Spanish Shilling

I write a weekly bulletin of news and opinion about Spain for subscribers. It's called Business over Tapas - short and useful items about life in Spain aimed at those who would like to know more about this country (that's to say: prices, rules, regulations, politics and finance).

Right now, I'm taking a month off to visit my son in Oklahoma: no bulletin and no posts on Eye on Spain for November.

This week's editorial over at the BoT follows (it will soon be out of date, but the Spanish view-point will likely remain):

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Although Israel was officially born on 14th May 1948, Spain and Israel only signed diplomatic relations on the 17th January 1986. The forty-year lacuna might have been, in part, because Spain didn’t want to sour its relationship with Arab countries. Spain, however, still doesn’t recognise Palestine as a state, despite efforts from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although it ‘enjoys excellent relations with the Palestinian National Authority’ – the Fatah agency in partial control of the region.

Today, and in contrast to most of the western world, the Spanish media could be described as being lukewarm towards its support of Israel in the current conflict. The politics here are more concerned with trading blows between the (pro-Palestine) left and the (mildly pro-Israel) right than what might be Spain’s official position in the Middle East (which is, more or less, spreading criticism equally between Hamas and Netanyahu). 

Spain, having been largely under Moorish domination for seven hundred years, and being the closest point in Western Europe to North Africa, is more sensitive to the Arabs than – perhaps – to a regime which is located far away at the other end of the Mediterranean.

But here, we shall only talk of the Israel/Palestine struggle (for land) as it affects Spain.

Thus, the right wing must confront the left – if the Basque EH Bildu party asks for the release of the Spanish hostage Iván Illarramendi (he’s a Basque) held by Hamas, then naturally El Español will write that ETA used to hold hostages too.

The official PP website claims that Alberto Núñez Feijóo would have gone – as president of both Spain and the European Union – to both Israel and Palestine for talks, however as things stand today, “nobody expects or can rely upon Spanish participation’’ (Pedro Sánchez was in Egypt about the same time that Feijóo made his constructive remarks – preaching for restraint at the ‘Cairo For Peace’ meeting held on Saturday, October 21st. Furthermore, Sánchez also phoned Netanyahu the next day asking for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza).

After the Podemos leader and acting Minister of Social Security Ione Belarra called for Spanish support of Palestine and for Pedro Sánchez to ‘condemn Israel’, Núñez Feijóo reacted by saying that Sánchez must instantly relieve her of her position but, alas, the socialist leader needs their approval (Podemos has five votes within the Sumar alliance) to make the looming investiture work.

Vox says it wants to cut all official Spanish aid to Palestine.

Sumar wants the Government to recognise the Palestinian state as soon as possible.

Spaniards, according to a poll at 20Minutos, are split in their sympathies: 43% favour Israel and 47% favour Palestine - more or less divided (as above) along political lines.

The tragic situation is getting far worse by the day, while the terrible ongoing events in Ukraine - short of Putin pressing the Red Button - are pushed to the inside pages.

…

How will things progress and will Pedro Sánchez be able to return to power in the upcoming debate and vote for the presidency?

With poor timing, I shall be taking a vacation for November – to stay with my son in far-off Oklahoma: where the talk is all of Trump, abortion and guns. I look forward to enjoying a Thanksgiving turkey and my seventieth birthday over there before returning home at the beginning of December.

Maybe by then, things will have settled down.  

The best thing about the train is that it will take you into the centre of the city. You won’t be dumped in some stainless steel and marble airport half an hour or more – by taxi - from the downtown.

Living in Almería – one of the cities that has waited patiently for about twenty years for a high-speed train to take us somewhere, indeed anywhere… we have either had to get in the car, or on a very uncomfortable and slow bus, or take the trouble to buy an air-ticket, or climb aboard the one existing slow train – there's only one train station in the entire province, and that's in Almería City: a line which meanders across the landscape before eventually hooking up with civilization in Linares (Jaén) and so on northwards or alternatively west to Seville. 

The problem with arriving by car at your city destination is increasingly - where to leave it? 

There never was much in the way of railways in Almería, beyond a few mining routes built with foreign investment in around 1900 – now all since lost beyond the elevated rail-head in Almería City (now restored and converted into a tourist attraction) known as el Cable Inglés.

Trains are the best, because one can wander around in them – pop into the bar for a brandy and to read the paper. Even seated, one can stretch one’s legs. There’s no baggage issues either. Bring along a full suitcase, why don’t you.

Many years ago, taking the Sleeper to Madrid was, if you’ll forgive the pun, just the ticket. The carriage, built in Birmingham in 1948, was sturdy and comfortable, and one was delivered on Platform One in Madrid’s Atocha railway station at seven in the morning – the perfect time for a coffee and a bun before taking a taxi to one’s appointments.

Trains are better than airplanes, and if they are fast, then there’s little more to be said. Downtown to downtown without taxi rides to and from the airport – plus one is doing one’s bit for the struggle against Global Warming and one's Carbon Footprint production.

(A pop singer called Taylor Swift who leads the pack in air-rides with almost 8,300 tons of CO2 emissions in 2022 might want to take note. Take the train, Child, we’ll wait).

Trains then, will deliver one feeling refreshed while other forms of transport lean towards leaving one nervous, washed-out and irritable.

They say that Almería – poor forgotten province in the south East of Spain – should finally have its AVE (tren de alta velocidad española) by 2026.

Until then, By Jove, I shall be staying home on the couch and reading some well-illustrated travelers’ guides. 

I first came to Mojácar in 1966 with my parents who bought two apartments here (I’ve just found the escritura) for – apparently – 90,000 pesetas: that works out at just 260 euros per apartment.

We lived in the one upstairs with the three bedrooms and a roof terrace and rented the downstairs one to Michel for 1,000 pesetas a month, which he could never afford, and he would generally stay for dinner on rent-night instead.

One of the stories I heard (when not in school in the UK, polishing my Latin) was that a local woman had fallen into disgrace around 1899 and had taken ship to the Americas to hide her shame. She ended up in Chicago and found employment as a maid with the Disney family and after she died giving birth, the child was adopted by them.

A mere 25 years later, Walt Disney’s climb to fame began.

This seems unlikely as the girl wouldn’t have written home saying – I’m about to give birth to Walter (not an easy word for a Spaniard to say), who will one day be a household name.

Furthermore, the Mojaquero version has it that the child was called José Guirao Zamora and that his dad was the Mojácar doctor of that period – who also apparently suffered from prescience.

Not that the family hasn’t always strenuously denied the tale.

We would tell of the two FBI agents asking to see the Church Registry sometime in the fifties, so as to keep the matter secret (why we would think that they must have come asking for Disney if it was a secret, is a secret). The twist is that all the documents were destroyed in the Civil War so no one could prove anything one way or the other.

It was all a good story, and while the Disney Corporation would tremble in outrage at the suggestion of their Founder being a Mojaquero, there wasn’t anything much to prove that he wasn’t.

Well, except for a birth certificate (which, strangly, has never been found) or a Certificate of Baptism currently on display in the San Francisco Disney museum (‘Walter Elias Disney: 5 December 1901).

The old mayor of Mojácar Jacinto Alarcón once told me the story of Walt Disney. In his version, he and Diego Carillo (the village doctor) were once reading a magazine which had a picture of Walt Disney in it. ‘Coo’, said Jacinto, politely dropping the ñ, ‘he’s the spitting image of you. I bet you’re related to him’. 

Thus, after another round of Anis del Mono, was a legend born.

All Good Stuff, one might say, and we can’t dine out on Gordon Goodie the Train Robber (he had a beach-bar in Mojácar) for ever.

When asked if he was from Mojácar – so the story goes – Walt himself replied ‘Who knows…?’

Despite the fact that if he was, he certainly never came back – unless he was one of those FBI agents, of course.

So, fifty or sixty, or probably seventy years later, the Mojácar City Fathers have decided that, well, yes: Walt Was Here.

So now we have two enormous murals in the village, vast wall paintings of Mickey Mouse welcoming the tourists to come and buy some souvenirs. There’s to be a Plaza de Walt Disney and even a Walt Disney festival to be held in late November (unless they hear about it first in San Francisco).

One little town in Andalucía - Júzcar in Málaga - has painted itself blue to accommodate the Smurfs, and now another has grown a pair of huge mousey ears – to please the shopkeepers.

I imagine that most of us have had a pet in the house since we were of the tenderest age all those years ago.

I certainly did.

What was yours called?

No, don’t tell me, or I’ll have your password figured out.

Now we read that, while some of the Animal Welfare Law hasn’t yet been ratified thanks to a conspicuous lack of government, other bits of it have. We don’t need to take lessons in how to entertain a pooch (which we have done, as above, since we started. After all, one is pretty much there with Walkies, Din-dins and Down Boy!).

But, let’s see – one can no longer take the dog out to go shopping and leave him tied to a post outside while we pick up a box of milk, some chocolates, a tin of dog-food and a free English-language paper (to wrap it all up in).

There’s anything up to a ten thousand euro fine if you are caught. More, probably, if your mascota (the Spanish name for pet) bites the nice policeman during the inevitable altercation.

To cure this problem, supermarkets have beggars which sit, slumped, outside the entrance. For a small consideration, they’ll be happy to look after Fido and you will be able to shop at your leisure.

Maybe throw in an extra tin of Chum for the hobo’s dog, or indeed a frosty can of beer for the deadbeat himself.

We must now take more care and not leave our dogs in the house alone for long – or chained up outside either.

Felines have a bit more liberty, as is only proper, but run the risk of returning home through the upstairs window a few grams lighter that when they left having been caught by one of those peculiar catch-neuter-release people that are always leaving food out for the feral cats.

There is also a list of pets which we just flatly aren’t allowed to keep. It’s easier just to note the few one can – which pretty much comes down to dog, cat, ferret (who on earth keeps a ferret for a pet?), tropical fish and that thing you shouldn’t get wet or feed after midnight.

All this, plus the looming dog insurance at around twenty-five euros a pop (while a very good idea as any postman will tell you), which may be beneficial to our furry (or scaly) friends as the legislators provided; although I rather think that there will be more than a few accidents or inexplicable losses of surplus critters of one sort or another reported in the inside pages.

Some causes in Spain remain sacred, and hunting dogs and fighting bulls, of course, need not apply.       

…

El Comercio has an exhaustive list of the new Animal Welfare Law do’s and don’ts here.