Spanish Shilling

We return once again to ‘The most beautiful towns in Spain’. Some of these towns are special, but one must be in no doubt: that attention-grabbing label has been firmly stuck on the postcard by the local tourist authority.

They will be glad to see you, hope you have time to take a photo or two (post it on Instagram, because any publicity is good publicity), and then for Goodness Sake, why not stroll around and spend some money?

Friends, our souvenir shops don’t run on air!

The problem for the discerning tourist, who reads about these ‘best kept secret’ destinations, or sees the carefully angled photographs put out to attract his attention (Google will do the rest), is that thousands of other equally choosy people will have seen the same promotion. By the time you get there, it’s full to the gunnels of people all ready to get in the way of your photo.

You have seen the massed crowds at Machu Picchu (and that ain’t even easy to get to), the hordes of visitors in Venice, the queues of people waiting for their turn on the final shuffle to the top of Mount Everest (!), the wall-to-wall trippers in Barcelona, the apologetic oriental mob in Ronda, the gaggle of Brits in Nerja and the multicultural throng visiting the Alhambra.

There’s nothing less relaxing than appreciating the magnificence of the mosque in Cordoba as the thousand raised camera-phones and their owners noisily and irreverantly recording the scene.

Personally, I think we have left it too late.

In the past, I have sometimes laughed at the restored fortress in some dingy town, where ‘over fifty people visit daily’ during the summer months. I may have chuckled on seeing the rusted sign indicating the walls of a mosque in some Alpujarra village (the roof fell in over 400 years ago) or the iron cowboy erected near a bar where ‘Clint Eastwood once tried the garlic mushrooms’ (they were good, too).

But now I have changed my mind, and I shall diligently search for these treasures, content in knowing that the press of souvenir shop-keepers, tourist councillors, coach attendants or travel-article hacks will be light to non-existent.

The food will be good (it always is in Spain), the tinto de verano will be cheaper and the bar-owners will close up and be in bed by midnight.

See, they never made a list of ‘the Ugliest Villages in Spain’, because – well, that’s a properly well-kept secret.

We wonder, maybe, how things are getting along in the UK following the acrimonious divorce known as ‘Brexit’ – a split which left the departing defendant, his head held high, with little more than a caravan, an overseas bank-account he neglected to mention to the court, a hefty lawyers’ bill, and the cat.

The reason given was that we Brits were concerned about the un-elected people running the European Union – the second or third largest political and economic power in the world – as if we in the UK choose our own civil servants, or practice some form of proportional representation (rather than first-past-the-post).

A country where the current prime minister is eternally on holiday and the next one will be chosen by a handful of right-wing politicians who still evidently believe in the Raj.

The French at least have eleven deputies (members of parliament we call them) who represent solely those French people who live abroad. Imagine – eleven MPs exclusively speaking for the interests of the French diaspora overseas. But wait: in the UK, they want – finally, long after the Brexit boat has sailed – to allow us expats to vote for our ‘local’ MP according to his views on the price of sugar-beet. Not a dedicated representative and spokesperson for our interests, but the one chosen from our last place of residence.

That should water us down.

There are around a million three hundred thousand Brits living in the EU, without voice, presence, reputation or prominence. That’s around the same number as the entire population of Estonia or Cyprus. Or Glasgow.

Glory be! We need our own police force.

Here in Spain, we Brits slid quietly from second class Europeans to third class residents. We have a special card called the Foreign Devil’s Card (also known as the TIE) and we must queue in the non-European line. We can no longer have a British bank account and we must accept that we can’t get parcels from the UK as we used to. As to whether we will be able to continue to vote in local elections (that’s to say, in the municipality where we are now settled), that’s still open to doubt: until the Interior Ministry says otherwise.

It could have been worse. Imagine that Brussels righteously decided that we should all have been shipped back to what would have essentially been some camp erected (by Polish labour) on Salisbury Plain.

Pork-pies and Gentleman’s Relish are no longer easy to find in the stores here, although we can still watch British television, eat fish and chips at Dave’s and find an unread (and unreadable) pile of trashy free English-language newspapers dumped outside. The front-page leader with something about the local dog home.

The Spaniards wonder how we made such a mess of the whole thing. Even the Catalonians, keen to depart Spain for pastures unknown, have now changed their minds after seeing how Brexit has affected the UK.

Referendums aren’t a very good idea anyway. A popular vote supposes that there will be another one coming along in four years’ time; whereas, a referendum is a one-off. You can’t vote the Brexit a second time say the winners of the plebiscite. Although, given the chance, they would probably vote in a referendum in favour of hanging as well.

Things haven’t gone well, and the British politicians (and the media) will blame the coronavirus, the irascible Europeans anxious to put a spoke in the gilded British wheel, global warming, partisan attacks from ‘the Remoaners’, the war in the Ukraine, Northern Ireland or – best of all – the pesky French.

Who apparently hate us.

Or have forgotten us entirely. One of the two.

The British left the EU, not because of those un-elected foreign bureaucrats, or the lies on the side of Boris’ bus, or the propaganda from the Daily Express and other media owned by non-tax paying billionaires; but by the simple fact that, following from the implicit belief that we British are better than everyone else – if Britain couldn’t run the European Union (for better or worse), then it didn’t want to be a part of it.

Most Europeans, not to put too fine a point on it, think we have gone nuts. Britain is suffering from shortages (of trained workers, farm produce, foreign sales and promotion) along with extra paperwork and bureaucratic blockages, while we TIE holders living in the un-wounded remains of the European Union are now in the odd position of being better-off than our Island brethren.

At least we can stay here for longer than ninety days.

Back home and drinking one of those beers from the Aguila people that you have to turn for a moment upside-down. Gassy. Urppph.

Alicia and I were in Velefique this week, a small village up in the hills beyond Tabernas (you remember - where they shot all the spaghetti cowboy films). The village was celebrating its three-day-long fiesta which started on Monday, a Moors and Christians effort, and we supplied the four horses and their skilled and costumed riders. Not me, Gracious no, I was either in the bar or propping up the chiringuito: the temporary tin-bar in the square next to a pop-group platform.

Oh yes, it was noisy all right.

The councillor in charge of fiestas is called Ramón. He had showed us where we could keep the horses, where the water was and so on (Alicia slept up there with the crew on Monday and Tuesday).

I got a ride home (well, to water and feed the rest of our animals).

It’s a nice little pueblo, no foreigners, no hotels and strictly no souvenir shops. Velefique (pop. 230) can apparently trace its history back to the Romans.

So noisy indeed was the fiesta last week in next-door Senés, where we had similarly brought our four intrepid riders and horses for another Moors and Christians hoopla, that the bar-owner and wife had upped stakes and closed for the session (only two days this time - the village is even smaller).

No one likes to overwork, I agree, but closing up for the fiesta? The only place that served drinks in Senés during that particular thrash was the estanco, the cigarette shop who luckily has a side-line in beer.

Well, and the chiringuito as well - with the same crew. I can highly recommend their old-bit-of-pig sandwich which comes together with one’s welcome glass of beer.

The Moors were ejected from the hills of Almería sometime around 1490, a couple of years before Granada fell to the forces of Fernando of Aragón and Isabel of Castille. To prove their undying fealty and rigorous un-moorishness, everyone had to start eating pork and stop bathing (true story!).

Fiestas (or ferias) in Spain often overlap the single day saint's celebration (Almería, which kicks up its heels from the 19th, carries gamely on until the 27th, inclusive. Well, come to think of it, since the last day is a Saturday, we might as well manage a merrie and boozy luncheon on the Sunday, informally known as ‘el día de resaca’, down at the playa, why not?).

But first, Velefique. I was reminded of a pretty village inland from Mojácar called Bédar, when my dad had bought three houses in 1966 for ten thousand pesetas (sixty euros).

I opened a bar there for a few months sometime in the mid-seventies before deciding that hard work was not for me. I called it El Aguila, the eagle (there was a brand of smokes called El Aguila in those days, plus of course the beer. Marketing, I figured).

Fifty years later, and Bédar is now a British colony where people complain about the dog-poop and have tea-parties.

I forgot to ask Ramón how much a house costs in Velefique these days (much to his relief).

See, I was thinking of opening another bar.

I was at the Tanatorio waiting as the old friends gathered. The air-con was on (just as well, it was killer hot outside) and, as Andalucía always favours naked walls and plenty of marble, the echoes and reverberations of the various conversations were such, that even with my hearing-aids turned to Yowza!, I still couldn’t make out what anybody was saying.

Something about The Departed, I supposed, as I looked solemn and said ‘uhh’ now and again.

Eventually, we were called to the chapel (similarly accoutred, but with a wooden cross for decoration and this time, with the seats all facing the same way). We tottered in and filled up the room from the back rows first. I was seated at the front – I was going to say something apparently.

The boom-box was switched on, the coffin was brought in, someone sniffled and the show began.

The son was the first up. No one knew him, he’d flown out from Manchester. He had brought some notes which included some jocularities as one does: the time my father did this, the time he said that. We laughed dutifully (although I still couldn’t make out a word).

I was third out of five. No notes and I took my glasses off (there was someone in the audience who owed me some money from a long time ago and I didn’t want to see him).

The dead friend had run the local bar for many years, and then finally retired a couple of decades ago. Like many in the bar-world, he’d enjoyed a drink or two.

I remembered one hot evening when he had reached into the bottle cooler for a beer, found the temperature evidently to his liking, and fell asleep there, his head and shoulders slumped over the white wine.

Many of his customers are of course resting in the same cemetery which is now his new address. When the gates close each night, if you listen closely, you may hear a ghostly champagne bottle as it pops.

My point, as they played something from Frank Sinatra and we survivors staggered out into the hot afternoon’s heat, wondering who would be next, is this:

God, how old we’ve all gotten!

There are several expat groups on Facebook, by which I mean, they call themselves that. 'Expats in Spain' might be one. Seek them out, they can have useful posts sometimes.

I am in no doubt that these sites, with many others, receive critical messages every now and again from a recently arrived-to-Spain Brit who seeks to chastise them by erroneously saying in a pious tone: 'we are immigrants, not expats'.

Expats (expatriates, having left the patria, the home-land, rather than ex-patriots, having, er, seen the light) are simply that, a handy self-inflicted name for us Brits and other nationalities who want to join in, who live (in this case) in Spain.

We like to sententiously claim that we will learn the language, and we make some small effort to this end. But, it's hard for Brits to learn a foreign language, especially if we are not in our first flush of youth, and, especially too, if we live in an English-speaking gated community while watching satellite TV and reading worthless expat newspapers.

How many of us expats know the first thing about our host nation's culture, history and cuisine? Who do we support in an international sports event between 'our' country and theirs?

We expats don't particularly want Spanish nationalization (or, we didn't until Brexit came along) and, nota bene, we are mostly worried about whether we could still keep our British passport with dual nationality.

Not a major concern for an immigrant.

An immigrant is someone who wants to become a national.

He will learn the language, and insist that his children speak it fluently.  He will, on balance, be younger than an expat, with his life ahead of him (our average age is apparently north of sixty). He will be looking for work. Perhaps some of the Brits could fall into this category, but certainly not the ones you find on Facebook.

I have an American friend of Italian descent. His parents came over from Calabria. He recalls that they would say to him over the dinner table in broken English 'you in America now, you speak American'. I know of a young fellow here who lives in rural Spain, whose father is British and whose mother is Spanish. He is said to speak two languages, learnt from his parents: these are, in order of usefulness, Spanish and Broken Spanish.

Most immigrants are known more fully as 'Economic Immigrants'. They move to a wealthier country to earn more and live better. While expats also move elsewhere to live better, they don't do it for monetary reasons, and they are certainly never referred to as 'Economic Expats'.

Howsoever, not that the subject comes up much, I shall continue to justifiably call myself (with your permission) 'a European'.