The plain in Spain....

Hi all

Well, I'm back and I survived but, truth to tell, I didn't enjoy my week in Spain as much as I'd hoped to. (Venetian, I was on the Castilian plateau - sort of in the middle and up from Madrid, not on the coast at all.) I would love to be able to say I had a great time, but I'm too honest to tell fibs and I'm actually really pleased to be back.

I did see some great old buildings, especially cathedrals and monasteries (I'll be putting a photo album together later) but in the end, Spanish Catholic gloom and suffering really started to eat away at my soul, IYKWIM: there's such a lot of pain involved! Where's the joy? And the love?

It's been nearly forty years since I lived in Spain and I hadn't counted on how much I have changed in that time. For instance, Spain is a very carnivorous country and I had a real problem finding anything to eat (how I missed our sandwich bars!) Plus the hours they keep have become a problem to me in my old(ish) age: restaurants that don't open in the evening until 9pm, everything shut between 1pm and (often) 5pm. Plus prices were nowhere near as low as I'd expected and in many cases were higher than England.

I came across some pretty unfriendly people too, which upset me a lot. On one occasion I had bought an umbrella in the giftshop of the University of Salamanca. Well, I used it for about half an hour and it broke so I took it back. The three women in the shop were hugely reluctant to give me a refund and accused me of having broken it myself. I still don't know if the amount has been credited to my account (they phoned the bank with my debit card details and told me it had been done but gave me no written proof.)

One thing I did appreciate was that, at least where I was (Burgos, Leon and Salamanca), there appeared to be no disaffected youth around. Without exception the teenagers I saw looked bright, friendly and engaged. Perhaps there are feral youths but I didn't see any.

I hate to say this because I don't like to admit that TV looms so large in my life but Spanish TV is just awful. Awful. And whenever I switched it on there were at least two channels which had nothing else but a woman shuffling tarot cards and giving readings for viewers who phoned in their questions. (I guess they paid by credit card.) There were also hours devoted to word games with contestants winning money. Spanish dramas are badly overacted and artificial. I have to say it made British TV look wonderful by comparison.

This all sounds so negative, I'm quite ashamed. It's been a big blow to me as I thought I had a major connection with Spain and have been nurturing the idea of retiring there in a few years time. Believe me, I'm thinking again. And the Castilian plateau is so flat and .... unimpressive. The great plains of Spain. Mind you, the weather was pretty good - apart from a bit of rain and a nip in the air in the mornings. All in all though, I am very pleased to be back!

Edit to add a more positive afterthought: when I arrived in Leon, I discovered that they were celebrating the fiesta of the patron of the city, San Froilan. For the two days that I was there, a medieval market was set up in the pedestrian streets of the old town and I have to say that this was superb. It was far better than the Christmas markets that I've experienced in London and Bath and I walked my feet up to the ankles looking at all the stalls.

But there were a couple of items in the news that truly disturbed me: firstly a small coastal village on the island of Tenerife was being torn down by the authorities for being built too close to the sea, in spite of the inhabitants having lived there all their lives. The scenes of people watching their homes being destroyed were heartbreaking - and they had been given nowhere else to live. Similarly, somewhere else in Spain (in Andalucia I think) a group of neighbours who had thought they were buying their flats from the local authority (and had been paying what they thought were their mortgages for 26 years) were told that they had only been renting and that the flats were now needed for new families. Figure that!

xxx