A Wild Night

As we moved through September, the fierce heat of August quickly subsided and settled in the mid to high twenties. And stayed there, which is unusual. We have had the pleasure of an extended period of warm weather to such an extent that I was still in shorts and sandals on my birthday last Saturday. But all good things come to an end, they say, and that certainly happened last night. The Spanish equivalent of Britain’s Met Office, AEMET, is pretty accurate and they put out an amber alert for our area from midnight last night until midday today for heavy rain and high winds., coupled with a sharp drop in temperatures. Sure enough, in the small hours we were wakened by the sound of two chairs and a table careering from one end of our balcony to the other, and then back again, and then off again. Winds were gusting over 50mph (84kmh, if you want it in Spanish) and stuff that was neither stowed away nor tied down could be heard moving around all over the village. We used to get this kind of wind when we lived in Ramsbottomm, but there we were down in the valley bottom, so it roared over us about 100ft up. Here, however, we live at 1100ft on a ridge so the wind comes straight for us. And the rain, too, was as predicted, heavy and prolonged, lashing against the windows. I had to go for my flu jab this morning and once more put on my shorts on the basis that it is much easier to dry wet legs than wet trousers, but by lunchtime my legs were covered and I had put on a cardigan, so I think I’m in transition. Trousers, shoes and socks, but short sleeved shirts for a while longer. Can I hang onto them until Christmas, I wonder. I’ll let you know.

Quick Update On Filming

A friend posted these photos on Facebook. 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10152297559001571&id=624141570

Hollywood Comes To Town

Yet again I find time rolling by between posts. I guess it’s a consequence of writing about life in the village and the wider Spain for six years; when it comes to ‘events’ they usually come around every year and so I’ve already written about them at least once before, and I don’t want to keep repeating myself. However, we do have a local event which has not happened before and which has caused great interest within the village. Tomorrow and Tuesday large parts of the old village - el Barribarto - will be off limits whilst filming is in progress. This is not just some promotional short or documentary. This is a proper film, with a proper story set in 1950s Spain. Calle Real will be closed to motor traffic all day, and a village of the 1950s will be created from our Morisco quarter. Not only that, but on Thursday of last week villagers were queueing right round the Salon de Usos Multiples (the multi-purpose community room) in order to be inspected for possible roles as extras. Great excitement! On a personal note, we were out for lunch with friends of ours who live along the coast at Almuñécar and heard that they have sold their apartment and will be heading back to live in England. At the beginning of August, as we were setting of for a holiday in the UK, another couple, this time from the village, also left for England. In each case the motivation was the same; they wanted to see more of their grandchildren while their grandchildren were still happy to see them. I suppose in that respect we are less concerned as we have always been used to living a long way from our own grandchildren and seeing them only occasionally. Even so, both couples leave a gap in our lives as they were - and are - good friends. Oh, and one final event that has filled me with quiet pride; my blog has just passed its nine thousandth visit. Onward to 10,000!

In Fourteen Hundred And Ninety Two, Columbus Sailed The Ocean Blue

So runs the mnemonic taught to British children in my schooldays. Today, 12th October, is a national holiday in Spain. Except, of course, that as no one works on a Sunday, it will be celebrated tomorrow. El Día de la Hispanidad (The Day of Spanishness) is actually the national day of Spain and is also celebrated throughout the former Spanish empire, although one suspects that in South and Central America Simon Bolivar might be accorded greater status, he being the man who effectively liberated the people from the yoke of Spanish colonialism in the nineteenth century. The 12th October, you see, commemorates the day in 1492 when Christopher Columbus - funded by Ferdinand and Isabella - made landfall in what are now the Americas. Given the mineral wealth that was discovered there, this was particularly important for Spain at the time, as the Catholic Monarchs had only recently concluded a long and expensive war of reconquest against the Muslim powers who had ruled Spain for the previous seven hundred years, and the royal coffers were seriously depleted. We know this sea captain as Christopher Columbus, which is from the Latin Christophorus Columbus, but to the Spanish he was and is Cristóbal Colón. I mention this because it is from his name and his activities on this and subsequent voyages across the Atlantic that we get the words colony, colonial, colonist and colonise. And speaking of words deriving from people, the liberator of Latin America from colonial rule, gave his name to the country, Bolivia, to the Venezuelan currency unit, the bolívar, and indeed to the official title of the country, The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Then And Now

I was looking at a painting on my living room wall recently. I painted it in 1997, but it had lain neglected with other paintings until about a year ago. What struck me most was that the lomas (ridges beyond the village) were barren and empty. The land was what is known as secano, non-irrigated land.

What a difference today. The construction boom that began not long after this was painted, and which was fuelled by people from Northern Europe looking for holiday homes in the sun, led to a rash of new villas springing up everywhere. The photos were taken from my balcony a few minutes ago.