Of Wells

I mentioned the Plaza del Pilar in Saturday’s post. This Pilar has nothing to do with the popular female name Pilar, which comes from La Virgen del Pilar, and refers to a pillar of stone on the banks of the Ebro on which Our Lady allegedly appeared in the 1^st C to encourage St James the Great when he was having a bit of trouble converting the Spanish. That pillar still stands, and was incorporated into the magnificent mediaeval basilica that was built on the site, and which lies at a funny angle because of it.

Anyhow, the Pilar in the town here is not a pillar, it’s a different word meaning ‘spring’. The original village came into being because of that spring, and it grew because it was on the royal road from Toledo to Cordoba. People would rest at the spring, eat, buy things, stay overnight, and it became a sort of 10^th C Watford Gap.

In the 12thC, after some unpleasantness with the Arabs caused the fortified settlement nearby to be abandoned, the King founded a walled town on this site, more or less guaranteeing its existence, growth and protection. But old names of the place, and still existing names of streets and neighbourhoods, reveal a lot about the intricate relationship between the town and its springs and wells.

One of the earliest names of the village on this spot was Pozuelo de Don Gil, (Don Gil’s Well). D. Gil Turro was the semi-legendary founder. Later it was known as Pozuelo Seco (Dry Well), which is partly why the major settlement in the area moved to a hilltop by the river about 8 miles away. There is a street Pozo Dulce (Sweet Well), at the bottom of which there was once a well of drinkable water. Here it’s common to distinguish between sweet and bitter wells, which is reasonable enough.

There’s another street called Pozo Concejo (Council Well) where the corporation dug a public well to provide for an increasing population at some point. It’s long gone, as has the original spring and the other wells in the town itself, but the names live on, and we remember a little of our history therby.

Memories of 70's Britain

I was talking to a friend yesterday and, looking for an analogy to explain some impression I had of the current economic and political situation in Spain, I was reminded of the case of Britain in the 70’s. A hugely, unsustainably, unproductive public sector, controlled by the unions who more or less dictated their own terms; millions of people paid to burn money; an ever-smaller productive sector struggling to pay for it all; successive governments full of cowards, incompetents and ideologues who could not, or would not, deal with the situation; an increasing number of immigrants willing to do jobs and accept wages that the welfare state, and general prosperity, have made the locals treat with contempt.

The role of the Indian and Pakistani immigrants is being played by the Chinese. Although there have been Chinese restaurants in most Spanish towns for over 30 years, in the last few years there has been an explosion in corner shops and cheap boutiques run by Chinese. They work very long hours, have low overheads and no employees, and offer people what they want when they want it. They give their children Spanish names and make sure they integrate, study hard and don't have to spend their lives working 15 hours  a day 7 days a week to make a living. It all sounds very familiar.

Because of the system of public employment, devised to combat a particular type of political corruption in the 19^th C, it is almost impossible to remove the unnecessary, lazy or incompetent. With the problems the country has now there is a need for someone to change a lot of things. Mariano Rajoy, despite his merits (not being Zapatero is a good start), is unlikely to have the guts to do what has to be done. It isn’t just fighting with the unions and losing the next election that’s the problem; it’s also that restructuring the entire economy means a great deal of hardship for many people. In 80’s Britain the result was that by 1988 it was a different country from the Britain of 1979. Without the reforms, without Margaret Thatcher, it would not have happened. But for many people it meant years of hardship before the change caught up with them.

I don’t see any Spanish government in the near future changing the employment conditions of their employees (they certainly won’t ask those of us who pay them what we think). So there will be no 80's in Spain in the near future, but we could do with one.

The Town this Saturday (and the Rugby)

There is life in the town today.

There are a number of coloured awnings in the Square. Different groups are doing comedy acts, singing, organising games for the children, handing out leaflets and collecting signatures, in the name of eradicating poverty, Aids, rickets and other bad thin gs. At least they will probably achieve something, however small, and these things can only be done a bit at a time. And they are collecting moent and making their causes known in a friendly way which attracts people to them. In other words, they are decent people giving up their time and energy  trying to do a little good, and with the wit to actually do it.

Unlike the miserable bunch of communists who had attached themselves to a corner of the show. They were spouting the usual rubbish, which I'm sure not even they believe any more, or even listen to. Since nearly all the real poverty in the world is their fault, they can't have much to offer by way of a solution.  And they resolutely fail to appreciate that in order to relieve poverty you have to let people create wealth, when the whole point of communism as far as I can see seems to be to stop that happening.  Still, Viva la Libertad de Expresión!

There was a young evangelist in the Plaza del Pilar, outside the Caja Madrid, standing on a box with what I think were kick-boxing gloveson his upraised hands, speaking about the love of God and how he gives us more than we can possibly imagine. He spoke fairly fluently and confidently and seemed to understand what he was saying. A few people were gathered round, listening, out of curiosity I imagine. I don't think that's the way to make converts, but it gave him satisfaction.

On a different subject entirely, in rugby I'm a Welshman. My great-uncle Cyril played for Wales, it's in the blood. I've seen the Warburton play- it was a terrible tackle, the kind that breaks necks- and I've read the Laws- it is clearly typified as dangerous play- but I'm a bit out of touch with rugby generally as you can't see much over here, and so I lack the context to make any kind of proper judgement. People are saying that, whatever the IRF has decreed, that action is usually a yellow card rather than red. Should I be spitting blood, or just saying 'bad luck' and accepting defeat graciously? Wales should have won in any case; they missed two clear chances near the end. It's a funny old game.

Added: The more I look at that tackle, the less I think Warburton has anything to moan about. It was very dangerous indeed. He lifted the player five feet in the air, turned him over and dropped him on his neck. No, there's no malice, just an excess of adrenaline and poor judgement, but that and bad kicking cost Wales a game they should have won. So if I'm spitting blood it's because the skipper made a fool of himself when he should have known better.

The Weekend

Last weekend we were at the farm. Too much work and the painters in the house have prevented me from posting about it, which is probably a good thing since it would read like a dozen other posts on the same subject, but a blogger never lets an opportunity go to waste, so here it is.

There were about a dozen of us. The usual crowd, broadly speaking. Most of them go to the country for the express purpose of getting up late, sitting in the kitchen all morning gossiping, drinking beer, and complaining about their hangovers, rising late from the siesta, and sitting in the kitchen all evening gossiping and drinking sweet rum. Lunch is generally taken in the garden, which is the only occasion on which many of them leave the house, and dinner is a late barbecue which is fun to do but rather pointless as most people are already full of snacks and beer by that time. The dogs appreciate the leftovers.

Your blogger, of course, goes to the country to see the country, to take photos in the (usually vain) hope that one or two will turn out decently, and to walk or ride around the lakes. This time I took one of the group with me. He had asked to join me himself, and said that he often went out cycling with friends, but I suspect he was a bit out of practice. He seemed to flag climbing the final hill past the Cueva de Montesinos*, and for the last few miles home the zest had definitely gone. But still, ‘que le quiten lo bailao’, as they say here.

Everything I could say about the country and the lakes I’ve said before, so here are some photos: new angles, new ideas.

*Don Quijote spent a night in it and had a series of visions which he later admitted were the product of his confused imagination.

Touching Lives- Unanswered questions

Just south of Madrid there is a pair of villages called Pinto and Valdemoro. They have grown so much that there is a gap of only a few hundred yards between them. They have long been used proverbially to refer to a difference so small as to be negligible. Until I checked just now I had always assumed that they were actually linked, and I suspect most people who don’t know the area would make the same assumption.

There is a village down the road from here named after the son of the legendary founder of the town I live in, as though it were a kind of daughter colony, its status reflected in its being given the feminine version of his name. In the last few years it has grown so much that the two towns are now closer than Pinto and Valdemoro.  If it weren’t for the motorway recently built on the municipal boundary, they would by now have coalesced.

I went walking to a shrine on a long hill, a kind of ridge, the other side of that village, on Saturday. The views from the top are not spectacular, but they have a form of beauty, and they fill you with a sense that everything you can see, and which you know so well, is yours. I have been there in the mist, the rain and the wind, but this time it was sunny and I could survey my entire realm.

The shrine is of no architectural interest, but it’s there. Every spring, on a date I can’t remember exactly, the people carry the local Virgin up there, then set up camp and get extremely drunk on cheap wine. I have been there the next morning when they are treating the hangover with fried sausages, seeking the strength to continue the party, and pretending to prepare for the Mass.

On this occasion, as I approached the shrine itself, there was movement. I was vaguely away of people to one side of it. A young couple, I registered, I think. At that I might have noticed no more than the presence of humanity. I stopped to look between the trees to my left at the plain below me and the town I had come from in the distance. A few second only, but long enough for an engine to start up behind me. I turned. It was a moped, riding down the hill from the shrine. The young couple, teenagers, were on it. They both had their faces turned away from me, and the girl, who was the passenger, hid hers with her hands as they passed.

Why had my arrival scared them into running like that? Why did they think I might know them, or care about who they were and what they were doing there? They had gone there to be alone, of course, and I had accidentally interrupted them, but they could have pretended to be watching the crows for a minute or two and I would have gone again. Why were they afraid to be seen? By me or by anyone?

How did it end? Did they find another quiet place? Did they argue? Was the girl angry because the spot the boy had chosen wasn’t as isolated as he had promised? Was the boy angry because the girl had taken fright too easily? Despite their youth, was there a reason they should not have been together?

I can’t answer those questions, because this is their story, not mine. The story, if it is worth telling, cannot be told here. It will be written in their lives, and I will never know it.

When People are not Other People

One of the major errors in the way people think about the world they live in is that they imagine there are slots available into which one person or another can be placed. A job is a pre-existing slot. A house is a slot. A position in an organization, even the organization itself, has somehow created itself and is waiting for someone to fill it. A wage, therefore, likewise. And so they conceive that a sum of money is sitting there waiting for someone to earn it. From there to the misunderstandings behind rabid socialism is a short step. I’m poor because someone else is rich, they say. More likely you aren’t poorer still because someone else is wealthy enough to pay you. Immigrants are not taking our jobs. In Spain, at least, they are doing the jobs that no one else wants to do. Time and again you hear, ‘I had to get a Rumanian/South American because I couldn’t find a ‘nacional’ who’d work properly for what I can pay.’ Children, the sick and the elderly are looked after by South Americans, bars and restaurants are staffed by Eastern Europeans, houses are cleaned by Moroccans, the corner shops that never seem to close, ever, are run by Chinese.

If Fleming hadn’t discovered penicillin, if Berners-Lee hadn’t created the protocols which make the Internet work, if Bill Gates hadn’t decided to get stinking rich by making cheap software, if Freddy Laker hadn’t taken on the state airline monopoly, if Stephenson hadn’t come up with the rocket, if Lyndon Johnson hadn’t decided to keep Kennedy’s boastful promise about going to the moon, if Margaret Thatcher hadn’t broken the more fascistic trade unions, if Norman Borlaug hadn’t improved crop yields manifold, the world would not be the place it is. These things did not have to happen when they did. There was not someone else waiting behind these people to do it if they didn’t.*

Tax the rich, they say. We already do. If they shared all the money we’d all be better off, they say. Yes, for five minutes. Then there’d be no money left to share. Stop people getting rich and we all go short. It has been tried, you know. Money doesn't pre-exist either, nor does wealth. They are not sitting about waiting to be distributed. They have to be created. Not everyone knows how to create them, and those that do are often not allowed to.

*Unlike the case of our rulers. Behind every MP, every head of government, every senior union and civil service boss there are thirty men and women with knives up their sleeves who could do the same job. One test of those who matter is they can’t be replaced.

Meet the Meat

This chap was dinner a day or two ago. He was a fine beast, weighing in at just under a kilo and beautifully decorated. I have been unable to do justice to the range and brightnes of the colours on his shell, which included indigo spots and a background of deep purple. Although they may look ugly at firt impression, they are wonderfully designed, and if they don't become damaged by fighting, they have a perfect symmetry, not only in form but in movement as well.

There are two main ways of preparing such a creature for the table, and neither is very pleasant for the animal. The more usual way is to place it in cold water with abundant rock salt and bring it to the boil. You leave it boiling for 20-30 minutes depending on the size.

The other way is to grill it on a hot-plate.  First you have to slice it down the middle the entire length of its body. It will probably have some comment to make on this, which is why there are elastic bands around the claws. The squeamish will find that if you put it in the freezer for about 10 minutes before you cook it, you can leave it insensible but without affecting the taste.

It was Mrs Hickory's saint's day, by the way, which was the efficient cause of the creature's demise. He tasted won

derful, since you ask.