Raising your eyes unto heaven

Novelda and Alcoi both have lots of Modernista or Art Nouveau, buildings. Other Spanish towns boast a different architectural style, mediaeval walls or a castle. Some are littered with stone built palaces. Pinoso has none of that, in fact it has quite a lot of horrid buildings and plenty of buildings which look alright except that they are in the wrong place. Nonetheless, while Pinoso isn't exactly breathtaking in its architectural beauty, it does have lots of detail to notice if your life is not so full of care that you have some time to stand and stare.

For some reason traditional, as in traditional costume, seems to mean 18th or 19th Century. The first Levi's were made in 1853, but I suspect we're unlikely to see the local dance group, Monte de la Sal, in jeans. There's a certain unspoken aesthetic about what classic and traditional mean. Maybe it's the same with houses, traditional implies some sort of fixed time in the past. Apparently Alicantino houses, those from Alicante province, didn't change much in their basic construction or style from the 17th Century through to the beginning of the 20th Century and they're the ones that are tagged traditional.

In these standard Alicantino houses coloured facades are a big thing. If you've been to Villajoyosa you'll know about vivid facades but if you look around the central Pinoso streets, like Perfecto Mira, Maestro Domenech, Sagasta and Maisonnave, you will see that it's the same here but without all the fuss. Those traditional houses are built of mamposteria which is like dry stone walling but with lime mortar. First, you try to fit the stones together, like a jigsaw, and then you fill the spaces between big stones with smaller stones. To finish it off you bind the whole lot together with the mortar. The mamposteria walls are often very thick. When some families became richer they showed off their wealth by rendering the walls and then adding colour wash. In the end nearly all the houses ended up rendered and coloured. You still see houses in the countryside without render because that's where the poor folk lived.

Another feature of these classical houses is that the windows and doors follow the form of the house. Sometimes, often, there is a central axis marked by a big, impressive, solid wooden door. The windows are arranged, symmetrically, around that axis with the same shape and number on each side. The window casements and door surrounds might be picked out in mouldings of a different colour. It's usual for the windows to be tall rather than square or horizontally wide. Exterior decoration frequently picks out the floor lines of the various storeys of the house. The ground floor windows are usually protected with fancy ironwork; the fancier the ironwork the richer the household. It's very common for the upper windows to have small Juliet balconies commonly sporting fancy floor tiles. Sometimes there are decorative tiles under the eaves too.

There are as many exceptions to these "rules" as there are houses. Over time people renovate their homes and these classical features are diluted. Coloured facades dull and peel, someone might to build with dressed stone instead of mamposteria. Sometimes a different need called for a different design, big doors at the end of the building often point to an entrance for animals with carts or carriages for instance. But, if you can. just look up from street level and I'm sure you'll notice that some of these features are there.

Ugly Spain

I'm reading a book called España fea, or ugly Spain. Actually the full, and translated title is Ugly Spain: Urban chaos, democracy's greatest failure. Now this book is 506 pages long and I'm on page 98 so I'm being a bit previous here but it did set me thinking. One of the central themes in the book, so far, is that Spain followed the US model of delegating planning to local administrations which have been open to corruption and cronyism. The end result is a mish mash of badly designed, poorly built and inappropriately placed buildings.

Lots of Spain is chocker with palaces and churches and big, big stone buildings. Around here in Alicante and Murcia those sorts of "monumental" town centres are far less common than in other part of Spain. Orihuela leans a bit that way and there must be others but, in general, this area is, architecturally, less impressive than many others. Pinoso is a perfect example. It's a great place to live, it's safe and tidy and with lots of services and lots going on but architecturally it's a bit limited. The Torre del Reloj isn't really that jaw droppingly beautiful and the newer buildings (with the exception of the tanatorio) were unlikely to win any architectural prizes.

Unlike some other towns Pinoso didn't go too bonkers during the "brick explosion" in the first few years of the 21st century. The expansion of the town was low key and a couple of the vanity projects actually turned out rather well. Compare it with Fortuna with the Lamparillas development or Monóvar with its plans for the Ecociudad and Pinoso was the soul of discretion. Nonetheless, if you look around Pinoso there are any number of half completed houses and blocks of flats. Glance towards the town centre as you drive along Calederón de la Barca (the road the lorries use to bypass the town; the one that comes out at the junction near the Repsol garage) and you will see tens of unfinished private houses. And whilst we're by the garage there are those big blocks of flats, some lived in, some abandoned, alongside the Jumilla road. I wonder if they will just be left there forever to rot? Lots of the older houses in Pinoso town are still owned by members of a families that haven't set foot in Pinoso for years. Their houses get no maintenance and every now and again bits fall off them or, in extreme cases, they simply fall down. 

Look around the central parts of Pinoso and you will see that, among the older houses, there are lots of single, two and three storey buildings. The single storey houses generally have a central door and a matched single window to left and right. The two and three storey houses have vertically elongated windows and doors with the casements and door surrounds picked out by moulding. Often there is a symmetry to the front of the building and some sort of horizontal lines to demarcate the various floors. Many have little balconies and lots and lots have the fancy grill work on the balconies and windows. There isn't a model but there is a repeated style. So, even if Pinoso isn't particularly architecturally interesting it does have a certain uniformity of character.

You do not see that uniformity as you move away from the old town centre. Santa Catalina is a district with a particular and different character but, again, it looks like it belongs here, it looks Valenciano. I'm not so sure you can say that about the Franco regime houses, the group of buildings to the west of Paseo de la Constitución, or in those the streets named for nearby towns. The residential home for older people, the pensioner's club, the theatre, health centre, nursery school etc. would probably look just as at home in Barnsley or Bilbao as they do in Pinoso. And would you say that the Sports Centre blends nicely and looks local?

Now it's obvious that if we stopped all modern development we'd all be living in caves or half timbered houses or maybe, if we were all rich, in those "Modernista" houses which were so typical of wealthy Spaniards as the 19th became the 20th Century. It's because, over the years, that we have built new in among the old, that we get the variety that makes towns and cities so interesting. Tate Modern to the Millennium Bridge to St Paul's. But when something new is built surely there should be an attempt to make it fit with what's already there, with the weather, with the environment with where it is?

Walk along Calle Monóvar and Perfecto Miro or Calle Azorín and although the houses are from all sorts of times there is a sort of oneness. The newer blocks shoehorned into a vacant plot stick out like a sore thumb. Look at the Town Hall. Now I understand that the old building was a right mess and a new one was needed. But seriously could anyone, ever, have thought that fitted in or was even nice? And what do you think of the municipal market in Plaza Colón? Is that building in keeping with the style of the square? Where are its credentials as a Pinosero, Alicantino or Valenciano building?

Over in el Faldar this weekend they burned their hoguera - the bonfire to celebrate San Juan. The villagers had built a replica of the water tower, called el Pouet (which I think means well in Valenciano) which is just off Calle Valencia on the western edge of Santa Catalina. All the blurb from the local Medios de Comunicación, the Town Hall's communication arm, was about how emblemático, symbolic, el Pouet is of Pinoso. If you know it you will know that for some reason, a few years ago, permission was given to build a block of flats next to it which were in a completely different style and which completely overshadow the little water tower. That block of flats was never finished. Presumably some property speculator went bust with the 2008 crisis and just walked away from the car wreck result. 

It happens in the countryside too. Look at the old houses and the way they sort of blend in to the land, maybe in a stand of trees, just in the hollow there, same sort of colouration. They do that estate agent thing of nestling. Then look at the newer houses. It's true that they haver better shaped rooms, insulation (maybe) and that their pools and barbecue areas make them nicer to live in than the more traditional houses. The trouble is that so many of them look completely out of place; almost as though they just landed there from some far away place. I'm sure it's perfectly possible to build something with modern features that would blend in just a tad better and maybe that idea should be intrinsic to the local planning regulations. 

Anyway, I have another 408 pages to go so maybe I'll have a more detailed, less simplistic, analysis to offer soon.

Casa Mira

Maggie once helped some people, preparing to be official tourist guides, to get ready for the part of the exam they had to do in English. To be honest I've forgotten the details, then again I forgot why I'd gone back into the kitchen a while ago and I'll probably have to re-read this sentence to see where I'm heading, so that's nothing new. The point, though, was that these people had a scripts to learn for each of the places they were going to show. Word for word scripts.

Now there's nothing wrong with "This cathedral is a milestone in the development of the Gothic, marking a symbiosis of technique and aesthetic that characterises so many other great churches built before the onset of the Renaissance".  I have no idea what it means but that's probably because I'd bunked off school or had a note from my mum that day.

This morning though we had to get up early to get to Novelda for nine in the morning. Novelda is about 25 kilometres from Culebrón and it has some notable Modernista style buildings. Modernista is the stuff we Brits call Art Nouveau - all inlaid wood, and curved lines based on the shapes of plants and flowers. For the past couple of years the tourist office has organised a Modernista Weekend to celebrate the style and we'd signed up to visit a house, Casa Mira, that's not usually open to the public. It had only been possible to book a place by phone after a given time on a set date and it took me ages to get through; I reckon I must have dialled at least 100 times, but it proved to be worth it.

The chap who was showing us around adjusted his straw boater, checked his portable microphone and loudspeaker combo and away he went. He started by talking about how people from Novelda had taken advantage of the early development of railways in Alicante, he talked about how the businessmen had been wheeler dealers who risked their money and invested as distinct from the monied classes who just earn and spend. We got stories about how the entrance way was designed to impress prospective clients, about the current owner sitting at the window and chatting with neighbours, about the people who had worked in the house and so on. I'd be lying if I said that I thought the guide was one of those inspired types you remember forever but he was good enough. It reminded me that it's a long while since we got one of the robot voiced facts and figures monologue tours. So much the better.

No photos though, private property and all that.

Chilling

There are fifty provinces in Spain and two autonomous cities on the North African coast. Then there are the islands. Each province and all of the islands have a capital and Ceuta and Melilla have a similar sort of "capital" status. Over the years we've bagged most of those towns so that it's just Palencia and Melilla to go. Until last week we were also missing Ibiza and Formentera. But not now.

It takes only 35 minutes in the air, more or less, from Alicante to Ibiza. Nonetheless, it took us something like six or seven hours to get there. The plane being four hours late didn't help. Then there was a slight hiccough with the pickup minibus to take us to the hire car. Actually the car was quite odd. I'd taken out insurance to cover the 1200€ insurance excess, which cost about 50€, but the car hire itself was flagged as being something less than a euro a day and that proved to be true. There was a bit of a trick though, I'd been expecting something because 87 cents per day is just too good to be true, but it was such a small trick that I happily paid. They charged me for the three quarters full tank of fuel and that was it. Even better they gave me a biggish Nissan Qashqai when I'd only paid for a little Fiat 500.

Maggie doesn't particularly care for my idea of a holiday - go somewhere, look around, move on. She likes to stay still from time to time. In Ibiza we travelled around but in the whole week we only clocked up 500kms which is next to nothing. Driving around wasn't that much fun though. I'm used to long, empty roads. In Ibiza the roads are often narrow, pretty short - the island is just 50kms from end to end - and full of cars. On road parking spaces could be tricky to find, though nearly all the villages had big car parks. We were never away from other traffic. The narrow roads provided for some amusement. Obviously people need to send messages on their phone as they drive - being out of contact for more than a few minutes might have dire consequences. Normally people try to text when they are stopped by lights, in traffic queues etc. In Ibiza the text as you drive drivers were very noticeable because their lack of concentration made them very slow and their sideways drifting made for amusing swerves as they avoided a head on collision or the very hefty looking roadside banks.

I realised when we were unpacking in our hotel that it had never crossed my mind to take anything in case it rained. I had a pullover and a jacket "por si acaso", just in case and I used them but not a thought for a pac-a-mac. I didn't need one of course. Generally the sun shone and it was only chilly in the evening. The season hasn't started yet. In fact the whole island was being painted, scrubbed and generally refitted ready for May when things swing back into gear. It was good for us. There was nobody having multi-partner sex on any of the beaches we visited, no pumping music in the air and still space in those car parks.

The island was lovely. Very green with some beautiful spring flowers. The sea was sparkly and blue or green and, although I know the Med is a cess pit, it looked clear and clean. Beaches varied from sandy to pebbly but lots of the little coves were splendid. The island's not very hilly going up to something under 500 metres which is lower than the contour line that runs past our house. It seemed quite modern too, lots of ecological this and organic that. There were places to charge electric cars all over the place. Towns and villages basically came in two varieties. In one the white church and main square were surrounded by shops selling hand made jewellery and straw hats whilst in others there were rows and rows of souvenir shops, tattoo parlours and cafes selling full English. Not even the tatty places were cheap.

One of the things that I missed, and something that I'm sure exists, was the island identity. The local version of Catalan, Ibicenco, was everywhere but we'll gently sidestep that as a mark of identity. Spanish regions usually have some regional food. We ate out stacks of times but we were very seldom offered anything that wasn't "international" or a sort of generic Spanish. When we were flying home the airport had local beer, local cheese, a local version on the ensaimada pastries, local sausages etc. Actually there was a food thing that may be quite Ibizan; I got cup after cup of terrible coffee. I may be wrong but I think they use the torrefacto coffee where the beans are roasted with sugar. Spain is good for coffee so it was a bit of a shock.

Identity wise it was the same with the architecture. In Valencia the tent like barracas, in Castilla la Mancha the blue and white paintwork and the houses on stilts in Galicia are noticeable. In Ibiza it's true that white paint was predominant, there was a common green or light blue colour and the churches were all low and squat but I would be pushed to say I noticed an architectural style.

There wasn't any pushing of "folk" traditions either - here in Pinoso you can see "traditional" dress several times a year. In Murcia the white shorts for men, zaragüelles, and the rope soled sandals get lots of outings whilst people playing regional musical instruments are on every street corner in every town of Alicante. I'm exaggerating, of course, but tradition is often on show in Spain and it wasn't in Ibiza.

There was one thing that was ever present though and that was music - the sort of chilled Ibiza, dance cum shopping music that works, with slight variations, as the soundtrack for contemplating a sunset, as background music in the hotels or bars and on the local radio stations.

Lots more to say but I've already used too many words so I'll leave it there. Good week though.

Whilst we're nearby

We hadn't been to La Rioja, a small wine producing region in the North of Spain, for a while so we decided to put that right. We stayed in a Parador, visited the capital Logroño and toured an upmarket bodega. And, as we were nearby we extended the trip to Bilbao and finally to Canfranc.

I'd mentioned a place in Bilbao that I had read was worth seeing. Maggie looked on the map and thought as we were in La Rioja why not wander over the border into Euskadi (nobody seems to call it the Basque Country anymore) and have a look? The place I'd read about is called the Alhóndiga and it turned out to be a sort of arts, culture and fitness centre rolled into one. It took us a couple of hours to drive to Bilbao from Logroño.

I also noticed that a sensible route home passed through the Huesca province of Aragon. This time I'd heard a programme on the radio about the Canfranc International Railway Station. The place was built as part of a railway project to unite France and Spain via an 8km tunnel dug through the Pyrenees. The station was opened in 1928, worked well for a while but the line went into decline after the 1940s. The railway was finally closed in 1970 when a bridge on the French side became unusable and repairing it just didn't make economic sense. By all reports, in its heyday, the station was like a mini embassy in that part of the station was considered to be French territory on Spanish soil.

So our route was set and hotels booked accordingly. It was only when we typed the destinations into the TomTom that the horrible truth hit us. From Bilbao to Canfranc for instance is just short of 300kms and three and a half hours of driving. Spain is a big country but the mean map makers fit it onto the same sized bit of paper as we use for the England and Wales side of the map of the UK. It catches us out every time.

The round trip was 1993 kilometres.

The future of the Valley of the Fallen

This isn't about Culebrón or our life here.  I wrote it for the TIM magazine and it was published earlier this month. I just thought I'd save it here too. It's long.

El Valle de los Caídos is a huge mausoleum and basilica church carved into solid granite and topped off with an enormous cross in the Cuelgamuros Valley in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid. It was built, on the orders of Franco, between 1940 and 1959 with money from the National Lottery. The work was done by as many as 200,000 Republican prisoners of war according to some sources and as few as 2,470 according to others. The prisoners were able to gain remission on their sentences by working on the construction. Some sources suggest the workers were reasonably paid whilst others charge slave labour. The supposed number who died during the building of the the complex varies from 14 to 27,000, depending on whether the source is pro Franco or pro Republican. The monument was consecrated by Pope John XXIII in 1960 with care being taken to build a curtain wall within the basilica to ensure that not all of the space was consecrated. By this device the church was kept smaller than Saint Peter's in Rome. Over the main entrance an inscription reads "Fallen for God and Spain!"

The altar of the basilica is directly beneath the tallest cross in the World, all 150 metres of it. On one side of the altar, under a one and a half ton granite slab, lies Franco, el Caudillo, whilst on the other side is José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founder of the Falange, the Spanish fascist party. More than 33,832 other victims of the Spanish Civil War keep them company. At least 491 bodies were transferred there illegally, to fill up spare tomb space, from some of the more than 2,000 mass graves dotted the length and breadth of Spain. The monument is easily the largest mass grave in the country. Most of the others are much less grand - roadside ditches and shallow graves usually dug and filled in the dead of night.

When Franco finally died in 1975, after nearly 40 years in power, there was a tacit agreement amongst politicians and society in general to forget the past. No settling of old scores, no mass trials, no national blood-letting. Then in October 2007 the Zapatero Government introduced the Historical Memory Law which recognised and extended the rights of those who suffered persecution or violence because of the Civil War and the dictatorship that followed.

The law directly condemns the Francoist regime, recognises certain rights for victims on either side during and after the war, prohibits political events in the Valley of the Fallen, legislates for the removal of all Francoist symbols from public areas, provides state aid in tracing, identifying and possibly exhuming victims buried in mass graves, annuls laws and some trial court rulings carried out during the dictatorship, grants Spanish nationality to anyone who fought in the International Brigades and gives the right of return to exiles and their descendants.

This law is a bit of a problem for the Valley of the Fallen. How can this monument, built as a symbol of the victory of National Catholicism, be turned into something that doesn't glorify Franco's reign? It's a particularly thorny problem for the Benedictines who live in the Santa Cruz Abbey within the valley and who are technically responsible for the monument. Under the new law they are supposed to ensure that the monument restores the balance between victors and vanquished though they don't seem to have knuckled down to the job so far. Another difficult question is to decide what happens to Franco's body, the only person in the whole complex who isn't a casualty of war. Everyone else, down to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was executed by firing squad in Alicante during November 1936, died a victim.

The Government's answer has been to appoint a commission to work it all out. There were similar failed attempts under the Governments of Adolfo Suárez and Felipe González. The Commission's job is to decide how to tackle the problem of the status of the monument in relation to the new law. They have already had to disappoint Republican family members, who wanted to exhume and re-bury their forebears in places far away from their executioner. Government forensic scientists found that it was impossible to determine who was who in the jumbled and deteriorated piles of bodies.

Views vary as to what the commission will finally decide but the clever money seems to be on Franco's remains being removed from the Valley maybe to rest alongside his wife. Other options include moving Primo de Rivera as well, turning the place into a non religious museum or even converting it into a monument to the victims. There was even talk of dynamiting the giant cross which some have compared to an enormous swastika.

In true Spanish style the monument was suddenly closed in November 2009 for "urgent safety work." A pragmatic if short term solution. The commission is due to report late in 2011 and it looks likely that the safety work will be completed shortly afterwards.

Round town

It would be hard to describe Pinoso as good looking. In fact if I were searching for everyday adjectives to describe our home town I'd go for words like scruffy, messy, boring and dusty. The one horse has most definitely left.

In truth Alicante province is a bit short of handsome towns - a few like Orihuela and Elche have a collection of monumental buildings but generally the townscape consists of anonymous and boring concrete boxes. What's more there is a mania for pulling down anything old but ordinary to use the space for something much more utilitarian.

Nonetheless there is a traditional style of Alicantino house. Originally the facades were of plain stone - something like dry stone walling but with mortar holding the irregular sized stones in place - though with time the facades were rendered and then painted in bright colours. It's usually two or three storeys high and the windows are tall and rectangular with grills or rejas and surrounding casements. The door is tall and wooden and there are metal fenced balconies on the first floor.

I went in search of a couple of these houses in Pinoso and I was surprised just how many there were sandwiched between the more modern buildings. Lots are in a bad way just waiting for the property speculators though the meltdown in the construction industry may have given them a stay of execution.

More pictures on the Some of my snaps link