Spanish Practices - Real Life in Spain

Transcript:

Day 98 The End?

Sunday and the Alarma is over, Lockdown is unlocked, 99 days, it started on Saturday March 14th, but actually I consider that weekend to be the two phoney days of Lockdown.

Saturday 14th March was a pretty normal day, the supermarket rammed with people taking everything off the shelves, including the toilet paper, something that the Spanish do not a use a lot of, most prefer to wash in the bidet than smear on the pan, as it were.

Sunday was equally as busy as people rushed around to be in the right place before the strict measures and fines started on Monday 16th March.  Our friends Jen and Dave making a run for it to their seaside flat, Jen told me “Well it will only be for fourteen days, so we grabbed a few things from the village flat and drove early to the coast.”

As it turned out it has been 99 days and Jen only had her flip flops to wear which after week three fell to pieces and had to patched up with sticking plaster.

For us that first day felt, well felt like this:

CLIP:

So, 99 days, the first thing that happened was our air-conditioning failed due to a power surge that also, we discovered destroyed our faithful ten-year-old iMac computer, then the business laptop decided to join the other two in a suicide pact. That left us with one working laptop and the challenge of buying a new laptop and fixing the air conditioning in full Lockdown.

Ricardo came to the rescue for the air conditioning, finding a new unit tucked away in a warehouse, the laptop had to come all the way from China.  The iMac now resides in our workshop waiting for a trip to Harry the Russian who fixes computers in town.

Chris was out of a job, Spain shut all Gyms on Saturday 14th including the one where he was working, but thanks to our Administration ladies they were able to fill in the complicated online paperwork so that Chris could receive some money from the Government.   

Then there was the silence, no traffic, no planes, nothing but birdsong and the waves crashing against the shorelines.  Weird but after a few weeks, quite relaxing. 

Our British friends fleeing the country so that they could look after their parents back in the UK.  They left so fast that they had to leave their precious dog behind.  He hasn’t seen them for months now, poor love, but he is enjoying life with a family who run a local kennels.  It took them two days driving pretty much non-stop through Spain and France to grab a ferry back to England.  Petra says she never ever wants to go through that again.

Being really worried about our family, for a few weeks Britain just ignored the Pandemic and my elderly parents went out to a packed pub lunch on Sunday March 15th – but bless them, after that they stayed at home, I think they picked up the seriousness of the situation. 

It all seems a long time ago now as we sit outside in the warm sun, the road below noisy and busy, the sounds of the motorcyclists haring round the coast road, great gaggles of cyclists shouting encouragement to each other and on Saturday evening the sea was filled with silly boys on jet skis racing each other, yachts out from Marina de Este, little fishing boats and the odd canoe, far off on the horizon a stream of container ships were heading out to the Atlantic.

Parasols decorated the beach in the distance, all perfectly socially distanced thanks to the lifeguards and the new officers of beach protection.

Chris turned to me and said, “it is if this never happened, like some kind of dream.”

The fact is, it is still happening, it has not gone away and it has not ended, probably not ended for years to come, even if a vaccine was found, it would take years to administer and there would be parts of the world, I am thinking poor parts, that will not be vaccinated. 

There currently is no proper control of the virus, it looks like a particular steroid might help, but it seems to have many side effects, My LBC colleague Ken Guy took it for cancer he says on Facebook:

I see that the steroid Dexamethazone could be useful in the treatment of Covid 19. It was part of my cancer treatment back in 2009 and should still be, but I gave it the flick pass sometime back. I took six pills each Monday. It kept me awake till Wednesday and produced mood swings. Neither Gracie nor I appreciated its effect, so I’ve not taken it since.

I should point out he is an Australian. So here in Spain we might be at the end of Lockdown, but we are only at the beginning of the understanding of what this virus is and does, where it actually came from, bat?

Wet market?

Laboratory Accident?

Will it mutate? Will it return in the Autumn and cause another Lockdown? Will the effects of the virus be nothing compared to the economic havoc it has reeked across the world?

The virus is like life, full of more questions than answers, and in life you should always dare to take risks.  As humankind we took a risk climbing down from the safety of the trees, learning to stand upright, our lives are all about risk.

Thank you for listening to Spanish Practices these last few months, our biggest hope is, weirdly, that we do not have to come back for another season, that dear Spain never has to go through Lockdown ever again, stay safe and well, Goodbye.

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Full transcript:

Day 97 Of mousy women and men

Saturday the weather is calm, the sun is shining, I have been doing some extreme weeding on the mountainside and managed to not fall down, the one time I did I thought it was best to relax and just let my body slide to a bit where I could cling on.  Our garden in Essex did not have the same extreme challenges, unless you count the incredible numbers of snails that ate their way through most of our English garden.

I have been spending some time reflecting, yesterday about the reasons why we came to Spain, today a reflection of things past.  Sometimes it is not healthy to keep reliving the past, much better to look forward to the future.

But often the future is fashioned by the past, all my mental health problems during the 1990s definitely changed me long-term as a person. I am pleased to say now I am a much more ‘mellow’ individual, although I am still capable of falling off my perch as my dear colleague Richard Dallyn used to say.

Over the years we have worked with hundreds, maybe thousands of people, some like us ordinary, some famous, some politicians’ others who might fall into the celebrity status, whatever that now means.

By 1997 I had already become an old lag at LBC and was often pressed into service to train the new young blood coming through the radio station. I remember one such day when I was training a new studio engineer, it was the two Julia’s show, Julia Sommerville the Presenter and Julia the Producer.

Julia the Producer decided that it was a bonus having me in the studio as it meant she could go sit out in the office and catch up on the paperwork that we all had to fill in to comply with the Broadcast regulations of the time.

I agreed and asked what was on the show, she said “A regular guest and some children’s author.”  “Fine,” I replied, I was quite happy that there wasn’t anything complicated about the show.

First up I left my charge and went up to collect the regular guest, who was been badged up by the very efficient reception staff at ITN.  Down we went to the basement, sorry, lower atrium of the large glass and steel building that is ITN studios. The guy I was training had been good, had engineered a junction into a commercial break and out again with no problems.

Then a call from reception, the next guest had arrived.  I left my charge once again to travel those sick making glass lifts of ITN and back to reception for the kiddies author, she was a mousy sort of woman and clearly suffering from nerves.  ‘Oh God, I thought, this one will be trouble.’  On the way down I checked her title and that she was the right guest,.. yes it does happen that you can put the wrong guest into the wrong studio.

A seem to remember an occasion when a guest for Geet Mala our Asian show wound up in a discussion about the future of railway transportation in the other studio, he gallantly discussed the advantages of off peak travel until it was discovered he had actually come to talk about a new Indian Restaurant opening in Brixton.

“I want to be called by my initials,” mousy woman piped up.  “Oh” I replied. “And what are they dear?” She told me, I thought that is seriously weird, so I put my foot down.  “The thing is, that nobody has ever heard of you, this is your first book,” “yes,” she replied.  “So, we are going to call you by your proper name, so listeners can relate to you.”

Mousy woman agreed, but it made her shake a little bit more.  I took her into the studio and Julia warmly greeted her, she said “My daughter read your book last night and loved it.”

We both had a copy of the book, whilst Mousy lady was telling us all how she was desperate and wrote the book in some café in Glasgow or Edinburgh or somewhere, I took a look at the book.  It was your usual fairly dismal children’s book offering.  The cover had a train on it with some spotty gormless urchin in glasses in front of it.

I flicked through the pages, it was mostly about magic, not my cup of tea at all.  Well the interview was over and the show runner, the poor kid who didn’t get paid but got to enjoy the ‘media experience’, had come back from his break, so I got him to dispatch Mousy Lady upstairs.

I thanked her for coming in, “Oh I see you have a copy of my new book,” she said, “would you like me to sign it for you?”

I answered “no” but I shall look forward to reading it later, she smiled and as the runner led her away I took the book between thumb and forefinger and threw “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling,” into the bin.

So that book became a life-changing book for me.  One I realised what a pratt I had been and how rude with it too. This poor woman had come to plug her book that she had worked long and hard to write and I dismissed it, without having the good grace to read the thing.  I did years later, and it is a cracking children’s book, every bit as good as the classics, which it has now become.

And two I constantly try to be a kinder person, I don’t always succeed, there is something inside of me that wants to be capricious, arch and downright rude, but I work hard to control it.

Maybe I was always destined to be the hapless journalist that dissed J.K. Rowling as an author, but it did teach me a lesson .. always try to be kind.

Full transcript:

Day 96 Tim Tams

Friday and the I made a terrible mistake today, I try very hard now to avoid the TV news from the UK, we have enough to occupy ourselves here with events in Spain.

I caught a picture of Headmaster Boris holding a packet of Tim Tams up, from what I understand following a new trade deal with Australia you will get tuppence off this less than delicious biscuit from Australia and the trade deal will end up adding only a gnats thingy to the UK GDP.

Worse I then wandered into the news that the New Zealand trade deal could well have a negative effect on GDP, as things like delicious but cheap New Zealand lamb will lose its trade tariff that allows British farmers to sell their lamb at competitive prices.

I scooted away as quickly as I could, off to Facebook for some friend’s kittens being naughty in his apartment in Spain. Oh no! the next post concerned the much-heralded UK tracing APP.

The story that unfolded that Apple and Google make a free tracing App but the UK Government thought they could do a better job and got one of Dominic Cummings mates to cobble something together which not only didn’t work but drained everyone’s iPhone battery and cost a 120 million British pounds.

That leads me to remembering the plans for ‘the word that must never be used,’ the UK government plan to increase the number of ferries crossing the channel by hiring a company that crucially had no ferries or experience of running a ferry company, but was a mate of somebodies.

I turned off my social media and retired quickly to the uninterrupted view we have of the Mediterranean and a moment to reflect why we are here.

It is a courageous step to leave friends, family and one’s country behind for a new life.  Population emigration research by Washington University in 2018 pointed to statistics that show up to 45% of people who leave the UK for a new life in the sun of Spain, return back to Britain.

I think we were both guilty of less than complex thinking about coming to live in Spain.  We almost created a mantra of “when we are in Spain this won’t happen anymore”

Train delays – I remember sitting on an overcrowded hot sweaty train, trapped once more at the, once more, broken signals at Ingatestone near Chelmsford thinking – when I am in Spain this frustrating feeling of being trapped and delayed will be a thing of the past, I can sit and just soak up the sun.

How naïve, OK so there are no delayed trains here but waiting for a licence from the Town Hall to paint your bloody house, that takes more than eight weeks, the frustration and feelings are just the same as sitting on that train outside Ingatestone.

Rude and unpleasant people.  Well working in London for over thirty years you learn to be a survivor, there is no time for friendliness, it is shove or be shoved, get to the front of the queue at all costs. Then  witness someone who’s way you got in, turn and call you a see you next Tuesday and wish death by cancer upon you – when I am in Spain that will be a thing of the past, because everyone is so laid back there.

Naïve thought number two – it is true that the pace of life is slower here than London but tempers flare in just the same way, the swearing is in a different language and there is a deal more physicality in any dispute. But there is I would guess the same ratio of nice people and nasty people.  Some of the nasty people have also been in absolute positions of power and living in a foreign country you feel a lot less empowered than living in your own native country to contradict them.

And so the naïve list goes on, the food is not better here, just different, it is a bit fresher, we have just had some delicious Mezula fish for lunch that would give British, well Icelandic, cod a run for its money, but if you fancy a Thai or good Curry, the Catholic tastes of the Spanish mean there are fewer restaurants or availability of ingredients in the supermarket than in the UK.

So, this is the long way around of explaining that we live in Spain because we accept that it is a far from perfect country, just like the UK.  It has more than its fair share of absolute political twankers, if you are in doubt about what that word means look it up in an urban dictionary.

OK so I think the Spanish Prime Minister would stop short at flogging Tim Tams, but he has bloated his parliamentary departments to quite an obscene level in light of the crisis that Spain and the world finds itself in. And his Deputy seems to be channelling Napoleon in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, after a political lifetime decrying the bourgeoise lifestyles of his opponents, the moment he got into power he suffered major amnesia and moved himself into a mansion in an exclusive part of Madrid, every time I see what my friend just calls “ponytail man” I keep hearing “four legs good, two legs bad,” in the back of my mind.

So bottom line, if you are fed up of the stupid and downright crazy things the UK Government are up to right now, and you think moving into the sunshine of Spain you are somehow going to avoid the realities of life, then you are mistaken.

You will, mostly enjoy better weather and a different pace of life.  Or you might find you openly hate the culture, if you listen to some of the Ex-Pat, [hate that word], drunks sitting in English bars along the Costas, you would think that the Spanish are good for nothing and that Blighty is the greatest place to live in the world.

I remember a good Spanish friend saying to me, “If they, those Engleesh drunks, think England is so great, why are they living here in Spain?”

I know why we are here, because we love the place, warts and all, the good times and the bad, just like we still love the UK, warts and Tim Tams at tuppence off an all.

Transcript:

Day 95 Bonfire night

Thursday and now just a few days before everything un locks, the end of the Alarma and the new normal will start on Monday, many Spanish can go back to work and get the working week off to.. er, well er, a two day start, because next Wednesday “we are having a Fiesta”

The Fiesta of San Juan to be precise, the beginning of summer and those long summer holidays, after all we have all been working so hard these last few weeks … erm!

San Juan is when hordes of Spanish all head to the beach for a party, it will last all night and bonfires are lit all along the coast on the beach, there will be a lot of food and drink, all in throwaway plastic containers, barbecues and plenty of booze, that will also come in plastic containers and tin cans.

The idea is that the bonfires of San Juan are said to purify and protect, and ward of evil spirits, also at midnight, Spanish time, you go to the water’s edge and wash your face in the sea water to bring you good luck and hope for the future.

The following morning all along the beautiful coastline it looks like there has been an illegal rave, the devastation and litter is truly appalling.  The crowds must leave the beach by 10am that following day so that a massive council run cleaning operation can come along and mitigate the damage done to the eco system. By removing hundreds of tons of rubbish off the beaches.

They are often too late, and we have the pleasure of watching swathes of plastic litter pass by us on the sea. For two years running the locals decided, why bother bringing your own firewood to the beach when you can rip up the disabled wooden walkways for wheelchairs and set fire to them, at the expense of the local council and of course those who are disabled.

Ok, ok, I am painting a rather bleak picture here and there are some who bring their own bin bags and do clear up, but some don’t and as I have mentioned the Spanish do like a smoke, so hundreds and thousands of butt ends are discarded on the beach.  Every cigarette has a small ring of plastic at the filter end, so they also need to be cleared up off the beach too.

At least twice a year usually at the end of summer we have beach cleaning volunteers who go along the beaches collecting cigarette ends and other summer holiday detritus left by visitors and tourists.  

This year, San Juan is cancelled, no bonfires, no plastic waste out at sea, no drunken behaviour ripping up disabled boardwalks, also no income for the bars and restaurants that stay open all night.

Covid19 measures mean instead of spending money on cleaning up the beaches, the council is spending money on policing the beaches and closing them ALL across the whole of Spain next Wednesday.

I have been to a San Juan festival and enjoyed the event, but there is a great deal of young drunken behaviour, a lot of drugs and booze, not the family event we were expecting so came away soon after midnight.

I think what has happened, well at least here, is that what should be a great family festival has been hijacked by a club 18 to 30 mob who just go wild and trash the place.  We have seen it happen so many times in the UK.

When we lived in Essex, we were very close to a rather attractive park with a museum, there were ornamental flower beds and lovely stretches of grass to enjoy a summers day on.

Except that summer picnics have turned into a competition to scatter as much plastic and other waste around and then leave it on the grass.  I know speaking like this makes me into a bit of a Victor Meldrew. I am not.

I like a good party, I like to let my hair down, if I had any, but I can’t bear to leave a mess behind, and I don’t understand why you would want to do that?

Thursday and the economic figures are starting to emerge all over Europe detailing the cost to the economies of Lockdown.  In Germany there was a 13% decline in economic activity, here in Spain a whopping 34% fall in output.

Spain is hit harder as it has a reliance on the services industry.  And almost 95% of Spanish businesses are small to medium enterprises, here where we live, they are often family run.

It was another of those big culture shocks to discover so few national chains of anything other than McDonalds or Burger King, I swear the first business on the moon will be one of those two.

The Spanish Government is expecting a drop in GDP of 9.2% this year, I personally think they are way out and GDP has fallen a lot more than that.

There is to be EU money made available to help Spain but some in the EU are worried that the left-wing Government will spend the money on ideological schemes rather than re-igniting the business sector.

The conservatives in Spain believe that the money should be spent on digitising Spain, making more of the administration online and easier to work, create jobs with re-industrialisation to provide what they describe as ‘real jobs’.

The good news is neither side want cuts or austerity. The bad news is as usual left and right are both at logger heads as to how the money should be spent.

One thing is for certain though, they are not alone, the whole world is sharing in the same challenges and that getting us out of lockdown will be a far more complicated process than putting us in.

Transcript:

Day 94 Assassination 

Wednesday and the excitement cannot be contained, I am going shopping with Chris, well to be honest he doesn’t want me in the first shop, - Mercadona, he tells me he has a routine now and that doesn’t include me putting unsuitable items in the shopping trolley.

Never mind I am going to the Post Office instead, to pick up a parcel, the Post Office is only open between 8.30am and 2.30pm, the local office is tiny and usually packed, as many Spanish still come and pay their bills and do very complicated administrative things.

I arrived to discover the entrance was hidden behind some railing and the pavement outside was in a complete mess.  I followed the arrows around to the back entrance, I am guessing the temporary entrance that will take you through the sorting room/office.

Just ahead of me is curly lady, she is our local Postal worker and delivers the mail to the Estate.

But as I reach the door the sign on the door says closed at 2pm.  Madre Mia I said to her waving my hands Spanish style.  She explained that the Mayor had dug the road up and it meant, for some reason, they were closing early. Then she said to me the name of our Estate.

Yes, “Un a momento” she took my parcel slip and disappeared behind the door.  A moment later she was back with my parcel.  “Mucho gracias” I said “De nada.”

So I have my parcel and I have time to annoy Chris in Mercadona.  I found him pawing the fish, “Oh” he said, “I thought you were going to the Post Office?”

Now doused in alcohol and wearing my plastic gloves to get in, I thought I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity and “helped” Chris with the shopping until he got so annoyed, he told me to go back and sit in the car.

But at least the whole shopping trip this week had a bit of normality about it.

We drove out of the town along Avienda Frederico Garcia Lorca.  If you do a Google Map search you will find many roads named after Lorca, he was probably one of the greatest writers and poet of his time and is as important probably as Cervantes, Gaudí and well almost Picasso too.

He came to a rather unfortunate end.

Garcia Lorca was born in 1898 in a little town called Fuente Vaqueros, about an hour’s drive from here, his dad was making good money from the Sugar Cane growing industry.  Sugar Cane was a big thing here and a lot of the plains surrounding us now were given over to growing the stuff.  By our gym is the old Sugar Factory, that supplied sugar to Spain and beyond.

The factory is wreck but is slowly being restored, a couple of times the place has been used as a film location, standing in for Cuba, I believe once.

Lorca mother was a teacher, when he was eleven the family moved into Granada so that he could attend a city school. From there onto University.  From the age of six he took piano lessons and became interested in Spanish folklore.

Rather like the Bloomsbury Set the bright young things of Granada met in a local Café, Café Alameda.  By 1917 Lorca was writing books and Lorca’s parents were persuaded to let him attend the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid.

There he made friends with Salvador Dalí and many other creative artists that would become influential throughout Spain. Then came a play, that got laughed off the stage, it was the tale of an impossible love between a cockroach and a butterfly, but that did not deter Lorca.

In a career just a brief 19 years Frederico Garcia Lorca revitalised Spanish Poetry, helped to start the second Golden Age of Spanish Theatre and became one of the most important Spanish poet and playwright of the 20th century, and his work still influences writers and artists to this day.

Unfortunately for Lorca he was Gay, I say that because the Nationalist Forces led by Franco in1936 were not awfully keen on Gays or socialists and he was both, so he ended up being arrested and imprisoned without a trial. On the night of August 18th or maybe 19th, nobody bothered to keep a record, Lorca was driven to a remote hillside somewhere outside of Granada and shot dead.

I say somewhere because so far nobody has been able to find his remains, he might be in the mass grave in Viznar. So, Spain managed to assassinate possibly one of the greatest poets and playwrights of the age all in the name of Nationalism, deciding without a trial he was a danger to the cause. Franco never recognised that Lorca had been bumped off by his Guardia and the whole affair remained an irritation abroad until Francos death.

Those dark days are over and since the death of Franco, Spanish towns and cities have been falling over themselves to name roads, squares, museums and the like after Garcia Frederico Lorca

Transcript uncorrected:

Day 93 Anyone for tennis?

Tuesday and we are battening down the hatches, the wind is returning again with a vengeance, so far, the summer here has not really happened. Today it is overcast and sticky humid.

Our Gym has opened, and we went last night, OK so it is not the normal evening busy, but there were people and Chris’ class was about half the normal number.  What was encouraging was the queue to join the Gym, at one point ten people deep, well social distanced.

There were a lot of arrows and nowhere to sit, most of the members were totally ignoring the arrows, years of travelling on the tube and I can’t help following arrows on the stairs and corridors.

Alcohol cleaner dispensers were everywhere, the same ones they use in hospitals and we had to clean equipment before and after, but twice a day they have one of those fog cleaning machines you now see on trains and aircraft.

The changing rooms were open, but you are, currently encouraged not to use them.  And more importantly you could shower, a decision has been made that it is probably more unsanitary to keep the showers closed than open.

Obviously, the difference in Spain is that everyone wears a mask, and everybody was, with only one exception.  Once you found your place in the class and put your equipment out you could take off your mask and, frankly it was like a normal BodyPump class just a bit shorter.

Out on the tennis courts people were playing tennis and at the back where the Padel courts were, they were also enjoying that game. 

Padel is a cross between tennis, with a thicker racket come shovel and slightly softer ball, with a splash of squash thrown in as it is played in an enclosed court, the ones at our gym being glass. They are about half the size of a tennis court.

It was a Mexican by the name of Enrique Corcuera who in 1969 decided to adapt his Squash court at his home in Acapulco and he took some ideas from Platform Tennis which had been developed back in 1912 in New York as an all-weather way of playing tennis, but on a much smaller court, a third the size of a tennis court.

Enrique created  "Paddle Corcuera". So he is the first person to create the “Padel” game.

But it was Enrique's Spanish friend Alfonso who loved the game and brought it back to mainland Spain, he decided to create the first two Padel courts in a Tennis club in Marbella in 1974.

Now more than ten million people play Padel, it is one of the fastest growing sports in the world, and of course we have outdoor state of the art courts at our gym.  I have to say I struggled with tennis, the court for me is a bit large, I am tempted to give Padel a go, it is a very, very popular in this part of Spain.

So last night felt a bit more normal, we met up with Carmen who joined the class, I have to say we were all huffing and puffing a lot more than usual, particularly me as the evil god Bacchus has been playing havoc with my weight.

It does occur to me that the massive financial downturn and job losses created by the virus is a very different financial crisis than before.  In the previous crisis I felt helpless, the decisions to bring the economy back was being made by the banks, you could only look on as a bystander.

Now here today I realise that if I took courage, went to the gym, or went shopping as the Brits did yesterday, took a holiday abroad, put up with even more misery at the airport,.. it would be my little bit to help bring the economies back along with the jobs that have been lost.

There is no denying that the world will be a different place, but how different it is actually is up to you and there is a better chance of a faster recovery than in previous times, unless you believe that the economic model the world runs on is broken for good.

My Client and friend Tony Wrighton how presents the brilliant Zestology Podcast has started making his own yoghurt and is thinking of going camping in the UK as a summer holiday this year!  I wonder how many other people are discovering The Good Life and change their whole way of thinking.

Here in Spain and certainly in this area, there are many Spanish families that have a small holding, a larger allotment, or grow fruit and vegetables in their garden. It is quite normal to be inundated with produce.  Last night Carmen brought us eggs, which she described as “Fresh from the arse of the chicken,” and lemons that were twisted and deformed, compared to those perfect lemons in the Supermarket but taste delicious.  My favourite fruits are the pomelos, what the Spanish call grapefruit, they are soft juicy and have that proper tangy grapefruit flavour, we get about a month of glut in the Autumn with those.

I am thinking of growing herbs and tomatoes, I tried to grow Mediterranean int in the UK but the first sign of frost it fell into a deadly swoon and died, you would think I would be able to grow it here, down below us the neighbours are turning their back garden into a grow your own with fruit trees and raised beds for veggies, I have to say I am looking forward to their harvest glut.

Tuesday and the day ends with the removal of Charlie the cockroach from Chris' bathroom, last night we had a swarm of flying red ants in the house, the sticky night and our house lights attracting them.  So maybe the Spanish summer will return proper next week, when Lockdown ends.

Transcript (uncorrected)

Day 92 Dance off

Monday has come, I usually dread Monday as it always brings administration stuff which I really don’t care for.

By the way if you want to catch all 92 episodes with transcripts of Spanish Practices head over to THE secret spain dot com.

Today the administration was our Spanish Tax return, I say our, as we are married it has been done jointly, I get the classification of Woman, the form does not seem to have a code for Partner. 

The Spanish Tax year runs from January to December, unlike the UK tax year that runs April to April, it means that, certainly for a Brit you have to get your shite together straight after a major holiday of feasting and excess.

The Spanish celebrate Christmas differently, it outwardly seems a much more serious affair, Midnight Mass at the Church is a rather dreary occasion, I have heard carol singing from the children in the main town. Carols are sung in Latin which makes them sound beautiful if a little inaccessible.

We still haven’t got our Christmas quite right, it is fairly difficult to have a traditional Christmas here, several attempts at cooking a turkey has led us to give up and go for a chicken.  The main Spanish meal and celebration is on Christmas Eve, like it is in many other Catholic countries.

One year our friend Maggie got us organised enough to make a Christmas cake, she brought dried fruit over from the UK, it is quite hard to find here, even though a lot of it comes from nearby Morocco,

There is more than a physical divide between Spain and Morocco, it extends to a cultural one as well.  When the Moors were driven out of Spain by the Christians, the ones that remained were forced to convert to Christianity and as a kind of obvious test, a lot of local Christian dishes were pork based. Many of the exotic spices were now more difficult to obtain and were not used in the new Christian cuisine of the conquered area.

It does mean that the local pork here is quite delicious, but for our friends who are Jewish who asked me did I think there was anywhere Kosher to eat, the answer here is no.

The cake we made came out very well, Maggie told me to feed it regularly with Brandy.  So I fed it every day, turns out that it only needed a feed once a week, but I have to say it was far more delicious Brandy soaked.

But it does not put you in the mood to fill a tax form in, January is bleak enough without that.  There are personal allowances here, but less generous than the UK, there is also little incentive to save, no ISAs or as far as I can see opportunity to easily buy shares, up to now cash is king, it allows the Spanish to ‘protect’ there money from the onerous tax system.

I mentioned to Carmen that winning the lottery is probably the only way the ordinary Spanish can hope to amass a fortune. She told me “you are joking, they tax you if you win at 33%!” So good luck can turn into bad luck when the tax man comes knocking to take a share of your good fortune.

In the UK, I believe the tax is taken at source when you buy a ticket, in the long run the taxman makes more money taxing everyone than just the winners, but it doesn’t work like that here.

Speaking of Christmas, one year in the little village of Velez the whole village, well everyone who was in the syndicate won the major Christmas lottery – The Gordo.  Every person walked away with one hundred thousand Euros, many bought flashy cars and others improved their houses, for one-year Velez was a very lucky little village.

Monday and today the Alhambra has announced how it will welcome visitors back to the palaces.  No more tickets but a system that links your entry back to your Passport number or DNI number and I guess our NIE number.

The attraction will run at just fifty percent so a lot fewer visitors milling around could actually make the Alhambra a nicer place to visit.

Some clarification on tourists yesterday and it looks like the British will also be allowed to come to Spain along with the rest of the European Gang, although not a member of the Schengen area or an affiliate, I think, if I understand right, UK is still technically in Europe so tourists are allowed.

There is the complication that the UK has, finally, introduced a quarantine period, just at the time the whole of Europe drops their quarantine period.  I was looking on a Spanish site that has the UK Government quarantine advert in Spanish on.  I have to say the Spanish were very unimpressed by the less than warm welcome they might receive in London, so I imagine if you stay at home in the UK this year, London will also be a great place to see as there will be fewer tourists willing to spend 14 days banged up in a Travelodge waiting for their holiday of a lifetime to start.

Oh, and if you are thinking of going on a clubbing holiday to Ibiza this year, it looks very much like you will not be doing much dancing.  Clubs that have areas for dancing will be prohibited from opening them.  The dance floor must be laid out for sedentary use. Tables and chairs with social distancing measures.  I think the Spanish Government has identified clubs with a lot of people up close and personal as a viral hotspot.

To discover more episodes of this Podcast Spanish Practices head along to the secret spain dot com where you can find all the episodes and transcripts.

This evening we are off to the gym, Chris has a class to teach, I am not sure that there will be many people there, it is after all the first day of Gym’s being able to open, tomorrow I will report back on just how that went.

SOC

Transcript (uncorrected)

Day 91

Sunday and Uncle Pedro has been doing his weekly Zoom meeting, he likes to surprise the regional Governments, just to remind them all he is the one in charge.

So he has brought forward the date when Spain will open its borders to everyone except Portugal, so on Monday 22nd June the Lockdown will be over, for now and so will this Podcast, I still have the story to tell about one of the stupidest things I did some years ago. I will keep that for later in the week.

But you can’t have a Podcast about Spain without mentioning the Spanish Royal family and in particular the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos de Borbón.

It must be remembered that Juan Carlos although swore allegiance to Franco as soon as Franco had popped off, Carlos started the transition to democracy back in 1975, which, with one or two hiccups along the way, seems to have served Spain well, although there are some who would wish that Franco was still in charge.

My Aunty Isobel who had a large portrait of Franco in her sitting room in Luton, She eulogised the man.  She used to say things like, “when you come to Spain you will find no crime, because the General has eradicated it,” 

My late father used to describe Aunty Isobel’s rantings about how great Spain is under Franco’s rule as, bollocks, - he was very fond of that word, as are the Spanish, I often hear the word cojones used in everyday Spanish slang.

Where we would say I couldn’t give a toss, the Spanish say they couldn’t give tres cojones, we might say I swear on my mother’s grave, the Spanish say Me corto los cojones, - I would cut my own balls off. Finally we say you will die laughing, the Spanish say descojonada , laugh your balls off. 

Sadly, King Juan Carlos hoping that he might be remembered as the great architect of Spain’s transition to democracy is overwhelmed by his terrible reputation as a corrupt old philanderer.

He had been accused by an old German socialite – Fräulein Sayn-Wittgenstein of not only giving her a good old philander but of using her to squirrel away money in secret overseas assets.

He also took the Fräulein on his secret trip in 2012 to Botswana to hunt elephants, most people are going to find it hard to like a man, let alone a King who in this modern age would think that was an OK thing to do.

I have to say our own Royal Family quite like killing animals for sport as well, but I think Prince Philip would stop short at bagging an elephant, .. I think?

He didn’t do very well with his trip to Botswana and managed to break his hip, which is how the scandal came about. But on previous occasions he had managed to kill one of these magnificent beasts and there is a picture of him standing next to a dead Elephant.

At the time in 2012 he was the Honorary President of the World Wildlife Fund, I mean you couldn’t make this kind of thing up.

In his younger days Juan Carlos loved nothing better than riding his Harley Davidson motorbike around Spain on his one King mission to philander as many eligible Spanish girls as he possibly could.

He loved to ride along the hairpin bends, as they were then of the old coastal road that passes by the bottom of our estate here near Salobreńa, indeed some of the Kings friends from Almuńecar are still alive today and remember him travelling the coast on his own and without any security, well it was a different time.

Now according to our friend Carmen he would pull up outside our estate and take the Canada, goat road down to the tiny secluded beach below us, park up his motorbike there and give some poor local girl he had met a good philandering.

Then after jumping her he would jump back on his motorbike and disappear back to Madrid.

The popularity of the King, amid the accusations of corruption and playboy lifestyle, tarnished the monarchy in Spain and made them quite unpopular.

But suddenly, as things often happen in Spain, the King decided to abdicate in 2014 and was replaced by his son King Felipe the sixth of Spain. He is married to Letizia a former news journalist and a very glamorous Queen in the mode of Princess Diana.

In dramatic contrast Felipe has set an example of a modern monarch, he is married to a former TV news journalist, they lead an understated life.

A couple of months ago in a massive snub to his father Juan Carlos, he renounced his personal inheritance from his father, worth millions of Euros but coming from a secret offshore fund with ties to Saudi Arabia.

Felipe has said he wants to renounce his inheritance along with any asset or financial structure who character is not in accordance with the law.

A modern Monarchy for a new modern era, something that Spain badly needs in a time of the new normal and the exit from the Lockdown.

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Transcript here:

Day 90 holiday from hell

Saturday your Sunday and the Spanish Government has started to talk about how they envisage foreign visitors coming to the country, the first lot will turn up on Monday, they are Germans coming to the Balearic Islands.

Interestingly about 35,000 people travelled to Spain in May, whilst not holidaymakers, they were mainly people returning back to Spain for work or back to their residency.

From all those who travelled, 104 people were detected to have Corona Virus.

But in a couple of weeks the onslaught will begin, instead of personnel there will be automatic heat detector cameras, inline health declarations, this will only apply to people arriving by sea and air.  If you drive into the country, there will be no health checks.

But as we know people lie on health declarations, they do it all the time with travel insurance, and how do you track and trace hundreds of thousands of visitors into the country?

I am not sure that will be possible. For us we are probably going to stay away from the beaches and bars, at least for the moment.

For the all-important tourist industry, the spring was a disaster, a complete standstill, nobody went anywhere, saw anything and it is highly likely that, that will continue into the summer.

Only half of the hotels in Spain will open and most of them will only be at 25% capacity.  As I have mentioned in previous Podcasts, tourism represents more than 12% of Spain’s GDP.

The Industry want some kind official map of safe areas to travel in Europe that will allow travel corridors, I am not sure that any area is really safe. Also, you are going to have to ask yourself can I trust the airline. How safe will the hotel be? If there is a virus outbreak, will I end up being trapped in Spain unable to return home?  Airports are fairly unpleasant places not, what will they be like with all the virus prevention measures?

Personally, I have no plans to travel at the moment, we are discouraging friends and relatives from travelling this year too.

It is not all bleak news, there will be intrepid folk who will see this as an opportunity.  An opportunity to explore and see tourist sites normally rammed with coach parties and other tourists.

The Spanish themselves will probably come to the coast, so far, fingers crossed, the social distancing on the beach is working well, helped by the Lifeguards and security staff employed by the Local Government to ensure beach safety.

The new normal is embracing face masks, alcohol cleaner and reducing surfaces and objects that get touched a lot.  All the restaurants here are using chalk board menus or telling you is on offer.  No sticky menus and special of the day cards.

Our Gym also opens on Monday, there are a raft of health measures and social distancing happening.  Studios are marked out for distance, entry is strictly by booking a class, use of masks and alcohol cleaner at the point of entry to the class is obligatory.  But you don’t need to wear your mask when you are in position in your marked square.

Exercise equipment has been re-spaced to reflect the 1.5 metre rule for distancing and cleaner is to be used on all equipment.  The use of a towel is also obligatory, it was before.  I am not a fan of grubby towels; I prefer disposable tissues and cleaner before and after I use an exercise machine.

Towels don’t kill bacteria or viruses but do mop up the sweat. We will go on Monday, Chris is teaching a class, it will be interesting to see how many turn up and what the overall experience will be like.

Saturday afternoon and Carmen is coming, or rather we are going to pick her up from Alcampo after I collect my glasses, hoping there will be no dramas collecting them, I have waited patiently for nearly three months for them.  Currently I am writing this with a pair of one Euro reading specs from the pound shop, which is far from perfect.

I do worry that we all bang on about the new normal, but that it doesn’t actually exists and that the virus is still out there waiting.  I don’t even know if I have the virus and was asymptomatic, I bet you don’t either.

New glasses but no fitting service, they were just inched over a sanitised mat and I was given a card to read from, in Spanish of course.  We were early so shopped in Alcampo, no gloves just alcohol dispensed from an automatic machine. 

The shelves were looking healthier, no police tape sealing off the things you could not buy, I am still wondering who made a list that you could buy a TV but not a book.

We saw Carmen and we drove her back home to hand over the car.  Some refreshments and a bowl of Tyrrells Crisps, “Oh my god, I forgotten how good British salt and vinegar crisps taste,” She said. The Spanish supermarkets are not very adventurous in the crisp flavours.  I notice that quite a few Spanish like Pipa’s – they are just sunflower seeds that they eat spiting the husks out into a nearby handy ashtray.

The day ended with Carmen disappearing into the distance with our old car. Tomorrow as story of the Playboy King of Spain and why a little beach below the estate got Royal Approval.

If you are enjoying Spanish Practices we would love a 5 star review. The music Leaving Havana is by Marty Stone and Ben Hatten, Spanish Practices is a Creative Radio Partnership Ltd Production. 

Full Transcript:

Day 89 Fag End

Friday and we are off to the Administrator to sell our old car to Carmen, what could possibly go wrong, find out later in this episode.

If you want to catch up on previous episodes and full transcripts, go to the secret Spain dot com

Today I have been thinking about Satan’s smoke. A great many people in Spain seem to smoke, I remember we had to pick up a parcel from a UPS pick up point that turned out to be a rather sad looking Travel Agents, I guess even sadder now we are in the Covid19 world.

It was a pain to get to, Chris had to negotiate the one-way system of Motril and park the car in a tiny space in an equally tiny square.  We got out the car and looked around, finally seeing the little shop and a sad and very tiny sticker saying UPS pick up.

We went inside, a very disinterested lady was sat, chuffing on a ciggy above her was a large sign “No Fumar” to her right were some rusty carousels with actual travel brochures - Viaje inglés with your usual pictures of a pleased with himself beefeater, Stone Henge and William Shakespeare.

Behind her a shabby shelf filled with a disorganised pile of parcels, one of which would be ours.

I said in Spanish ‘I have to collect my parcel’. I placed the UPS note on the counter.  She took one last drag of her cigarette, blew the smoke out in both our directions and stubbed it out on the counter.

She picked the delivery note up with a great deal of disinterest. Turned to the bulging shelves let out a “mmmm” then “Dinee” The DNI is the Spanish Identity card, I don’t have that I have a Knee an NIE card, I gave her that, she replied “No good, ..passporte!”

Well I don’t actually carry my British passport around, it stays in the safe, so I said “No passporte” she replied “No paquette”

Then I had an idea, I wonder if she would accept my, then, British Driving Licence.  I got that out and pointed to the EU flag thing on the pink plastic card.

Another “mmm” she turned around and started to poke at the parcels on the back shelf, one fell off with a slight tinkly smash sound, eventually she found our parcel.

“Sin, sin aqui”   I signed my name and she pushed the parcel across the counter.  “Gracias,” I cheerily said, she gave us a withering look and reached over for her cigarette packet and drew out another smoke, lighting it with one of the Chinese shop lighters that threw an enormous flame up, momentarily lighting up the dingy shop for a moment.  We left.

As Chris tried to reverse out of the impossibly small square, she came to the door to watch us suffer, scowling and flicking cigarette ash up in the air in a theatrical way.

So, smoking in Spain, wherever you are seems to be a thing, I can almost imagine a Hospital Operating Theatre with a surgeon he is in the depths of some complicated surgery, the patient laying on the table.  He stops, pulls out a cigarette packet and lights up, then carrying on with the operation fag ash falling gently into the patients open body.

It was Rodrigo de Jerez who in 1492 first saw ‘natives’ smoking and brought the dried leaves back to Spain.

This did not go down well with the Church, The Spanish Inquisition stated that ‘only Satan can give to a man the ability to expel smoke through his mouth.’

So they locked up poor old Rodrigo for ten years, he was released after seven and the habit got picked up in Seville, but still the Church was having none of it.

In 1624 the Inquisition posted a tile that said you blow smoke out of any of your orifices and we will severely punish you, and that stayed the Church’s outlook until the 18th century.

By then the state had started to take an interest and saw an opportunity for tax and of course control.

The first tobacco factory in the world was in Seville which started production in 1758 they made snuff and cigars, but the quality was a bit shite,  mainly due to the men working in the factory not turning up to work and when they were at work having a half arse attitude to the manufacture of the cigars. The solution was to hire female workers to do the job, by 1829 all cigar making was done by women, there were more than six thousand women working in the factory by 1868 with their good wages made them ladies independent economically and a really important part of the economy of Seville.

Thursday and our trip to the Administrator his hit a little bump in the road, the DGT, the Government office she must visit has shut down the internet appointment system as “too many people are using it,” so she will have to doorstep the office in Granada to get the paperwork done.. sigh!

It is enough to make you want to take up smoking! All over Spain you see Estancos, little Tobacconist shops are where you buy you ciggies from, stamps and since 2014 a few other bits and bobs like crisps and the like.  Estancos are  Government controlled and have been for over 400 years ago they were traditionally awarded to War Widows, if you want to sell cigarettes you have to buy them from the Estanco, it is no good looking in the supermarket, along with paracetamol, cigarettes are also not sold there.

The weekend comes, it has already arrived for you, and as usual the wind will accompany our Saturday howling and whistling along the coast of Spain.