Spanish Shilling

Here’s a tricky one – a piece on homosexuals: the LGBTQIA+ (I had to look up the complicated acronym on Google, and got the answer, refreshed with a colourful graphic of rainbow flags and confetti). As usual, as we lean over backwards, the opposite doesn’t enjoy the same service. See, I had also looked up: ‘Manly fellow drinks a beer and cleans his Harley while scratching himself’ and found it wasn’t similarly decorated by the friendly search engine with a frolic of whistles and belles.

Those who belong to or sympathise with the Gay movement must eternally be aware of the hatred, disdain and the politics of those who wish them ill, broadly increasing as one heads towards the right end of the political spectrum, and culminating in a recent headline regarding Vox, which is ‘concerned about the "alarming increase" of homosexuals and transsexuals in Spain’. This from a group which, it would be safe to say, is not partial to the gay lifestyle at all. They are in little doubt: the Government must be secretly putting something funny in our tap water.  

It is said, mind you, that those who are most vocal in their anti-gay rhetoric are sometimes the very same ones who would stay in the closet, or who get caught in some deeply embarrassing and melodramatic, er, misunderstanding – like the Hungarian far-right and anti-gay MEP József Szájer who had to abruptly leave a homosexual orgy back in 2020 through a window, naked, as the police came through the front door.

Or maybe he was merely in search of a better education.

Life goes on. Those of us who think of ourselves as ‘normal’ might look down on the antics of our gay friends, but there’s probably a bit of jealousy mixed in as well: the jolly mixture of theatre, camp, pride and adventures (contrasted with the insults, vexations and sometime violence received).

They say that it’s one in ten of us, about the same as the number of left-handers (who used to be known as sinister). Perhaps we just need some patience; but meanwhile, the silent majority rules.

Encouraged by Vox (and the Republicans, the Iranians, Meloni’s Italy, the Opus Dei, apparently the Ugandans and a number of other totalitarian governments and organisations), the messages and comments of LGBTIfóbia in the social media have increased in the last few years, at the same time as the democratic governments have been working hard to remove the traditional opprobrium (particularly in a macho society like Spain) against the gays. Indeed, Pedro Sánchez wore a rainbow bracelet in his TV interview with Pablo Motos on Tuesday.

One isolated news-item – a mixture of a student rag and an ill-judged attack on the collective during Gay Pride Day (June 28th) has a leaflet over at the university undergraduates’ residence in Málaga calling for a small reward of twenty euros to be paid for anyone reported as suffering from the homosexual epidemic in a ‘Gay Hunting Month’ (this phrase is in English). Serious or just some silly prank? I don’t know, but it’s not quite the same as being beaten up for holding hands with one’s same-sex boyfriend.

It’s always nice to see when a new café opens near where I live. Sometimes, I even make an effort to visit there and have a coffee or a beer and a tapa, depending on the hour.

I live in a working-class neighbourhood, so the cafés are open early, five o’clock early, and generally call it a day by one in the afternoon. The bars will last a little longer, perhaps closing around five – after the lunch trade, or even staying awake until the wee hours of ten thirty or eleven at night on the weekends.

My tap-room habits aren’t what they were, and I tend these days to stay home and raid the fridge or put on the kettle according to my inclination.

In the morning, I might drop in at the café opposite and have a coffee and a tostada. Since this order never varies, the girl will smile when she sees me and shout through to her partner who will cut a small loaf length-ways in half and put my bit in the toaster. He'll then cover it with shredded tomato and I'll round it off with salt, pepper and lots of olive oil. Good stuff. 

Of course, if I wanted something else, maybe a tostada with tomate y jamón on it, or with butter and jam (locally called 'un mixto'), then it's easier to go to one of the two other nearby establishments, who will know exactly what I want, because I always have the same when I'm there. 

It saves on the conversation.

It used to work the same way when I was younger - that place for gin & tonic, that one for a beer and, oh my, that one for a beer as well. Well, sometimes you have to order, but with training, they'll just plonk down the right drink in front of you. 

I remember Diana, an elderly and eccentric British lady, coming into the Sartén (a famous bar in Mojácar) one evening and arranging herself on a bar-stool. 

'The usual?' asked Simon, by way of greeting. 

'Oh yes, rather', answered Diane. 'By the way', she said after a short pause, 'what is my usual?'

'Creme de mente you silly old cow', said Simon, reaching for the bottle.

So today, I crossed the road for my breakfast coffee and tostada, to find a new girl behind the bar. 'Café con leche', I said, 'y una media con tomate'. 

'You want that in a glass or a cup?'

'Warm or hot milk?'

'What sort of bread do you want?'

So many questions. I wonder if she'll charge me the same as the usual girl does - which is just 1,20€ plus the few bits of straw from the stables that have collected in my pockets during the morning. 

Brenda Lee keeps giving me a mental nudge as I write this. 

But Brenda, it's As Usual!

I think I've got the record somewhere. 

It beats watching the television.        

Dah da da Dahh.. Have you ever been to a bullfight?

It’s the season for the toros right now, with the Pamplona ‘running of the bulls’ coming up in July. I was there one year – I would have been around 25 – and ended up drinking all night with some locals, and then early the next morning, armed only with rolled-up newspapers, we were chased through the streets by a dozen angry bulls.

I’m never doing that again.

Bullfights are part of the culture here. They are something quintessentially Spanish and, what with anything to do with tradition, flags, the municipal band playing pasodobles, the crowds waving their white handkerchiefs and shouting ¡Olé! every moment there’s a good-looking pass, the matador being taken out of the Puerta Grande on the shoulders of the fans…

…it’s really no wonder that the far-right movement here has taken la corrida as their own, although, in reality, it has support from various sectors of society and besides, is protected as a ‘cultural patrimony’.

We foreigners erroneously call it ‘a sport’, but it’s a cultural event really. Sort of.

Let’s just leave that for a moment and drop by one of Spain’s most beautiful and enlightened regions, to see what’s happening in the levante.

Right now, as the Partido Popular cosies up with Vox thanks to the vagaries of the conservative voters, in Valencia everyone (well, of the right wing persuasion anyway) was shaking hands and slapping each other on the back as the deal was struck for the region’s Generalitat, or parliament, for the next four years. The PP leader is the new president while the Vox leader, for some reasons to do with his past, has been kicked upstairs to become a candidate for the General Elections next month. His second-in-command thus takes over from him as regional vice-president and, why not, secretary for culture.

This august personage is Vicente Barrera, a retired bullfighter.

Putting, as it were, the vox among the chickens.

As the debate rages in Spain about la tauromaquia – whether it should keep its status or be quietly marched off into the pages of history – we have a senior politician, an ex-bullfighter no less, in charge of culture in Spain’s fourth most populous region which includes the country’s third largest city.  

One wonders if the post of education will go to a priest, and that of health to a faith-healer.

While many Spaniards will be inconvenienced by the summer elections and the possibility of having to re-plan their holidays – either through being called to be poll-workers or because they’ll be suddenly running for election – we foreign residents (who can’t vote or of course act as invigilators) can relax knowing that the time is coming around for our trip to Portugal, or to discover somewhere unknown in Spain and stay in a Parador (the only place in Spain where people actually whisper), or perhaps back to our own country to see the family and try and avoid the heat.

The joy of living in Spain of course means that some of those family members, plus surviving school friends and other exotics, will be fully committed to coming over here to stay with us.

Clean up the spare-bedroom, put all the books and records away, buy some things for the fridge and plan an evening at the local fiesta (in our case a Moors and Christians extravaganza where the costumes, noise, gunpowder-smoke, rivers of beer and a few sensational looking-girls will make a lasting impression on our visitors, who will once again toy with the idea of buying an apartment down on the beach).

You said something? Yes, of course I’ve got records. Decent pop music stopped in about 1992.

We may not be Spaniards, but I think that we are now something a little different from what we were when we first arrived. We treat the Spanish coast – our new home – in the same way as the North Americans from New York or Chicago treat the south of Florida: a good place to retire to (with the added bonus of no alligators) - and we shall leave all the work and scheming here down to las familias, the local mafias.

There are clouds on the horizon though. Assuming the Partido Popular and their strong-arm friends from Vox win the forthcoming summer elections on July 23rd, there’s every chance that there’ll be some unwholesome changes around here.

I think for a start that there’ll be more beach-property available.

Well, that was interesting. It got a bit closer to me than expected, since Mojácar made the headlines in every news-site in Spain. But then, we always were a bit of an exaggeration, ever since Walt Disney was born here.

Or so they say, on no evidence whatsoever.

Anyway, two fellows high on the local list of the PSOE (nº2 and nº5) were arrested three days before the local election for allegedly buying votes from impoverished foreign-residents through a postal-vote.

Now, the PP in Mojácar are said to have done the same thing in previous elections, so apparently, it’s not considered much of a crime. But, there can be too many postal votes and things can get suspicious! The normal amount is around 3 or 4 percent.

This time, a record 25% of all votes in Mojácar came via the postman. 

Nevertheless, our practically levantine corruption, which again, made all the media, probably didn’t help the socialist cause elsewhere in Spain, with the PP winning several regions and major capital cities - and much of this was thanks to Mojácar. 

Indeed, the PP-A say in Seville that they will leave no stone unturned to discover the truth about Mojácar ‘and will act firmly if any party-colleague is found guilty’ (a claim I think, that they may come to regret).

That final postal vote, by the way, was exactly 701 papeletas, or 25% of the entire vote (or the equivalent of three councillors).

The system is that the votes are counted along with the rest of them, but the envelopes are retained in case there's a suspicion of similar-looking hand-writing.

Then word came from the courthouse that another arrest had been made, this time someone buying votes for the Mojácar PP. Although the arrest was before the election, the announcement, to no one's surprise, was made after the election.

The person in question - a week later - is still in clink.

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In another unconnected story, the Junta de Andalucía has now green-lit Mojácar's General Plan (PGOU) which includes a licence to build a further 2,685 dwellings in the community.

I live in Almería City these days, so I voted there. The advantage for me was that I neither knew any of the candidates, nor (for once) had any dirt on them.

From 20Minutos here: ‘Homes, okupas, Bildu, vote buying… the campaign for the local and regional elections’.

Nothing, in short, of great substance. But it was enough to beat the robust economy, the high employment and the protection for renters, employees and the retired..

From Ignacio Escolar here: ‘Since the economy is doing much better than expected, the right had sought other arguments to make a dent in the vote. The first week of the campaign was all about ETA. The second was monopolized by complaints about the purchase of votes by mail…’

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For us foreign residents with the vote, let us hope that the new town hall takes some small notice of us: maybe someone who speaks a second language in the medical centre or over at urbanismo. Perhaps have the mayor drop by the foreign-run bar for a milk-shake. Perhaps have the local police chief call a meeting to tell us that all is fine. Maybe pay someone to translate the edicts (bandos) from the town hall. Maybe they already do. Maybe they don’t.

One question remains about buying votes - and I make the point: didn’t they ply us with chocolates in Mojácar back in December to go vote for Ferrero Rocher?