Showing posts with label expats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expats. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 01, 2019

Down on the coast

Tell someone that you live in Alicante and most people think coast, they think we live by the side of the sparkling Mediterranean. It may, in reality, be one of the most polluted stretches of water in the world, full of plastic, sewage, lead and agricultural chemicals to rival the dead patch in the Gulf of Mexico, but there's no denying that the Med can look lovely.

Actually we live inland, about 60 km from the coast. We also live up a hill so we are at about 600 metres which means, other climatic factors being equal, we are 5.8ºC cooler than at sea level. That difference is notable at this time of year. Very noticeable. As I type, Bohème like, my little hands are frozen.

So, one of the conversations between immigrant Britons is based on the major division between those who live on the coast and those who live inland. There are all sorts of perceptions about the Spanishness, or not, of the two locations. The probable truth is that the influence of immigrants is a product of population percentage. The 500 Britons in Pinoso make up 6 or 7% of the population so we make a significant difference to how the town looks and feels. In Abarán the 14 Britons pass unnoticed. I have no idea how many Britons live in Alicante City but even if it were a couple of thousand they would be under half a percent of the population lost amongst the tourists. There are other towns where the influence of Germans, Moroccans, Norwegians or whatever is pronounced. There are also perceptions of that influence which may or may not be true. When I think of Torrevieja, for instance, I think of Iceland and other English speaking shops but I remember that, for Spaniards in Santa Pola one of their initial comments in any conversation about the town would be the presence of the Russian Mafia.

Several people we know have chosen to move from Pinoso to the coast. Reasons vary from looking for more variety of food and entertainment to the weather and the ease of being able to do so many more things in English. A couple of pals moved from Pinoso to a spot between Torrevieja and San Miguel de Salinas a couple of months ago and we popped down to see them. They chose to downsize altogether and they moved onto a campsite but bought a sort of small wooden chalet. I have to say that I thought the site was remarkable. There is a huge variety of caravans, park homes and  motorhomes on numbered pitches and most of them have a variety of more or less permanent structures, awnings, sheds and adapted carports, to increase the living space. There is artificial grass and there are mountains of pot plants, sculptures and ornaments of every shape and size from wind chimes and mobiles to gnomes and fountains. The space was very organised and nicely landscaped with lots of greenery, with numbered pitches along streets, shower and toilet blocks on each street and a big communal pool. I'm told there is a restaurant and bar too. All of it with security and various systems for Wi-Fi, televisión etc. I saw vehicles with Belgian, British, Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, French, German and Spanish plates and I wasn't really looking. The nodding and "good afternoon" language was definitely English and the sun was shining.

I looked at the for sale sign on one of the plots - 8,950€ I think. Hmm? Warm and only 10 minutes to the beach.

There are snaps at the tail end of this December 2018 album

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

And you all feel so superior and expert

One of my little jokes is that I like paying Spanish taxes. I say it gives me the right to complain about Spanish politicians. Now I'm going to argue that after eleven years here I have a right to express an opinion about Spain.

I wrote a little essay for a Spanish class I do and I posted it on this blog. It was no more than a writing exercise for the teacher but when it was done I thought it was a whimsical look at things I noticed in Spain - good coffee, bad tea, uninformative notices - little inconsequential things. Perfect for the blog.

Nobody much comments on my blog but I got one about that article. At first the chap (I think it's a man) was just putting me right. I said there was no good British style tea to be had in Spanish cafés and he told me about the varieties, methods and what not of making a range of teas all of which were available in Spain. Fair enough, not the same point but fair enough. As his reply lengthened though it changed tone. He doesn't seem to be too keen on we Britons. Again, fair enough, if his experience of us is bad then that's his experience. He didn't seem to care for me much either or at least what I write.

He also made a comment on an article I wrote about swearing. My basic premise was that Spaniards swear less forcibly but more frequently than Britons. As you may imagine my post was full of explanations, qualifications and exceptions. Now here we had a different mode of attack. He simply told me that I was wrong. I don't think so. I may have a different experience to him or a different interpretation but I am not wrong. I can see swearing on the television, hear it on the streets and in the bars and I have been unpleasantly surprised by the frequency of swearing amongst my sub teen pupils. It may be true that I notice the use of strong English language swearing by Spaniards more than the home population. After all I know what it means and how forceful its meaning is because I am English but I would not notice it if it were not said.

This chap though did make me wonder about the generalisations that I make in a lot of the posts. We all gather information from around us and extrapolate - all Swedes are blonde, all Ecuadorians are short, all Andalucians are full of the joys of life. All obviuosly untrue but all good healthy stereotypes. So when does extrapolation become stereotyping and when does stereotyping become offensive? When a Spaniard tells me that all the English wear socks with sandals I smile. Everybody knows that's what we Britons do. When I get told we are all drunkards I think of the news stories showing all those Britons in Magaluf paddling and crawling in pools of beer and puke and I smile again. If I were feeling combative I may rise in defence of all the sober Brits, dismiss the sock myth or even argue the merits of socks to avoid scarred feet and stinking sandals.

I was about to start this paragraph with "I like Spain, I like Spaniards" but then I realised that's not absolutely true. There are plenty of things about the behaviour of some Spaniards, things that are common enough for me to rashly declare that "all Spaniards do this or that" that I definitely do not like. I don't like all of Spain either. Some of it, is in my opinion, a blighted wasteland. There are things I think are actively stupid here - penalising private solar electricity generation and the relatively recent "gagging law" spring to mind. Then again I found plenty to complain about in the UK before I left and I could, Peter Green style, keep you amused for hours complaining about the behaviour of some of my compatriots living here. There are lots of bad similarities between the two counties too - the overbearing pride that "we" did this or that in things like history or sport, the rewriting of history and the jingoistic and chauvanistic in general.

In fact, my general view is that the UK and Spain are, nowadays, pretty similar places. It's not a popular view. I voiced it on a forum about what culture shock people could experience coming to live in Spain. I said there were lots of differences, some of them quite wide differences, but that none of them were of the big kind - no general prohibitions on personal freedom, no threats to basic safety or democratic organisation, not even different clothes. Just another European country. I was thinking about big things like education, healthcare, and the visible economic indicators. The flood of posts after mine listed everything from cruelty to animals and much more visible corruption through to slow Internet connections and poor bank services as evidence that Spain would dish out plenty of culture shock. I stick to my opinion.

And what's the point of this rambling? Well it's to say that I have spent something like 18% of my life in Spain and I'm reasonably clued up about the country. I've visited all but one of the provincial capitals, In a Munro sense I'm missing just one of the Balearic Islands and one of the autonomous cities. I may have been a tourist in most of those cities but I'm not a tourist in Spain. I watch Spanish telly, read Spanish press, wear Spanish clothes, drive a Spanish car, work in Spain, eat Spanish food, buy in Spanish shops. I know what's going on. Anyway it's my blog, my experiences of some of the things, the little things, that happen to me and around me. That's what the blog description says. A personal view, a personally biased view, but not an uninformed view.

I did suggest to the commentator, who wrote in a mix of Spanish and English, that if he were still trying to improve his English we could continue the discussion over a couple of pints of whisky or some tepid tea. He turned me down. He said he'd been considering it until he saw my posts.

Now maybe if I'd promised to wear my Union flag shorts!

The title is taken fom one of the comments. It refers to Brits in Spain and probably more specifically to me.

Thursday, April 09, 2015

Slightly off

I signed up for a weekly Spanish course yesterday. I haven't quite given up on the language yet - despite what Maggie says, and what I know to be true, that I will never speak Spanish adequately.

I have just finished a blog post. Looking for information I was wading trough official bulletins, where laws and official notices are published. I could understand them but I wouldn't pretend that it's easy reading. It's the same with books, I normally read in Spanish but, at the moment, I'm reading a book written by an Englishman and it seemed perverse to read it in translation. I have to admit that it's much more comfortable reading in English.

We took Maggie's car for an ITV yesterday, the road worthiness check. The tester took the car off us and drove it through the various test bays himself. I have the feeling that he was only doing that with us immigrants. Easier to do it himself than explain the various actions he required of us.

Bank yesterday too to comply with some legislation. No problem really but the odd falter so that I chose to be economical with the truth rather than explain a complicated situation.

I stupidly lost a pair of sunglasses. I went to the three shops that I'd been in to ask if I'd left them there. In two of the three cases I stumbled slightly as I asked. Nothing serious, just a slip of a tense that needed correction or a falter over the pronunciation of a word, not a problem I notice with English.

I wanted an appointment with my accountant. I used WhatsApp to avoid a telephone conversation.

A Spanish friend asked me for my opinion on a service he was considering buying. At the end of my reply, which I rewrote several times before running it through Google translate and a spell checker, I added my usual - I hope you can understand what I meant to say.

Easier to buy the poor supermarket meat than ask (and queue) in a butcher.

And so on.

It's nice living here. It's home. But the truth is that language affects every aspect of everything we do from watching the telly to getting a beer. Anyone who isn't fluent in both the culture and the language will always be a bit out of it.