alhambra

Jeff Miller is a member of the Black Crystal Wolf Kids and the founder of Citystock Music Festival in addition to being a Los Angeles based food and music journalist. Jeff talked with us about his experiences with the PLaNETS crew, both on stage and at the Alhambra House, and what it the community meant to him through the past decade.

To Learn more about Jeff: @jeffmillerla on instagram, facebook, and twitter

To learn more about Black Crystal Wolf Kids visit: http://www.blackcrystalwolfkids.com/

@blackcrystalwolfkids on instagram.

To support Lost Beat 6 Artists on Bandcamp Friday visit: https://lostbeat6.bandcamp.com/

Our Making The Scene continues the deep dive exploration and celebration of the Los Angeles arts and music community known as PLaNETS. Today we hear from Nathaniel Peterson and Nick Daue who were the primary artistic directors and production designers. They made the props, the backdrops, the robot, and stole the forks. We get an inside perspective of what it took to put on a PLaNETS show and life inside the Alhambra house.

To learn more about PLaNETS...

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/planetsvideo

Bandcamp: https://planetsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thedarkwoods

Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-dark-woods/567187801

We are starting a new segment that will deep dive into creative communities and movements. We’re gonna call it “Making The Scene.” The first of these groups of podcasts will be focused on the East Los Angeles group PLaNETS and the people, bands, and fans that were in their orbit. The end result of these talks will culminate in a written observation and commentary on was made this community so very special to everyone involved.

So…all that being said, we’re kicking off this mini series with co-creator Adam Stilwell. Adam is a filmmaker and writer in addition to being the PLaNETS frontman. Steve spoke with Adam to discuss the origins of the group from Montana to Los Angeles underground and beyond. Adam also discusses how a sense of place and an open door policy of inclusiveness help to create a culture of participation from both performers and audience.

To learn more about The PLaNETS universe please check out

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/planetsvideo

Bandcamp: https://planetsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/thedarkwoods

Apple: https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-dark-woods/567187801

To screen The Triangle: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B079R6ST5T/ref=atv_sr_def_c_unkc__2_1_2?sr=1-2&pageTypeIdSource=ASIN&pageTypeId=B079R7HDKK&qid=1610914306

The story of the Reconquista continues into the time of Muhammad V who ruled over Nasrid Granada during her Golden Age. However, just to the north, Muhammad's friend and ally, Peter I of Castile, would be engaged in a series of wars that would affect nearly all the major contestants of Western Europe. While Granada enjoyed prosperity, Castile would be consumed by a massive civil war that would bring about a new dynasty. One that was destined to impact not just the politics of the Iberian peninsula, but the whole world. 

Contribute on Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/FPHx

Leave some feedback:

flashpointhistory@gmail.com

Follow along on Facebook:

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Engage on Twitter:

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Flash Point History YouTube Channel:

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MUSIC

Le Documentaire

- Arabic Music

Premium Beats

- Flowing Rivers

WAYNE JONES

- Epic Battle Speech 

World Music Official

- All Moon Night

- Golden Age

- Epic Middle Eastern Music

Omri Lahav

- Peak of Atlas

Claudie Mackula

- El Castillo De Santiago

Plato, Kant, Nietzsche, Buddha, Confucius, Rousseau, Aristotle, Bastiat, Molinari, Cicero, Hegel, Hobbes, Kant... LL Cool J.  The contemporary philosopher sits on the social and political branch of the Western tradition.  He began releasing treatises in 1985 after collaborating with Def Jam.  Radio was his first.  Two years later, Bigger and Deffer.  But 1989's Walking with a Panther was 'too pop-y', said the Philosophical Review.  'So much empty fluff,' pondered the British Society for Phenomenology.  Dialectica wouldn't even look at it.  His fourth commentary however, returned him to the top.  Both the album and its most famous song were titled Mama Said Knock You Out.  The single famously begins with, "Don't call it a comeback, I been here for years".

Singing that tune these days are Communism, Marxism and Socialism.  In this, the 17th episode of Making Sense, Jeff Snider explains how to understand their philosophy and why their recent popularity is not a comeback despite the doctrine's body of work.  Marxism was never gone, it was waiting for the club of mostly wealthy nations to reach the end of their capitalist potential.  Well, a thirteen year depression on par with the 19th century's Long and the 20th century's Great depressions is making a good case.  So then, how to counter the argument? 

But that's for the back-half of the show.  First, a Catch-22 like paradox in bond markets.  Safe sovereign and risky corporate bonds both display falling yields.  Why?  We look back to the last worldwide depression for answers.  Then, yield curve control.  This podcaster has a feeling it'll be the must-have toy for central bankers by Christmas.  We look back at the US experience with the policy during the 1940s.  Then Marx, Lenin and Mao take the stage, grab the mic and start spitt'n.

----------WHAT----------
Don’t Low Rates On Junk Bonds Mean Fed-fueled Credit Bubble? No. Precisely The Opposite
Yield Cap History Is Rock Solid, Just Not At All In The Way They Are Telling You
Yield Caps = Toddlers
From QE to Eternity: The Backdoor Yield Caps
Socialism Would Have Been Easy to Discredit, Had There Been Growth
Brent Johnson & Jeff Snider "Breaking Down Eurodollars" Webinar by BlockWorks Group
Reddit Late Stage Capitalism Thread 549,000 Strong

----------WHO----------
Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments with Emilulous.  Artwork by David 'Straight Outta London' Parkins.  Podcast intro and outro is "Callin Shots" by Damma Beatz at Epidemic Sound.

After half-a-century, some 8,000 episodes and numerous tournament of champions the American television game show Jeopardy! decided to hold its definitive contest to determine its ultimate victor.  The trial featured three accomplished champions: Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and James Holzhauer.  The selection of these three remains one of sports' great scandals -- right up there with the Czechoslovakian judge in Lillehammer.  The three contenders were fine, having won more than a 100 contests and $10.7 million dollars between them.  That's not bad... as far as humans go.  Who should have been in the tournament?

The first contestant most clearly deserved to be Phil Connors.  Connors, initially a Pittsburgh weatherman stuck in a time loop, eventually attained the status of god.  Not the God - at least he didn't think so - but a god.  And as a deity not only did Connors know every answer in "Lakes & Rivers" - What is Mexico?  What are the Finger Lakes?  What is Titicaca? - he knew the question before the answer was even given: What is the Rhône?

The second contestant was god-like in its knowledge: Watson.  The likely forerunner of HAL-9000, this question-answering computer system already beat both Jennings and Rutter in an exhibition match for a million dollars.  A eurodollar realist and having no use for a pyramid of physical bills, Watson promptly set the money alight and was heard walking off stage saying, "It's not about the money - it's about sending a message."

The third contestant inhabits that shimmering space between reality and myth called "legend": Clifford C. Clavin, Jr.  The part-time Boston-area mailman and full-time bar patron appeared on Jeopardy! in 1990, where he feasted on the categories like a walrus in a bed of bivalve mollusks, which is the mammal's preferred food you know.  "Civil Servants", "Stamps from Around The World", "Mothers and Sons", "Beer", "Bar Trivia", "Celibacy".

It is in the spirit of these latter three - as legend, as eurodollar realist, as living through a monetary time-loop - that Jeff Snider confronts listener questions in a Jeopardy!-style show in this, the 16th episode of Making Sense.

----------WHAT----------
Alhambra Investments Blog
RealClear Markets Essays
Yield Cap History Is Rock Solid, Just Not At All In The Way They Are Telling You

----------WHO----------
Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments with Emil Kalinowski, the Vanna White of Eurodollar Jeopardy!  Artwork by the Phil Connors-like, preternatural David Parkins.  Podcast intro and outro is "Come 2gether" by Ooyy at Epidemic Sound.

Published in 1862, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is "the novel of the century" according to David Bellos, professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University.  When asked on The Great Books podcast what qualifies this novel to be on the show Bellos responded, "It tackles a huge range of human experience, with an enormous amount of passion.  If there ever was a great book, it must be Les Misérables." 

The story focuses on 'the suffering ones', 'the humiliated'.  It's set in the social, political and economic upheaval of early-nineteenth century France.  'The poor people who are worthy of our pity' were caught up in the consequences of what Jeff Snider calls the first modern business cycle.  Michael Pettis, in his 2001 book The Volatility Machine, identifies it as the first modern deglobalization. And Friedrich Engels called it "the first general crisis". 

Engels is, of course, the co-author of the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 in response to the shocking, worldwide disorder.  Karl Marx and Engels are said to suggest that capitalism has an expiration date; that capitalism was an ahistorical phenomenon which would burn up the limited fuel of labor and then sputter.  And at that point communism would take over and redistribute the existing wealth equitably because there was a limit to human wealth creation.

This, over the long sweep of history, is a pessimistic view of human character and potential.  But humans don't live across history, they have a handful of decades.  And when capitalism does find itself in a cul-de-sac as it did during the first general crisis, and the Long Depression, and the Great Depression and now this -- Year 13 of the Silent Depression, well then terminal capitalism sounds perfectly reasonable. 

In this the 15th episode of Making Sense, Jeff Snider discusses the barricades and autonomous zones of Les Misérables, Marx and Engles' thesis, late-stage capitalism, the Soviet Union, and present-day China; but all in defense of capitalism without denying that it's going down the wrong road -- toward the barricades.

----------WHERE----------
Apple: https://apple.co/3czMcWN
iHeart: https://ihr.fm/31jq7cI
Castro: https://bit.ly/30DMYza
TuneIn: http://tun.in/pjT2Z
Google: https://bit.ly/3e2Z48M
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3arP8mY
Castbox: https://bit.ly/3fJR5xQ
Stitcher: https://bit.ly/2C1M1GB
Overcast: https://bit.ly/2YyDsLa
PocketCast: https://pca.st/encarkdt
PodcastAddict: https://bit.ly/2V39Xjr

----------WHAT----------
The Economic Boom You Heard About Never Really Was
A Massive Problem That Has Them Searching For One

----------WHO----------
Jeff Snider, Head of Global Investment Research for Alhambra Investments with Emil Kalinowski, manning the barricades in the CHAZ (Cayman Highball Armorik Zone).  Artwork by David Parkins, a modern-day Émile-Antoine Bayard.  Music track "The Ministry" by Howard Harper-Barnes at Epidemic Sound.

Transcript:

Day 98 The End?

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

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

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

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

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

CLIP:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wet market?

Laboratory Accident?

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

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

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

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Full transcript:

Day 97 Of mousy women and men

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript:

Day 95 Bonfire night

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript uncorrected:

Day 93 Anyone for tennis?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript (uncorrected)

Day 92 Dance off

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOC

Transcript (uncorrected)

Day 91

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoying Spanish Practices, hit the subscribe button on your favourite Podcast Player, catch up with all 91 episodes.  

The music Leaving Havana was composed by Marty Stone and Ben Hatten and both are reproduced under licence from Storyblocks. Spanish Practices is a Creative Radio Partnership Ltd Production.

Full Transcript:

Day 89 Fag End

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday and the day Bruce Forsyth didn't play his cards right, community swimming pools and dirty rain.  The daily Podcast diary of a British couple in Lockdown Spain, phase 2.

Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 78 Brucie Bonus

Monday oh how I loathe you, but only because it rained last night for 10 minutes, but it was that dirty calima rain, the brown sand from the Sahara fell and covered everywhere in a sticky glaze. So we spent an hour this morning clearing it up from the outside terraces.

If you don’t it finds its way into you home and gets trodden onto the tiles like Man Friday footprints.

Phase 2 here in Granada Province, more restaurants are now opening, the beaches are opening, you can get married and go to a funeral. I think that’s about it, I am confused.  We have kinda got into a pattern now, so are quite happy to make minimal journey’s and eat at home, for the moment.

We are lucky we have outdoor space and a pool, for many Spanish living in small flats with large families – it must have been purgatory, at least now they can socialise.  Even our friend Carmen was out with her friends yesterday, finally celebrating her birthday.

I have never been that good in confined spaces, I think years of working in radio studios haven’t helped.  When LBC was run by the TV news people ITN our studios were tiny, they were in the lower basement, although you were forbidden to call it that.  The Management liked you to say lower atrium.  But in reality the basement, next to the big pump that pumped the poo out of the building up to the London sewer.

The building looks quite swish on the TV, if you have ever watched Channel Four news, all that glass and lit offices is real.  Sadly, their studio is where the original canteen was.  The canteen was amazing, there was a roast of the day, at least two mains and a veggie dish and desserts to die for. Infact where Jon Snow reads the news is where the dessert cart used to sit, I can’t watch the news without remembering the delicious spotted dick that they served in that canteen.

The toilets in the building were another matter, the Architect Norman Foster built the ITN studios and had a love of Italian sanitaryware, so he designed these Italianesque bogs, complete with Italian plumbing and highly polished marble floors.

Now Italian plumbing and British plumbing are a marriage made in hell, our pipes are 1mm larger than the Italians, so the loos leaked.  Worse was if you were hoping for any kind of privacy whilst you were on the throne, there was no chance as the marble floors reflected you and your business to anyone standing by the sinks or urinals.

Also, less glamorous was that ITN only had one dressing room, usually reserved for the female newsreader.  So, the male newsreader would make-up in the toilet.  Nothing is odder than seeing Dermot Murnaghan putting eye shadow on and turning to you as you are washing your hands to ask you if he had put too much on!

So, I like to avoid working in small places, even though I am recording this in a cupboard right now.  I also think the trauma of once getting stuck in the ITN lift with Julia Somerville.  We had a stilted conversation about films for twenty long minutes of my life.

The famous lifts of ITN appear on Channel Four news, they were fast and glass, anybody with a nervous disposition would be better off using the stairs that were oddly hidden behind a false door, - another Norman Foster idea, I guess.

Chris remembers once Bruce Forsyth jumping into the ITN lift, Bruce stood beside him asking if the lift was going up to the ITV programme centre? Unfortunately, it was going down to the basement.  Chris couldn’t help himself and turned to Bruce and did a Brucie “No Bruce you want to go higher, higher!”  

Bruce laughed, sadly it wasn’t his day, because they had summoned him to the ITV office to sack him on the grounds, he was too old for Play Your Cards Right.  So, he went back to the BBC and Presented Strictly Come Dancing and took his audience with him.

Monday and a Skype with a client, and a discussion about the community swimming pool. The complex measures to keep the pool social distance safe, hiring a member of staff and the fact that the pool pump needs maintenance, means our Estate will not open the swimming pool this year.

I think a lot of communities are going to struggle to adequately fulfil the rules that the local and national Government have laid down, the local main town beaches open tomorrow, I hope people do a better job at social distancing than Southend-on-Sea has managed these last few days.

This year the summer is going to look a much different place to that of a normal Spanish summer.  I don’t think we will see the usual numbers of tourists coming this year.

Flying will be far more complex, it was miserable enough before passing through airport security, add the extra sanitary measures, temperature taking and the like, not the best or most glamorous way to start your holiday.

We shall see, but if you do make it to Spain, you will receive a warm welcome, enjoy good food, beautiful coastline and countryside, that much has not changed in the new normal.

Today the story of a railway porter who transformed the whole of the Spanish tourism industry, a story that involves a Bikini and General Franco.

Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 77 Benidorm Brits and Bikini’s

Sunday, the eve of Phase 2 and another step toward the new normal here in Spain.  Today the Spanish Tourism Minister Maria Reyes Maroto has said that the UK must improve the Covid19 rates before Britain’s can be allowed to come back to Spain for their holidays.

Last year just over 18 million Brits visited Spain with just over 65 million from other countries so about 11% of all tourists in Spain are British.

In the next couple of weeks Spain will open up some test corridors from other European countries with a wider expansion on the 1st of July.

The Daily Mail was suitably outraged by the statement from Spain, with an editorial suggesting Brits should stay at home.  They have a point.  I very rarely read the comments written in the Daily Mail but this one made me chuckle from Vestan Pants, guessing that is not his real name!

“Piling onto planes wearing their Elizabeth Duke jewellery clutching bottles of duty free grog, dressed up to the nines (they think) in Matalans finest fashion then piling out at the other end and being pistas farts for a fortnight.  Can’t for the life of me imagine why Spain wants to defer their arrival for as long as possible.”

He has a point British Tourists have a rather dubious reputation here.  A few years ago, when we were living in the flat in the little village, we met a lovely family around the pool who had come from just outside Benidorm to spend some time down here on the Granada Costa Tropical coast.

I asked them why they didn’t take a holiday in Benidorm?  Their son, who spoke good English looked down at his feet, he said.  “Have you been to Benidorm?”  I said “No, I didn’t it think it was the place for me.”

“We have been once, it was terrible, many people in the morning, drunk, being sick.”  Their daughter chimed in “And making the pee pee on the floor.”

He continued, “We saw some peoples fighting, and my mother and father say we will go now and have not been back.”

So, a Spanish family who actually live near one of the most popular British tourist hotspots in Spain, chose to stay away.  What a reputation we have abroad!

I am not saying that the other countries behave that much better, Germans are quite capable of bringing their country into disrepute. It is interesting that many of the new-age travellers down on our small but beautiful beach are Germans.

It makes the beach, not a no-go area, but a place where you are not entirely comfortable. We were at the Chiringuito at the beach when four people came in, they were all as stoned as those old ladies in our village that Saturday afternoon.  It took them about thirty minutes to order, they say huddled around an MP3 player, on quite loudly playing Ibiza sunrise type music, which I actually like, the owners of the bar were having none of it and told them to turn it off.

I do wonder if our appetite for all-inclusive pile your plate high from the buffet, lay sweltering by the pool holidays in Benidorm are coming to an end?  It would be a shame as there is nothing wrong with those sorts of holidays, but they do decimate local bars and shops as holidaymakers prefer to stay in their complex rather than go out to eat.

To discover just why Benidorm became such a draw we have to travel back to the 1950s Benidorm a pretty little fishing village that it was then. But something ghastly happened, the bikini had arrived on the beaches and the Catholic Church were horrified and wanted it banned.

They had not reckoned on a railway porter by the name of Pedro Zaragoza Orts, in 1950 he had become the Mayor of Benidorm and in 1953 he allowed the wearing of Bikini’s on the beach, this caused uproar.

The Guardia were pictured grabbing bikini clad women from off the beach, the Catholic Church began the process to excommunicate Zaragoza, this would have been a disaster as the Church controlled the Mayors office and no Mayor can stay in office without Church approval.

The church even erected a huge cross on the top of the hill that looks over the town, just to make the point.

But Pedro Zaragoza Orts was having none of it, he believed the future of Spain was tourism, so one chilly winters day he got on his Vespa scooter and made the 8 hour trip to Madrid - to see Franco.

General Franco was probably the one person in Spain who could question the Church’s authority.  Zaragoza says he managed to change his shirt before meeting the General, but his trousers were still spattered with motor oil when he was summoned.

What happened at that meeting between the two men went unreported – whether or not Franco gave his tacit approval for Bikini’s is a mute matter.  But Zaragoza returned to Benidorm to say ‘the General he says yes.’

Once the Catholic Church heard the news, they immediately reversed the excommunication from the church and Benidorm became Europe’s first holiday resort town.  

I agree with that Spanish family that nobody wants a drunk Brit staggering down the road parking their breakfast on the pavement, I believe those Brits are the minority and most of us just want some sunny seaside fun.

Wednesday and there is news that tourists coming to Spain will be greeted by beach vigilantes, who will be employed to make sure we all socially distance and bathe in the correct safe way. Day 73 of Spanish Lockdown for a British couple and their three-good legs cat.

Find out more here: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 73 Beach Vigilantes

Wednesday week two of Phase 1 and we learn that the Spanish Government is going to make sure that you naughty old tourists behave yourself on the costas, if you decide to take a holiday abroad here.

Three thousand vigilantes will be hired by the Junta to police the beaches and make sure your Parasol is the right distance between the family social distance sitting next to you.

They will be paid 1,900 Euros a month for the summer period. It will cost 24 million Euros the Vigilantes will report to the Policia Local.

It is worth just pausing a moment to explain the police services here in Spain there are three main types.  The Guardia who dress like a scary military army, that is because they are a scary military army. 

They do the highways, ports and rural areas, and will investigate crime in those areas and they work out of, in the case of our local main town. A big, scary fortress like building that looks like it might contain thumbscrews and other such paraphernalia, called a Garrison.

All the while you also must remember policing in Spain is not like the consent policing in Britain, if you mucked around with the Spanish police like you sometimes see the British Bobbies suffer in social media videos, you are likely to find the butt of a rifle whacked around your face, or at the very least be flung to the floor, for a jolly good batoning.

Next up from the Guardia are the Policia Local, they are more like the British Police, crime prevention, traffic control, a bit like the Guardia and also intelligence gathering – for instance  investigating if you might be one of those naughty indoor farmers growing wacky baccy.

Then there are the National Police they will be the ones that might give you a jolly good batoning in a riot, they have civilian status.

BUT there are various different mixtures of these three main police, remember this is Spain and Autonomous regions have created their own police forces that carry out the functions of one or the other groups of police.

Again – really confusing for the Tourist, they all travel around in different colours of cars too, the local police look like a typical police car, the ones from that work for the Autonomous area might have red and yellow cars, looking a little like New York Yellow Cabs and finally the Guardia have white and green cars, usually those big four wheel drive things.

It is Wednesday and there has been a lot of drilling and noise from our neighbours below.  This has much to do with the way that houses are constructed here.

The Spanish have an amazing love affair with Portland cement, pretty much every building you come across is made from the stuff, they pump it out from great elephant trunk things into shuttered wood and build incredible buildings.

They are the masters of the cement truck and mixer.  No self-respecting Spaniard doesn’t have a cement mixer tucked away somewhere.. that might be an exaggeration.

But it is hard to fathom the next stage of building.  Once they have completed their cement buildings and walls inside and out, they take a cement cutter and rip holes out of every part of the newly constructed building.

In the UK we love a bit of trunking, it is easier to hide behind a stud wall.  For the most part Spanish construction uses very little wood.  It is very expensive here; I think there were historical political difficulties in persuading countries like Sweden to sell wood to the country.

So, no trunking, but tubo – round plastic piping is placed into the gaping cement wounds in a building then plastered into place with a magic substance called Yeso.  Yeso comes in two flavours – “bloody hell that dried quite quickly” and “oh shit it has set straight away”

Yeso holds up many Spanish Houses in the same way “no more nails” seems to keep British homes together.

It means that house building is a very noisy process here.  Everything from a simple wall to a three-bedroom villa seems to require a lot of shouting, drilling, banging, crashing, cement mixing, hammering before it gets completed.

A special mention must be mentioned about Jesus or Jesus the Grua, he is an amazing local man that owns a large red crane attached to a lorry.  He is the person tasked with delivering all the building materials.  Clearing away the spoils and dropping plant and cement down the mountainside where it is needed.

He does this with the precision of a marksman, not from the comfort of his cab but with a remote-controlled thingy that operates the crane.  It is precision work, one moment of distraction and you could loose a corner of your balcony.

Yesterday I watched him reverse down our tiny main Estate road in between parked cars, me flattened against the wall, and two oleander bushes.  He was magnificent, there could only have been a few inches gap between us all, I am pleased to say he missed us all.

I am not sure what the uniform they will give the beach vigilantes of Andalucia but I am guessing it will not be a pair of too tight red shorts and  jolly yellow tee-shirt with Baywatch written on it.  

Could legally growing marijuana save Spains Economy? Today the whole podcast is going to pot, after all it is time we started to chill and relax, before the onslaught of tourists arrive here in Spain.  This is the daily diary of a British couple in Phase 1 Lockdown in Spain.

Find out more here: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 72 gone to pot

It is Tuesday, and today we celebrate 1,918 lives not taken by the virus, the Health Ministry mis-calculated the figures which represent a 7% drop in the number of deaths.

You can endlessly criticise the statistics and method used to collect the data, as Mark Twain once said, “There are lies, damn lies and statistics.” But this is still good news.

Less good news is that the Health Ministry is only testing about half the suspected cases of Covid19, which makes an even bigger mockery of the un-lockdown phases that Spain has imposed on the country, with some parts still in zero and a bit, some in Phase 1 like our province and some in Phase 2.

I looked at the IKEA site yesterday and some stores are open to the public, some are not, the Malaga store has a click and collect service operated outside in the car park.

The local large shopping centre has managed in Phase 1 to half open some of its bigger stores with the shops that have access from outside and cutting down the floor space of each store.

It is turning into a right old mess. 

It also looks like social distancing measures will be enforced by fines, so on beaches during the summer holidays, distances of 4 metres have to be kept and only a certain number of people may share a sun parasol.

Our local main town will be patrolling the beach with a drone, so if you think you might be getting away to a relaxing holiday abroad, think again. Although things seem to change by the day here, rather like they are doing in the UK.

Yesterday instead of driving hundreds of miles to test my eyes and accidentally ending up at my parents’ house, - now that would be a long drive from here!  I got MY eyes tested at an Opticians.

I think Governments all over the world are struggling to give good governance, Spain and Britain have both had some challenges, to say the least.

I wonder if we should just all chill out and concentrate on what we can do to relax.

I remember when we first came to Spain and the little flat in the village, we were quite amazed by how quiet it was on a hot Saturday afternoon, so decided it would be pleasant to take a stroll around the place.

Leaving the flat which was on the edge of the village we walked into the small streets and lanes that lead to the main drag through the place.

There was an overwhelming smell of pot, not just from one house but from the whole village.  An elderly lady was attempting to water her, rightly named, ‘pot’ plants, she was clearly stoned out of her head.

Some old men were wobbling, far more than usual, down the road toward their meeting place by a local sports bar.

From every house the smell was strong enough to make you feel slightly high too.  There is a myth that marijuana is legalised in Spain.  It is not and the organised crime mobs that control the mass growing of it regularly play a game of cat and mouse with the authorities.

Out in the campo and with either stolen electricity or solar, sophisticated air conditioning – I can believe that there is a lot of money at stake in the growing of weed. 

With a shortage of money and jobs following the covid19 virus I wonder if more enterprising Spanish souls will indulge in “indoor farming” as it is euphemistically called.

There are arguments on both sides as to whether Marijuana should be legalised, I would think it would certainly end the criminal gang activity associated with growing weed, rather like the end of the bathtub gin mafia operations during American Prohibition.

The danger I guess is that would lead to more criminal activity with higher classes of drugs.  I don’t know what the answer is, I am just a simple Podcast Producer.

There does seem to be a fair share of drug busts here though, further up the coast class A drugs find their way across from north Africa and southern Spain seems to be a landing point for these drugs that then get spirited away north to other European countries.

I will leave you with a quote from our local newspaper “The Seaside Gazette”. Martin Myall writes:

“A man driving a Peugeot 406 overtook a Guardia Civil patrol car on a B-road in the Alpujarra Granadina and was dismayed to see its lights activate. He was dismayed because the 66-year-old man happened to have nearly 60 kilos of marihuana onboard.

So how the hell did the Guardia know that he was carrying wonky weed? The answer was because they got a strong whiff of it as the man sailed past them. Quite apart from that, it’s never a good idea to overtake a police car anywhere in the world.”

His trial is pending, but the amount of Marijuana the man was carrying could be turned into a street value of 75,000 Euros, now for somebody who has waited months for their ERTE – Furlough payments, that is a tempting amount of money to make.

I have wondered if they actually legalised weed, to grow commercially – there wouldn’t be a single tomato to buy in Tesco ever again as all those seas of Plastic greenhouses would all be going to pot.

Monday and day 71, and a few tips about buying a property here in Spain and what you need to do as a Brit, before January 2020.

Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 71 Peseta Pats

Monday of week two of phase 1, we are still confused about why we have not moved to Phase 2, so I asked my Spanish neighbour from Granada.

“There are not enough beds in the Hospital, of the critical kind.”  She said.  It would appear one of the worries is a flood of inter-province holiday makers would risk overwhelming the hospital.  I suppose the answer to that would be to add more beds.

I think all hospitals will have to re-think their ICU facilities and what is required to look after and keep alive patients with Covid19.

Monday is accounts day, and Chris is going through the Community payments for our Estate, he is the joint Treasurer. If you live in an Urbanised Estate or a block of flats you will have what amounts to a resident’s association with the power to collect fees and make decisions about any building work and maintenance.

A kind of mix of Management Company and Residents Association. We have a President, Vice President, Treasurer and hold a regular annual meeting where you can vote on passing budgets and plans for building and maintenance.

For the fee you get to live in a block of flats or development that might have community facilities like a pool.  The land will be, well should be, legalised for urban development. There should be services like electricity and water available, sewerage.

Roads and public gardens are maintained along with shared thing like lifts.  When the visitors to Spain return it is worth considering living in an organised development like this, if you want to be closer to the coast or near or in a town.

If you are looking for solitude, it is a lot cheaper, in some ways or can be a lot more expensive if you find there is no water supply or electricity, or the electricity is not powerful enough to turn a toaster on.  That can all mean expensive utility costs or having solar power.  Access roads here can be owned by other landowners, so you need to check you can actually tar over a road.

Look out for Canadas – the protected goat tracks, you can’t change those very easily and they are usually no more than a dirt track, that might lead to your new rustic house.

We are now only a few weeks from the tourists returning back to Spain, some will be keen to look at coming here to live, even though Spain has suffered a great deal with the Covid19 virus, it still remains a beautiful place to live, with many places enjoying mild winters and hot sunny summers.

The pace of life here is slower, particularly here in Andalucia, it makes for an attractive retirement option.  The process for Brits to live in Spain will be a little more complicated in the New Year, but people from all over the world come and settle here. 

It just might mean the end of the Peseta Pat’s – those Brits who came here thinking it might be a cheap place to retire to – I guess it depends on how you put a value on lifestyle. 

It is possible to live on a budget here, just as it is possible back in the UK,  but truthfully we find the cost of living is much the same as it was back in Britain, you might pay less council tax, but you will pay more income tax, alcohol costs are lower but eating out is now only slightly cheaper than the UK in many of the tourist places.

If you are considering a move to Spain, try to avoid thinking about living the dream, but living the reality, be honest with yourself about how big a change it is to jump from one country to another.

Monday in phase 1, there is a bit more traffic about, below us I can hear the familiar sound of banging, crashing and drilling as our neighbours are having a new metal gate put in.

I am off to the opticians a six o’clock appointment, but when I looked at the ticket it said 4 o’clock so we rocked up at 4 to discover that Claudia had a ticket that said six o’clock but written in the diary in biro she was 4pm and I was 6pm – have you lost the will to live yet.  Thought so.  Suffice to say there was a lot of ballet dancing mask wearing social distancing, I was allowed to remove my mask to see what my new glasses would look like san mask. Two weeks and some more glasses to drop to the tiled floor and break.

If you are serious about coming to live in Spain, as a top tip get here as soon as the Alarma – what the Spanish call the Lockdown is over and you can fly, get your NIE, rent a property with a tenancy agreement, then apply for your Residency card.  Once you have the Green card it will give you protected rights and an easy transition to the new T.I.E. card for British citizens in Spain.  Oh and don’t confuse citizenship for residency.  You can be a British citizen and reside in Spain.

Becoming a Spanish citizen is a whole different thing the being able to live, work and retire here. The clock is ticking down to January.

The clock is also ticking down to the end of the Spanish Lockdown it might come quicker than sooner, there is a lot of pressure for the Spanish Government to keep up with the timescale of Italy and Greece, it is an interesting that the Lockdown was put on a short hiatus as the Government worried about the economy, and in reality it is the economy that is again driving the end of the Alarma in Spain.

Day 69 it is Saturday and a tale of majestic beauty and ticket fraud, the daily diary of a British couple in Lockdown, still, in Spain.

Find out more: https://www.thesecretspain.com

Day 69

Saturday and the weekend has arrived with thirty plus temperatures, somewhere nearby somebody has some gentle Spanish guitar music playing and the birds are singing away. 

The Alhambra Palaces have said they plan to open again on the 1st of June and are putting in place social distancing measures, so I guess fewer people allowed around the palaces in each timed trip.  So this might be one of the best times ever to see the Alhambra, it truly is a wonder.

There is a lot of tosh written about the Alhambra, ruddy American Washington Irving with his “Tales of the Alhambra” seriously muddied the waters between fact and fiction.  Some of the myths are quoted in some books as facts.

Published back in 1830, the book did help the restoration of the Palaces that had fallen into a poor state of decay.  Rather like the old medieval British castles were the locals helped themselves to what amounted to an easy supply of building materials, the same fate happened to part of the Alhambra, locals “borrowing” stones and parts of the palaces.

So much so that much of what you see has been recreated.

Also, the name “Alhambra” which some think means in Arabic “The Red Fortress” is under debate too.  As the castle bit was whitewashed, so it wasn’t red at all but white.  Rather like those drab Roman buildings in Rome, in reality they would all have been painted.

I have to say I really love the gardens there, the scent of roses and myrtle, which like a Mediterranean box is fantastic. Also you have to admire the Moors and their engineering, bringing water into the Palaces and Gardens from miles away, all by gravity.

The Palaces themselves are much smaller than you expect, but are still amazing with their geometric designs and clever courtyards that with a water fountain in the middle could keep cool in the searing heat of a Granada Summer.

It was the home to the last Muslim ruler of Granada, Boabdil, who was finally chucked out of the city, but not before a lot of diplomatic complicity between, him and the Catholic interlopers, finally the place was reconquered by the Catholic kings back in 1493

Boabdil made the journey across to the “Moor’s Sigh” a place near modern day Otura here in the mountains that lie between us in Motril and Granada city, looking back at the city he once ruled, he let out a sigh .. yeah - I am guessing that might be tosh too.

But Boabdil didn’t do too badly he got offered an Estate in Laujar de Andarax in present day Almeria, but instead he went off to Morocco and built a palace at Fez where he spent the remainder of his life.

Here in Salobreña a Moorish castle fort stands there was also some shenanigans involving Mohammed the 7th and his brother Yusuf who also had rights to Granada, Mohammed banged him up in the Castle here.

But Yusuf was still a threat and Mohammed, who was on his death bed sent someone to pop Yusuf off, and the myth is that they found him playing Chess with the gaoler.  He asked if he could finish his game of chess, and that was agreed.  So Yusuf made the chess game last until his brother Mohammed had popped his clogs, and then Yusuf grabbed the Sultans job becoming Yusuf the third of Granada.

How true any of these stories are but the Nasrid dynasty managed to reign for  two hundred and fifty years in Granada, so that wasn’t bad going at all.

Of course this Podcast being Spanish Practices, aside from all the intrigue and mystery of the Nasrid Dynasty, there was also a more modern mystery of why the Alhambra Palace was so packed with visitors.

It turns out there was a major ticket scam involving more than sixty people, all in cahoots with each other according to the newspaper “The Local for the 3rd of October 2014:

“For three years, the fraud network - made up of Alhambra staff, travel agents and hotel workers – reaped the benefits of forging tickets, using old ones and carrying out other shady deals without raising the alarm.

They were able to control how many tourists had access to the UNESCO World Heritage Site and even forced tour guides and agencies that weren’t part of the fraud network to buy fake tickets off them.

The scam was made easier thanks to the backing they received from the Alhambra’s IT head and two officials responsible for the transfer and safekeeping of the tickets.

The Alhambra, the medieval symbol of Muslim rule in Spain, receives approximately 3 million visitors every year.

The court’s estimates put the total number of fake tickets dished out by the fraud gang at around 50,000.

The whole thing nearly bankrupted the tourist attraction and was partly blamed on poor management.  Hey ho!

When they finally get to reopen The Alhambra it is definitely one of the things you should try and see yourself, it truly is an astonishing place to visit, and thanks to social distancing, might be all the more enjoyable as there will be less people allowed to visit, at least in the near future.