Never Trust an Expert... Well, not Always.

 Forgive me for having a laugh at an article provided by the Senior Travel Reporter for the Daily Express about the real lowdown on Spanish food and drink, but she hasn't a clue.

Under the intriguing title 'I live in Spain and there’s a tourist trap that catches out lots of visitors’, we read,

‘A Spanish resident warns British visitors to avoid one of the country's most popular drinks’. We learn that ‘“Sangría is a tourist trap, originally created by some British folk. The authentic and original version is called ‘tinto de verano’'".

"What’s the difference? The original uses actual wine and lemon. Sangría is a soda like Coca Cola and Fanta, so imagine going to Spain and paying 10 euros (£8.58) for a jar of Fanta. This happens everywhere in Spain”’.

Actually…

The clue is in the word tinto. It’s red wine, fizzy lemon or lemonade, with a bit of vermouth if you're lucky, ice and – why not? – fruit. Sangría is about the same animal, but (we fall back on the venerable British recipe) may have some extra booze thrown in. Like brandy, vodka, pear schnapps, or whatever else is gathering dust in the cupboard…  

Google helpfully explains about Spanish Sangría: 'Its origins can betraced to the southern buy drostanolone propionate region of Spain, where it was first used as a refreshing way to endure the summer's heat'.

Which explains the mix-up.

The Express felt it needed to pad out the article, so moved on to Paella, which, we learn, comes from Valencia.

Apparently, "You can find ‘paella’ in cities like Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, but it is a tourist trap and unironically it is 99 percent microwaveable yellow rice, it looks gross".

Luckily for us, “Now, there are some hidden authentic paella restaurants out there outside of Valencia, but like the name suggests, they are hidden and mostly known through word of mouth".

Most Spaniards I know down here in the south call paella, or any other rice-dish cooked in una paellera (a large flat pan over charcoal) as simply un arroz. Good all over, too!

The comments are always worth a look in this most British newspaper. 'Spanish cuisine is revolting, as is sangria', says Panhandle, evidently a shepherd's pie and pint of bitter individual.

But wait, this journey through Spain is not yet complete. The writer introduces us to tapas.

'Seville claims to have invented tapas while octopus is popular in Galicia. In San Sebastian, many bars serve pintxos, small snacks with a range of toppings'.

Well, sure, but the whole point is that you are meant to wash them down with a glass of something cold and damp, like, er, sangría.

Graffiti Blues

 We are surrounded by louche pintadas and graffiti, somebody’s initials in blue, black, red or silver spray-paint, squirted furtively but ambitiously over an old door, on a wall, on a shop-front, on the side of a ruined house.

Forget the Banksys and the news-items that show up here and there like ‘Andalucía is home to two of the prettiest street-paintings in the world’ – here, we talk about the jungle of aggressive balloon letters painted at night to dismay the local residents. It’s grim vandalism: a kind of Call of the Worthless. ‘Urban art is an industry, graffiti is just ego’ says a columnist.

The street-artists know that Society has no room for them, that there’ll be no chance for them to be remembered, raised, honoured or respected. Theirs is the sour realisation that they are the detritus of modern-life.

Have you seen the pictures of the underground trains in Barcelona? Cohorts of feeble-minded nitwits are out every night, spray-cans at the ready. Did you know, it cost the city 11,5 million euros to repair them last year?

Did you see the old ruin covered in competing letrasets near the motorway, or the besmirched shutters in front of the entrance to the bar that closed down last year, or the ruined and unreadable street-signs or that odd message on the bridge (how on earth did they get up there, anyway?). What about the daubed political comments, crossed out by opposing idiots who get their ideals from comic-books? Will my vote change because I suddenly see a Pedro Xanche maricón inked onto a wall?

The offensive doodle must either be removed (I saw a can in my local Chinese shop which claims that it will lift it) or painted over by either the owner or the council. Why bother? It’ll probably be back tomorrow.

One answer is to employ municipal graffiti-removers – pay them with a one euro surcharge applied on all spray-paint sold in the shops.

The town hall is busy planting trees, gussying up the fancy buildings and spending a fortune on tourist campaigns, while the secret hoards of scribblers are out night after night befouling the walls and alleyways (preferably where these idiots can’t be seen, or denounced, or arrested).

It gets worse. There’s a new phenomenon in Spain called el turismo vandalico, where foreign tourists come here to paint. Not with watercolours, but with spray-cans. Tenerife is particularly punished with this kind of visitor.

A book in the Valencian language says that it is ‘…all about our popular culture, which - among other things - helps to understand how those graffiti that emerged as a spontaneous countercultural outbreak having evolved from the primary scream to today’s sophistication…’. 

Yer, right on. That’s no doubt how Rembrandt started too.

The defacement lies in its unstated threat. We are out there.  

Vandalism isn’t just paint-spray on a shop-front. In its more extreme moments, it can be worse: where one paints some crap on a castle wall, or gouges out one’s initials on a prehistoric relic, or cuts down a famous ancient tree.

The message is: I may not be going anywhere, but I’m here nonetheless.    

I Belong to Glasgui

 There comes a time, perhaps, when your Spanish might be described as being pretty damn good. You can read the instructions, the newspaper and the nice letter from the power company, and you can understand the news on the TV – understand the words, that is, if not the context.

The context, because the background is all important. We must grasp the culture to know what’s going on, and indeed, why it’s going on. Take a course in Spanish politics, history, geography and art. Get a Spanish companion and go together to a wedding or a matanza – a pig killing. Go to the football game. Join the local train spotters group. Speak loudly and often.

But let’s look at a rarely mentioned corner of the pronunciation jungle. You have mastered the jota and you can roll your rr more or less, but how do you pronounce foreign words in Spanish?

Answer: as a Spaniard would.

Let’s start with a drink – a soda pop. There’s Sprite (pronounced espry), there’s 7Up (siete oop, maybe? No, they’ll just call it seben), Pepsi Cola is pesi and then there’s Schweppes (no one can pronounce that in any language, but in Spanish it’s just called eshwehs) and thus, to no one’s great surprise, we all drink La Casera.

Do you see the difficulty?

Some foreign place-names have been spanishified. 

There’s Londres for London, Edimburgo up in Scotland, and (for some reason) Cornualles for Cornwall. But if you go to Middle Wallop, then you are in for a treat. It’s pronounced Mid.del gualop. Wolverhampton becomes Guolberhanton. For Heathrow, you drop the second h. Liverpool has a b. 

As for Worcestershire, don’t even try.

Now me, I’m from Norfolk, and luckily, that’s more or less the way you would say it if you were talking in Spanish.

It’s all about communication of course; saying it in a way that the listener will understand. After all, we are in espain.

Oh, and by the way, jappy easter.

(Pido disculpas a él que se siente ofendido por lo anterior)

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Right-wing Lies

 Sometimes we are a little silly. Facebook got steamed up about a picture I posted - which came with the headline from a magazine article.

You know what they're like - oh, we are going to move this post down into some forgotten closet, because it goes against our principles. Why don't you post pictures of kittens anymore?

Or Gaza - they don't seem to mind photographs from Gaza 😒.

Now, Facebook will add the first picture (and yes, it's a cutie all right) if one were to publish this on their social media platform, rather than the second. Sigh! 

Anyway, now we are all happy, I suppose, and I can get on with my point.

The article comes from a Spanish right-wing bank-supported website with appropriate news and opinion. It's called The Corner.

It publishes in English. 

Their title today: 'Immigrants – 8.8 million – account for 18.1% of population in Spain'.

(With a nice photograph of us immigrants – I mean, the ones at the top left in the picture, of course).

 

Sometimes, We Must Laugh at Ourselves

 It's been a tough few months recently for the country - with protests of one sort or another receiving coverage in the national newspapers.

A long-term protest is the one currently going on outside the head offices of the PSOE, the ruling government party which is the socialist party. Those to the right, the PP and the Vox, agree on one point, that everyone else in Spain is not only wrong, but shamefully so. 

Thus inspired, they wrap themselves in the Spanish flag - it's odd how national flags these days only belong to the far-right - and get on down to the Calle Ferraz in Madrid for some good ol'-fashioned protestin'. Maybe burn the president in effigy or howl some appropriate insults. The police will likely turn a blind eye (Madrid is a conservative city) and the media will be there. 

What with the tractors all driving through the city, lovingly decorated once again with Spanish flags (the agricultural workers who really do all of the picking, wrapping and dodging work inspectors will have stayed home); the angry protests outside the headquarters of the smellysocks; the populists banging on in their heavily subsidised media (Madrid spends 27 million this year on 'institutional advertising' for friendly newspapers and TV channels) and the current issues with the regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, Madrid is as usual the centre of attention in Spain.  

But let us move our attention to another city, usually (if not currently) in the hands of the left: Valencia. There, the fallas have just finished. The fallas are a week-long festival with lots of music, fireworks and a tradition of comic papier-mâché models which will be judged and them, with one saved for posterity, thrown into the flames. It's like we read it in Gormenghast, with the Hall of the Bright Carvers. 

But not every model - they are called ninots - are destroyed, and one must be saved. My own favourite this year is the old lady with the sun-glasses and the Spanish flag.

Now, where have I seen her before?

Dere's a Rat in Me Kitchen

 There’s a major bookshop in our local city, and I’ve dropped by there a few times – either to buy a novel in Spanish (which I can read, if sometimes a bit slowly), or one in English from their foreign-language nook downstairs. Three or four shelves in English, plus a few books scattered in there in German – hey, it’s all foreign, right?

The spines on Spanish books are always printed upside-down which means that the usual book-stocker employee, unaware that this peculiar custom has yet to emigrate beyond the Pyrenees, will put the English (and German) books on the shelf the wrong-side-up so as to match the other shelves upstairs. Then along comes a Brit and pulls a few out to scope the back-cover and before you know it, the foreign books are higgledy-piggledy, which means, when I come along for a spot of browsing, I have to throw my head from one side to the other, wrenching my neck, to glom the offers on display.

At twelve euros a pop or maybe more, they ain’t cheap, neither.

So, in the Brit community fifty miles to the north, there’s a few charity shops that sell books.

The Brits will volunteer to run these shops, collecting funds for some Noble Cause (dogs and cats, usually – they haven’t yet run to helping the Palestinians).

The charity shops work on stuff being brought around and kindly donated.

Often after a local funeral.

Books are considered as a filler, I suppose, as they are usually sold at six for a shilling. Which is fine by me. See the difference here? One book at twelve euros in the city, versus seventy two charity books in guiriville for the same price. I mean, if I get half-way through and decide that it’s tripe, then I’m down by fifteen cents.

So the other night, I am lying in bed in the place I’m looking after, a country-home. Nice, very quiet, lots of trees and birdies. Reading some rubbish about a pretty detective who rides a Ducati through the worst streets of Washington (I do love to travel), I was interrupted by a large rat galloping across the bed and disappearing under the wardrobe.

So the next day, I went to buy some poison. A box with a dozen blue cubes of some dreadful stuff that disagrees with rats and I leave one on the kitchen counter, and returned to my detective, now in bed with her lawyer.

The next day, the poison had gone. But, you know, judging by some evidence in the fruit bowl, the rat hadn’t.

Or maybe there were two rats. I put another cube out.

The following day, the second cube had gone, but someone had got into the rice crispies.

I put out a third cube, put everything edible in a steel case with a combination lock, and returned to my pile of books.

And so, Best Beloved, every day and until the box was empty, the daily poison has been taken away from its place in the kitchen. Seems I either had a very strong rat on my hands, or I was doing the Devil’s Work and killing the babies living in some hitherto undiscovered hole.

I found one possible lair under the wardrobe and wedged the detective and her motorbike in it. It was about time she did something useful.

Today, a friend gave me a humane rat-trap. You leave a chunk of cheese within, the trapdoor goes *clunk* and you take him outside and toss him out in the campo a few kilometres from home. That’s the theory, anyhow.

I also bought a box of strychnine this morning, just in case.  

The Bar Indalo

 In the old days - the sixties through the early eighties - the Hotel Indalo, located in the Mojácar Square, housed the Bar Indalo: the focal centre of the pueblo.

It was an ugly bar, dark and scruffy. They rarely managed any tapas and the decoration was bleak. There were a couple of tables and a black and white TV, switched on whenever there was a football game.

As somebody says, the toilets were pretty grim as well.

Outside, there were a few tin tables and chairs.

It was where we all met to catch up on the day's gossip.

I think it was a terrible shame when the hotel and its bar were demolished, along with the Aquelarre theatre, to make room for the 'multicentro' - three stories of grim souvenir shops.

In the picture, Antonio and Diego were for many years the two barmen.

The Rudderless Island

 Those of us who moved to Spain from the United Kingdom will have our view about how the old country has either prospered or gone to the dogs since the Brexit, or perhaps even before that particular upset.

My dad used to trace Britain’s final decline to the Suez Crisis in 1956. Now, I think it was when they arrested Julian Assange in 2010 on a trumped-up rape charge (oh look, I’ve gone and used the t-word!).

But we all have opinions. Those of us Brits who are living in Spain have other things to think about – unless we are among those unfortunates who find themselves enmeshed in the 90/180 Schengen Trap – then it’s a daily and anxious look at the calendar and the doubt about who to look after the house for the next three months.

Another way to look at the UK comes from a Spanish journalist who works at El País called Ana Carbajosa, who after travelling extensively across Britain has written a book called ‘Una Isla a la Deriva’: the drifting (or rudderless) island. The write-up provided by the printers, Península, says, ‘When did the United Kingdom collapse? How is it possible that the empire in which the sun never set has ended up becoming an increasingly isolated, fragmented and unequal place? How much has Brexit contributed to deepening cracks that had been opening for decades? How were unscrupulous politicians like Boris Johnson or Liz Truss able to end up running the country?’

elDiario.es interviews Ms Carbajosa. Their first question is: ‘What misconceptions are there in Spain about the United Kingdom?’

She answers, ‘We probably think that the United Kingdom is a unit and that the United Kingdom is the English (los ingleses). In truth, the United Kingdom is a very complex and diverse country due to the geographical and regional differences that, as the experts I spoke with for the book explained to me, are the most noteworthy in all of Europe. In all European countries there are differences between rich and poor regions, but the poor ones are not as poor as those in the United Kingdom, which is (by the way) also the sixth largest economy in the world. There is a brutal regional inequality that we are not aware of and that has contributed to Brexit and other political phenomena’.

She tells us that the media and politicians who she meets there talk of ‘Broken Britain’.

But that’s all happening elsewhere. We live in Spain, with its own triumphs and failures (of which, if we stick to The Euro Weekly and other low-shooting English-language media, we are blissfully unaware of).

Perhaps we can stay here – or perhaps some hostile currents in Iberian politics or the media (chucking Spaniards out of the UK needs some retaliation, maybe) may send us abruptly home. There are 5,700 Spaniards currently living in the UK under threat of deportation.

After all, as we fail to concern ourselves about Rishi Sunak’s hostility towards the immigrants, it’s not like we have the ear of the Spanish legislators.

Most unlikely, of course, but there you go. We live in unlikely times.