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Updated: Thursday, 31 July 2008
We started from 0 to date on July 1, 2008 with this new digital The New Entertainer. Visits from 01/07/08: 8215 |
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July 2008 |
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The thermometers are claiming thirty-five or even forty degrees inland and not much less on the coast. Afternoon activities that don’t involve a swimming pool or a siesta have ceased and even the mosquitoes have called a truce. High above us, a lone paramotor circles, its pilot scanning the barren landscape for signs of life below.
But life there is. In this month's edition, Angel writes about rules in language and society, how they change and where they will take us. Lenox sees the need for a few more linguists. Peter claims, that, all things considered, and despite Spain's excellent results in the world of sport, there is what experts often refer to as 'a crisis'. But, don't worry, it can't last for long.
Our picture this month 'Burros, Cabras y Ovejas' comes from Steve Brockett, pilot, photographer and adventurer, whose exhibition of his latest portraits of Almería taken from the air are on show at the Museo Pedro Gilabert in Arboleas.
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A Language Free from Gender |
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If it wasn’t for the fact that this page traditionally doesn’t have photographs splodged into the editorials (like some of our cheaper brethren), we would seriously be considering placing here a picture of our splendid Minister for Equality, well, Ministress actually, who has done so much, in so little time, to make herself a household name.
She has taken the spotlight away from all the rest of the Cabinet in a way that can only leave one feeling breathless.
She will go far!
You see, she’s not only a corker to look at, but she has grabbed the front pages because of her remarkable grasp of populist concerns and the forthright way she has in speaking her mind.
Now, I have never been one to talk about the difference in people due to their sex, so, a ‘ministry for equality’ strikes me as a pretty stupid idea.
I think feminism, quotas, macho violence and the rest of it are just so much hogwash. We should be against all forms of violence and support full integration and harmony.
Of course, we shall soon be facing fresh social crises. For example, with the drop in the number of births in Spain, together with the rise in the number of old people, coupled with the remarkable number of immigrants here (now officially put at over five million), it is clear that our country is becoming a gigantic old peoples’ home run by furriners.
So, as there are good and bad people in any group, we shall start to see occasional cases of ill-treatment being handed out to the little-old citizens of this country, and we shall need yet another ministry to look out for them; and new laws against ‘violence towards the elderly’.
Perhaps punishment for ill treatment of the elderly should be considered according to the age of the victim. After all, violence against women is more harshly punished in Spain than against men. We could invent a code where you got ten years of jail for ill-treating an eighty year old, twenty years for a ninety year old and a whopping thirty years for mistreating those who have reached a hundred.
Not that the Government’s social security payments are going to hold out for much longer; so do think twice about aiming for a hundred…
Of course, neither this nor any other government has had a chance with the touchy subject of ‘equality’, I mean, how can we have a just and balanced society when the Royal Academy of Language has dome nothing to stop the absurd sexism in our everyday speech.
English, at least, doesn’t bother about genders and is happy with a modest ‘the’ in front of a noun without trying to check under its kilt.
How can you explain to an English person why ‘agua’ is masculine yet ‘aurora’ is feminine? Well, if anyone can explain, it would be Gwyneth who articles about the vagaries of Spain and the Spanish language appear in this paper every month.
Anyway, it appears that the Royal academy is bent on maintaining inequality, machismo and hatred towards the weaker sex.
How else would justicia, Junta (de Andalucía), idiota, demolición and indemnización all be feminine words and, at the same time, threatening and negative concepts?
And if you don’t know what I mean, you can ask the Priors whose house in Vera was unjustly knocked down back in January.
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What You Say |
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Language is power. If you can communicate with someone you are in a far better situation than if you can’t. Both socially and commercially. That’s why we need to speak Spanish and, by the same token, why local businessmen, town halls and official organisations need to speak English.
Many Spanish owned businesses now use bi-lingual staff and, the fact is, there are plenty of young people who, despite being British, have lived here since their earliest years and are comfortably bi-lingual. In the town halls, you will find English-speakers only in the tourist departments – as if tourists, who, during their five day visit, spending 200 euros on the choo choo train or whatever other vulgarity is available, are somehow more useful to the community that the foreign residents.
A doctor I know who works at the hospital in Huercal Overa says that up to 20% of the patients there are English speakers. Some of the doctors studied in the United States and are fluent in English, but none of the staff can speak a word. Why should they?
Because it makes things a lot easier.
In Spain at large, the problems of ‘language’ are currently upsetting the purists from two different directions. Firstly, as Spanish nouns generally end in either ‘a’ or ‘o’, being ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ (remember your French), certain people of a liberal disposition feel in some cases slighted. A woman minister (ministress?) has upset the Real Academia Española by describing herself as a ‘miembra’ rather than a ‘miembro’ of the government. One member (thankfully, masculine) of the Royal Academy says ‘If it’s not an error, it’s a stupidity. The minister is a champion of shallowness regarding the subject of sex and gender’.
It’s a bit like the ‘manhole’ controversy in Bloomsbury. Pathetic in other words.
In Spanish, a ‘masculine’ word doesn’t connote masculinity. It’s just a word. The masculine form is also the fallback when there’s a group of articles or people of both sexes. You say ‘vosotros’ rather than ‘vosotros y vosotras’. Except for leftist politicians and fringe groups. Some people now use the ampersand sign to cover themselves – such as in the hugely irritating compañer@s which opens letters from unions, women’s clubs and other select groups.
¡Idiotas! (sorry, ‘idiotos’ doesn’t exist in castellano).
But a far more serious problem for purists, patriots, pragmatists and conservatives is the limits to which the nationalists in parts of the north and east of the country are prepared to go to crank up the ‘bilingüismo oficial’ which is now an accepted ‘coñazo’ (pain in the arse) in Catalonia, the Balearics, and to a lesser extent in Valencia, the Basque Country and Galicia. Nowadays, for purely political ends, Catalonian children must take practically all their classes in catalán and they will grow up to speak Spanish (if they are lucky) as about as well as I do. Very useful when they want to leave the confines of their community.
In the Basque Country from next year all classes must be held in euskara. All. The announcement was made in the Basque parliament by the Basque minister for education. In Spanish – of course – otherwise nobody there would have understood him.
In Mallorca recently, a nutter – sorry, a ‘senior nationalist politician’ – accused Air Berlin, which flies in more tourists to the islands than they can count, of disrespecting their amusing local patois by only using German and Spanish on their flights. His thrust was that ‘the company is run by Nazis’ and he calls the service ‘Air Goebbels’.
The Germans are not amused.
Of course, every Catalán, Basque, Gallego and Ibicenco speaks Spanish (at least, this generation does), so the whole language question is at best, artful. Returning to the Almerían coast, most of the English (the word is ‘ingleses’ in Spanish, which is accepted to mean something nearer ‘northern Europeans’) don't unfortunately speak any Spanish, so there is evidently a certain commercial, social and political case for bilingualism.
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Well, How About ‘A Mild Deceleration’? |
For a nation that has become so prosperous in such a short space of time, the last few weeks of striking lorry drivers proved to be a gruelling test for Spain. For the moment, things have quietened down; although the causes remain the same, and the chances are that we are in for a summer of discontent.
On the one side there are the average consumers, concerned with making do until pay-day, whilst on the other, the totally justified strikers, who are protesting the very high cost of diesel fuel. For the truckers as well as the fishermen - who were also on strike - the arithmetic is crystal clear and exemplified by the truckers: a supposed journey from say Madrid to Paris and back again will cost over 1,200 Euros for the fuel, but the trucker in fact gets paid just 600 Euros to undertake this journey.
However, the strikes last month had an exemplary effect on Mr and Mrs Average Consumer, who took to hoarding and over-buying with all the enthusiasm of survivalists at the outbreak of a nuclear war. The shelves of the supermarkets were emptied in the first days of the truckers’ strike and petrol was unavailable besides occasional supplies brought in tankers with police escorts. Mad Max anyone? Luckily, the whole performance was over after a few days, but the lesson was there for anyone to note: panic buying in Spain is now a national hobby, showing that the country can be held to ransom, if the strikers are serious enough.
Of course, post-strike prices are well up on just thirty days ago. Vegetables, fresh produce, bread and fish of course are all more expensive, sometimes by as much as 50%. The world is becoming not only a dangerous place, but an expensive one as well.
So, overall, look at what is happening in Spain as now, just months after being re-elected, the economy has utterly and completely blown up in the face of Prime Minister José Luís Rodriguez Zapatero, and the combination of factors seems to show that there is no easy way out for anyone at all. All he has undertaken thus far is call ‘anti-patriotic’ anyone who mentions a crisis, and equally refuses totally to call the current state of affairs a crisis as it damages the image and prestige of Spain - never mind that he and his ministers have been dragging this down to the lower depths over the last few years without the help of anyone thank you.
The banks are facing a credit crunch unlike anything they have seen for the last ten years. Mortgages now carry very high rates - if they can be had at all - and the ensuing result on the profit figures seems set to be devastating, with at least one bank - The Royal Bank of Scotland in Madrid - cutting down on its employees considerably. At the same time, as there is always opportunity in misfortune, Banco Santander - one of Europe’s biggest banks, has revealed that it expects profits this year of around ten billion euros - something of a drop over previous twelve month periods.
Everything is still up in the air about the mortgages the banks currently have on their books, as most of these are based on the Real Estate sector, which is also facing a crisis of its own, with 600,000 homes for sale that were built during the boom years in the hope of finding a client still lying empty and unoccupied, as by now the clients have all but gone away, and with a lack of sales, the building companies are now finding that their credit ratings with various banks are undergoing revisions. As a result, several companies have gone to the wall in the real estate sector, whilst others are holding on for all they can - or like Jesus Ger of the Marina d’Or - seeking and creating developments in up-and-coming markets like Egypt and Rumania until the economy of Spain is sorted out. The slowdown in the housing market has also affected electrical goods shops that depend on the most part on the owners of new houses to make their sales of new equipment. As a result, at least one chain of stores in the Valencian Community has gone bankrupt for that very reason.
To continue the doom and gloom theme, crisis has also hit the electricity sector, which, despite undergoing a considerable price hike, now says that there is not enough juice to go around - especially in the summer when people turn on their air conditioners at full blast, or in winter when heaters are the main mode of heating for many Spanish homes, so more electricity generating stations are required. However, little old ZP - not Finance Minister Pedro Solbes, you may note - says that constructing nuclear power stations is too expensive today, so that’s the end of that, and everyone will just have to cough up more - despite the unemployment figures rising to alarming proportions, with 53,400 people adding themselves to the dole queues in one month alone. Indeed, a government spokesman admitted just last week that he expects unemployment to reach 11% by next year.
Buddy, Spare a Dime
The terrible situation in Spain is more accentuated than in any of the other countries of Europe due to the fact that for the last four years the economy has been allowed to go unchecked in any way, as no guidance has been forthcoming from the top - hello Mr Solbes, anyone home? The problem is that when faced with a tremendous crisis of these dimensions, it requires someone with some considerable knowledge, training and experience to cope with it, and the two main people faced with this downturn in the economy (not recession you note) are Pedro Solbes, who for the first four months of this year roundly denied that any crisis was around the corner (he just called these market adjustments and added that they were quite normal), and Miguel Sebastian, who has been used by ZP as a financial advisor, when despite allegations to the contrary, he was in fact fired from his previous job as an investment advisor to the BBVA. The real economics technocrats and experts in their field- Rodrigo Rato and Cristobal Montoro - have remained ominously silent when asked to offer solutions to the problem - Mr Rato probably because in his former position as President of the International Monetary Fund he saw this global crunch coming, and rather than face it, chose to run away by resigning, whilst Mr Montoro probably does have some clear solutions to the problem, but will not unveil them in the hope that the current crisis will be enough to unseat Mr Zapatero and his Socialists from the Moncloa Palace by forcing early elections. Meanwhile, Mr Zapatero places the blame for the crisis at the feet of Jean-Claude Trichet, the head of the European Bank, for allowing the Euribor rate to rise unchecked, but in all truth, the crisis is upon us and it just simply has to be faced. All our economies are going to feel the strain, with holidays now becoming a gamble over whether these can be booked without turning up at the airport or train station to find that either the trip has been cancelled or the ticket now carries a surcharge. The thing is, though, what is ZP actually going to do about the crisis? In real terms, probably nothing, and sit on his hands in the hope that it will all go away, and his offering some 55 million Euros to the truckers who want to take early retirement is just chaff, as the retirees - if there are any - will then become just like the rest of us, with restricted travel due to the truckers blocking the roads; restricted eating as supplies run out, and restricted holidays as costs become prohibitive.
Mojácar is famous for its chiringuitos - its beach bars. The playa has been scattered with them since the first ones opened in the early seventies, with places like the 'Kon Tiki' (operated for a while by our most famous resident - Gordon Goody, the Glasgow Train robber), the 'Aku Aku', the 'Patio' (Ric Davis who came here to work on the desalination plant being built by the apologetic American government after the Palomares incident in 1966), 'Tito's', and Lloyd and Tish's 'El Cid'.
The Cid is thirty years old this month so celebrations are underway, including a golf tournament pictured above with Lloyd giving Tish what might be a bottle of something. How on earth they could spend thirty years behind the same bar is a mystery...
The beach bars in Mojácar are anarchic. Many are on private land and the others all seem to manage somehow to get around the rules of the government 'costas' agency. Good for them.
In other parts of the Spanish Med, beach-bars have to be taken down in the winter (to make room?) and are usually made to one design and put out to tender to anyone who wants them (as long as they are related to the mayor). These soviet joints of stainless steel, clapboard, bad flamenco and waiters in white shirts and black bow ties have yet to make their appearance in Mojácar, but, my friends, plans are afoot.
Meanwhile, we can enjoy the old, bohemian way of life in a torn tee shirt propping up a beach bar with sand under our toes or perhaps, with a little more clothes-sense, we can sit elegantly in an attractive evening-spot with a copa of champagne, the Playa Blanca or the Lua; or at fine beach-bar restaurants like the Neptuno. Life - as somebody's tee shirt elegantly points out - is a beach-bar.
So, raise a glass to Lloyd and Tish, who are known to many thousands of happy visitors and contented residents, on this their thirtieth anniversary. They are part of the charm and magic of Mojácar.
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Peter Gooch,
Editor - Valencia Life
www.valencialife.net |
More Global Warming Absurdity |
| TIME Magazine has a video on how to cook insects. They say the reason is because if we start eating insects, we eat less beef, which will help carbon emissions that will help global warming. Eating bugs is a great way to save the planet. They show you how to cook beetles, grasshoppers, silkworms, and centipedes. Is that not absurd? It's a great source of vitamin A and other nutrients say these idiots. Somebody commented that aren't we going to be using energy to cook the insects so why not just eat them raw! It just gets more and more absurd.
Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC. It's like Vaclav Klaus the president of the Czech Republic said: facts don't matter anymore.
Accumulation of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere has nearly doubled around the globe over the past 200 years. Scientists believe that rising concentrations of this greenhouse gas, which absorbs and sends infrared radiation to the Earth, are causing changes in the climate and contributing to global warming.
Livestock animals naturally produce methane as part of their digestive process, belching it while chewing cud and excreting it in their waste. About 15 to 20 percent of global methane emissions come from livestock. Methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the culprit normally at the centre of global warming discussions.
Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacterium to cattle and sheep that emit large quantities of the harmful gas. While the usual image of greenhouse gas pollution is a billowing smokestack pushing out carbon dioxide, livestock passing wind contribute a surprisingly high percentage of total emissions in some countries.
Fourteen percent of emissions from all sources in Australia are from methane from cattle and sheep. And if you look at New Zealand, which has a much higher agricultural base, they're actually up around 50 percent. Researchers say the bacteria in Kangaroo-style stomachs would also make the digestive process much more efficient and could potentially save in feed costs for farmers. Not only would they not produce the methane, they would actually get something like 10 to 15 percent more energy out of the feed they are eating. Even farmers who laugh at the idea of environmentally friendly kangaroo farts say that's nothing to joke about, particularly given the devastating drought Australia is suffering.
Scum Report
From rags to riches: a humble footman became the butler of a princess then a millionaire after describing his relationship with the princess in a book written by a ghostwriter. Paul Burrell is now boasting in graphic terms he was Princess Diana’s stud. There’s nothing unusual about Royals bedding their servants. One of the most famous was Queen Victoria’s affair with her Balmoral gardener John Brown. But for Burrell to capitalize on his alleged sexual relationship with princess Diana for monitory gain is despicable.
The Off the Rack Dress
With the help of an off-the-rack dress, Michelle Obama eased her harsh image on the popular TV show ‘The View’ that is a gabfest for women. Her dress, retailing at $148 at White House Black Market, drew rave reviews. The Manhattan outpost of the brand, White House Black Market, reported an immediate spike in requests for the $148 leaf-print frock at its Fifth Ave store the moment the show went off the air. (It's also on the designer's web site, www.donnaricco.com, for $99.)
The tour de force appearance, balancing serious political issues with the show's more frothy fare, helped soften her reputation, marking the first step in the Obama campaign's new effort to reshape her national image. Michelle has become an issue in the presidential campaign even though she isn't running for anything. An educated, successful lawyer, devoted wife and caring mother, she has been labelled "angry" and unpatriotic. Last winter, Michelle sparked controversy when she told voters, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." She explained on ‘The View’ that what she was talking about was having a pride in the political process.
Michelle conceded that unlike her husband, whose temperament is steady and cool, she wears her heart on her sleeve and oozes a level of passion that could be a political risk. She said the more the public gets to know her, it will become clear who she is and what she cares about. People aren't used to strong women, she said. On the lighter notes, Michelle shined. She said she had stopped wearing pantyhose a long time ago because it was painful and they always ripped. Everyone had a good laugh on the issue of proper breakfasts, where she confessed that for protein in the morning, she and her family skip the low-fat yogurt in favour of bacon.
Her only slip occurred when she meant to say Barack was "sweet and empathetic" and it came out sounding like she was saying "sweet and pathetic." Her comments, though, were deliberately designed not to take over the room, or the TV show. Rather, she tried to be "one of the girls," pointedly steering the conversation to inclusive topics like raising children. But when she stood up, at 5 feet 11 inches, she inevitably became the commanding presence. In general, her appearance was an effective counter to insinuations she's angry and aggressive. She came across as calm and feminine - clever and articulate.
Barack Obama plans to visit Europe later this month, a visit that will include the UK, before going on to Iraq. I hope he takes Michelle along for the European leg of the trip. Critics say Barack Obama is still an empty suit and that his campaign for the presidency is the usual promise of change you hear from all politicians. But if you go to his web site www.barackobama.com you will find there’s a lot more to this man who plans to change America as never before. As a couple, Barack and Michelle Obama are standouts; they are the rock stars of politics! They represent a new generation of Americans; they are young and very bright, they are the antithesis of the political establishment in Washington. His message is resonating, mainly among young people, confirming and reinforcing the notion that anything is possible in America. But we shall have to wait until November to find out if oratory can triumph over experience!
After Words
Following a long tradition in China of naming children after current events like ”Build the Nation” or “Defend China”, over 4,000 Chinese have named their children “Olympic Games.”
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Mojácar's Old Lags: The 1970s |
They were the first billboards for Mojácar. One was a construction company, another advertised the Tío Edy (a small German hotel run by an ex Luftwaffe pilot) and two more promoted Mojácar’s first knick-knack shop, an establishment down to the rear of the pueblo called ‘Jean-Pierre’.
The souvenir shop was owned by Felippe Paccini, an ugly Corsican who had arrived in town in 1970 claiming that ‘he had been thrown out of many places during his life, but he wasn’t going to be pushed out of Mojácar’.
Actually, I’ve just heard that he was wheeled out last week. RIP you French bastard!
My dad, myself and another Mojácar resident called Tony Hawker had decided late one night in the spring of 1971 to remove these billboards in a daring terrorist action. Not having any useful connections with the IRA, we used saws. The four signs fell, one after another, around four in the morning following on from a rather heavy night in the Bar Sartén. One sign was in front of a house on the playa and as it fell, we saw a surprised – and we hoped – rather pleased looking man peering out at his improved view.
We knew the cops pretty well: the Guardia would come by to visit our house once a month on their mopeds to get our signature to prove their patrol schedule and to try a whisky or two. Relations were most friendly and it was a very chastened corporal who told us, three months after the event, that we were to report to the Vera calabozo, the clink. The two other advertisers had ‘let us off’, but the Frenchman wanted his pint of blood.
Curiously, the penance wasn’t the loss of freedom, the difficulties associated with not being able to get a vodka and tonic while chained to a wall or the possible risk of losing our tans, the cruel and unnatural punishment meted out to the three idiots was… to miss the Polansky-sponsored bull-fight.
Which, oddly enough, we had no intention of going to anyway.
My mum packed a suitcase and we went to collect Tony who lived somewhere in the pueblo. We arrived around five that afternoon in Vera only to be told that ‘the beds hadn’t been made yet’ and to go and get a drink. The lock-up was in the downstairs of the Vera town hall, looking into the church square. Our cell was ample, with an en-suite thunderbox. One wall was decorated with a large mural of Jesus going about his business clearly chalked by a previous inmate. There was evidently time to kill.
Our suitcase had been searched by another apologetic policeman and the vodka confiscated. We were left with a radio, a few books and some lavatory paper. Tony, a thin man in his forties, had some ‘Bustaid’ slimming pills which, it was claimed on the street, would get you high.
My mother visited constantly, bringing my dad vodka in a Casera bottle (well, it fooled the jailers). Otherwise, supplies had to come through the window of the next-door cell, inhabited by a young villain, and passed through into our quarters in exchange for a small coin or a cup of good cheer.
The judge saw us on the third day. Our excuses fell on deaf ears. ‘¿Cuantos años tienes?’ he asked Tony, who was dressed in a rather scruffy leather suit withy a hole in the seat. ‘How long are you?’ translated the interpreter. ‘About this long’, said Tony, holding his hands a generous distance apart.
He was returned to ‘solitary’ where he complained bitterly through the walls of his jail-mates, ‘a bucket of shit and two thousand flies’. My dad and I were returned to our own quarters and released on bail two days later. Tony and the flies were let out on bail the following day.
Franco had an amnesty about that time for evildoers and we were released from the threat of a three to six month stay in a proper jail. Well done the Caudillo!
I was seventeen at the time – making me one of the youngest old lags in the business.
Life Behind Bars
The following year, the same Frenchman had another run-in with a foreigner. Paccini lived upstairs from Til, a Swiss sailor who owned a restaurant in the village (‘the customer is always right… except at Tillies’). A misunderstanding arose as to who owned Til’s roof-terrace and after Til had tossed Paccini’s bricks, cement and bathroom fittings into the street, Til found himself in our old cell in Vera. The window had been covered by chicken wire and the young next-door felon had departed so Til was unable to get any refreshment during his stay.
Next to visit the Vera clink was Eddie, a film type who had been denounced for some form or other of wickedness. He arrived at the calabozo in his Rolls Royce, leaving it wedged in the narrow street outside. Within an hour, the gaoler had allowed him his freedom, if he would only agree to move his car.
Cheap Pete was a small and very American character who bought and sold antique carpets ‘by the yard’. There’s a street named after him in the pueblo (‘Calle de Pedro Barato’). He married Josephine and inherited a step-son, a large red-headed bruiser who took a violent dislike to Pete. The subsequent fight was so noisy and bloody that the local police felt honour-bound to put the two of them in the Cooler for three days. With the calabozo near to capacity, they placed them in the same cell. For one reason or another, Pete lost a lot of weight during his captivity.
Fritz was an American artist. He was known for his loud ‘haw haw haw’ laugh, his beard and his bottomless capacity for booze and illicit substances. For some reason – the accusation was ‘gamberrísmo’ – he was locked up in the brand-new Mojácar cell, a small room that gave onto the street. By the evening of his first (and last) day, he had managed to decorate his new abode with several paintings, a radio, a carpet and a pot-plant.
By 1980, the cops had appeared to have given up on the foreigners.
I’d call it a long-term truce.
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Forenta Años of ETA 1968-2008 |
I harp on about Spanish cinema because films are on Video, dubbed or subtitled in English, and constitute a quick, easy and enjoyable way of getting at the wider Spain. ETA is something we are all aware of but what you may not realise is that its reign of terror (first assassination August 2nd 1968) has now lasted as long as Franco's: forty years, or forenta años as the cartoonist Forges used to put it in his cheeky way around the censors. Two recent films more or less bracket this career of violence: El Lobo (The Wolf) covers the years 1972-75 while Todos Estamos Invitados (We are all Invited) is absolutely contemporary.
El Lobo looks at ETA in its glory days, when it assassinated police torturers like Melitón Manzanares, who had been a liaison man with the Gestapo, and Carrero Blanco, Franco's Prime Minister, whose death made it difficult for the regime to survive its Generalísimo, which happily it did not. The attack on Carrero was dramatic, daring and reminiscent of the assassination of Rheinhold Heidrich, the Butcher of Prague. Todos Estamos Invitados looks at a contemporary ETA which assassinates those who dare criticise it.
Despite appearances above, the early ETA portrayed in El Lobo, is as despicable as the current ETA of Todos Estamos Invitados. What has changed is the Spanish Government, scrupulous to a fault now, towards terrorist suspects. El Lobo starts with the murder of a taxi driver who got in the way of some car thieves, who happened to be etarras. Txema, the protagonist, had sheltered the terrorists before the killing and had then attempted to prevent it. The Police exploit his mixed motives, his liability as an accomplice and the parlous state of his finances to turn him into a mole. He takes enormous risks, ruins his marriage and ends up taking the initiative and running the show.
The ETA he joins is a hale-fellow-well-met world of good food and drink, starry eyed French female admirers and offhand brutality. The smooth police commissioner, Ricardo, who "runs" Txema (code-name Lobo), while not hearty, is equally given to the good life and just as callous, leaving his agent in lurches where he has to fend for himself with a frequency, which can only be described as casual, and not above torturing a rebellious colleague to death.
Ricardo has rivals though, in the administration, who really suffer from blood lust and cannot wait to send the tanks into the Basque Country and let fly at everything that moves. Ricardo is ruthless but moderate out of expediency (just like Heidrich, as it happens). The power struggles inside ETA turn on the same question, just how brutal to be. They are resolved with bullets in the back of the neck, the victims' heads falling into their plates of gnarled and prized mushrooms.
Lobo has wolves to the fore of him and to the rear and instead of succumbing takes his initial tentative gesture against the terrorists, little more than an afterthought, to its ultimate conclusion, serving up ETA's "active service units" one by one, to the Spanish State. This is a thriller, where a man comes to think that ETA's fanatics are the enemies of ordinary Basques like himself, a conclusion he comes to when irremediably enmeshed in a war between ETA and the then very questionable Spanish State. His uncomfortable and ambiguous situation forces him to act or perish, his decision might well be flawed but he takes it and has the courage and wherewithal to carry it through and the luck to survive, albeit in anonymous exile.
Mushrooms
In Todos Estamos Invitados brutality and good living also go hand in hand. Xabier, a university lecturer is an enthusiastic member of one of San Sebastian's Sociedades Gastronómicas. These are male cooking and dining clubs, where members take it in turns to regale their co-gastronomes with abundant delicacies of their own devising. The atmosphere in this sociedad is more epicurean than hearty and eminently civilised.
Xabier is ribbed for his uncompromising condemnations of ETA on television. He in turn wonders how Iríbar got hold of a delicacy, kokotxas (cod's cheeks), during an arrantxale (fishermen's) strike. Iríbar went to France for them. Xabier wonders at his strikebreaking. Iríbar's intransigent and supercilious reply is ominous. When it comes round to clearing the table, he tells Xabier, in a clearly audible aside, that he has just had his very last taste of a kokotxa. He is to die. "Did you hear that?" asks Xabier, understandably taken aback: nobody had, although in the privacy of the gents one of them does commiserate. Iríbar's orders were only to threaten Xabier but he is in a position to take things into his own hands and does so, to his taste.
At the same time, Josu Jon, an etarra, who suffered brain damage and capture in an attack upon a moving lorry, is returned to the Basque Country under controlled release, for treatment of his amnesia. His psychotherapist is Francesca, Xabier's Italian girlfriend. Josu Jon is contacted by his old comrades and, in fits and starts remembers them while also affecting not to. Lesaca, a priest and one of the gastronomes, wittingly or not, takes him on as an acolyte, as a favour to Iríbar.
Xabier and Francesca's lives become a nightmare, he must go everywhere with an escort, the precautions are endless. As a Sicilian she is not phased and stands by him but life together is not easy. A major row precedes his next visit to the sociedad, which will be his last.
Josu Jon's awakening proceeds. The comrades recover his talent for gunplay. He still does not recognise his doting Mum. He becomes fond of Francesca and recovers his knowledge of wild mushrooms for her. He is roped into the back-up team for the next "operation", Xabier's assassination, as it happens. Will it complete his "rehabilitation"? Or will the unscrambling of his synapses take him a step further back beyond the hatreds and injuries, "which are the first things amnesiacs remember"?
Or perhaps he will make a mess of his return to "active service" and be allowed to occupy himself with the innocent, the bucolic and the gastronomic: in a word, mushrooms! Fungi appear on every table in both films. They witness murder, betrayal and terror; gourmet delight, brotherhood and affection. Their nature is primitive; their origin, sylvan; their taste, exquisite. Some initiation is necessary before they can be appreciated. They blow in on the wind, insignificant spores, predestined to be toadstools or rare truffles beyond price, to serve as tasteful garnish or to fill out a rustic's omelette. In a state of nature they lodge wherever, they grow, each one an individual, some of them lethal.
The business of others is not their concern: they go about their own.
Throughout the period, people who like mushrooms plug on with a traditional convivial variegated way of life, unaltered by terrible events. In 1972 under the crossfire of rival warlords, the savouring of fungi showed admirable stoicism. In 2008 under democracy, it is beginning to savour of indifference. Has liking shaded into likeness?
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Feedback |
The Editor - The New Entertainer
Parque Comercial, 94
Mojácar 04638 Almería.
info@thenewentertainer.com
tel:950 475 313
fax: 950 475 333
TV Blues
Sir, I have recently moved to the area and enquired to a local TV service company for an installation.
I was offered a microwave system, no large dish and low monthly fees. I feel strongly that your readers should know that any such service is illegal. This is confirmed by the joint UK and Spanish Police operation that closed down Superbeam Tv in Alicante last month.
No person or company (except SSVC for the British Forces) has the right to rebroadcast UK TV, whether it is SKY, BBC or ITV, outside of the UK.
Territorial rights apply as confirmed by OFCOM and the EU Television Without Frontiers Directive. The girl that answered the phone tried to insist it was legal. Absolute lies. Did this company state that they wanted to re broadcast UK TV when they applied for the 2.4 or 5.2 ghz licence? Not a chance.
If your readers do subscribe they are committing an offence to view and are likely that the system will let them down when the police come calling.
Andy Wyatt
Dear Mr Wyatt, I read your email with great interest and wholeheartedly agree with all you stated concerning microwave TV and its illegality. However you made one humungous error in your statement.
Europa Digital do not and have never offered the microwave TV service. We only supply and fit the official Sky system supplied with its own dish and digibox and that is all we have ever done in our eight years of trading. (Please see our advertisements in the… (Richard lists some exile press titles here. ed!)).
In fact we have been the biggest protagonists in the area for the closure of this illegal service since it arrived in the Almería region some three years ago as can be seen by the newspaper columns I write and radio shows I present both on Spectrum FM and Trust FM. When the system was finally closed down by a court order last month the champagne corks were popping in our office!!!
Please check your facts and name and shame the actual company who offered you this service, as it most definitely would not have been Europa Digital.
Thank you for the majority of your comments
Richard Shanley
Europa Digital
Tel: 950 133 233
The copyright for television content is, unfortunately, territorial. However, while the SKY people pretend to gnash their teeth at us Brits all watching their shows, news and (above all) weather forecasts, the reality is that no one, besides the copyright holders, could care less. SKY, however, has to ‘go through the motions’ which explains the British-based addresses you are meant to give them. The fact that half of the freebies here run the SKY TV schedule is witness enough to the complicity of all concerned. Of course, to avoid that terrifying ‘late-night pounding on the door’ and to actually get some vague feel for Spain (remember Spain?), you could try the Satelite Digital system, which has endless sport, music, kiddy-wink shows, films and – all in English at the touch of a button! There’s also several news channels (CNN, BBC, SKY News, Fox News and so on), plus a few in Spanish for local coverage. The humour channel (Paramount Comedy) is awful, but there’s heavy late-night porn – for those that like that sort of thing – to balance things up a bit and help enhance your vocabulary. I don’t suppose Satelite Digital is as good as SKY, but it is at least Spanish – which should count for something.
Editor
Opportunity Knocks
Dear Mr Napier, You would think that during an economic downturn, such as is occurring worldwide, businesses would be anxious to gain revenue at every legal opportunity.
Why is it then, when I offer bars and hotels, who have suffered a quiet start to the year, an opportunity to make money with no outlay and therefore no risk, I should be turned down or ignored? I have assumed that they are already making so much money, here in Mojácar, they don’t know what to do with it. I shall take my concept to Benidorm with regret because I live in Mojácar and wanted it to be a success here first.
Titan is a single hole putting game for all the family and designed with bars and hotels in mind.
The point of my letter is this. Why, when confronted with an entirely new concept, do the Spanish in general and those of Mojácar in particular, dismiss it when it is handed on a plate? Why are they so reluctant to have dialogue with an Englishmen and it would be one of us, wouldn’t it? We have given the world all the great games including football which the Spanish embrace totally now. I ask myself what would have been said when soccer was first shown to the Spanish.
“What do you think Juan? Will it catch on?”
“Can’t see it myself, José. Nothing gets killed. What’s the point in that?”
“Can you not see some art in the game, Juan?”
“Yes, a little, but the outfits are a bit drab. They could do with some glitter. Who would want to watch a load of blokes kicking a bladder across a park?”
Quite! Golf is becoming more popular amongst the Spanish but I can’t help feeling that if I offered the same concept to the Japanese, they would rip my arms off instead of showing me to the door and settling back to bemoan their luck over another glass of Sobrano.
K J Davies
kevilldavies@hotmail.com
English as She is Wrote
Dear Sir, I received the following email recently. 'I write you from Essan Translations, a company specialized in translations and interpretations, among other services.
The objective of this email is to make you know that we would like to offer you our translation services.
In Essan Translations we work with specialized translators whose job is excellent.
Therefore, if you need translation services, whether translation of documents, web pages, books, letters, etc., as well as searches of information in other languages, altogether with the corresponding translation, please, do not doubt in communicate it to us. I assure you that if you trust us, you will not regret'.
As they used to say in my report card... 'Could try harder'.
Richard Rambeau
Vera Mental Home
Beach Noise
Dear Lenox, Once again the season is here and once again we have the music to the early hours of the morning (one place is shut down for noise strange it is a little English Bar). Your amigo with his noise detector that he promised he would be using seems to be redundant (still I suppose you rely on advertising to keep going so one should not expect too much).
However perhaps he would be interested that at 4/5 am in the morning we seem to have a lot of vehicles racing along the front they park anywhere they urinate anywhere plus we have broken glass (Night Clubs in the UK use plastic glasses and most do not serve bottles over the counter) perhaps when some children get badly cut on the beach some-one might even consider this problem whatever happened to all the new policemen that our then newly elected council were bragging abou?
A. Stewart
Mojácar Playa.
I don't think loud noise and advertising have much to do with each other - unless you are using a megaphone.
Rates
Dear Lenox, A snippet from your Entertainer Online....
‘The local ayuntamientos are without any cash, thanks to the 'crisis del ladrillo' - the building crisis. Vera has collected just 10% in the first three months of 2008 compared with the same period last year (44,000 euros against 413,000 euros) in building licences. Both Vera and next-door Cuevas are 11 million euros in debt. Mojácar is six million in the red. All of the local towns admit that they are struggling to pay their staff and maintain basic services.’
I am sorry, even without the extra income from new building licences, Town Halls should be able to provide all basic services necessary to support the EXISTING completed and licensed properties from the taxes collected from these SAME property owners. So just why does any Town Hall budget to survive ONLY with the *extra* income they anticipate receiving from NEW building licences?????? There may be no new requests for building licences for the next ten years!!
When the local authorities here seem to make no effort whatsoever to collect Taxes from existing licensed properties, perhaps it is now time they at last made a concerted effort to collect the Taxes due and perhaps, at the same time, grant licenses to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of newly built, legally owned and, in many cases occupied, properties from which they currently receive no IBI Urbana contributions whatsoever because of stupid red tape. The fact that no Statements, Final Demands, Court Summonses or, for that matter, any form of initial requests for payment are actually delivered to the majority of property owners, at any address, street or apartado number, seems totally crazy to me.
I reckon that a single Town Hall employee, armed with a list of Debtors and instructions to trace the owner's home address or, failing that, to go to the property and take whatever steps are necessary to embargo it (even padlock and chains) would see a serious reduction in the amount of money due to the Town Hall. It's what Bailiffs do in the UK isn't it?
Imagine a new housing development in the UK being completed, electricity, gas and the other utilities connected, then owners, UK resident or not, take ownership and all sit back and totally ignore their obligation to pay Council Tax because no one, Estate Agent or Lawyer, bothered to tell them about it at the time of purchase? Sorry, their local UK Town Hall has some news for them and it will arrive pretty soon.... so why does this not happen here too??
JM, Mojácar
Brown Paper Weenie
Dear Ed, the Euro Weekly has started another mag, this one in a brown paper wrapper called ‘Contacts’. It’s only on the Costa del Sol – where perhaps they go in for that sort of thing. Naughty articles, vulgar adverts and truly awful classifieds.
Isn’t there a case in England of a British pornographer that runs a newspaper as well?
It’s just, for a moment, I thought that they’d come up with an original idea.
Tony Muldoon.Mijas
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OVER THE HILL AND FAR AWAY |
When I find that being old is no worse than I’d feared
I shall live in a country that’s kinder
I shall wear baggy shorts and I’ll grow a white beard
And just sometimes, go out on a blinder.
I shall sit in the sun in the heat of the day
Without putting on Factor 40
And I’ll wear garish T-shirts with slogans that say
“I am really quite nice – but I’m naughty!”
I shall park where I want in a battered old car
On a road where there aren’t yellow lines
And light up a very big Cuban cigar
Under blue faded ‘No Smoking’ signs.
I shall certainly try to make sure that I drink
All my 21 units a week
But my week starts on Sunday and finishes Monday
So my calendar’s somewhat unique.
I shall sit in a bar when the sun doesn’t shine
Drinking coffee and sweet honeyed brandy
And watch the young waitresses pouring the wine
And have thoughts that are dreamy and randy.
I won’t promise to eat my five veggies a day
And I’ll still have my salt and my butter.
I shan’t care a jot what the food pundits say
Or accept any nonsense they utter.
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And when I occasionally still have to fly
I shall leave a small bag unattended
And not wipe the hand basin totally dry
In case the next person’s offended. I shall carry my nail scissors onto the plane
And I won’t watch the safety procedure
I’ll just read to arrest the decline of my brain
To distract from the gloop that they feed you.
I’ll tell them, yes, someone did help me to pack,
And pull faces when cameras are spying
And then with relief I shall take myself back
Where Big Brother’s not constantly prying.
To a place that’s not strangled with miles of red tape
By the mean and the envious and greedy
Where’s the culture’s not trivia and garbage and rape
And an utter contempt for the needy.
We’ll go off to the sun to sit out our old age
Where the life is as good as the weather.
Where there’s no Health and Safety to fuel our rage
We’ll grow old in the sunshine together. |
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In Spain there's a refrán that says "en abril, aguas mil" - the equivalent, I suppose, of the April showers we used to get back in the UK. Only this year, the thousand waters didn't stop with April but just kept right on all through mayo and beyond. I don't know if the lluvia en Sevilla has been una maravilla, but in Madrid it's been tremendous. And it hasn't just been wet, but cold, too.
With the UK's unpredictable clima, we don't count on being able to cast our clouts till May is out, but every time I speak to anyone back home en Gran Bretaña they expect to hear that it's gloriously hot and sunny over here. I'll admit I took some pleasure in telling the woman on the Lloyds phone help-line that she was likely to have dreadful weather for her up-coming holiday: I really don't see why I should have to provide una previsión del tiempo on my international phone bill, particularly when I have rung to complain about the bank personnel's inefficiency.
I doubt she believed me, though. No one does when I say the Spanish are warned not to quitar el sayo hasta el cuarenta de mayo. But it's wise advice: out in the pueblo I had to light the estufa de leña on June 9th it was so cold and damp. If I only knew what a "sayo" was, I could have wrapped up warm in one and saved the firewood.
Although the weather doesn't run to schedule, some things do, so the Comunidad de Madrid opened the piscinas at the start of June despite the fact it was raining. No doubt they will close them punctually, too, even if the weather is hot in early September as it so often is.
Other signs of the imminent llegada del verano have been apparent for a while. A pesar de los cielos grises, the bars started to set tables out in the streets weeks ago with unwarranted optimism. Then again, perhaps they reckoned las sombrillas gigantes would serve for the rain just as well as they do for the sun. (I've never worked out if a paraguas is so called because it is "for the waters", or if it's a thing "que para el agua", and nor do I understand why the Spanish insist on using a word which translates literally as "little shade" rather than the perfectly acceptable English "parasol".)
Further signs of the run up to summer include the predictable artículos y anuncios in the papers: it's exam time, so you get the general interest reports on técnicas de memoria y de relajación as well as las mejores dietas para el cerebro and comidas para combatir el estrés. No one seems to remember that the memory techniques are pretty much the same as the ones they published last year, so they clearly don't work that well.
As well as brain food diets, proliferan articles with diets promising to help you achieve un cuerpo para presumir en la playa in less than a month. Mostly these don't work either, but, like Fox Mulder, the reader wants to believe in the impossible. Of course, la pérdida de peso would demand an additional expense on new summer clothes and it's easy to forget that las tarjetas de crédito son de plástico no de elástico. With all the recent talk of la crisis económica it seems likely that for most of us it'll be either holiday or new clothes this year, but not both. Though perhaps the new European 65 hour working week is intended to give us the chance to increase our earnings y así costear ambas cosas.
Summer Courses
It must now be a full month since un amigo - professor at one of the local universities - told me he had already finished his classes for the term (he seems to teach about 65 hours in a year - nice work if you can get it.) Just as he and many jóvenes were thinking of enjoying their new-found libertad, other madrileños were thinking of starting to study something new.
All around the city, en los faroles and las paradas de autobús, hand-written and photocopied adverts have appeared for clases de interpretación y canto, talleres de payaso, cursos de técnicas de la radio...
I suspect these courses and workshops are directed at the people whose plastic hasn't stretched enough to pay for a proper holiday and whose companies work the reduced horario de verano providing them with more free time to fill over the next couple of months. Certainly the skills on offer are mostly of the sort that might come in useful if the crisis worsens: there will always be rincones in el Parque del Retiro or in the túneles del Metro where a busker or juggler can hope to earn a few coins to supplement a meagre income.
The summer-school ads that appear in the newspapers are of a different type: they tend to be for asignaturas which are more academic or exotic. For the students who have failed their exams, options include Aprende a estudiar and Memoria y concentración, though whether the techniques taught are better than those mentioned earlier I have no idea. In Madrid this year, there are such subjects on offer as Voces de la ironía, Sistemas de catalogación de museos and Dirigir con éxito, so, whatever your interests, it should possible to find something that suits. Personally, I'm intrigued by the idea of Periodismo económico from a selection of specialised journalism workshops. Could this be where aspiring periodistas learn to be economical with the truth? And, if so, will it contradict what is taught on the Ética y periodismo course offered by a rival organisation?
Now summer has officially arrived, calendar and clima have come into synch, and temperatures are soaring. As well as the altos niveles de ozono de los primeros días de verano, the Ayuntamiento warned us to expect "una intrusión de masas de aire africano". No mention was made of whether these would be held in a detention centre until they got their paperwork sorted out.
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Mojácar's Moors and Christians festival has been and gone, with reports of ever more people joining in or 'just visiting'. The three-day festival, which began on Friday June 6th, ending with the tremendous and colourful parade on the Sunday afternoon, celebrates (with a heavy dose of artistic licence) the amicable agreement reached between the Christian forces which were reconquering the country from the Moors, and the garrison-leader who wanted no battle, but a fair resolution. This was in 1488, and several Mojácar residents began the Moors and Christians festival to co-incide with the five-hundred year celebrations. One of them, Carlos Cervantes, who always managed to look magnificent in his Moorish commander's outfit, his generous belly and luxuriant beard leading the rest of the troops to glory, was unable to attend this year, as he is under doctor's orders.
Perhaps we should dedicate these pictures to Carlos, in the hope that he soon recovers from his illness.
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| Not Fair – these Fairs |
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Fair is fair and a fair must be just that. The over hyped Feria de Galicia was advertised everywhere and on every lamp post in Antequera for weeks. At some stage I was wondering if we had moved, lock, stock, barrels and cats in the middle of the night. Nobody had told me anything about it. We might have moved up North. In our household anything can happen and usually does. It is a life-style that leaves you totally exhausted and I would not recommend it to anybody. But once in it, the die is cast and there is no return.
I once woke up in the middle of the Sahara with my late husband and a driver on the front seats of a Land Rover of a certain age (the car and the two men). I was wrapped up in blankets in a very uncomfortable position on the back seat.
In the din of this old machine and the fury of the wind storm I managed to ask where the hell we were. I was told that we were on our way to **** and I had fallen asleep at Heathrow. May be a couple of G&Ts had something to do with the painless flight.
So, when we were bombarded with the Galicia propaganda I thought that we had moved to the rainy North. I can believe anything before breakfast. But no. The familiar streets of our lovely town were at the same place; Boots Alley as we call the pedestrian passage from the market to Madre de Dios, was still there, its shops selling the most unwearable shoes at unaffordable prices. There must be a generation that has mutated and have feet that have no relation with the shape of mine. Nobody told me about that phenomenon either. I should have checked. I have that irritating habit of checking everything anyone says, any information given by people who usually don’t know what they are talking about, any facts and figures appearing in the press or disgorged from any brainless anchor man on that blasted machine called TV.
“Shall we go to the Galicia Fair?”
So on the Sunday, the last day, we went.
Expectations are dangerous. Alice and the rabbit found that very quickly. I am still trying to find my white gloves so I always wait for the magic to happen.
I was expecting a lot of stalls, with information on Galicia, where to stay, what to see, where to eat, what to do, how to get there. I wanted to taste some of their products, especially seafood, their wines, their cheeses and obviously buy some. I wanted to see the special crafts they have, I wanted to see photographs, posters, replicas of their fishing vessels, men and women in traditional costumes, anything that makes a province so far away different from our Andalucía.
Well… It was a large tent. Quite filthy with hundreds of plastic chairs and tables. An army of equally dirty chefs were obviously busy warming up the night’s before left-overs.
Some unfortunate lobsters were dying in a not too clean display fridge and some cigalas had given up the ghost next to them. The girls at the cash desk were wearing the usual lazy uniform of unwashed jeans and T/shirts with dubious slogans on the chest. The kitchen staff could have done with being shoved in a washing machine, bodies and clothes together.
As soon as we stepped under that tent a familiar smell assaulted my nose. It was the smell of the gas they use for deep-freezing fish. It is the same type as the gas used in domestic fridges. It leaves that nasty coating on any piece of seafood and, if bought in a shop, adds to the weight charged by the seller. I once visited one of those ‘factory’ trawlers that freeze fish on the high seas. I was horrified. The smell in that Galicia tent was just the same.
Somebody was trying to promote the seafood of Galicia. Somehow it stank. Any frozen fish or seafood deteriorates just by the freezing process. Even in a domestic freezer. The texture and flavour is lost. The fair had been going on for three days so the possibility of fresh produce was remote. Fish, being cold blooded, have enzymes designed to be most effective at the average temperature of their home waters. Sometimes as low as 4oC. So fresh fish has got to be eaten fast otherwise the fish eats itself.
The fair was from Friday to Sunday and I can’t imagine that they had fresh supplies coming from Galicia for all that time.
We picked up a menu (grubby) and looked at the prices. Horrendous. If I had 65 Euros to spare on a plate of seafood I would go to the fish market and for the same amount I would feed a family for a week. Coming back home after not even taken a glass of wine (2 Euros) we met Maria our neighbour on her doorsteps as is customary in our barrio.
“Went for a paseo?” She has got to know everything.
“No, went to have a look at the Galicia Feria”.
She went bleak. “You did not spend any money there? The prices are stupid! And the fish is frozen and if I want to eat seafood I go to the fish market because they get their seafood from Galicia in the first place!”
No, we did not spend a centimo in that tent. It was a vast disappointment and we consoled ourselves with a ham sandwich at home.
Local Produce
The travelling fairs have replaced the old fashioned circuses. Instead of sad underfed lions and tigers the new travellers are displaying anything that in fact has nothing to do with what they are advertising. The medieval fair that arrives in Antequera every year to the dismay of the local businesses offers nothing else but what you can buy in the local shops and an array of stalls that sell jewellery any child could make at school given a couple of simple tools.
Travellers?
Gypsies tramps and thieves
That what the people of the town call us…
Said the song.
Except that in our environment I would cut out the gypsies. We always had a very good relationship with them and have lived in their quarters for decades. For some reason they always have their barrio in any village or town with the best possible view. Not always accessible, I agree, but splendid. We live in one of those and when the children knock on the door to sell rejected vegetables because of their size or deformed shapes not acceptable for the European markets I buy.
This is fair. And fair is fair enough. It is not a mockery.
We are all travellers. Without the trickery.
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| The Parish Line |
All the local charity, culture, club and association news that fits.
Please send your news and information: magazine@elindalico.com
Royal British Legion, Mojácar Branch. Trip to the Alpujarras. An enjoyable day out to the Bodega Valle de Laujar took place on Wednesday the 11th of June, some 54 members of the Mojacar Branch of the Royal British Legion and friends went on this trip and were treated to some breathtaking scenery on the way through the Alpajarras. An interesting tour around the Bodega with the usual wine tasting the chance to buy some of their wines it was then on to the Hotel Almirez for lunch where the owner kindly invited members to viist his own Bodega. A very nice lunch was then served with the luxury of their own wines ..It was then time for our return journey to Mojácar.
The Royal British Legion Mojacar Branch got together with the La Mata Bowling Club on Thursday 26th June for a “Fun Bowling Day”. The Bowlers started the event with a game of ‘Spider’ which was won by Mrs Iris Kerry, a member of the RBL. Following the morning’s games, an excellent buffet was enjoyed by all and the RBL Mojacar Branch Chairman presented a plaque to the captain of La Mata Club congratulating the club on winning the day. Proceeds from the day were kindly donated to The RBL Mojacar Branch by The Bowling Club and the organisers hope that this will become an annual event.
N.B. There will not be any meetings during the months of July and August, the next meeting will be on Thursday September the 4th. Secretary. 950 459 509 Membership Sec: 950 618 232, Welfare: 950 472 042
The Albox branch of the Royal British Legion meets every third Thursday of the month at El Rincon, Albox (opposite the BP garage). New start time - 11 am. We have talks, monthly quiz, regular social events and trips. Our next social event: Saturday 26 July, 8 pm, Garden Buffet Party with Brendan O’Dee. For further information contact Peter Green on 950 064 811.
Exhibition of photography with Arno Klinkhamer and the ‘Ruta Don Quijote’. The Villaricos Castle, Cuevas. Until June 15th. Mornings 10.00am – 1.30pm and evenings 6.00pm – 9.00pm
PAWS Great Summer Sale. PAWS Shop, Mojácar Playa. All Clothes, Bags and Shoes Just 2 Euros! The PAWS shop will be closed from August 16th until September 2nd. For early August opening hours please see notice in-store
Although everyone knows of PAWS unwavering work for dogs, people may not be aware that they also have a team of dedicated volunteers committed to raising funds to carry out a neutering programme for feral cats to reduce the amount of unwanted kittens. In the meantime we are caring for lots of abandoned, orphaned and unwanted kittens and are even having to turn some away as we do not have space for them. We are desperate to find homes for these beautiful kittens that will all be fully vaccinated and can be neutered later in exchange for a donation towards our costs. We are also looking for short-term fosterers to care for kittens until we have space for them and for volunteers who could spare just a couple of hours a week to help us feed and care for the ones we have at PAWS.
If you think you can help in any way please call Margaret 950 477 063, Diane 950 617 643 or Tracy 950 460 011.
Our picture shows the youthful team of The New Entertainer knocking out yet another edition of your favourite newspaper. That’s me in the back row. R.Rambeau
Examples of Steve Brockett’s remarkable aerial photography 'Landscape Lines - Lineas de Paisaje' are on show at the Museo Pedro Gilabert in Arboleas, Almeria.
Originally from Wales, photographer and painter Steve Brockett's latest work is this series of abstract aerial images taken over the last 2 years while flying with his paramotor over the Almería landscape. The 22 large-scale images show unique vistas of the shadows and contours of the landscape, planting lines, marks and patterns that can only be seen from the air. These stunning photographs feature the landscapes of inland Almería and the coast as you've never seen them before. Our featured picture is titled 'Bajo la Piel'. The exhibition runs until July 25th 2008 and entrance is free to the Museo Pedro Gilabert 10 - 2pm (Tel: 950 634 521) every day except Mondays. www.geckoflyparapente.blogspot.com
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| News From Cabrera Lawn Bowls Club |
What a busy month June has been. At the beginning of the month, we held the Ladies Singles Lomax cup competition. Joan Gardner won the trophy. Wendy Anderson was the runner up. On June 11th, we held our fun evening of bowls folwed by a buffet supplied by Sue and Trish, open to all the local clubs, which was attended by over 100 bowlers and supporters.
We were honoured to host the International Test Match between Spain and Portugal on june 15th and 16th. Squads of ten men and women took part and Cabrera bowlers were avid spectataors on both days. Spain won by 10 points.
Below, some photos from the Interantional Test Match: Cabrera
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He said it was top shelf liquor. But there was only one shelf.
After I paid my week’s rent Señor Antonio invited me to a shot of orujo, straight from the freezer of his mini-fridge. Went down and massaged my spine like icy little fingers. He owns the pension I’m crashing at. He’s about up to my chest. His skin is thin and almost transparent, clinging to his sexagenarian bones, holding a beer gut worthy of a man twice his size.
Antonio’s taken a liking to me. He’s wise to my trade and for some reason the old mug has opened up. The English he knows from working in the hotel is no better than my sailor’s Spanish. Still I’ve found out where his favourite whores are. And where to buy the best jamón de jabugo. But mostly he bitches. And has the kind of theories you’d expect from someone holed up for fifty some odd years. Listening to talk radio. And the international debt-set.
Today he’s going on about the Chinese:
“Dees tipos. Los chinos. They know the machines. They have mafia!”
“Machines?"
“Si. The machines. The ones you put the money in.”
I pumped him for more info on this Chinese mafia. Somehow I understood after five more shots of Antonio’s frozen orujo: the Chinese have a system with the slot machines. Tragaperras as he likes to call them. Coin-swallowers. They always know when the silver is about to shoot out. They always know jackpot.
I say thanks to Antonio and leave the end of my stogie in the tin cup that stands guard on the register. Antonio rolls his foggy, red-rimmed eyes at me and nods. Turns the COPE radio station up. I take the stairs. Step into a piss-stained alley. Sunset. I head up to Trafalgar, where all the Chinese sell their knockoff duds.
From Sant Pere I shadow a suspicious character a couple blocks until he enters a sex shop. Next to the sex shop is just what I was looking for. Bar Mariona. Where the fat gitanas hang out after buying bulk clothing in the Chinese shops. Tragaperras inside.
I sit at the greasy zinc counter. Above me rusty trumpets and accordions hang from nicotine-stained walls. In front of me a sour looking dame with a peppery hair cropped in that butch style. She bores into me. Black say-nothing eyes. I order a plate of jamón and sliced French roll with tomato. A canya go with that.
To my left is a slot machine. Covered with months-old dust and splattered grease. And sure enough there’s this whisper-thin Chinese kid. Salmon-colored blazer over black t-shirt. I wolf down the jamón and order a shot of Mascaró.
The Chinese kid, burning cig bouncing in his lips, orders a “Jota Bé” from Miss Sour Grapes.
Sipping my Mascaró I eyeball him over a lowered copy of El Mundo Deportivo. The kid, in about the time it takes me to finish my snifter, burns through two Nobels but barely touches his scotch. He busts out a pink bill and raps on the counter.
Sour Grapes punches a button on the register. Counts ten euros in small change and sets it in two piles. He swipes it off the counter. Goes back to the machine.
I’m about to order another conyac when the little lights start flashing. Little electronic beeps and farts. The monedas spill out, and by the sly look on this kid’s face I have a mind to put the slug to him.
This gypmeister and his crafty kin somehow had the game rigged. Antonio was right. I haven’t seen nothing but Chinese winning on these slot machines. The goddamned Chinese mafia.
A cascade of coins. Clinkety-clink-clink-clink. The Chinese kid with his poker face. I push off the barstool and casually step to him. Lean against the fruit machine. Actually this one has some kind of wild west motif. I grit my teeth. Rasp through them:
“Tú. Niño. Sure know how to play.”
The kid avoids my eyes. Cagey mucker.
I grab the lapels of his knock-off suit and hoist him up. To the newspaper hooks. Got him hanging in between a copy of La Vanguardia and La Razón. He’s glaring at me now. His eyes two sideways Vs. His mouth a twisted into a nasty knot. He squawks:
“Chink chan chungg” - something that is no-doubt bar-room Chinese.
“¿Qué?”
“¡Joder macho! ¿De que vas?” he replies in what I think is perfect Spanish.
“What?”
“Fat man! Take me off wall!”
I unhook him and drop him to the cig-burned linoleum. I square up to him and growl:
“I’m wise to you kid. I know you guys are tapped into the slot machines. You guys know. When they cough up the goods.”
“What you say crazy man?”
“Tragaperras. Slot machines. Tu truco. You make trick.” Little louse got me talking bad.
He twitches and reaches into the coin tray. I grab his wiry neck. He whelps and twists out, pushes on my solar plexus and I stumble back. Some kind of martial art technique. He screams:
“You bad! Loco!”
The butch behind the bar has her face contorted into a grin. It’s the only time I’ve seen her grin. It’s all wrong. I grab him again. Twist his shirt two-sizes tighter.
“All right. Be on the level with me. La verdad. How do you know you’re going to win?” I release him before he can pull another one of his kung fu techniques.
The kid tugs on his blazer. Straightens the wrinkles where my mitts grappled it.
“Tag-along fool! It easy. You listen. When monedas no make noise. Mean full. Mucho dinero.”
He reaches into the coin tray and scoops out his winnings. The kid’s right. It’s easy as that. When the coins are at bursting point they just sound different when you drop them in.
I consider a future in slot machines. Beats sleuthing.
He lights fire to another Nobel. Blows out blue death. He says:
“I Hu Yu.”
“Who you?”
“I have job for you. Come by father’s store. 1000 Secret Moda.”
He kind of floats out. Like that. Pockets lumpy with loose change. Cloud of cig smoke trailing.
I turn to the bar. Look at the butch.
“¿Que?” she spits.
I order another shot to cut the phlegm. Kid got me worked up.
So. Hu Yu and the old man. Work.
You gotta take it where you get it. |
A Mirage In Andalucía |
Diseño Earle, International Architects based in Fuengirola, have designed what they believe to be the first ‘zero carbon’ footprint house in Andalucia, possibly in Southern Spain.
The highly unique and modern architecture of the villa was designed to meet two specific objectives. The first objective was to achieve a virtually zero carbon footprint. The second objective was to reduce running costs to an almost self-sufficiency level. By harnessing and exploiting natural elements within the design the architects believe the home will be 80% more efficient than a similar sized home and with 75% less waste than a traditional design. All this will go towards a massive reduction in running costs.
The villa to be sited on a plot overlooking the La Quinta Golf Course will also be built using sustainable construction methods ensuring total regard for the local environment and social footprint.
Whilst virtually every architectural feature contributes to the overall sustainability of the project by no means has the design element been forfeited over ecological function. This is a strikingly original home packed with the kind of superlative features one would want to experience in 21st century luxurious living.
The 3,125m² plot presented a major challenge to the architects, long and narrow sitting on a 45° gradient, there is virtually no flat land. However the plot does have stunning views over the golf course and the famous La Concha mountain backdrop to Marbella. The total build will be 650 m².
The house is on three levels. A ‘floating’ glass walkway leads to the entrance which opens into the upper level of a double height glass atrium drawing the eye through 180° of stunning views. This level includes a kitchen, dining room and main living room. A swimming pool and two terrace areas are also located at this level with a separate guest house situated at the far end of the plot. Stairs lead down to a lower level which houses three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a master suite, TV room and family room. In addition a study with en-suite facilities offers versatility. A plant room is on the basement level which also includes the water holding tanks.
The kitchen opening out onto an East facing terrace is positioned to take advantage of the morning sun, partial shading towards the house is provided by a pergola. The main living area is connected to the kitchen and dining room by a bridge which passes over water.
Cooling
Externally the most apparent feature is the roof line which sits wing-like above the building line. The roof form and distance from the building is key, it holds the solar panels at the correct angle to maximize effectiveness whilst also hiding them from view. Less direct heat is transmitted into the house and the space between the two rooflines allows air to pass over the building adding to the cooling effect. Perimeter adjustable louvered vents are also located just below the building roof line allowing cooler air to pass through rooms whilst removing the accumulated hot air.
Extensive glass is used in the design however the ‘double skin’ effect again incorporating adjustable louvered panels, prevent excessive heat conduction through the glass.
The main living area hovers above a ‘mirage’ of water which appears to merge with the swimming pool but is in fact part of the cooling system. It is fed by a canal which runs the length of the pool to one side. The 30cm deep ‘mirage pool’ cools the air passing over it thus contributing to the cooling process.
A rainwater reclamation system will be installed and Grey water will be recycled from holding tanks situated in the basement. The pool will be saline negating the use of standard pool chemicals.
A photovoltaic system will supply the electricity to run a radiant heating system within the floor. The adjustable louver wall system will optimize heat capture during the day and retain the warmth by night. Geo-thermal energy will provide a back-up cooling and heating system.
In keeping with the design ethos only wood from verified managed sources will be used as will low VOC paints and LED lighting. Environmentally sensitive smart glass technology reacting to sunlight will reduce the cooling load through self adjusting opacity levels. The kitchen layout will optimize storage design to decrease waste. All appliances will be the latest low energy and water-efficient models.
With the Spanish government taking such a proactive role in sustainability Diseño Earle hope that at a local level the public will engage more positively with the global environmental consciousness that is gathering pace.
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| Amanda Fisher – Marketing Director
afisher@d-earle.com |
Responsible for the Crisis: The Speculators |
| With the Spanish property sector reeling and sales of properties to foreigners along the coasts and on the islands down to less than 10% of what it was two years ago, it is time to analyse the situation and answer the question frequently asked, i.e. ‘Who or what is responsible for the crisis in the sector which was the motor of the Spanish economy?’
The Association of Promoters on the Costa Blanca, PROVIA, has told the Valencia Government ‘with the only answer that they can’ i.e. that the crisis is the result of the attacks from abroad which the property sector is suffering; ‘made by a lobby of foreign residents.’ They implore the Valencia Government to assist them in stopping these attacks and propose that public money be spent to reduce the price of the 10,000 unsold dwellings in the Region!
The recommendation of our Association (unanimously agreed by all members) one and a half year ago ‘that foreigners should not buy properties on the Costa Blanca in the circumstances prevailing at that time’ has certainly given us the honour to be included in the phantom lobby invented by the promoters to try to hide their own responsibilities. They threatened to take us to court for ‘damaging their commercial interests’ and although we encouraged them to do so, we never got an invitation from the courts.
The foreigners who followed our recommendation one and a half year ago (well reflected in the European press) can be content they did not buy a property at artificially inflated prices (which have since fallen on average by 20%) in unfinished projects (many of them stalled due to the crisis) some of them without the necessary public approvals (several projects stopped by courts or higher authorities). A great number of foreigners not hearing or not following our advice are today trying to sell their property and having to reduce their prices radically.
The list of accused
We accept that the credit crisis was initiated in the US as a result of non-payment of speculative mortgages, which were then bundled and sold to speculative banks eager for an extraordinary profit and which not able to see the great risks involved. This has aggravated what started as a property crisis in Spain and thus Spanish banks are less affected by the problems unleashed in the USA.
With that said, here follows a list of those responsible for the crisis:
The main culprits are the immensely speculative promoters. They scoured the coasts and the islands for land that could be transformed into building land with maximum occupation, volume and number of dwellings; buying land cheaply from small landowners, paying politicians to get plans approved, obtaining finance from the banks (often at valuations several times the real value) and then stamping out of the earth an enormous number of dwellings being sold by an international army of real estate agents earning fat commissions, assisted by lawyers who looked more at their fees than at the legal safety of their clients and propped up by a great number of newspaper publishers and web sites in foreign languages praising to the skies any property company placing advertisements with them.
The promoters fill a needed function in a market economy. Not all of them are speculative. However, over the past ten years there has developed a group of speculators corrupting civil society in Spain, often using shoddy methods, trampling on the rights of small owners to reach maximum, speculative profits (rapidly transferring the funds to fiscal paradises or new, innocent markets where they hope to be able to repeat the performance).
Secondary culprits are inept and corrupt politicians, below the national level. They have entered politics to get part of the extraordinary profits amassed in the property sector and have become the faithful helpers of the speculative promoters, assisting in transforming great tracts of land (mostly outside the General Plans) into massive housing developments, where the number of dwellings is not counted in hundreds but in thousands and tens of thousands. For personal benefit, or to increase the income of an inflated public administration, they would disregard such ‘petty obstacles’ for their clients, as the area of the project being some kind of protected land, or lacking guarantees for a stable supply of drinking water.
It is logical for the Alicante promoters (with a decline of 96% in the number of new building projects on Costa Blanca) to complain to the President of the Valencia Government about the ‘scurrilous’ reports in the foreign press and that they should be halted and public money be given to the ailing property speculators. (Please read the last sentence once more and consider the enormous absurdity: they want help from the Government to gag the free press and public funds to pay for their greed and failure of their market research!).
But they have got the address right: The President of the Valencia Government, Francisco Camps, has been the staunchest defender of the immoral property laws LRAU and LUV, denigrating the reports on urban abuse in his Region and the opinion of the European Parliament; publicly praising the speculative promoters, and his government has approved more speculative urbanisation plans than at any times in the history of the Region. It is logical that he manoeuvres to get rid of the Ombudsman elected by the regional parliament that has criticised the approval of urban plans without water guarantees. It was also logical that his government dismantled FIPE, the foundation set up to give foreign buyers information on how to buy a property in Spain without losing their shirt in the attempt.
The third of the main culprits are the speculative banks. They bankrolled the urban planning projects, valuing farmland as building land even before the politicians had time to make the formal approval of the projects or the courts give their opinion. They recommended their clients to sign up to large mortgages at floating interest rates, at a time when it should have been clear to anyone with some knowledge of economy that interest rates on such loans would increase (remember our warning: “Interest rates will go up!”). In dong so they have placed many of their clients in great financial difficulty, have followed a financial policy that places some of their own entities in the danger zone and have collaborated in what should be termed ‘the robbery of the Spanish Nation’.
The Worse, the Better
The national authorities also have a responsibility, maybe more from inactivity than collaboration. The National Government only passed on, to the Valencia Government, the complaints coming from the European Parliament. They washed their hands in the face of the extensive corruption at local and regional level. They failed to assist foreign and national victims of property scams. They turned their backs on the dangers from the collapse of the property market and denied, until the beginning of this year, that a crisis even existed. How can a government not seeing a crisis avoid it?
A few days ago, the new Minister for Industry and Tourism, Miguel Sebastian, declared in relation to the de-acceleration in the Spanish economy that ‘the more it falls, the more rapid will be the recuperation’.
The bitter reality is that the Spanish authorities have let the speculative promotion and the construction of dwellings (a great part of them in holiday centres along the coasts and on the islands, far away from any industrial areas) become the motor of the Spanish economy, neglecting the agriculture, the traditional industries and the services not directly connected with the property bubble. The Spanish politicians believe that as long as the sun shines on the Mediterranean and Atlantic beaches, the Northern Europeans as tourists or property buyers have no other choice than to come back to Spain. I think they are making another fatal mistake; there are now several other good and sunny destinations. Spain will have to make a profound review of the reasons why the foreign property buyer now shuns Spain and why many owners are leaving. The organisations and associations of the foreigners in Spain should also participate in this review
The Association Ciudadanos Europeos has its analysis ready, as well as a program for the recuperation of the lost confidence, but with the knowledge we have from many years of Spanish politics, we don’t expect to be asked.
www.c-euro.org
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(Acuso y agitado) |
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The Spanish government and Mark Thatcher have both been accused of being behind a failed coup to overthrow Equatorial Guinea's president. Old Etonian Simon Mann is facing 32 years in jail and made the allegations at his trial in Malobo, the capital of the former Spanish colony. Mann was among 70 mercenaries arrested at Harare airport, Zimbabwe in 2004.
Mann, an ex-British army officer, was eventually extradited to Equatorial Guinea after Zimbabwe received a guarantee he wouldn't be given the death penalty. He was sent to stand trial charged with being one of the ringleaders of the plot to overthrow the country's president Teodoro Obiang. The plan was to replace Obiang with opposition leader Severo Moto Nsa, at present living in exile in Spain. Obiang, whose military training was undertaken in Zaragoza, came to power in 1979 when he ousted the brutal dictator Francisco Macias in a coup d'étât.
It was, however, Mark Thatcher, Mann told his trial, and Nigerian businessman Ely Calil who masterminded the plot and went on to implicate the former Spanish government in these dark and dastardly deeds.
Thatcher, Mann alleged, had been one of the major plotters in the scheme to overthrow Obiang, with oil money being the motivation for the coup.
Mark Thatcher has already been fined £226,000 and given a four year suspended sentence for supplying the plotters with a helicopter. The businessman, son of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, claimed, at the time, that he believed the helicopter was to be used for humanitarian purposes. Mann, however, refutes this and claims that Thatcher was one of the main conspirators and planners of the attempted coup.
Now residing in San Pedro de Alcantara, Malaga province, Mark Thatcher has refused to comment about Simon Mann's allegations.
But, it wasn't just Thatcher and Calil who were accused of being involved in the failed coup. José María Aznar and his deposed Partido Popular government were also named by Mann. According to the defendant, Aznar's Spanish government of the time - circa 2004 - had promised diplomatic and military support if the overthrow was successful. Mann also claimed that plans for the coup were brought forward amid fears that Aznar's government might fail to hold onto power at Spain's March 2004 elections.
The British were also said to have been aware of the plot in 2004. British intelligence, it has been claimed, knew a full month before the overthrow was attempted and had warned Mann off trying to carry out the plot. Jack Straw, Britain's Foreign Secretary in 2004, later admitted in a reply to a parliamentary question that British intelligence were aware of the plot to overthrow the president weeks before it was due to happen. This gives some credence to the belief of Equatorial Guinea's Attorney General Jose Olo Obono that both the USA and the UK knew of the plot to overthrow Obiang and replace him with Moto.
Meanwhile, in Spain, the hapless Severo Moto was granted political asylum in March 2008 and arrested a month later on suspicion of trafficking arms to Equatorial Guinea.
Will Thatcher and/or Calil face trial? Or will the sacrifice of Mann be enough for Obiang, Obono and Equatorial Guinea? Answers on a postcard...
Agitado
I was sitting in a rather busy Glasgow airport the other day watching endless lines of passengers queue for a seat on their flight. A huge ocean of human cargo heading for destinations all over the world. To pass time I had wandered off for a coffee, but it proved difficult to find a seat as other people had the same idea.
It struck me what a restless lot we humans are. There, in that transit warehouse with all those people from all over the world waiting to travel on to their destination.
Migration of course has become a major political issue in many countries throughout the world, in Europe and, above all in modern Spain.
The foreign population of the Spanish nation has grown spectacularly in just over 25 years. From a reasonable low of less than 200,000 in 1981 the number of immigrants grew by 350% to around 900,000 in the year 2000. In less than a decade, however, the rising numbers of foreign nationals in Spain have pushed the immigrant population to a staggering 4.5 to 4.8 million. A gigantic increase of between 3.6 and 3.9 million in less than ten years. The Spanish authorities estimate that the immigrant population grew by around 750,000 in 2005 alone.
Of those foreign nationals in the country today, a whopping 730,000 are Romanian. Other main groups of migrants include 645,000 Moroccans, 420,000 from Ecuador and approximately 350,000 are thought to have migrated from the United Kingdom. This latter figure is, unsurprisingly, disputed by the British authorities who have estimated that around 800,000 Brits - in some reports one million - now reside in Spain. It’s all to do with whether you appear on the official figures, which originate with the local town hall register – the padrón.
The downside of all this movement, of course, is the concomitant growth of right wing, anti-immigration political groups across Europe.
In France, the National Front, founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972, have experienced mixed fortunes recently, but remember it wasn't so very long ago that in 2002 Le Pen was involved in a run-off for the French presidency with Jacques Chirac. The National Democratic Party in Germany is known for its opposition to the increasing numbers of immigrants, especially non-whites, Jews and Muslims living in the country. In Switzerland, the Swiss People's Party take a similar stance. In 16 years the popular vote for the Swiss People's Party more than doubled from 12% in 1991 to a staggering 29% in 2007.
Of course Spain once had three Falange parties. The Falange Española de las JONS, Falange Española and the Falange Auténtica. La Falange Auténtica - who emerged from a split from within Falange Española in 2002 - did manage to win a seat in Ardales, Malaga in the 2003 municipal elections. Otherwise, the racism is generally left to ‘los skins’ – the urban skinheads.
Lights Out For The Territory
I have recently noticed how territorial my dog is. He... erm... marks his area regularly when we are out on walks - in a doggie sense of course. He also guards his little empire jealously (this consists of a few streets, our garden and a nearby park). Madam dogs are welcomed with open arms - perhaps he is looking to improve the population of his little 'nation' - Mister dogs, however, are growled at and threatened. They are, I have to admit, rapidly seen off the premises. Male immigration, it would appear, is not welcome in Buster's canine world. |
© 2008 Radio Mojácar S.L.
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