, was apparently seen on British TV on June 28th by 3,820,000 viewers who will most likely not be buying a home in this province in the near future, or creating jobs for that matter, and, to add fuel to Almería’s falling reputation, the ‘Homes in Hell’, featuring the Prior’s house getting nuked, was once again shown the following week, presumably to similar numbers of couch-potatoes, who may well be thinking of leaving Britain for good, but would be quite as happy living in Cyprus as in Spain.
To battle this, there is an association of foreign property owners – not one of those groups of people who actually own homes at risk, or are foreign, but an official one, run by the building cartels. I’m not making this up. It’s the authority to whom one turns when one wants to know about the Brits for example. The group is called ‘Live in Spain’ (even the name is ambiguous) and they claim that ‘The prospects predict that, in the next five years, 800,000 new foreign families will establish their second home in Spain’. The association has a preferred slogan ‘España destino golf’ and indeed prefers to call the Malaga coastline the ‘Costa del Golf’. The president of ‘Live in Spain’, Manuel Gandarias, who used to preside over the controversial ‘Puerto Sherry’ (home of the prestigious ‘Hotel Yath Club Puerto Sherry’), told the El País newspaper recently that, to bring back the foreign buyers, ‘…one would need to create a platform between companies and banks to better present the Spanish product in the countries where buyers can be found, especially those in recuperation. Such an initiative should also have the direct support of the Spanish state’.
So, let’s spend our way out of the housing crisis with some more tax money. Don’t fix the problem, ignore it! It would be a lot cheaper, it goes without saying, and a lot more useful for Almería, if the ‘Spanish State’ just coughed up the appropriate compensation (and a grovelling apology) to the Priors. But no one knows about such a thing. Those television shows haven’t been screened here.
Another solution is to criticise those who ‘are rocking the boat’ as it is making things harder for the presumably unrepentant promoters. A group of this type, based in Albox, was briefly active making fools of themselves before they threw in the towel sometime last autumn.
More usefully, there was a meeting in Turre the other day between some representatives of the local home-owners groups, like the AULAN, the AUAN, the Cantoria Residents Association, the AVEP, Levante Sin Cables, the Ecologistas en Acción and a senior Junta de Andalucía politician from the opposition Izquierda Unida who appeared willing to take note of the problem. He will raise a motion on the issue of the illegal homes when parliament reconvenes in Seville in early September and he promised to fight for at least the first three points in the ‘Decalogue’ (produced in the spirit of the Auken Report) of demands and recommendations from the property groups. These are:
COMMISSION OF INVESTIGATION: A national commission of investigation be established, with representatives of the administration and citizens’ groups (including those for the protection of homeowners’ rights and the ecologists), to investigate the existing grave planning and environmental problems, to draw up a report on the causes of said problems and their possible solutions, as well as recommendations for the future.
ARBITRATION: The creation of a special administrative commission that includes a provincial public ombudsman, advised by independent investigation services, including representatives from the administration and from citizens’ groups (including those for the defence of individual property owners and ecology groups), and with arbitration powers in relation to disputes concerning these problems, available to affected parties free of charge.
RESPONSIBILITY: The liability of developers, the administration and pertinent third parties, for having given rise to the grave planning and environmental problems which exist, must be made enforceable and real. Any process of regularisation should, as far as possible, include binding agreements (including adequate guarantees) between those who have caused the irregularities and the administration, and these must include the opportune measures so that those who caused the irregularities compensate for the damage caused.
The politico, José Antonio Castro, also took away a dubbed-into-Spanish copy of the Cantoria section of the ‘Paradise Lost’ video (linked here to YouTube).
Meanwhile, we hear that the different property-owners associations spread across Spain, led by the notorious AUN from Valencia, have morphed into (take a deep breath) ‘La Federación Española de Asociaciones en Defensa de los Derechos Humanos y en contra de los Atropellos Urbanísticos y Medioambientales’. The acronym is the easier to use ‘FAUN’. We wish them every success.

Mojácar on Fire

Picture by Adrian.

A fire started yesterday in the hills above Turre and, with a strong wind, it crashed down through Mojácar. We slept on the beach in a friend's house. Our own home was engulfed but, on inspection today, the house seems to have survived although everything else looks like the Seventh Circle of Hell.
The fire by late last night was on three sides of where I was staying. Inland and east and west.
We had been at the house, watching the red sky and worrying. Fiddling with the hose. Making vague plans.
It comes down on you like a train. We had perhaps a minute's warning from the police to GET OUT GET OUT before the trees were on fire. We went down into the dry riverbed nearby and watched the mountain behind our house go up like a volcano. The air was hot and dry. Local people came past with their stories. Others on their phones shouting news.
We had a neighbour with us who had been burned when her car caught fire and exploded. We took her to emergency on the beach - fighting against the current on thousands of cars making for Garrucha. She seems OK this morning.
Mojácar doesn't.

Now there is talk of some fire-bug having started the blaze and, they say, experts are coming down from Madrid with their kits to investigate. The real concern must be towards building fire breaks (!) rather than chasing some phantom lunatic with a mechero. The city-based environmental weenies can't run the countryside. Well, they've proved that.

Updates, by the way, on The Entertainer Online

Camel Train

Well, I'm going to go with the majority on this one. Oh, look, what a good idea! Camel rides along the Rio de Aguas on Mojácar Playa... or... Are you freakin' nuts? Next thing they'll remember that Walt Disney was born here and have Mickey Mouse havin' at ya.
The camel caravans - seven in a nose to tail lope around the beach, with two nice gentlemen from North Africa - is the brainchild of Ursula, a German veterinarian who has been working the dromedaries in Lanzarote for the past few years.

Café Con Leche

Spain has always had an interest in milk, even if, until recently, you couldn’t find a cold glass of it anywhere.
The old milk was a definite bluish colour and came in a 1.5l glass bottle with a short and narrow neck and a metal cramp, like a coke bottle. This stuff could sit in the sun for weeks without losing its taste and often did. The blue colour came, apocryphally, from the formaldehyde that kept the mixture quiet. It didn’t taste good, which probably explains why breakfast cereal came late to Spain.
Pour that stuff over your Frosties – the milk would eat ‘em up before you could….
Later UHT milks from different companies, now in the tetrabrik box, became acceptable for coffees and so on. An English tea-bag, smuggled out in the carry-on luggage by someone coming-to-stay, would be pretty badly shaken by being diluted by this stuff, but you can get used to anything. Nowadays, we even have sippin’ milk in the supermarkets. Tastes pretty good, too.
While milk has never been considered a serious drink (despite the best efforts of some of the producers to tell us different in the usual kids adverts), it has certainly spawned a whole slew of versions. We have milk with vitamins, milk with calcium, skimmed milk, partially skimmed milk, milk with royal jelly, milk with acidophilus (a handy bacteria apparently found in drool), milks with Omega three, phosphorus, folic b and fibre, specially flavoured chocolate, vanilla and strawberry milks, rice milk and soya veggy milk. All competing for your attention on the shelf. How many times have you brought home the ‘wrong’ one? Bertha, what the hell’s this stuff?
The hardest one of the entire lot to find on the shelf of the supermarket seems to be ‘full bog-standard milk’. It’s like ordering Vanilla in an Italian ice cream shop.
In point of fact, I doubt any of those UHT milks (with additives or indeed subtractatives) ever loitered under a cow. Certainly Mrs Rambeau’s pet calf, Petit Suisse, refused point blank to drink one particular brand, the Valencian-produced ‘Leche Ram’, a sort of ‘can’t believe it’s not milk’ product. I see it’s since gone pear-shaped. Perhaps the calf knew something.
At the same time, yoghurt has done just fine. I think I first tried yoghurts here in Spain as a child. The Danone people (a company from Barcelona), were putting out their early flavours by the time I first arrived here in 1966 (they actually started in 1919, selling the stuff in farmacias) and apart from the plain one (add jam and sugar), there was at least a strawberry one going strong. A strapping young fellow called Danon, after whom the product was named, died the other day at the impressive age of 102, so the stuff can’t be all that bad for you.
Forget dithering between the strawberry and the banana varieties: in these modern times, there are an untold number of flavours clogging up the nation’s cold-shelves, with anything that grew on a tree or a stalk being processed into a yoghurt cup. You can now even get ‘Greek yoghurt’ (thicker than the usual stuff). Currently in three flavours and sales, by all accounts, growing through the roof.
Spain is not, with this notable exception, very kind to Greece, preferring for some odd reason to pretend that it doesn’t exist (try and find a Greek restaurant, a pair of crapcatchers or a decent bottle of ouzo).
Together with yoghurt, another milk-based little number on the shelves is guajada, rennet made from sheep’s milk. It comes in a little stone pot. With a squirt of honey, it’s pretty good in an ‘ummm, this tastes healthy’ sort of way.

Ice Cream

Spain triumphs with its ice creams. The main area for ‘artesanal’ ices is the interior of Alicante and Valencia provinces, notably Jijona (also famous for its nougat). Across the country, heladerías dot the main streets and offer dozens of alternative flavours. They (thank goodness) are all licensed, so you can always put a shot of whisky on top of your tart. In fact, tarta al guisgüi is one of the best and most august of Spain’s postres, together with the traditional old block of hard ice-cream with two or three flavours (vanilla, strawberry and chocolate) that you make a sticky sandwich out of. In regular Spanish bars across the nation, there is usually a deep freeze full of cornets and lollies together with one of those large cardboard signs on the wall above advertising the different flavours, shapes and styles of ice cream, available or not.
In the milky dessert range, we find the crema catalana (a custardy thing with a crunchy topping of burnt sugar), arroz con leche (an oversweet rice pudding), the natilla (another custardy thing) and the ubiquitous flan, the crème caramel. Then, there’s leche frita, or ‘fried milk’ – it comes in caramel covered chewy lumps – to try as well.
The cheeses available in the past used to either be that dreadful Dutch bola – a large red ball of tasteless dry queso, or a thin slice of cream cheese in silver foil from those fine people at (I hope appropriately called) The Laughing Cow, or the remarkably good Manchego, made from a mixture of milks from goat, cow and sheep. No doubt in the old days topped up with a drop of formaldehyde. More recently, we can add blue cheese, processed slices of industrial pseudo-queso, babybelle and cheddar, plus a few shy home-made Spanish cheeses from the north (Idiazabal for example) edging onto the shelves.
The butter used to come in a sturdy round can from Morocco. Probably started out as camel’s milk. You needed a tin-opener to gain entry. Which explains why we still mainly use margarines for our pieces of toast.
Before the fridge came along, and those fat blue bottles of Puleva were still being used for arcane cooking reasons, Spaniards would often put condensed milk (which I think came from Holland) in their coffee. They still do, and as a ‘bonbón’, one of over a hundred different types of café you can order from the bar, your ‘black n’ white’ coffee will give you a pretty good kick-start in the morning.

No Straight Lines

There’s an exhibition of sculptures by Bruce Cameron, a Londoner who now lives in Oria in north eastern Almería, in the nearby town of Olula del Río. Olula del Río (there’s an Olula del Campo nearby) turns out to be a bit of a dump, although it has one of the most astonishing art museums, the Museo Casa Ibañez, where the exhibition is being held. Bruce is a spry 70 year old and has been working with wood, ceramics and metal – here driftwood from a 1987 flood in Dorset – since his first exhibition in 1975.
The exhibition is being held in the Museo Casa Ibañez, which is a large private museum owned by Andrés García Ibañez who, as the pictures here show, can’t half paint! He has an international following and favours grotesque portraits of curas, policias and politicos (and sometimes royalty as here) together with delicate portraits of women. The twelve room museum also houses a collection of XIX and XX Century Spanish art, including Sorolla, Villegas and Fortuny.



In the presentation (first picture above) Bruce is on the left. The woman, second from left, is the councillor for culture from the diputación de Almería (the county council). On the right is Andrés García Ibañez, who in his speech, noted that the public authorities spend almost nothing on culture and the arts. García Ibañez actually covers most of the cost of the museum himself.
The exhibition and museum are open to the public evenings from 7.00pm - 9.00pm Tuesday through Sunday. Mornings (with a guide) call 950 441 000 (español).

Wall of Sound

It was a noisy week, between the fiestas from our village, starting at 11.30pm the other Friday and running through to the Sunday evening, and those celebrated in the town next door, which managed to raise five nights of music and party-time from the Saturday until the final bonfires of San Juan the following Wednesday, whence, I must add, our village returned to the fray, hung-over but defiant.
We had undergone the Moors and Christians bash, an annual tradition stretching back all the way to 1988 when someone thought of a merry way to attract some extra tourism, and to loose off the town-hall’s collection of fireworks while getting everyone to dress up as Moors (granny’s night-shirt), or Christians (old army clothes).
Or rather, it was the time to rent some expensive and amazing costumes from those places in Alicante that stock the different outfits and to try not to get beer or pinchito-juice all over them. It was a chance to remember, or indeed to re-invent, the story of Mojácar’s fall to the invaders in 1488.
The town was taken by the idea and enthusiastically divided itself up into supporters of the two faiths. The socialists donned Moorish garb and the conservatives went with the Christian outfits. The town’s under-employed pyro-technician, who until then had scampered about on the church’s roof on New Year’s Eve, blasting powder off to celebrate the occasion, or during the fiestas in August blowing tens of thousands of euros in thunder-flashes and other delights of the ancient art of keeping everyone awake, was naturally ecstatic. Moors and Christians means flashes, crashes, explosions, bombs, booms and bangs. Powder under the fingernails as he and his acolytes fire great chains of fireworks that will light up the sky (traditionally from the glowing nub of a cigar), or launch those ear-splitting rockets so beloved by fiesta-goers in Andalucía.
There are six bands or record-thumping lunatic DJs in the six barracks plus another band in the main square during this particular fiesta, together with the disco-bars with their terraces and open windows. More explosions. In all, a cacophony of sound that shrivels the soul. In Andalucía – or probably for that matter in the rest of Spain – a party that begins at 10.30pm, or half past one in the morning, won’t stop until ‘late’ – which usually means ‘sometime the following afternoon’.
That was on the right hand. On the left, Garrucha was enjoying its five-day run up to San Juan (the fireworks and bonfire on the beach with a sandy and agreeably raw sardine as the excuse - another modern festival designed, once again, more for the visitors and their fat purses than for the residents). Five days of ‘battle of the DJs’. Our house is located somewhere equidistant between these two towns, in an area described by the previous owner as ‘quiet and bucolic’.
So, I had to stay in with the windows closed and a clattering fan from that strange shop on the beach attempting to cool things down, tormented by some erratic but persistent explosions and the bass-beat from a hundred discos passing easily through the doors and down the chimney; the dogs going nuts, barking and throwing themselves at the door or whimpering under the bed as I curled up on the soaking mattress munching sleeping pills, or then there was the Plan B: a breathless walk up to the main square following the ‘if you can’t beat them’ philosophy. What's a person going to do?
The idea of Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’ must have come from a fiesta. It’s to keep the spirits away. Or, if your spirits come in a bottle, then judiciously mixed and drained repeatedly. Only the Spanish can claim a ‘hangover’ as a reasonable excuse to miss the following day’s work.

Down in the Bar

Now, I’m the type who can normally hear a pin drop – well, a fairly large pin, a rolling pin for example – but once there at the bar having pantomimed for a beer, with music coming from one side, a specially loud coffee grinder in action on the other, several televisions with different football matches going on, or a bullfight, together with a dozen different conversations typically held in high bellows, roars of motorbikes outside and a few explosions across the street to help wash things down, I find that my directional hearing is starting to falter, either that or I always end up having my drink with someone like Whispering Dave.
Have you ever grinned, nodded, grimaced and twitched at somebody in a loud bar without having a clue as to what is being said? This is, in fact, a popular pastime (despite the raised voices) and, to encourage this, bars have tile floors, hard surfaces, and walls and ceiling with as little decoration (which might in some way ‘eat’ or deflect the sound) as possible. Since everyone knows that the only interesting person in a bar is oneself, it’s not worth wasting too much time attempting to listen to other people’s views. Anyway, there’s a really good show about fireworks just started up on one of the tellies.
It is said that Spain is the second noisiest country in the world, after Japan. The only reason that Japan manages to be noisier, and this is something which Spain feels is a bit unfair, is because of the paper walls used in construction by Japanese builders and promoters. An intriguing idea indeed: the Murcians are said to be making tests. That and people shouting ‘banzai’ at odd hours. It all adds up.
But we have much to be proud of. The children here are encouraged to stay up late and really let rip with their lungs. Most of the people dancing in the square the other night at three in the morning when I got there were under nine. A small child’s bellow, given full and frank encouragement, is a wonder to behold and it is here, as the kids attempt to accompany the over-dressed singer’s stellar version of ‘Pajaritos por aquí’, that the citizens of the world’s second noisiest country begin to lose their hearing – and, come to think of it, their taste in music.
Which is why, to truly communicate in Spain, one needs to gesticulate heavily. It helps the flow.
The cinemas – especially the summer open-air ones with their open bars and loud conversation – are good places for guests to this country to learn the language and catch up with incipient hearing loss. Lip-reading doesn’t work, since the characters on the screen have been dubbed. They’re also probably saying something more interesting than the original script-writers ever imagined anyway.
I’m not complaining, having now lost most of my hearing from living here so long, I suppose that I would feel completely isolated in Switzerland, where everybody whispers.
To really get the best out of Spain, you must speak up!

Sticky n' Steamy

It's hot here in Southern Spain. The electricity bill has just gone up (again) and we can't afford, and don't have, aircon in the house. So, we get up early and we have a good siesta during the afternoon. We drink lots of fluids, including cold beers, and move slowly, except when transfering ourselves from one piece of shade to another. We are in Orange Alert, although, contemplating the tourists on the beach yesterday, I think it should be better known as 'Pink Alert'.
So, early each morning, before the day starts in earnest, I check the Internet. Just like you do. I see the Spanish news sites, I answer my e-mails and I check the forums, blogs and other interesing sites about Spain - all available on my The Entertainer Online, updated daily.
Dang, wouldya look at that - suckered in on an advert!

Don't Let Them Eat Cake

Do you remember ‘the Twinkie Defence’? This was the story of some mad bastard who ran into the mayor of San Francisco’s office many years ago and shot several people to death, including Hizzonor. The Californian police, failing for once to shoot the ‘alleged perpetrator of this heinous and unprovoked attack', carted him off to clink where, no doubt, he was treated to ‘advanced interrogation techniques’. All correctly administrated and in the nicest possible way.
Well, the pesky defence lawyers got hold of him and discovered that he had ingested a couple of cup cakes before bursting through the doors of City Hall. Their defence was based on this simple meal – the sugar in the cup cakes (or ‘Twinkies’ as the Americans call them) had gone to his head.
Imagine what he might have done if he had eaten an entire box of them.
Here in Spain, cakes are to be seen and admired, but never, ever eaten. They vary from the ones made out of (some white stuff that looks like) confectioner’s cream, with sugar added, some extra squirty stuff from a can, some more sugar, and some sugar. The better ones have a glass of sticky rum splashed over them to make them scrumptious (I’m beginning to sound like the Sol Times). No, I’m kidding. They’re horrible.
We had to buy one the other day for a child’s birthday. ‘Hapy Birhtday to Jonhathon’ was lovingly picked out in vermillion paste across the top of this monster. Luckily Jonhathon isn’t much of a reader and failed to notice the errata. He nevertheless picked up a valuable lesson after finishing his second piece of the confection.
Always sit near the door.
At home, we disagree about cakes. I like a fruit cake prepared several months before, stuffed with cherries and whatever else it is they put in those things and covered with marzipan and icing; while my wife prefers something dry and chocolaty with a wisp of sickly ‘frosting’ dabbed on top. She’s American of course.
But the Andalucians. OMG. The best place to start with local cakes is at the Bédar fiesta where you can admire a range of er, sweet things usually covered in enthusiastic if incautious wasps. These marvels of the cakemakers' art are usually designed more for show than for tell. They will be old, hard and stuffed with ‘angel hair’, also known as sugared pumpkin mush. The icing will remind the gourmet of the stuff the Turre barber uses after finishing your haircut – sets like cement, crackly at first but later turning into powder. The entire cake, built to both look good and to last, should never be eaten on an empty stomach.
There is a local version of a Christmas cake; it’s made with bread-flower and small chewy bits which turn out to be chicharrón – pig’s crackling. These are mixed in with some other bits of angelica and other dried fruit. Which leads to a question for the ‘Ask the Reader’ page. What does fresh angelica look like? The Christmas cakes also follow the dangerous British custom with the sixpence by putting a small metal virgin somewhere in the mix. A fashion no doubt invented by dentists.

Sweetmeats

Andalucía, under the control of the Moors for many centuries, enjoys something a bit heavier than a sponge cake covered with silver crunchy things. The usual fillings (which in Morocco or the Middle East can be quite delicious) include dates, nuts, dried fruit and lashings of honey. One of those babies and the Twinkie Murderer would have settled for a good sleep.
But the most likely place to find a cake is with one’s breakfast. We have ‘Napolitanos’ which are buns filled (or rather ‘spray-painted’) with ‘cream’ or ‘chocolate’. They vary from warm and good to dry, old and rancid. You can dip them in your coffee – sometimes, indeed, you are obliged to. The most popular bun is the ‘Madalena’ which is a simple and rather tasteless sponge scone. Well, spongy anyway. It comes in a plastic sack. The ‘Cruasán’ is the Spanish croissant, made with pork fat rather than butter. Not very good as a rule, especially when it’s been on the cake-shelf for a couple of days. There are a few brand-name cakes in plastic packets, chocolate Swiss-roll types of things, including an frightening looking pink one called a ‘Pantera Rosa’ which I both imagine and hope is banned in the Greater San Francisco area. Lastly, the ever-popular and industrial doughnut, the ‘Donut’, which comes in assorted flavours and a truly alarming collection of chemicals, food additives, colourings, flavourings, preservatives and conservatives. Personally, I love ‘em.
As our area has enthusiastically grasped the nettle of the Twenty-first Century, where you can no longer find a simple salad on the menu, or pig n’ chips without an endless complication of sauce and adornment (I had slices of strawberry surrounding my lamb chops the other evening in a Mojácar hostelry), so, too, our coffee shops have improved in the cake department. We have Italian, French and British cakes, scones, pies and doughnuts which are a far cry from the Bédar fiestas. Places where these are served are usually heavily patrolled by diabetic sparrows, anxious to die at an early age in a blissful sugar-rush.
Many alcoholics, when they give up the demon drink, are said to turn to sweets. Cakes, ice cream (delicious in Spain), chocolates and sticky things in plastic cups. I wonder if they have an effect. Did George Bush turn from booze to Twinkies – and was the War on Terror the unhappy result?

The Club Taurino Mojácar

The other day, the British Bullfight Club, more properly the ‘Club Taurino Mojácar’, gave a talk at the Vera Bullring. I was joining in to see the building, which stands sentinel on the edge of the city. A rather large crowd was inside playing with the wheelbarrow/bull’s head thingy as I arrived. Shrieks and photographs. It turned out to be a busload from the Imserso old people’s club. From Barcelona or somewhere. The Spanish are great believers in having a jolly time when on their hols. Waiting round the corner near the statue of Juan Belmonte, a bullfighter who gave his last fight before retirement here in Vera (apparently amongst other places), was the rump of the Club Taurino, decked out in shorts and sunhats. The president of the Vera bullfight appreciation club - where there’s a bullring there’s a peña - wearing a wondrous expression on his face (the Vera club is easily eclipsed in numbers by the Mojácar CT), said a few words about how we were all invited for a glass of fino, just as soon as the builders were out of his club, which was undergoing repairs. Mike Hathaway, head, and with his wife Audrey, organisers of the various activities of the club, took over the microphone as we trooped in. Here is where the main gate is, that’s the infirmary and the chapel and so on. There’s a capote (yellow and purple cloak used for bullfights) – see how heavy it is. We all paused to try and lift it. Those matadors have strong arms!
Inside as you enter through the main gate through the gloom and up some stairs passing under one of two arches into the stands of the main arena, as your eyes suddenly adjust to the bright light, you find yourself in a piece of emotion and history. Mike knows a lot about his subject and, by now sat on a cement bench overlooking the plaza, continued with his talk
I’ve always liked bullrings, even the Vera one which is apparently ‘third class’ (to do with its size, not its character). The Vera plaza de toros starred in the final scenes of Antonioni’s ‘The Passenger’ when Jack Nicholson, who has taken the passport of a dead man, lies dying in his room in a grotty hostal, ‘built’ for the occasion just outside the bullring.
I left Mike and his group of aficcionados and disappeared into a nearby bar. It was getting very hot in the bullring, where the primary colours of blue and yellow were waiting to be joined by the red. Sometime in September.
The CTM has an event every Thursday, which is to be commended. There are around 140 members which is quite astonishing, and the club is apparently the only ‘English’ taurine peña in the business, apart from one in London – the Club Taurino de Londres and another in New York

Trip to Huescar

Several weeks after the visit to the Vera bullring, Ángel Medina – the councillor for tourism in Mojácar, organised a trip to Huescar, a small town in Granada, for a tour around the pueblo, lunch, local product-tasting, some serious boozing and a bullfight.
Around 55 of us took the early morning coach-trip and, by 11.30, we had arrived in the town and had wandered into the nearest bar for a coffee. A guide from the tourist office called Juan would take us around the sites, the new and old parts of the town (Christian and Moorish, you could say), through some exotic town-gardens, down narrow touch-both-walls streets and into some impressive buildings, including the ‘Little Cathedral of Toledo, in Granada’, the Iglesia Colegiata de Santa María la Mayor – a church which until recently, was under the tutelage of the Bishop of Toledo. It had taken 250 years to build, starting in 1600 as a gothic church and ending up with renaissance influences. The tour through this church was given by Brother Carlos, a missionary from the ‘Heraldos del Evangelio’, dressed magnificently and supremely knowledgeable on the church and who appeared to be fortuitously between trips to the heathen.
Lunch followed in a large restaurant on the edge of the town, a joint clearly prepared for coach-parties. Most of us had the local speciality – a haunch of lamb. Delicious. We were taken by bus to the tourist office to try and buy local produce, including mead (well, it’s been a while for me. Not since school, I think). Then to the bullring, a modern but arrestingly beautiful plaza de toros in the middle of a quiet street, with just a small entrance to mark its position.
The bulls were ‘novilladas’ – two and three year olds – and the matadors were young fellows, between sixteen and eighteen. We had a large sign announcing our club which we had tied to the rail, opposite the Canal Sur cameras. Well, it’s not every day a party of slightly pink Britons descends on a small-town bullfight.

To find out more about the club, go to www.club-taurino-mojacar.com.

Nicked

Who needs to employ some foreign SOB when we've got those clever programs on the Internet to help with translations, or better still, Young Bertín, who once spent two weeks in Bristol?
Whaddya mean, we look like stupid rubes? We're the Guardia Civil!

Hot Spain

Man it’s hot. The soaring temperatures here in Spain have made it almost impossible to move, yet impossible to sleep either. The bed is soaked and I’ve wrapped a towel around the pillow. I’ve got the fan on – which wobbles alarmingly and blows dust and a noisy breeze over my recumbent figure.
Parts of the country are in ‘orange alert’, which essentially means 40ºC and up. Seville, Cordoba and Jaén are always the hottest bits, with the appropriately named Extremadura and indeed most of the rest of the country not far behind. Madrid in the summer, with the added heat from the breathless streets and avenues, is almost impossible. By August, everyone has left and the city belongs to the tourists.
Right here, just a few kilometres from the Mediterranean, it’s still relatively cool according to the experts. We are probably just hovering in a laughably unimpressive ‘yellow alert’ or something.
There’s no air/con in the car, but the window works. I drive with as much of me sticking out of that window as I can manage, pulling myself back inside on blind corners like a careful turtle in a pool full of ecologists.
The answer is to buy a cave. They are more or less the same temperature all the year round. That is to say, warm in the winter, cool in the summer. The old ones have fleas, but the modern ones are spiffy enough, as long as you don’t mind narrow rooms and no windows. You also apparently don’t pay ‘rates’ on them as they occupy no surface ground. Better yet, if another child or a long-lost relative suddenly joins the family, you just get out the spade and start digging. When Global Warming really begins to bite, I’m away to a cueva.
But right now, it’s a cold shower and a nice cup of tea. Piping hot, two sugars.

Four Wheels on my Wagon

Have you seen the latest offer from the government to get that smile back on your face while the economy lurches forward into the famous if somewhat clichéed Land of the Green Shoots? Simple. You take yourself along to the dealership and choose a new coche. I’d take the blue one, but each to his own. Just say to the chap with the huge smile and the gentle smell of too-much Brylcreem that you’d like to buy that one over there and watch his smile falter slightly as you toss him the keys to your old rattletrap. As long as it’s ten years old or more (apparently the average age of cars in Almería is an impressive fourteen), he’ll have to take it in part exchange, knocking, between one thing and another, two thousand euros off the price of the new one.
Now there’s a deal.
A deal I shan’t be picking up on, personally. You see, I don’t think much to new cars. They lose a third of their value the moment you get them out of the showroom, and somebody is sure to put a ding in it within a few days. Which won’t help the resale value either. However, if you intend to keep it for the next fourteen years, then a ding or two won’t matter much. My current transport is covered in them, together with a small and rather curious type of purple moss growing out of the rubber around the windscreen.
I’ve only ever once bought a new car here. It was a SEAT 1450 Whizzer which retailed at the magic price of 500,004 pesetas. I learnt that day that our friends the local businesses aren’t always great salesmen. I went in and pointed at the car, waved a check-book and said gimme. A man with a flared suit and half a pint of Varón Dandy dabbed behind his ears sauntered over and, to my surprise, told me I’d be much happier with a Renault 4 which, by a happy coincidence, their competitor sold just across the street. I had never seen this kind of salesmanship before and insisted, even making a joke about the extra four pesetas. I should have listened; the car was a lemon of the first order. I eventually gave it to an ex girlfriend. Come to think of it, they went rather well together.
Normally, I’ll buy old crocks. They are usually overpriced and the ashtrays are always full, but they’ll do nicely around here. No one steals them and they won’t have heated seats, swivelling headlights or navigation systems – so useful when you are driving to Garrucha – but they will generally do the trick and if the dog is sick on the back seat, hey, well who’s gonna care?
One car I bought off a dealer was an old Mercedes, like the one that Lady Di was in on her fateful drive through the Paris tunnel. That thing weighed several tons and I am sure that, at 120 kph, if a Fiat Uno were to hit it going the other way, there wouldn’t be anything left of the Italian car bigger than a piece of dust. So much for conspiracies. I had bought the car sight unseen – it was during the days when I ran a newspaper and this was a reputable advertiser from Alicante – and, to be frank, I had expected something a bit smaller (and, after the number plate fell off one time) a bit less imported. Still, it went pretty well for a few years.
And it did have those all-important heated seats, which tended to switch themselves on at odd moments.
The fastest car I ever owned – or ever drove for that matter - was an old Italian car fitted with a six litre Chrysler engine that I saw in a shop window in Madrid and immediately bought. It was in reasonably good condition even if it didn’t have much in the way of brakes. I drove it down to Mojácar scoring several speed records. This car was very fast and could beat the limit while still in first gear. Not much use, but fun to own. A young neighbour tried to fix the brakes and ended up trashing the speedometer – which rather took the pleasure out of driving it around. I eventually sold it for a song to some collector and it’s apparently now all fixed up and worth a fortune. But can you drive it down the playa for a beer? You see? Useless!
The finest cars ever made were the Citröens. The old ‘dos caballos’ 2CV was a splendid car made out of bits from a sewing machine. It would do 0-60 in about twenty minutes and, instead of interior-sprung seats (to say nothing of heated ones) it would have two deck chairs in the front held on by rubber bands. Between them and the suspension (more rubber bands) going round a corner in one was always going to be fun. It also had the push/pull gear stick which disappeared into the dashboard and changing gear was rather like stirring soup with somebody else’s arm. The Guardia Civil were kitted out with a special police version of the 2CV – it had a spare engine in the boot. I’m not kidding, there’s still one in Cuevas.
The best Citröen that I had was the GS. It had the clever suspension which rose up and down at the touch of a lever, useful when on ‘high’ for crossing rocky streams; and for settling firmly on the ground when parked on a yellow line, making it impossible to tow. Once I was thundering along the beach in this one that I had been given by somebody who had left for a better life in Canada. Playing with the knob and bouncing up and down. I was just overtaking another car when – bang – the bonnet of mine suddenly sprang open from the lock on the front and, caught by the wind, it curved over the windscreen and roof with a crunch. Blinded at 80kph! I stuck my head out of the side-window and kept on going. Anything else might have been dangerous. The other driver’s jaw fell open in horror as he contemplated this scene in the left lane alongside him and he ended up in the sand. It didn’t seem like the moment to stop and offer to lend a hand.
I later bought another bonnet from the desguace – in a different colour, just in case – and kept the car for another year. Now who would want to swap a thing like that for a new Veedub, that doesn’t even have an ashtray?

How to Vote

If you are living in Spain, over 18, non-Spanish European and have asked for the right to vote (that's around 350,000 people) and were wondering how to - then this one's for you.

The European Elections are this Sunday 7th June and the polling station is nearby. If you live in Mojácar, it's at the school (up in the Campo de Fútbol behind the pueblo). Indeed, in most other villages it'll be in the school as well. In Mojácar, there are four polling stations, A - M and N - Z, 'pueblo' and 'playa' kind of thing, so check with the lists outside to be sure which room to use.

To vote, you go into your room and go behind the curtain to choose the ticket from one of the 36 different parties running in Spain and you fold one of the 'papeletas', unmarked, inside the envelope. Spain is just one constuency for the European elections, so you have the same choice of papeletas as someone in Bilbao (although, of course, the Bilbao ones will be written in two different languages, Spanish and Basque).
Take the completed vote to the table and show your (photographic) ID. Your Residents Card or passport and silly unfoldable green A4 letter from the ministry will do nicely.
Go and have a beer at the bar round the corner - Ramón's in Mojácar - and feel justifiably proud to have participated.

Round Table on Property Abuse

A meeting was held today at the Best Hotel in Mojácar to discuss the 'illegal homes', 'land grab', town hall corruption and other ills as described in the Auken Report (recently approved in the European parliament in Brussels). Around 450 people came, almost all British property owners from various areas including Albox and Cantoria in the Almerian interior, as well as some groups from Murcia, Alicante, the Axarquía and the Costa del Sol.
The Greens (Grupo Ecologista del Mediterraneo) were also at the meeting - bravely putting up with and answering some tricky questions. Star guests were David Hammerstein (MEP) who explained the power of the European Parliament and Commission and Sean O'Curneen CDL head-of-list candidate and expat.
Who spoke very elegantly.
The meeting was organised by the AULAN with the AUN (Anti-Abusos - ¡No!) who had brought several Euro-MPs over to Spain in the past (Michael Cashman et al) because of the property fraud problems which have done much to trash Spain's reputation abroad. The AUN representative was Jacqueline Cotterill who is deputy mayor of a town in Alicante and Nº 4 on the list of the CDL.
The Priors (whose home was bulldozed down in January 2008 and have been living in a garage ever since) were also present.
They have lots of spare time now.
Some other groups to mention: the Ecologístas en Acción, Citizens Advocacy, Cantoria Residents Association, SOHA, AVEP and the Camposol Residents Association.
Various serious speakers, including Helen Baker (AUAN - the group based around Albox) and Concha Arraez (Levante Sostenible from Bédar) and the irrepressible Christine Fergusson from the Floor discussed the problems regarding the lack of a sensible reaction and policy from the authorities about the huge numbers of (wealthy) Northern Europeans who have decided to live here, and how much this must be costing Spain. The 'Decalogue' - a list of ten demands to the Spanish authorities regarding the rights of home-owners - was also presented and discussed by the different groups. It was agreed that a working party would be constituted between the various groups to work on the Decalogue and approve the final version of the same.
I closed the session with remarks about how the Spanish don't need to attend this kind of meeting (almost no one showed) as they know all about us foreigners from reading El País. For example, we Brits like to buy illegal houses and save a few bob. For example, we all want to go home to England where we have our empty houses waiting for us. For example, there are 330,000 Brits living in Spain (the Foreign Office reckons 750,000 to one million). Indeed, if you want to know about the phenomenon of the two million Northern Europeans living in Spain (for some reason known as 'turísmo residencial'), you don't need to ask any extranjero since we, of course, wouldn't have any idea.
Just read El País.
Thanks to all who attended, and to Alan Sykes who handed four different microphones without missing a beat.
Exciting times.


Pictures by John Bowling.

Press Release from AULAN.

MASS MEETING IN MOJACAR BETWEEN ECOLOGISTS AND BRITISH CITIZENS.

This Saturday a large meeting took place in Mojacar organized by the association campaigning against urban abuses known as "Abusos Urbanísticos Almeriense Levante - No!" (AULAN). The Auken report (which harshly criticised urban and environmental abuse affecting the province of Almeria and other parts of Spain) was discussed in a roundtable meeting between the environmentalists and associations of affected foreigners. Some 500 people from the different municipalities of Almeria attended, including those from the Valle del Almanzora and Levante Almeriense.

Special guest was David Hammerstein Green Party MEP and member of the Petitions Committee of the European Parliament, known for his interventions in Europe in favour of an investigation into urban and environmental issues in Spain. The Auken report was prepared and approved by the aforementioned committee, and was subsequently approved by the European Parliament by an overwhelming majority, despite opposition from the MEP of the PSOE and the PP. The report was harshly critical of Spanish urban planning and even proposed the freezing of structural funds for Spain.

At the roundtable were representatives of Ecologists in Action; the AUAN, an association known for their efforts in support of urban regularisation in the Almanzora Valley; AUN from Valencia, represented by Jacqui Cotteril, a member of Parcent town council; Levante Sostenible from Bedar and the AULAN.

In the audience there were also representative from groups in Almeria: Cantoria Residents Association; AVEP from Bedar; SOHA and Citizens Advocacy from Malaga and Camposol Residents Association from Murcia.

Sean O’Curneen Cañas, European election candidate and head of the list for the Centro Democrático Liberal (CDL) spoke at the end of the meeting.

After an Exchange of views the participants were in broad agreement on the following points, based to a large part on the Auken report:


1. COMMISSION OF INVESTIGATION: A national commission of investigation be established, with representatives of the administration and citizens’ groups (including those for the protection of homeowners’ rights and the ecologists), to investigate the existing grave planning and environmental problems, to draw up a report on the causes of said problems and their possible solutions, as well as recommendations for the future.

2. ARBITRATION: The creation of a special administrative commission that includes a provincial public ombudsman, advised by independent investigation services, including representatives from the administration and from citizens’ groups (including those for the defence of individual property owners and ecology groups), and with arbitration powers in relation to disputes concerning these problems, available to affected parties free of charge.

3. RESPONSIBILITY: The liability of developers, the administration and pertinent third parties, for having given rise to the grave planning and environmental problems which exist, must be made enforceable and real. Any process of regularisation should, as far as possible, include binding agreements (including adequate guarantees) between those who have caused the irregularities and the administration, and these must include the opportune measures so that those who caused the irregularities compensate for the damage caused.

4. PRINCIPLES TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT: The following principles should be recognized and reflected in urban law.

In urban development priority must be given to the true needs of the cities and towns affected, sustainability from an environmental point of view and the need to preserve the historical and cultural identity of the affected areas.

The need for full compliance with community law and fundamental rights, including the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and case law of the European Court of Human Rights.

In the case of demolition of property acquired in good faith by citizens real, effective and prior compensation must be guaranteed. Such compensation must be made prior to any loss and at proper rates and conforming to the case law of the Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights.

The legitimate right of purchasers to property acquired legally must be recognised and criteria established for the application of Art. 33 of the Spanish Constitution with respect to public and social interest in order to prevent and prohibit the infringement of people’s property rights by decisions of local and regional authorities;


5. TRANSPARENCY AND PARTICIPATION: Notice of any planning or environmental proceedings should be communicated individually to all those affected, directly or indirectly; as well as publicised widely; publication in the relevant Bulletins not being sufficient. The possibility of electronic access (Internet) to planning and environmental documents in the process of being approved or approved be ensured. Information in the Cadastral and Land Registry must coincide, and the Land Registry must include graphical information. It must be ensured that the information on the land registry includes information about the status of the property with respect to urban regulations as well as environmental and cultural restrictions or similar.

6. JUDICIAL SYSTEM: There is an urgent need to reform the judicial system to avoid the lack of effective rights before the courts; shortening of the real length of proceedings; computerizing and providing adequate resources.

7. ESTATE AGENTS: Should 1) be licensed or have passed an examination of sufficient knowledge and capacity; 2) have adequate insurance to cover all civil liabilities; 3) be clearly regulated in their activities.

8. PROMOTERS & CONSTRUCTORS: These must be subject to bonds, guarantees or insurance to cover possible liabilities to third parties (including to buyers), and to the administration; for possible planning or environmental breaches or infractions; and proof that such guarantees are in place must be a pre-requisite to present and manage any planning instrument.

9. PROTOCOL: An obligatory protocol for the buying and selling of real estate should be established for the benefit of the consumer, setting out the precise steps and standardised procedures , similar to those in other EU member states (for example the United Kingdom).

They (the participants) agreed to establish a working group, to establish the final version of a Decalogue of measures required to solve the problems that have occurred and to ensure that they do not happen again.

Mojácar, 30 Mayo 2009

info@aulan.es
www.aulan.es

A Brush, a Pen and a Chisel

There is a remarkable mountain just by where I live. It looks artificial. It appears to have sculpted sides leading up to a flat summit. It’s known as ‘Old Mojácar’ or ‘Mojácar la Vieja’ and there are those that say it is the first version of the white cubist settlement that twenty thousand drinks later and half a kilometre to the south would briefly become known as Almería’s leading tourist city – until it was left behind by bad planning and corrupt politics in the mid eighties.
The table-topped mountain, located for some reason in ‘the Valley of the Pyramids’ (who thinks these things up?) is too steep to have ever been a village (‘I’ll just climb across the street and borrow a cup of sugar from Mrs Ughh’) and it would never have been defensible against pirates, corsairs and fifth-century al Qaida warriors and suicide bombers (which I can tell you in those days were pretty ineffectual). There’s not much point in living half way up a stand-alone mountain because, if the defences are breached, where ya gonna run to?
It must have had some other purpose: perhaps it was a religious centre of some sort, a kind of local version of Stonehenge. It certainly looks artificial; as if it was purposely built (they appear to have had rather better craftsmen in those days). If you climb to the top (crossing our land at three shillings each, children half price) you will find the flattened summit has a gigantic tank cut out of it, about five metres deep and appearing to look like an old water reservoir. But how would you fill it? There’s no spring that we know of, unless an earthquake closed it off at some point. There are signs of damage round the back of the mount apparently caused by a heavy tremor in fifteen hundred and something AD. The tank on the top of Old Mojácar is said to be Phoenician but the graffitis thoughtfully painted inside it come from the twenty-first century. You can sit on the edge of the top, with the open cargo hold in front of you, and imagine yourself on a stone barge, sailing the sky.
The mountain has been occasionally excavated, or perhaps ‘expoliated’ or even ‘sacked’, by amateur treasure hunters over the centuries. There are still lots of shards of old pottery and brick lying around among the terrace stones; together with a few of the surviving local tortoises (most were killed in the fire set in Cortijo Grande a few years back). But the large gold figurines which inevitably litter these kinds of places have all been collected and sold to the Yanks.
The process of a place-name comes from the ease of use and the imposition of the conqueror. The hill was named ‘Holy Mountain’ by the Romans, or ‘Mons Sacra’. The Moors changed the name to ‘Muxacra’ which the Christians were to pronounce later as ‘Mojácar’.
A local historian, Juan Grima, says that Mojácar has had several sites, but always in the sierras where, as he logically points out, one could always scarper in times of crisis, and where there was always a spring of fresh water available. The corsairs, you see, didn’t like to hang about for a siege so they would generally try somewhere more easy along the coast.

The cretin who painted his doodles in the mysterious old tank on the top of Old Mojácar is just one of many artists who have come here, attracted by the light, the views and the inspiration in the bottom of a bottle of cheap brandy. The first artist we know of, if not by name, was the one who put up the little stick figures with a rainbow – or whatever it is – originally called in Spanish ‘the little Mojácar man’ but much later known as ‘the Indalo’.

The Indalo

The Indalo, the name rather than the figure, was popularised by a group of artists in the nineteen fifties who settled Mojácar – or at least dropped by on weekends – called the ‘Indalianos’. The name comes from Indalecio, the first Spanish bishop, who happened to come from Urci (apparently now Benahadux) in Almería. Another suggestion, from the colourfully named ‘Flaming Turd’ (I found him on a forum called ‘Conan Completist’) suggests that during an early drinking session, while still casting about for a name for their school, one of the original group of artists noticed that a doll perched on the bar next to a bottle of really quite reasonably priced brandy, apparently distilled in a shed in Murcia, had a similar face to another member, whose name was Indalecio (in point of fact, a fairly common Almerian name). You had to have been there.
Me, I think that the name was lovingly chipped into the wall just under the cave painting in Velez Blanco. With a hammer and chisel bought from an ancestor of López.
After the Indalianos had disgustedly left Mojácar in about 1960 (undone by the march of progress in the shape of the town’s first – and for some time the only – street light), Mojácar’s artistic fortunes declined slightly until Paul Becket arrived a couple of years later, followed by Fritz Mooney, Mompó, Coronado, Roberto Puig, Juan Guirado, Brandybel, Alfredo Pirís, Félix Clemente, Luz Marquez, Peter Honey, Tony Hawker, Jean-Marc Faure, Marisol Stirling, Penny Colman and Isabelle Raths. And that’s just the ones from my collection.
Plus a whole lot more of unusually fine painters, sculptors and so on who have come to live in this area attracted by the light, the views and the aforementioned brandy, now sadly much increased in price.
With them came the wannabes. The flip-side of the coin. The exhibitionists. The graffitists. Usually as young and callow as they are free of any suggestion of talent, they despoil and ruin anything they can. In some towns they are fined, in others, ignored.
Mojácar meanwhile continues to welcome artists (especially rich ones, it goes without saying). There is a municipal gallery and, soon, an art museum to honour the town’s recent resurgence. We also have the Delfos Gallery (with an excellent selection of paintings) and the Fundación Valparaiso. Regular exhibitions are put on at the Hotel Puntazo on the playa. Other groups, exhibitions, galleries and so on exist hereabouts, such as the Gallarte group in Los Gallardos. In Arboleas, there’s the remarkable Pedro Gilabert museum. The inland marble town of Macael is home to sculptors and hosts an annual prize exhibition. In Cuevas, the castle houses a magnificent collection of twentieth century Spanish art (Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Antonio Manuel Campoy).
And no doubt outside, on the castle walls, someone has painted with a magic marker or a spray can the lovely phrase ‘Herbert woz here’.

Painting: Isabelle Raths Webpage.

The Real Story of Gibraltar

In the old days of a century ago, the atlases used to show a lot of pink. This was the British Empire which stretched from Henley to Hong Kong, via Australia, India, most of North America, large chunks of Africa, bits of the South Pacific, oh, and Gibraltar.
A hundred years later, the pink has shrunk to just a ghost of its former glory. There’s not much more than Pitcairn Island, Ascension Island, Diego García (no relation), Rockall, a pizza-slice of the Antarctic decided by some geographer in Greenwich, the Malvinas (where we damn’ well showed ‘em), Bédar, the Scilly Isles and the old part of Benidorm after six in the evening.
And, of course, the brightest jewel in our crown, Gibraltar.
Gib didn’t start off British. It wasn’t discovered by an Old Etonian with a rucksack and a boat-load of natives and, in a sense, it’s only ours because we asked Spain nicely when the patatas fritas were down in 1713 after the Spanish War of Succession, a conflict designed to stop the proposed union of France and Spain in 1700. The war was in essence an early attempt to control the international balance of power. Gibraltar, some pirate gold, together with a few new paintings for the National Portrait Gallery, were the rewards for the British involvement.
The treaty was knocked together by some pesky lawyers. It starts with ‘The Catholic King does hereby, for himself, his heirs and successors, yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging; and he gives up the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever, without any exception or impediment whatsoever’. No mention of an airport, a Marks and Spencers or an off-shore banking scam. But, all things considered, it was pretty much tied up in legal knots for ever.
But the lawyers couldn’t leave it there. They added a bit to keep up appearances and, well, to stand on principle.
‘And Her Britannic Majesty, at the request of the Catholic King, does consent and agree, that no leave shall be given under any pretence whatsoever, either to Jews or Moors, to reside or have their dwellings in the said town of Gibraltar.’
A bit like not letting gypsies overnight in Mojácar (which may still be on the books: it certainly was prior to Franco’s passing).
So Britain got Gibraltar and, for a while, it was a useful place to own. With a few huge guns pointed out to sea from your network of caves, you control the mouth of the Mediterranean. It was also considered as a nice little earner for Britain long before the international association of usurers and bankers showed up with their cash-boxes and sealing wax. In the mid nineteenth century, Gibraltar used to smuggle goods over to Spain (still does, come to think of it). In those days, the main product was tobacco. There was a time when fully one quarter of all baccy smoked in Spain had come into the bay in Estepona at the dead of night. The Spanish government of the day complained to their British counterpart and the governor of Gibraltar was invited to drop by Westminster pronto. ‘Smuggling has to stop’, said the minister, ‘it’s not on, old chap’. The governor disagreed, explaining how the smuggling was saving the British Treasury a fortune in aid to the Colony. The point was carried and the British Government decreed that Gibraltar would be legally empowered to continue with its activities as a smuggler.
Which just goes to show that you should never get between a politician’s money and his principles.

The Gates

Spain has been chasing after Gibraltar ever since it signed the Treaty. Talk about bad losers. According to their point of view, it used to belong to Spain, therefore it does now. A bit like, could I have my house in Vera back – the one I sold a few years ago? You see, it used to be mine! And before that, it used to belong to somebody else. The people living there now…? Well, that’s not my problem is it?
Franco was particularly keen on the Gibraltar Español thing. You’ll find a street in Almería with that name, by the way.
In the second half of the 1960s, the prime minister of Britain, an old Marxist cretin called Wilson, decided that tourists could only take fifty pounds a year out of the UK and that this must be recorded in the back of one’s passport. Even in 1967, fifty quid didn’t buy you too much, so there was a lively smuggling service going on for those of us who had fled England in search of a civilized life-style in Foreign Parts (which involved a lot of cheap drinking). We used to use the services of an Indian called Bullshand, who ran a nick-nack shop in the Gibraltar Main Street and would take an English cheque, leaving you the pesetas, less a modest commission, in a place called Jack’s Bar in Estepona (with just the faintest whiff of tobacco in every envelope). Everyone – except for the absurd Harold Wilson – was happy with this arrangement, which meant a trip down to Gibraltar every few months and the chance to stock up on tea-bags.
Then Franco locked the Spanish side of the frontier. Every day at dawn, the British soldiers would march out, tootle their trumpets and shout strange instructions to each other ‘Abaaht turn Sarnt Major’ and so on, and solemnly open their side of the border with a large iron key. A few feet away, the Spanish border guards would nonchalantly light up their Ducados and leave their gates firmly shut and bolted. A few people who were on the wrong side – one way of another – would gather and shout messages across to the other. ‘Tobacco’ and ‘Has anyone seen Bullshand’, being popular subjects.
For us, and anyone else who started out in Algeciras, it meant a trip across to the North African port of Tangiers followed by another trip back to Europe, Thanks to Franco, a three minutes walk across the frontier had become an agreeable three or four day jaunt (Tangiers was lots of fun in those days).
Gibraltar immediately turned into East London, rising to its best under the threat of invasion. Cups of tea rattled and slopped all over the colony as it was cut off from Europe. The British Government, beginning to cut back on military spending and having not the least interest in its subjects overseas, spluttered but did nothing.
Eventually, when Franco finally left this mortal coil, the siege was lifted and Gibraltar was once again open for business. Unfortunately, Wilson was long gone and money changing was just a pleasant memory.
So, should Gibraltar become part of Spain – a bit of tidying-up that wouldn’t bother Whitehall for a second? Should it remain British like that absurd island off Argentina where everyone wears Union Jacks ‘neath their shirts? There isn’t a third way unfortunately. The Treaty of Utrecht – the one that goes on about Jews and Wogs – doesn’t say anything about independence, say the Spanish, whose interest and concern for the Gibraltarians in this entire hullabaloo is palpably absent.
But let’s leave this argument with the header from a webpage written by a Gibraltarian’s (A Gibo’s Tale).
‘Gibraltar belongs to the People of Gibraltar.
It is neither Spain's to claim nor Britain's to give away!’