Life in Cartagena

It's nowhere near Christmas in Spain yet. There are signs though. On the telly there is an IKEA ad with a Christmas theme as well as a mobile phone ad with a bloke in a yellow Santa suit. In a shop close by, Ale Hop, they have a blow up Christmas tree for sale. But this year I was determined not to be caught unawares. One of the Christmas traditions here is the Belén. The word means Bethlehem but it's actually a representation of the birth of Jesus with Mary, Joseph, the Wise men, the shepherds etc. We've got a Belén. The stable we bought in a Carrefour supermarket and the majority of the figures in a cheapy cheap Chinese shop. I've hankered after a better version for years but usually I leave it too late. By the time we get around to visiting one of the Christmas markets where the hand crafted key figures and all the trappings are on sale we've already put up the Christmas tree, laid out our Belén and dusted off the seasonal CDs. Maggie isn't keen on...

Yesterday we took our guests out to La Manga. We ate patatas bravas, watched the kitesurfers and drove over the bascule bridge that allows taller yachts to get into the Mar Menor before turning around and heading back to Cabo de Palos. La Manga is a sandbar about 19 kms long that separates a coastal lake - the Mar Menor - from the Mediterranean proper. It is an odd environment. In the 1950s a chap called Tomás Maestre Aznar set about buying up the whole strip and with a bit of political support and a few court cases by the start of the 60s he was ready to put his master plan into action; to build a major tourist destination in Murcia. The first photo shows La Manga in 1963. Tomás intended to build a private development aimed at the monied elite with a capacity for about 70,000 people. He wasn't going to urbanise the whole strip but wanted to conserve the original nature of the sand bar outside the walls of his complex. None of the biographies I can find on the Inter...

Romerías are religious, Christian, processions that involve taking a graven image from one spot to another. I'd seen a romería advertised in La Palma just outside Cartagena for the two "sainted doctors" San Cosme and San Damián who were going on a little trip from La Palma to the chapel at Los Vidales. These two Christian brothers trained in Syria and  practised medicine in Sicily and became famous for their kindness to people who were too poor to pay for medical treatment. Come the persecution of Christians their high profile made them easy targets and they were eventually decapitated for their faith.

The last post mentioned trying to change the details of the phone contract on the website. I tried several times. Someone who moderated a project I did at College about homelessness described my work as tenacious; a word I've used ever since to describe myself. Maggie, sticking with Hemingway in the "there's always a better and shorter word" sense tends to the word stubborn when describing me. Anyway the website said no and continued to say no. It worked in that infuriating way where you complete the whole form then press the button to save changes at which point it dumps the lot and makes you start all over again. By the end I'd learned how the Movistar database deals with our, rather vague, up a track with no street name and two possible post codes, address. I went back to the shop to get them to change the address on their reseller's database which I can't access. I spent 20 minutes explaining our address over and over to the young woman in the shop...

Christmas in Spain is a time for hampers and the box, basket or packaging says as much about the quality of the gift as do the actual contents. Christmas is a time for draws and lotteries too. I've written before about the big Christmas lottery - the event that really marks the beginning of Christmas for most Spanish families. So, as you may imagine loads and loads of bars have a big christmas basket behind the bar and they sell tickets to give you the chance to win it. Schools do it, neighbourhood associations do it, political parties do it - lotteries and hampers and Christmas go together. The Christmas baskets are usually based around a ham. Having a proper ham at home for Christmas is along the same lines as mince pies or Christmas trees or sprouts in the UK. They're Christmassey and Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without them. You may not like "Eat Me Dates" but there they are on the table. The hampers can contain anything though the essentials are booz...

I went to pick Maggie up from Alicante, El Altet, airport. She's been away for the long bank holiday weekend in the UK and by her account she spent most of the time in shops. She says it was a bit cold and grey and wet but very dynamic in Liverpool. By contrast I'd stopped off in Alicante on the way in. There were people sunbathing on the beach and it was a very pleasant 23ºC but the town looks much the same as it has for years and years. Maggie had flown out of Murcia airport and it was the first time I'd been to Alicante for a while. Since I was there they seem to have sneakily built a whole new airport! It's not operational yet but it was a bit of a shock seeing all those shiny glass buildings as I drove in to the car park. And, as we left the toll motorway on the drive back to Cartagena, all the traffic was being pulled over (Imagine trying to pull over every vehicle leaving the M6 toll!) and the drivers breathalyzed. It was the first time ever. I hadn't tou...

These council workmen are setting up the shelter that will house the Christmas nativity scene, the Belén or Pesebre. They seem to be using the roots of this rather large rubber tree as part of the scenery. Imagine, getting ready for Christmas already!