Mojácar Rubble

Around a hundred years ago, Mojácar had a population of six thousand people. Almost all of them lived either in the village itself, or in the surrounding hamlets, where water was available. Unlike today, few if any of them lived on the beach: views were not held to be of use then.
The town began to lose inhabitants following a fall in the water table (no doubt from having cut down all the trees), bringing inevitably less agriculture and more poverty. In those times, where the main way in and out was by sea to Garrucha, and the only land traffic was occasional donkey-trains heading towards Almería, Granada and Albox, life revolved around the raw material available locally. The village-folk of Mojácar never fished, and their prime sources of food came either from the huertas, the orchards, or the goat-herders.
An attack in the early years of the last century by a swarm of locusts put paid to the produce for a year or two, and many decided to leave for a better life. A regular ship called El Oranero left Garrucha for the Algerian city of Oran and then on to Barcelona every two weeks, and more than a few local people bought themselves a one-way passage.
The second bullet for Mojácar was the Spanish Civil War which lasted from 1936 to 1939. While the war ended with a Nationalist victory, the defeated side of the Republic (which included the entire province of Almería) was to suffer for many years from further shortages, rationing and privations. More people left as a result - ending up in many cases in Lyon and Marseilles in France (there are still Mojaqueros today who speak Spanish with a French accent), Frankfurt in Germany and, further afield, to Argentina (the Minguito restaurant in the village is a returned family from Argentina).
As they left for a better life, the people of Mojácar were unable to sell their homes. There were quite literally no buyers. The best they could do would be to dismantle their house, selling the rejas, the beams, the doors and the tiles for whatever they could find. These houses, once abandoned, were merely ruins.
The very castle of Mojácar, described in the encyclopedia of 1920 as 'inmutable', which translates as 'unknockdownable', was demolished for its stone.
By the fifties, there was little left of the village. From six thousand, now only six hundred remained. Plans were afoot to be ruled from next-door Carboneras.
Then, the Civil Governor in far-off Almería chose Jacinto Alarcón to be the new mayor. Jacinto recalled that he had to decide where the very streets would go as the village was little more than rubble. He offered to give away ruins to those who would fix them up within a year. There were several takers including a few senior foreign diplomats (the Calle de los Embajadores in the village is tribute to this). His second idea was to approach the Minister of Tourism in Madrid, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, to build a Parador hotel on Mojácar Playa. To his astonishment, the minister agreed and the hotel opened in 1966.
Jacinto's ambitions worked and the fortunes of Mojácar were reversed. By 1965, the village was showing signs of life again.

The Southeastern Desert.

One of the charms of the south-east of Spain is its intriguing desert. Dry hills festooned with a few scrub bushes and a rabbit or two. There are few habitations and hardly anything moving in the scorching heat beyond perhaps a thirsty cyclist and a watchful vulture.

Nothing much grows in the land around Tabernas in Almería (Spaghetti Western country) and up towards Granada, or along the way towards Murcia. To see it from the air is to see the only true desert of Europe.

Here and there among the million hectares of desert we can find some olive plantations lining the minor provincial roads, fed with water from the overstretched aquifers, while the stressed earth under the plastic farms of Nijar and El Ejido to the west is pushed to its limit, filled with chemicals and tired indeed of the very life it creates in such abundance. 

The official spread of the farms, quoted since 2004 as around 30,000 hectares, is understandably erroneous, and local farmers will quote more likely figures of 75,000 hectares under plastic. Plastic which, once perished, is now no longer sent off to China. Now, most of it is dealt with in unsatisfactory ways (90% is not recycled says Greenpeace) – ploughed under, left to rot, chucked into dry riverbeds – and from there to the sea (where some of it ends up, apparently, poisoning dolphins) or sent to official dumps (which often mysteriously catch fire).

El País has published a major study on how to attempt to arrest the desertification of the region, with some brave agriculturists trying out various crops such as almonds, olive, pistachio plus some reforestation (photos here) as the poor soil is lost to erosion through wind and occasional washes of floodwater. The article looks at foreign philanthropists and NGOs such as Alvelal, Commonland and Sunseed Desert Technology.

That the land is bad is no surprise. ‘...The content of organic matter in the agricultural soil of the Altiplano ranges between 0.38% and 1.5%, which is why much of it does not reach the usual organic matter rate of 1.5% minimum, according to data from the University of Almería. These soils lose an average of 1.8 millimetres of thickness per year from the most superficial layer, the most fertile, which means 20 tons of land per hectare. In recent years rainfall has been scarce, between 200 and 400mm per year.

Then there’s the problem of the depopulation of the towns: Vélez Blanco – in the sierras where Almería, Granada and Murcia meet – is given as an example. It has lost five thousand souls from its 1950 census, with now just two thousand inhabitants left.

Climate change, hotter summers and Spain’s growing desertification have been a source of worry from some time. We end with an article from El Mundo from July of 2017 titled: ‘By 2090, Spain will be the new Sahara’. It says: ‘Water is scarce, heat waves break records ... and Spain dries up. But this scorching summer is only a foretaste of the future: in 2090, the desert will have swallowed half of the Peninsula, from Lisbon to Alicante, according to a study by 'Science'’.

Some Drawings from Fritz Mooney

These pictures and others come from Fritz' diaries, created in the 1970s. The page size is 13.5 x 21cms. American-born Fritz lived in Bédar and Mojácar until his death in 1987. He's generally considered as the best of Mojácar's foreign artists.

Self-portrait. 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

An Early Indalo

The Almería Museum of Art (opposite the train station) has a small exhibition of artists from the Indaliano Movement (Wiki). These were Almería-based artists roughly spanning a time from the forties until the end of the last century. Several of them were very good - Cantón Checa and Jesús de Perceval are still remembered, as well as Castella, Abad and Visconti.
Their name comes from Saint Indalecio (Wiki), the first bishop of Almería (or 'Urci' as it was called in those times) who died a martyr in the first century.
The Indalianos are known to have baptised the little totem from Mojácar as El Indalo while installed in that village (or maybe they brought him with them?). Certainly, the figure was unknown (despite the collection of neolithic stick-figures in a cave in Vélez Blanco including one, unrevered, that looks a bit like the Mojácar totem).
But here, in an early exhibition in Madrid in 1947, we see the figure (un-named on the poster), but, notice the girl with the cántaro on her head. There's no doubt but that she's a mojaquera.

Gibraltar Español

Once the main Spanish parties (less of course Podemos) and media have gotten over their excitement regarding Venezuela (and their criticism of each other for any possible hesitation in declaring Juan Guaidó as being the president of that country, rather than the unlikable but legal Nicolás Maduro), the Spanish focus on foreign issues may turn to the agreeable subject of post-Brexit Gibraltar.

As The Daily Telegraph has it, Spain is in discussion with its European partners that following a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, Gibraltar should be considered as ready for ‘decolonization in all coming EU legislation...’. El Mundo takes up the story: ‘...The United Kingdom, however, recognizes the Rock's right to self-determination and always recalls that 98.9% of Gibraltarians voted against the option of shared sovereignty in the 2002 referendum. The Daily Telegraph quotes the analyst Ignacio Molina from the Elcano Royal Institute, who alleges that Spain is trying to "show its post-Brexit power and influence so that the EU will adopt the language traditionally used by Spanish diplomacy on the Gibraltar question". EU sources have acknowledged that such a text, which refers to the "decolonisation" of Gibraltar, would be "unthinkable" if the UK had of been present. The negotiation of a supposed Hard Brexit (that’s to say: ‘without an agreement’) - is being carried out by the 27, with London away from the table...’.

Reuters is plainer still: ‘Spain will insist on excluding Gibraltar from all agreements between Britain and the European Union once Britain has left the European Union, Spanish diplomatic sources said on Tuesday. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has said Spain intends to revive its bid for shared sovereignty over Gibraltar, a British territory since 1713, after Brexit...’.

Interesting – if trite – thoughts ensue. Gibraltar, if it were to be returned to Spain, or became part of the EU, would be the only territory whose official language is English (well, ‘Gibraltarian’ anyway) as Ireland claims Gaelic (Wiki) and Malta, Maltese (Wiki) Making the main working language of the EU, Gibraltarian (we did say trite).

Gibraltar has a population of 34,500 souls, who would clearly prefer to be both British and in the European Union. Good luck with that. But, if Gibraltar were to become part of Spain (part of Cádiz probably), with 34,500 rather irate newly-minted Gaditanos making their feeling known, the rest of the world, less the EU-27, would cast aside Spain’s slightly goofy claims regarding Ceuta and Melilla (with a combined population of some 160,000 people) and call for the return of the 31 square kilometres of real estate in question to Africa (and Morocco). The net population and land loss for Spain would then theoretically be in the order of 125,500 people and 24 square kilometres.

As The Olive Press notes ‘...Spain is not giving up without a fight – one that Pedro Sanchez backs up with the fact that 97% of Gibraltarians voted to remain in the EU during the 2016 referendum...’.

*The European Parliament has now ‘recognised’ Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela.

The Carpetbaggers

Not all of the foreigners who move to Spain do so to retire gracefully, or work for a company or for themselves in an honest way. It is said that we come in three flavours - those who live from money from outside (pensions, transfers or remittances), those who make their money here in some way, and those who live off their wits - which usually means conning their fellow foreigners (bamboozling Spaniards is not a good idea, they know the system better than we do).
So, I've been swindled a number of times down the road, practically always by people I know: people who originated from my home country.
I wonder why they come here. On the lam from the police maybe, or from the courts, or indeed from their circle of friends or associates. They come here as carpetbaggers, with an invented past which would normally not bear much scrutiny, only here of course (under normal circumstances), nobody cares.
We have more captains of industry, senior military figures and retired police chiefs than would seem humanly possible. They tend to be very proper.
You may also find these people in the bar (indeed, it's quite likely), where they will sell you a house, or furniture, or an investment scheme. 'Don't worry', they say, 'I speak the lingo'.
Amusingly, an obscure newspaper from the Costa Blanca appears to have caught one. They say the person evaded justice in the UK and has been here for twenty years. Next week, they promise to reveal who this is. I wonder if this will come as a surprise.
I'd give you the link, but Google says it has 'been pirated'.

The Garrucha Pipa Theatre is No More

The news is that the old Cine Tenis down at the far end of Garrucha, the open-air summer cinema also known as the Cine de Verano and the Pipa Theatre, has been sold. I am told that next door's Mercadona has bought it to expand their shelves with more dog-food and gin.
The nearest cinema now appears to be one remaining open-air joint - I think - in Vera and then the expensive ones an hour up the road in Aguilas (yes, yes, with features in English) or the other way in Almería (the Yelmo in the Torrecardenas shopping mall also has English-language films, at least on Tuesdays).
But who goes to the cinema any more?
The Cine Tenis was in fact doing pretty well. Summer crowds would take to the pipa-theatre (so called because of the fearsome din from the appreciative audience). This noise was exacerbated by the fact that the bar was open all the way through the show, so one could stand at the back, leaning on the bar and sip a cold frosty as James Bond elegantly dispatched another villain.
The noise of course was increased still more by deafening and slightly fuzzy speakers which made sure that, however bad your Spanish might have been when you arrived, it would be a lot better by the end of the show.
I reckon I learnt my castellano from my regular visits to the cinemas in Turre, Mojácar, Garrucha and Vera in my tender years. They were wonderful times, as for about ten pesetas, you were treated to a spaghetti western (made in Tabernas) starring Giuliano Gemma, or maybe Anthony Steffen, or Bud Spencer, Terence Hill or any from an innumerable list of other oddly-named Italian stars...
One three-reeler in Mojácar, a cowboy film - they never used to show anything else - was particularly memorable, as they showed the third reel before the second one, which, we all agreed, rather added to the plot.
Then my dad bought what became Mojácar's first video machine, plus just one film, 'The Life of Brian' on VHS, and life was never the same again.
'I say Billy, could we come by and see that film of yours?'.
I had to operate the machine and mix the drinks.
Later on, Bambi de Bruin opened a club in Garrucha where you could rent poorly recorded films for a few pesetas. It was a good business... 
While it's a sad truth that there aren't many good films being made any more (except for 'Mad Max IV', obviously), it's still a nice idea to go to an open-air cinema, grab a beer and some pipas, and watch a show.
If you can still find one.

Tourist Figures, as Accurate as Always

The official figures are in - 1,447,599 tourists visited Almería during the first eleven months of 2018. To think: just one more teensy-weensy visitor squeezed in, and we would have rounded up that figure to 1,447,600.
Figures vary by the season, with lots more trippers docking in Almería in the summer than during the lean winter months (known in Mojácar for some reason as 'the Lycra Months'). But, adding last December to this year's crop, we can probably claim 1,500,000 tourists in Almería in 2018.
All looking for souvenirs to take home, which explains the local enthusiasm: they come, they buy, they leave.
They are only here, apparently, for a brief spell, just enough for a sunburn, a hangover and a souvenir made in a Chinese sweat-shop. The average visit being around half a week.
It would be longer, but the bean-counters have been obliged to add the cruise-ship visitors, who are generally here for just six hours or so.
Now, they can't be quite as specific as they would like, as not all visitors are visitors. Some drive in from Murcia and stay in the spare-room. Some are en transit to Melilla or Seville. Some, visiting Almería, are from Almería. Some just crossed the border from Granada for lunch.
Indeed, some dropped by the province more than once in 2018. We didn't see anyone ticking them off on the road between Puerto Lumbreras and Huercal Overa.
The Almería tourist board, and its satellites, is continually looking for more visitors, with some current drivel about bringing them in to see the plastic farms. Yes, a two-week holiday in Spain with all the cucumbers you can wish for.
The only people that aren't added to the visitor list seem to be those who live in this fine province, including the foreign residents.
But, consider this: while there's no promotion, no office, no agency and no budget for foreign residents, who bring 150,000 euros with them to buy a house and another 15,000 or so for a car and a television, who spend their pensions or disposable incomes on living here for the whole year, which lasts a 100 times longer that does half a week, and who are here next year as well (while the satisfied tourist, whose souvenir key-ring has now probably broken, decides on Italy for 2019).
One reason we are seen with slightly wary eyes is that, unlike the visitor, we put down roots. Almost anything else that you can sell someone will then be taken away by the purchaser. Not a house though, that stays put. 

Will We, Won't We, Will We Have the Vote?

One of the downsides of Brexit – as far as the millions of Europeans who live in the wrong place (Britons in the EU-27 or the legions of EU-27 people living in the UK) are concerned – is the lack of information about their future.

It’s almost as if no one cares.

Which, of course, they don’t.

The European Union was always more about trade opportunity than displaced citizens’ rights. And nowhere is this more obvious than in our supposed (and somewhat modest) political privileges. Indeed, it’s hard to even plan for power and influence when you don’t know how many people are going to participate in elections and are in doubt as to how they might vote.

This was the conundrum that faced Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba back in 1995 when his president Felipe Gonzalez, observing a small but significant change in the Constitution made in 1992, decreed that the Europeans living in Spain would be able to vote in European and municipal elections that same year. Rubalcaba, the Minister of Presidential Affairs (the man who much later substituted our residence cards for the handy A4 police letter and passport combo), was appalled. God only knew how they might vote, he thought, allowing the European residents to go ahead in the European elections (after all, you are voting for people who represent Spanish interests in Brussels) but stopping the municipal vote until the next one occurred in 1999.

The constitutional change of 1992 was interesting, as it gave European residents (who now had to register along with their inscription on the town registry – the padrón – their separate plea to vote), not only the active right, but the passive one also (or, in English, that they could now join or even lead a local political list).

Some of us eventually did, and Rubalcaba will have been pleased, four years after his mischief, to note that we voted locally, for local candidates and, in short, behaved ourselves.

In fact, most of us didn’t vote at all, and even today, there is only a modest number of foreign councillors scattered across Spain, in local government or in the opposition, together with just one foreign mayor, Belgian-born Mario Blancke in Alcaucín, Málaga. Many of these councillors are stretched along the coast in (forgive us) small and insignificant towns, are thirty-seven of these are British. Proportionally speaking, the foreign residents are woefully under-represented.

So, what would happen if Brexit caused those British councillors along with all other British residents in Spain to become disenfranchised as is the current scenario from the Spanish electoral commission (‘when and if the UK implements Brexit, their nationals, resident in Spain, will lose their right to vote’)?

Firstly, candidacies from other EU residents, Mario Blancke as one example, would lose way with less ‘foreigners’ voting for their lists. Secondly, town halls, like any other political agency, would take less notice of a population that had no suffrage, and thirdly, the British residents themselves would be returned to that old position of ‘no taxation without representation’ (an ugly place to be, currently suffered by many other foreign nationals living in Spain).

Spain indeed has bilateral agreements with some third countries. Norway from the beginning, later followed by Iceland and a few South American countries along with New Zealand, South Korea and (of course) Trinidad and Tobago (22 of them live in Spain as residents!). Citizens from these countries may vote, but not present themselves as candidates on electoral lists.

An article in El País this weekend changed the game-plan. It said that the British and Spanish authorities were discussing an eleventh-hour agreement to give their guests rights to vote, active and passive rights. ‘The Government hopes that the bilateral agreement would be applied already in the municipal elections of May 26th’. In this agreeable situation, we could maintain our vote in local elections, even if we were to lose it in the European ones – a small loss as things stand. However, in a caveat which would please Rubalcaba, we read ‘...Once it is signed, the deal will be in the same category as any other international treaty and will require ratification by the Spanish and British parliaments. This will probably not happen in time for the May 26 elections next year, diplomatic sources have admitted. In order to work around this problem, the Spanish Foreign Ministry is considering the option of making the agreement go provisionally into force as soon as it is signed by both governments...’. Perhaps, if they had started this conversation two years ago, instead of last week...

Maybe (just maybe) the UK will stay in the EU – either a postponement of their departure or a second referendum with a happier end (hello, Westminster, it would be nice if we were invited to vote in such an important plebiscite this time).

This (apparently, hopefully, maybe, possibly) being the case, we foreign residents will still need to register to vote – by asking for the hoja de inscripción del voto – in our local town halls, before January 15th (or December 31st if you are not from the EU).

Would there still be time to revise our candidate lists for next May, in the event we keep our vote?

Barely.

The Quinto Toro

It's thirsty work watching a bullfight, which is why people bring along their own refreshments. Almería itself has a traditional 'half-time' where the crowd passes sandwiches and beers, or a squirt of wine from a bota, to their neighbours.
All good fun. The second-to-last bull, the Quinto Toro, is also the name of Almería's venerated bull-fighters bar, on Calle Juan Leal, next to the Diputacíon near the market.
We went for a drink and a bite to eat last week. Loli left me outside the joint and went off to park (I'm on crutches still). There's a few tables outside on the pedestrianised street, but I went inside, to see the sights (and of course the tapas).
The bar is on the left as you go in, with tapas and a small stove. It's not really a restaurant, but you can get raciones to fill you up.
I had a couple of small beers, with their tapas (a tomato and onion job and then garlic potatoes with boquerones). The bar was founded in 1947, so it's not the oldest place in town, but it makes up for this with the amount of decoration. I admired the posters, paintings and photographs of bullfighters past and present, the odd stuffed bulls head and other other sundry paraphernalia. Then Loli arrived, having apparently parked the car in Murcia, and we went into the small tabled section for a ración of ox-tail ('rabo de toro').
This is a plate of lumps of bone covered in almost a jellied meat, with a heavy gravy. It needs a good glass of Rioja to work. It was delicious.
The bar is fun, and the refreshing walk (hobble) back to the car filled up the rest of the afternoon...

A Place to Read

I like this picture. There's nothing like a small cosy bedroom filled with books. My own bedroom is a lot bigger than this, and I've spent the last two months in it, mostly, with my lower leg in a plaster-cast.
I'm not one for the television - I can't hear it properly and the programs don't interest me, but I do like to read.
In the past two months, I've read maybe twenty-five books - some tripe, some instructive and some very good. Luckily, the old house, in our family for over fifty years, is full of volumes - some of which I haven't read; while others - and thanks to what might be described as a 'senior mind' -  I can't remember if I've read or not.
But while you don't need much more than a good reading light and a warm blanket, that room in the picture - I hope it has doors - looks just about perfect for me. 

I briefly ran a bar in Bédar and made some very nasty tapas. Urrrpf.

My first (and penultimate) foray into business was to open a bar in Bédar in 1976, when I was a nipper. The Bar was called 'El Aguila'. I sold Aguila beer and Aguila cigarettes (clever, eh?). The beers, served in small bottles of 20cc (known as 'quintos' or - if you can pronounce it - 'cervecillas') came from a warehouse in Cuevas, and I could fit seven crates of them in my car. Thirty to a crate. The smokes, a brand similar to Ducados (strong black tobacco) came from a shop in Bédar called 'la tienda de Simón', which sold everything - from a wheelbarrow to a shower-bucket. A tin of butter to a postage stamp. Cigarettes and a tot of brandy. A useful place indeed.
Creating a bar takes a bit of work.
I had three old houses in Bédar, bought by my father for ten thousand pesetas (sixty euros) off of Old Gregorio in 1966. My father, whose Spanish at the time was non-existent, wasn't sure if he'd just paid for a very expensive lunch at Pedro's bar or if he was now the owner of three houses bought - apparently - off someone called Hermano. Herman to his friends.
I fixed them up, slightly. Knocked a hole through the walls. Built a kitchen somewhere, brought in a few mattresses and a sofa. The houses, now one, had electric, but no water. I put in a wrought-iron window terrace in the larger room for the bar, placed a plank of wood on top and was about good to go.The cross-eyed water man - who brought supplies in four large clay cántaros on his donkey - kept everything sluiced down, and the lavatory on the terrace was strictly soak-away.
The doctor from Los Gallardos came for an official look. He said the downstairs was fine, but the upstairs was off-limits. Three rooms and a terrace  for the public to enjoy: a bit of razzmatazz for the Bédar denizens.
The bar in theory was to be run with EJ Whyte, an Irish American who lived in Bédar and was responsible for bringing Fritz the artist to the area on the back of a BSA in around 1962. However, after enormous trouble getting work permits (think on this Brexiteers) - many trips to Almería, papers, fruitless visits, long walks up and down looking for obscure offices and people who had 'gone out for a coffee', stamps and photographs... EJ finally told the little man in the employment office in Almería to shove it up his backside, leaving me, as it were, in sole control. The card in the photo is the official permit to handle food. They give you a nail-brush and peel your eyelids.
Thus, I ran the bar by myself (sometimes my friend and local builder Juanico joined me - once arriving with a live and evidently stolen sheep which, after meeting a violent end on the bar-room floor, improved the tapas for a week or so). Beers and tapas. A quinto beer and a really quite horrible tapa cost 10 pesetas (seven céntimos in today's money). Since the local youth liked to play chinos (spoof) for a round, I found that I was drinking rather a lot. Perhaps many bar-owners do. I remember one in Los Boliches who used to surreptitiously finish all the dregs from the returned glasses. I rather doubt he's still going today.
My tapas weren't very good. I had bought a chapa, a large piece of iron plate, off Juan el Fraguero from Mojácar, and this was put on a small gas-fire. I would cut frankfurters sideways, sliced down the middle, with a squirt of hot sauce. I also offered costellitas: the bit of bone on the end of a rib with a nub of gristle hanging off it, also with a squirt of hot sauce. Bédar has long since had trouble with ulcers, apparently - it was good hot sauce. Then there was the mysterious bits of off-cuts in the bag of costillitas from the butcher's daughter in Cuevas. Juanico identified them as being rams' testicles. Apparently she liked me, he reckoned.
I had a record player and four of five records - the most popular being Nat King Cole singing in Spanish. Nat's accent was worse than my father's, but the clientele seemed indulgent.
My neighbours weren't convinced I wasn't running a brothel. One day, old dad came in for a chatico de vino (six pesetas). After about a dozen of these, he was sure that the place was of a moral rectitude seldom found in Spain. Several of the local kids actually carried him, gripping his arms and legs as he sang one of Nat's most popular numbers, home to his missus.
The bar was fun - sometimes. But it wasn't a money-maker. At threepence a beer, I wasn't making a fortune. My girlfriend didn't like it much, once hitting me on the head with a beer-crate.
I rented the place out after three months to some Brit football enthusiast called Roger for a Greenie - our name for a 1,000 peseta bill (6€) - per month. He of course never paid, although the tapas improved slightly...
The rest of the house, about two thirds of it if you counted the creaky bits upstairs, carried on as mine. The ceilings were made of beams, cane and plaster. Some of the beams were made of pine and others were just pita, the century plant stalk. I can tell you, they aren't very firm after a few decades...
One day, EJ came to stay the night. I left him the key to the house and went down to Mojácar. EJ relates that he suddenly woke with a terrible thirst, remembered there was a bar next door, and battered down the intervening wall using a butano-bottle as a sledge-hammer. He says he served himself a cool beer from the bar and meekly went back to sleep again. House guests, hey?
A few years later, I fixed up the whole building properly into one large and slightly eccentric house.
It's sold now.

Guernica Renamed (and Reinvented)

One of Spain's most famous paintings, the dramatic and bleak artwork known as 'Guernica' and painted by Pablo Picasso, has an interesting history. 

For one thing, it was painted before the attack on the Basque city of Guernica by the Condor Squadron in April 1937 (in passing, one of the pilots in the Luftwaffe 'Operation Rügen' was a man called Günter who used to drink in a Mojácar bar called La Sartén back in the seventies). 

The painting was originally called 'Recuerdo a mi amigo Sanchez Mejías', a bullfighter who had died in the ring in August 1934. Picasso finished the painting, dedicated to his friend, in February 1937 (two months before the Guernica atrocity) and it was already hanging in the Spanish Pavilion at the Universal Exhibition in Paris. With a practical eye on current events, a culture delegate from the Republican side decided to rename the painting following the attack.

From Luciernagas y Coyotes we read: 'The painting does not represent any act of war, but rather the death of a bullfighter; with the bull agonizing, the frightened horses, the horrified gestures from the public, the light bulb over the infirmary and the broken sword in the foreground.
The bullfighter, lies broken, with his sword broken, because he has lost, and the bull appears with the sword stuck, with a anguished expression: his name was "Granadino".

The symbolism of the mother with the child in her arms, crying, is that of all mothers losing their child, regardless of their age (losing a child is unnatural, as parents usually die first), so it shows her great anguish, as well as all the other characters, because he was a very admired bullfighter'.

Whether it honours the death of a bullfighter friend or stands as a powerful symbol against war, Picasso's masterpiece is worthy of its place in the world's collection of masterpieces.

A Short Break

Before the fuss with my broken ankle, Loli and I had taken a week's holiday, driving towards a tiny rural hostal called Apikale in the tiny settlement of Bedarona, north of Guernika. The house is on a high lip of verdant land, with falling cliffs to the ocean far below. There's not much in the way of beaches, and the tide races in twice a day.
Álvaro and Susi run the place. There are just four comfortable bedrooms with large wooden terraces, and downstairs there's the kitchen with a table, a breakfast room and a lounge. Generally, after helping out, we would settle around a table outside for some memorable meals, and plenty of local wine. The other guests ranged from Spaniards to Swedes, to a young Belgian surfer couple and so on.
The nearest neighbour is half a kilometre away, and the house is ringed with forest, hiking trails and fields.
In one field, there was a cow.
My companion Loli, who runs Albero Centro Ecuestre in Almería, a riding school, likes cows. This one was pregnant. Loli's joy overflowed when it delivered (with her help) a fine young bullock.
The mother was exhausted, and Loli milked her for her colostrum - the mother's first sticky lactation which is full of special nutrients. The things that happen on a holiday.
We spent three days with Álvaro and Susi, with some walks, a trip to the local port of Lequeitio where the beers are very large, the tiny beach is briefly available for bathers and the locals are friendly - if, like everyone in Spain, a little tired of so many tourists.
The season is short at Apikale, and they are now closed for the winter.  

Murdoch Looks at Spanish Acquisitions

Imagine if Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing champion and defender of both Brexit and Donald Trump, the owner of Fox News, the Times of London, The S*n and dozens of other influential far-right newspapers and TV channels, were to pick up some major Spanish daily newspapers to add to his collection.
Working with his star employee and lobbyist José María Aznar, the one-time president of Spain, the naturalised American mogul is currently in talks with RCS Media Group, the Italian owners of El Mundo (Spain's second newspaper) and is also looking at acquiring shares in the august ABC newspaper.
The main Spanish newspapers aren't already far enough to the right?
They will be.

More on this here.

The Magic Roundabout

Mojácar is known as a refuge for artists. These days, the shine may have worn off this idealistic statement, what with control of the local culture being firmly in the hands of the mojaqueros, who often feel that foreign artists are all a bit pretentious and anyway, coño, it's our town to do with as we see fit.
So, tiptoeing past the astonishing municipal art gallery with one enormous room blessed with an entire wall of windows, past the exotic one-legged stainless steel figure at the Fuente roundabout - once around no touchee - we hurry down towards the beach to be met with another roundabout, this time designed to look like the top of a box of childproof aspirins adorned with a (patented) Drunken Indalo that stares firmly towards Garrucha, from whence come the innocent visitors to our fair resort, all ready to empty their pockets in our tasteful souvenir shops while filling our narrow ill-planned beach avenue with their vehicles - at least during the short season that makes up our current attempt to be 'the most beautiful pueblo in Spain': for family-oriented tourism anyway. 
Returning to the delightful roundabout, which used to have a complicated system designed to throw water into the air in a riot of changing colours, something which proved to much of a strain on the pumps (no doubt supplied by a local ferretería, of which, the less said the better) that they soon gave up the unequal struggle and a fellow from the Town Hall was encouraged to supply an easier low-maintenance design.
Incorporating a gift from Cosentino (the marble people from Macael), the eighth wonder of the world was duly completed as described above. But, and here's the rub, it went a fraction over budget. What should have cost (an appalling) 27,800 euros eventually came in at a mind-numbing 44,000 euros.  The Town Hall approved the extra cost in a plenary session this past Thursday. 

Just Sayin'

A long time in bed, as I nurse a broken ankle. The public hospitals here in Spain are good (I lost my private health insurance along with my late wife Barbara's years back after being ripped off and left without a bean by some vulgar yahoos). What in America would have cost the earth - enough X rays to make me glow in the dark, a trip in an ambulance, an operation on my ankle with a plate and nine screws, two casts so far and more excitement still to come - here is free.
A bit boring though.
I lie in my cot, reading - Rafael Sabatini at the moment - and play around on the Android, posting rubbish on Facebook and looking up obscure facts on Wikipedia. 
Goofing off, but careful with my leg: the only movement a regular trip in my wheelie-chair to the bathroom.
Next week, I'll be a bit more mobile, and will return to writing my newsletter about Spain - Business over Tapas.
Funny, I always say that September is my favourite month.

Keep España Tidy

Our local English-language radio station Spectrum has this excellent campaign to clean up the beaches.
Spanish beaches are often filthy (as are the verges of almost all roads, the countryside and anywhere else which is is outside the private home). Spaniards, so generous and thoughtful towards people they know, meet or inter-react with, appear to have no concern for the public in general - and will often be surprised to find that - for example - they are inadvertently blocking the way... or having an innocent chat in front of a zebra crossing... or leaving a quantity of trash near to a dustbin rather than in it.
The Mojácar beaches, it must be said, are cleaned daily and are in great shape (a cost which must be borne by the tax-payer). But those who visit will often leave their wrappers, fag-ends, bottles, cans and cardboard trash behind them, saying 'well, the cleaners get paid to pick it up and they need the job' (which is a bit like punching someone in the mouth and saying 'the dentist needs the job').
In Almería, on the popular Playa de Zapillo, the accrued trash by nightfall is astonishing. Mounds of garbage. The Almerians like to picnic on the beach, and will bring chairs, a table, an umbrella, a cold-box and a radio. Not all of it is returned, needless to say.
Wandering along the beach the other night, barefoot in the sand, I could see not only the surprising amount of crap on the beach, but also a fair amount of it floating in the water. Then two young black kids, exercising nearby, surprised me by picking up the litter on that patch of sand, and taking it to the nearest dustbin.
It may be a cultural thing, but it is surprising to see few if any campaigns about keeping this beautiful country clean.
So, well done Spectrum.

It's Been a Long Summer...

While we shudder quietly over the story in The Mirror of the elderly British tourist who found ‘too many Spaniards’ on her Benidorm holiday (here) and the report in The S*n which says that sneaky Spanish inspectors are ‘counting the towels’  draped on the terraces to find the illegal apartment lets, and the ‘go ahead and jump’ advice to those tourists in Barcelona with a balcony (here in Público); we can begin – those of us who don’t own souvenir shops or flag-waving bars – to consider that it’s now the second-half of August: not long left before this splendid and beautiful country settles down to the quieter season, when we residents will once again be able to appreciate our surroundings – and wonder why we are never mentioned or considered in the tourist-hungry literature of the Spanish resorts despite our wealth, support and enthusiasm for this, our chosen country of residence.