Grandparenting: on life and death, on myths and art, on grateful dogs and kids with presents

Matilda, my five-year-old granddaughter, has developed an ability to come up with startling statements.

To be fair, and just to maintain the character of this series of posts as a true chronicle of our grandparenting experience, I should mention that she's not my only granddaughter. I have another but she, Aya, is twenty now. In my book, that means she's no longer a grandkid but a grandadult.

What's more, I have to confess to a bit of a gap in this chronicle of mine. We saw a lot of the grandkids last year but I failed to keep a proper record of their visits (or our visits to them). There were, however, some memorable moments.

There was Matilda's visit to us during which, as well as the many other activities we organised for her, she attended a horse riding class. It was a pleasure to see her again when her class crossed the road in front of me as I was driving to a supermarket soon after dropping her off.

A diminutive Matilda crossing in front of me with her riding class

Then there was the time when we and the grandkids’ family travelled independently to Ireland, to meet up in Donegal. That’s the county in the Irish Republic, sometimes referred to as Southern Ireland, that extends further north than the six counties still in the United Kingdom, often called Northern Ireland. Still, there are so many ironies in Irish history that the fact that the South extends further north than the North, barely registers.

Matilda and Elliott on a beach in Donegal

Elliott in the Emerald Isle

Matilda ditto

They came to see us in La Cañada early in August. We provided presents, of course (grandparent-esse oblige), and to make them more fun, we had the kids look for them in the woods.

Present hunt in the woods

Then I visited Elliott and Matilda in their home in Hoyo de Manzanares, near Madrid, later the same month. It was fiesta time in the village and there was plenty to entertain the kids. The activity that looms largest in my memory, perhaps because it was practically daily, was face painting.

Getting their faces painted during the Hoyo Fiesta

In October, they came to us to celebrate Halloween.

Matilda and Elliott enjoying Halloween
with their mother and grandmother

It was during a summer visit to us that Matilda came up with one of her startling statements. It seems that she and Elliott had discovered death. Obviously, that’s a traumatic event in any child’s life. It was in mine, I know. I don’t remember the exact moment but I do remember the horror with which I realised that my parents would die. And then it dawned on me that it was going to be my fate too, a discovery that struck me then as deeply annoying, as it still does today.

Matilda felt it was important to explain what this all meant.

‘When I’m older,’ she assured Danielle and me with earnestness, ‘you’ll be dead.’

Elliott (aged three) was of the same opinion. 

‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘you’ll be dead when we’re older.’

Well, they got no argument from us. That’s how we hope, and expect, things to go. 

Elliott is also good at producing breathtaking statements. Out for a walk with me, he pointed to what looked to me like a length of black plastic tubing discarded by someone on the street. Elliott saw it in a much more interesting way:

‘Look! It’s the frame of a rainbow.’

When a rainbow’s frame falls to earth
Like me you saw something duller? 
Time to break with prosaic realism

After all those exciting visits in 2024, the kids came back to us, with Nicky, their dad, in the week before Twelfth Night. That’s 6 January, an important date in Spain, since there are more presents for children at this, the Feast of the (Three) Kings. That was important for Matilda and Elliott, since they’d spent Christmas in Belfast, with their other grandmother, and they naturally needed gifts from us too. Or rather from the Kings, or perhaps I should say Reyes, this being Spain, after receiving what Santa had for them in Northern Ireland. 

Opening Reyes presents

When I say ‘Christmas’ I’m using the word deliberately, not just being non-woke and failing to describe the season in specifically non-specific religious terms. They were in Belfast explicitly for a Christmas celebration. It apparently went well, but left some important questions in Matilda’s mind. Sitting in our house and looking at the fire burning in the grate, she asked me:

‘How does Santa get down the chimney if there’s a fire burning?’

Well, I know that Nicky doesn’t particularly approve of maintaining the Christmas story for the kids. But far be it from me, I thought, to incur the wrath of Sheena, their mother, by undermining it.

‘Well…’ I said doubtfully, until inspiration came to me, ‘you have to make sure that the fire’s out on Christmas Eve. Otherwise Santa gets pretty annoyed and he comes to the front door to ring the bell, which wakes us up, and then he tells us off for not leaving the chimney ready for him to come down. Which is even more annoying for us as it is for him.’

I thought it was a pretty good explanation, but I have to say that Matilda looked at me quizzically, as though she wasn’t sure it really stood up. But she (and Elliott) have decided long ago that Granddad was silly (the silliest Granddad in the world, in fact), and she clearly felt that there was little purpose in pressing the point with anyone in that sad state. She dropped the subject.

One of the things that Matilda has decided she likes is foot massages. It took her a while to convince herself that if she put a foot of hers into my care, I wouldn’t just tickle it, but since she’s decided that she could trust me on that, she’s started not just waiting for a massage, but demanding one even if I’ve not offered it. That seems to be a genetic disposition. It’s something Danielle expects as a matter of course if we’re watching TV, and Sheena tells me she enjoys foot massages too and doesn’t get half as many as she’d like. Personally, nothing could persuade me to undergo one, but clearly there is an inherited predilection in their favour running down the female line of the family.

A development milestone it’s my pleasant duty to record here is Matilda’s progress in art. In the summer, she did a fine Etch-A-Sketch of a house. Now, most kids, including me in my own childhood, draw houses with a chimney, a door and two windows. Matilda went deeper into her picture. Deeper into the house, in fact. She left out the purely superficial features, such as doors and windows, to show us the bed inside. There’s a pillow on it too, and possibly the suggestion of a head on the pillow. Either way, what she seems to have produced is a sketch not so much of a house, as of a home. 

A bed inside the house? That makes it a home

That impressed me. Just like Elliott’s identification of the frame of a rainbow, a fine example of an artist's view of life. So much more interesting than a mere scientist's.

More recently, Matilda’s turned to portraits. She even did one of me. I know that it could be argued that she has perhaps marginally exaggerated the extent to which I can be regarded as slim. And I suppose, if we’re picky, it could be said that she needs to work a little more on getting a likeness absolutely spot on, but hey, when you’re five, you’ve got plenty of time to do that work. In any case, as she pointed out, she gave me a beard which is an important feature of the likeness.

Portrait by Matilda alongside a more photographic treatment

Incidentally, talking about that beard, in the summer she pronounced it irritating, and I dutifully shaved. I kept shaving for some weeks but the daily process started to get on my nerves, especially as I kept cutting myself. So eventually I let the beard grow back and, as the portrait shows, Matilda has accepted it.

That’s a win-win, I’d say.

In passing, let me say that I like the way she’s put a Spanish N with a tilde above it – what they call an ‘enye’ out here – in the label ‘Grañddad’. True, a pedant would argue that it isn’t right. But I like the way it underlines the fact that she was born in Spain and it’s her home. The enye’s a subtle wink to her Spanish-ness.

Max (left); larger and more intimidating than Toffee and Luci

One of the best things about the grandkids’ most recent visit to us is that Max, our largish dog (as opposed to Luci and Toffee, our toy poodles) who seemed somewhat ill-disposed towards Matilda and Elliott initially, now seems to have adapted to them completely. It no doubt helps that they both now give him treats from time to time. On one occasion when Matilda had given him one, I explained to her that the appreciative look he was giving her was his way of saying ‘thank you, Matilda’.

‘You’re welcome, Max,’ she solemnly told him.

Another high point of their visit was when the kids burst into our bedroom early one morning, when Danielle and I were fondly imagining we might get a lie in. They made a bee line for me.

‘You’re always up early,’ Matilda told me.

‘So you can take us downstairs,’ Elliott concluded for her.

So, of course, I did.

Mostly Mild Max

People talk about a ‘one-month anniversary’, don’t they? Unfortunately, my ingrained pedantry rebels at that expression, since the whole point about the prefix ‘anni’ is that it relates to a year. We need a different word.

My humble proposal (and I pride myself on my humility) is ‘mensiversary’.

Max moving in
‘Hey, who’s this other dog?’

The second of April was the first mensiversary of the latest addition to our household. That’s the arrival of Max. He’s a Podenco, a classic Spanish dog, which makes our taking one a symbol of our assimilation to our adopted nation. 

Not that the symbolism was the reason we took him. We need exercise and our Toy Poodles, Luci and Toffee, for all the joy they bring us, have had pretty much as much walking as they can stand when we get to half an hour. Max feels he’s barely got going when he’s done 5 km (3 miles if you insist on sticking with the measures of the empire) and he likes that twice a day, so he keeps us very much on our feet before leaving us on our backs. 

Like many nations the world over, Spain is a highly divided society. People of opposing views glare at each across a chasm of incomprehension on many issues – the rights of immigrants, the status of Catalonia, the appropriateness of kissing a football player on the lips without her consent and, in particular, on animal welfare. As well as the fans, there are those who regard bullfighting as a barbaric form of entertainment obtained by torturing an animal before putting him to death. Hunting, too, is divisive, between those who see it as a sport and those who regard it as a way to take pleasure from the killing of living things. And there are hunters who like to use Podencos for a year or two and then abandon them by a roadside somewhere, while in the opposite camp are those who try to take them to shelters that give them all the care charitable donations allow them to provide. 

Max was one of the rescued. Not that he was Max when we met him. Someone had given him the name ‘Hannover’ which, as well as being a bit of a mouthful for a dog’s name, made no sense given he had absolutely no connection with Germany. ‘Max’ is short, easy to say and easy to recognise, which is what a dog’s name needs to be.

So Max he became. Not in any way in tribute to the ‘Mad Max’ of Hollywood fame. He’s about as sane as they come. I’ve never known a dog with a temperament as quiet and gentle as his. It was a week before we heard him so much as bark.

That isn’t the reputation of the Podenco breed.

‘Oh, you want to be careful with them,’ people would tell us, ‘they’re hunters, you know. And once they’re off the lead, they go hunting. Good luck to you on getting them back before they’re exhausted or hungry or both.’

They follow that kind of warning up with some blood-chilling tale.

‘My Podenco still runs away all the time. I’ve got a GPS device on her collar and I can tell where she is, but when I move towards her, she just moves somewhere else. Once, I spent three hours tracking her and then had time to go home, get some food, and return to tempt her back to me with something to eat.’

Well, we got to know Max before we took him. We visited the shelter several times, taking various dogs out for walks to see if we could work out how they’d behave. Of them all, Max was the one who showed no inclination to clear off, never barked, never growled at other dogs, and showed both affection and a good temper. 

So we took him, even though he was nothing like the dog we’d had in mind. Danielle goes for male cats but female dogs (she also goes for male children, which she’s done three times over, but that’s not something that depends on her choice). We also wanted a small Podenco, of the kind that comes around knee-high to us. Max is male. And he comes pretty much to waist height, which means he can stand up to a table or kitchen surface to grab any delicacy we may have carelessly left out.

His size was another reason to call him Max. Not that we’ve adopted the suggestion of renaming Luci ‘Mini’ and Toffee ‘Micro’. That seemed unfair.

The pack greeting a passer-by
That’s Max, Toffee and Luci, not Max, Micro and Mini

Well, Max has continued for the most part mild as ever. He’s enthusiastically joined the pack Luci and Toffee had already formed. So when they go chasing down the garden barking at anyone with the temerity to go walking past the gate, he likes to go with them. And he demonstrates that he too can bark (deep and loud, now that he’s decided to let us hear him, as opposed to the girls’ yaps).

Max in our woods, off the lead

And, most wonderful of all, he’s never run away from us in the woods. We’d planned not to take him off the lead for the first two or three months. But within ten days we felt confident enough to let him loose and, while he certainly likes to go running into the undergrowth, he seems if anything anxious not to get separated from us and reappears quickly each time. Even more quickly if we call him.

Of course, he may shock us yet and disappear for some hours on some future walk. But, so far at least, so good.

Sunbathing with the pack
That’s Luci to the left, Toffee to the right, not Micro and Mini

His rapid assimilation into the household also demonstrates a political principle for me. Many years ago, I was told that ‘if you want to make a man a conservative, give him something to conserve’. It seems to be true of dogs too. Now that Max has regular meals, a pack, and plenty of affection, he’s become possessive and taken to being a little aggressive towards other dogs, growling at them if they get too close to the main source of his contentment, Danielle. ‘She’s mine,’ he’s clearly saying, ‘try to divert any of her affection towards you and you’ll have me to answer to.’ Very menacing, very worrying. Very conservative.

Even so, he remains mostly mild. His biggest failing sadly concerns children. A friend of ours is a professional dog trainer and I think he got Max right: ‘he’s probably never lived with small children before and he sees them as little noisy creatures that run around everywhere. Unfamiliar with all of that, he perceives them as a threat. So he growls.’

Well, that’s all very fine, but we can’t have our dog growling at our grandchildren. By the end of their last visit, he was getting a lot better, accepting treats from their hands. But there’s more training to be done. And we’re going to do it.

Overall, however, we’ve been more than happy during our first month together. I’m looking forward to the future with him. So it’s with pleasure that I say:

‘Happy mensiversary, mostly mild Max!’

What’s a flowerbed for if it’s not for sunbathing?

Spanish politics, a spectator sport for our times. Sometimes terrifying, always entertaining

As a spectator sport, politics can be right up there with the most gripping. 

Sometimes, here in Spain, it feels like a gritty comedy drama. Sometimes, more like a bullfight. But it certainly isn’t dull.

The 28th of May, when local and regional elections took place, was a bad day for those of us out here who don’t much like the far right. Or even the less far right. The traditional party of the right, the Popular Party or PP, in alliance with the far right Vox (which means voice in Latin, a good name for that bunch of loudmouths) swept into office in town halls and regional assemblies across the country. For the PP, think of the US Republican Party before Trump. Vox is the Trump version. 

Those results painted a bleak picture for the centre-left government of the Socialist Party, the PSOE, and the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. It looked like the elections due before the end of the year were likely to see him out of a job. I just hoped he would be able to turn things around a bit over the few months the old parliament still had to run.

But then he astonished me. Instead of waiting he called a snap election in July. My immediate reaction was to think that he’d made a mistake, that it was too soon, that he could only be defeated if he went that early. But then I reminded myself that Pedro Sánchez constantly surprises everyone, constantly overturns any predictions made about him.

And this time he did it again.

It’s undeniable that he lost the July election. The PP won 137 seats to the PSOE’s 121. Sánchez had come second. On the other hand, against all expectations, he’d actually added one seat to his tally in parliament, at a time when everyone expected him to lose some.

Then there were his allies out to the left of the PSOE. A bunch of small parties organised in a group called ‘Unidas podemos’ (‘United we can’, with ‘united’ in the feminine – yep, that’s how with-it they were) had won 35 seats last time around. Now, with a new leader and reorganised as ‘Sumar’ (‘add up’), they took 31.

A relatively small loss but a loss all the same.

The problem is that there are 350 seats in the lower house of the Spanish parliament. To be absolutely sure of being able to form a government, a candidate for Prime Minister has to have the support of 176 MPs. 

If that’s not possible, a second round of voting takes place, in which it’s enough simply to get more MPs voting for you than voting against. The problem was that neither the PP with Vox, nor the PSOE with Sumar, could gather 176 votes, or even enough to outvote the other side if they all voted together.

That was remarkable, given that the PP had 137 seats. In the previous parliament, Vox held 52. All they had to do was hold or increase that number. The local and regional elections, in which they’d done so well, suggested they’d have no problem. That would give the PP-Vox coalition the votes it needed.

That was what made the election in July so extraordinary. Because far from growing its allotment of seats, or even holding its own, Vox collapsed, losing 19 seats to end up with 33. That meant that together with the PP’s 137, it would reach 170 and fall short of a majority by six.

Even with the support of two small parties with one MP each, they’d still be on 172. That wouldn’t quite get it over the line.

It’s up to the king to decide which party gets the first chance to try to put together a coalition that would allow it to lead a government. He perfectly sensibly called on the PP to have a go. The biggest party in parliament clearly deserved to try first. But no one expected them to pull off the trick, hated as they are by so many of the smaller parties – or at any rate, hated as is the presence of Vox in a potential coalition by almost all the other parties.

Once it became clear that the PP wasn’t going to succeed, the king, again perfectly properly, called on the PSOE instead. It makes sense, doesn’t it? You try the biggest single party first, and if that doesn’t work, you switch to the second biggest.

That’s when Sánchez astonished me again. He’s proved himself extraordinarily skilful at coalition building. 

With his 121 seats and the 31 of Sumar, he was on 152. 

The two Basque parties (left and right) with their eleven MPs and the (left-wing) Galician party with one, came on side, putting him on 164. 

Still far from enough. 

Sánchez needed the support of the two Catalan nationalist parties with seven MPS each. That’s ERC, the Left Republicans of Catalonia, and Junts per Cataluña, Together for Catalonia. The ERC was happy to back him. That put him on 171. But that meant he still couldn’t outvote the opposition, even if Junts abstained.

He needed both Catalan parties to vote with him. But their support came with a serious price tag. The leader of Junts and then President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, had held an unauthorised referendum on Catalan independence on 1 October 2017. It had been attacked by police sent by the PP government of the time in Madrid, with serious violence, followed by the flight of some leading members of the party, including Puigdemont, abroad (those who stayed were gaoled). 

Junts and ERC wanted an amnesty for their colleagues in gaol or facing trial. And they wanted an official referendum.

It was clear that Sánchez would refuse the referendum. But he was prepared to move on amnesty. And I feel, why not? After all, these characters hadn’t done anything violent, no one had been killed by their calling the referendum, illegal or not, and I really couldn’t see how their actions merited a prison sentence.

Right wingers demonstrating against the Spanish Socialist Party

A lot of people in Spain, however, don’t see it that way. The right wing has been holding angry demonstrations outside the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid. But many on the left are just as fed up. Spaniards are sensitive about anything that affects the integrity of the nation, and they find the behaviour of the organisers of the referendum far more reprehensible than I, as a mere Englishman, do.

That shows the courage of Sánchez. While sticking firmly to his refusal of a referendum, he agreed to put a bill to parliament providing the amnesty the Catalan parties wanted. They eventually agreed to accept that commitment as the price of their support, possibly in part because their vote has been falling in successive elections, and the alternative of another general election didn’t appeal to them.

So Sánchez got the seven MPs from Junts to back him too, taking him to 178. And then, to cap it all, he even persuaded the single MP from the Canaries Coalition, a right-winger who’d previously backed the PP-Vox attempt to form a government, to switch and support him instead.

So he ended up with 179 votes, a clear absolute majority, and has been re-elected for another term of Prime Minister.

Now, there’s a lot of hostility towards the amnesty. Of course, I feel the electorate can only blame itself. If it didn't want a compromise, coalition government, they should have given one party a majority. They elected a parliament that pushed Sánchez into this kind of concession. How can they blame him now?

Still, the question remains, whether the hostility to the amnesty will eventually do him serious harm. It’s hard to know. Spaniards can get passionate about their politics, as the demonstrations against the Socialist party show. But will they be able to keep it up? However passionate such movements are when they start, it’s hard to see them lasting for many months.

Interestingly, one of the symbols of those demonstrations is the Spanish flag with the royal coat of arms that normally sits in the middle, cut out. Why? Because by even inviting Sánchez to try to form a government, some of these demonstrators feel the king has betrayed the country.

The Spanish flag with the royal coat of arms cut out

That’s not limited to Vox people. Many on the right call what Sánchez has pulled off a ‘coup’. It was fascinating to see the president of the Madrid region, Isabel Ayuso, in the PP but on its hard right, calling for a response ‘golpe por golpe’. That’s a gloriously ambiguous demand. It can mean ‘blow for blow’, which would be fairly innocuous. But it can also mean ‘coup for coup’. Was she calling for an actual coup against Sánchez? And was that what upset the people who cut the coat of arms out of the flag – that the king hadn’t called out the army for a coup?

Intriguing times ahead. Sánchez faces terrible hostility. He heads a coalition that runs from Coalición Canaria on the right to Sumar on the left. The received wisdom is that it can’t last.

But that’s the thing about Sánchez. He keeps proving received wisdom foolish. It’s going to be fascinating to watch what happens in the coming months and years.

Spanish politics is going to remain a remarkable spectator sport for a while yet.

Prim, and weird people

There’s nothing particularly wrong with the human race. It’s just people that are sometimes a bit weird.

That was confirmed by a visit to the fine old Catalan town of Reus. It’s rather an attractive place, as it happens, with a pretty centre. But it also has a curious history, as we learned from an old friend, Rosa, someone I’d mistakenly let drift out of contact for many years until last year, when we had a great reunion during which Danielle at last met her.

Rosa lives in Reus, which is why we made a stop there, on our way to Perpignan in southwest France. I’ll explain in a later post why we were heading for Perpignan. Probably.

Danielle and Rosa are leading the way into the
great restaurant and Vermut maker Vermuts Rofes

Reus is a great centre for vermut, which is what Spain calls vermouth. My visit allowed me to confirm that the city deserves to be proud of its production of this fine drink. I liked both the red and the white I tried, the latter in a vermut maker's which is also an excellent restaurant, where we had a great meal with Rosa.

The city's only 16 km from Tarragona, which is the capital of the province to which both belong. Now, the way Rosa tells it, Reus was for a long time the more commercially successful of the towns. It had a much more dynamic business sector and that allowed it to finance a thriving cultural life.

But, she explained, Reus rested too much on its laurels. For instance, local businesses, including shops, liked to shut at 1:00 in the afternoon and open again at 5:00. Not convenient for the people who travelled into town to buy supplies and equipment, or perhaps to see a doctor,, and might have liked to make a day of it, with lunch thrown in. Apparently, the good merchants of Reus didn’t care. Clients simply had to adapt their expectations to the way Reus businesses liked to operate.

As a further example of their outlook, Rosa also pointed out to us one of the most fashionable shops in the town. Perhaps the most fashionable. Rosa went there once, just once, and never again. She was dressed casually, though well. That didn’t stop the shop assistant she turned to for help finding an item she wanted, telling her she doubted the shop had anything to offer her.

This strikes me as the kind of arrogance that underlies the story told about many high-end shops where, if you ask the price of something, the assistant will answer, “if you need to ask, you can’t afford it”.

Faced with either of those types of snootiness, my inclination would be to do what Rosa did, and walk out of the shop, never to return.

Now whether this kind of attitude was the only cause of the relative decline of Reus or whether other factors came into play, what happened is that as the decades rolled by and turned into centuries, Reus faded while Tarragona blossomed. Eventually, the upstart on the coast overtook its rival, adding wealth and dynamism to the privilege it had enjoyed since Roman times, of being the capital of the province that includes both, and which has always carried its name. 

You can imagine how Reus felt. Even the university has its faculties split between the two centres, and rather than be called after either, has given itself the name of a person instead (Rovira i Virgili, if you must know, who was president of the Catalan government in exile from 1940 to 1949, in succession to Luis Companys who went into exile in France after the end of the Spanish Civil War but was handed back by the Nazis, to meet an unpleasant and quick end, though not quick enough, given how unpleasant it was).

We enjoyed one particular facet of the rivalry between Reus and Tarragona. This is associated with the name of General Juan Prim. If you’ve never heard of him, let me assure you that nor had we until we got there.

He was a nineteenth-century general, born in Reus, who made a name for himself in, among other things, civil wars devastating Spain in his youth and later in colonial warfare in North Africa. A couple of generations later, another Spanish general, Francisco Franco, would win prominence by his North African campaigns. The difference, however, was that Prim remained surprisingly liberal, not something anyone could say about Franco, who was just prim. And nasty.

Prim in particular spent ages scouring Europe for someone who could be brought into Spain as constitutional monarch, replacing both the warring branches of the existing royal family (literally warring). That would mean accepting a crown offered by democratic election. Prim is reported to have said that looking for a democratic monarch in Europe was like looking for an atheist in heaven. 

Eventually though, Amadeo of Savoy accepted the role. In fact, he only lasted, as King Amadeo the first (and only) of Spain, for just over two years. After an attempt in 1873 on his and his wife’s lives, he decided that, quite frankly, it was too much like hard work trying to rule Spain, a nation as deeply divided then as it is now. He stood down and told the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, that Spain was simply ungovernable. 

Prim, though, didn’t see any of that. In December 1870, as he left the Cortes, of which he was a member, just a few weeks after voting for Amadeo to be given the throne, he was gunned down in the street and died soon after.

Prim and his horse
Seen from the direction of Tarragona

Reus decided to give its glorious son a suitable monument. It takes the form of an equestrian statue of Prim in the saddle, brandishing his sword.

Now there’s a story told in Reus, that the statue is so oriented that the horse’s back end and, I suppose, therefore Prim’s too, are facing Tarragona. I’ve not been able to confirm that but, hey, it’s telling that the tale is even told, isn’t it? Whether it’s true or not.

It’s great to celebrate your favourite son. But if you can do it in a way that also abuses your despised neighbour, isn’t that just win-win?

See what I mean? The human race may be absolutely fine. But think of Prim. Of what happened to Companys. Of the behaviour of Reus shopkeepers. Or of the rivalry of that city with Tarragona.

Surely you’ve got to agree that people are weird.

When a stalker is not a stalker

It’s the little things that bring home the cultural differences between nations.

That’s because they affect our lives far more. For instance, Spain gives kids presents on Twelfth Night rather than Christmas Day. That makes some sense because it’s the anniversary of the arrival of the Three Kings to give presents to the infant Christ. In any case, sensible or not, the custom affects us once a year.

Similarly, the cult of machismo which infects a sadly large percentage of Spanish men, only really emerges as a problem when an offence is committed. That’s only a news item for us, though it’s something far worse for the victim (sometimes involving her death). 

Of course, it gets a far higher profile when it’s Luis Rubiales, the President of the Spanish Football Federation, kissing a world-cup-winning woman player on the lips, without her consent. Indeed, we can all then be caught up in the scandal and indignation (or in other people’s cases, in his defence), praying for him to be fired (or, for those others, vindicated). But it’s still remote from our daily lives.

On the other hand, unlike any of the other countries in which Danielle and I have lived – England, France and Germany – where council lorries call weekly or so to collect rubbish, and it gets taken as long as we’ve remembered to put our bins out on time, in Spain the system is different. There are large containers on the edges of pavements around the neighbourhood and our job is just to deposit our rubbish in them whenever our bins need emptying. That’s true of general waste as of recycling.

Since, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, we seem to produce a huge amount of rubbish and, above all, of recycling even though there are only two of us, this difference really impacts on my life. I find myself popping down to the bins every other day, and sometimes – especially when the grandkids are with us – every day, so this is a difference that I truly feel in my own personal existence.

Not that it’s a bad thing. Gone is the need to remember when the bins have to be put out, and the terrible panic when you realise at midnight – or worse still, six in the morning – that you’ve forgotten to do so. You empty your bins when they need emptying, safe in the knowledge that the council lorries will be around within a day or so to empty the containers. You walk a little further than with the other system, but that’s not much of a hardship.

Now, one of the things I’m sure I’ve mentioned before is how having dogs helps you make friends. Walking dogs is like dropping kids off at school. It brings you into contact with people who are happy to chat to you, and some of them turn into something more than mere acquaintances.

Toffee and Luci out for a walk
A great hook for friendships, like dropping kids off at school

Miriam is a lovely lady, the first Miriam in her family after three generations of Marias on the female side. Of course, Miriam is only another form of Maria, so her parents didn’t stray far when they named her. And she and her equally appealing husband Alex made sure that the family would revert to norm quickly, when they named their own daughter Maria.

Our little orange dog Toffee gets on very well with theirs, and even the black one Luci seems OK about running into them. So whenever we meet, there’s a great deal of celebration, made all the more joyous by the fact that Miriam always carries dog treats with her, and always gives our two one or two of them, or more if she can get away with it.

The friendship that sprung up between the dogs and them quickly communicated itself to the humans, and we’ve even enjoyed having them around to dinner.

Recently, I took some recycling out quite late in the evening. I take the whole lot with me and then sort it out, putting the paper, the glass and the plastic or metal each in their appropriate receptacle. The containers all have their openings facing a fence which is pretty close to them, and once I was on that side of the containers, in the deepening darkness, I was out of sight of the road. 

When I came round the corner of one of the containers, therefore, and stepped out into the fading light, I was concerned to see a young woman right in front of me. My fear was that I might have scared her. A man appearing at night from what might seem to be a hiding place? It could be worrying. So I was quick to say ‘Hi’. 

Well, this being Spain, I said ‘Hola’.

She did look at me a little quizzically, but then smiled and said ‘Hola’ back before she got into a car that had stopped to pick her up with the little dog she was walking. No harm done, I felt. I obviously hadn’t upset her too much.

A day or two later, I ran into Miriam and Alex again, as we were walking our dogs.

“Hey,” Miriam told me, “Maria saw you the other night.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes, you were by the containers, dumping some recycling. She was with the dog.”

Things clicked into place.

“That was Maria!”

“Yes,” Alex told me, “she thought you might not have recognised her. But she recognised you. And she told us, ‘Well, he said ‘hola’ to me, so I reckon he must have known who I was’. Apparently she said ‘hola’ back to you.”

Ah, well. There was I worried I might be taken for a stalker. Whereas, in fact, far from frightening the woman I more or less sprang out on, I’d merely had the bad manners to fail to recognise her as a friend.

Still, I suppose that’s a lot less serious. No one could take me for a follower of Luis Rubiales based on so little. 

Or, at any rate, I hope not.

Corona: not just the problems we knew about

Corona just means crown. We use the word for things that have, or seem to have, a crown. There’s a corona around the sun. There’s a corona around the particularly nasty virus we talk about so much these days. And, of course, there’s a corona on every crowned head, by very definition.

So spare a thought for poor Spain. Like England, it’s struggling with both the health and the financial impact of the virus. Its strict lockdown to protect public health worked a lot better than the weaker measures in Britain, but the damage to the economy has been painful. Though, oddly, England has damaged its economy even more seriously, while controlling the pandemic less well. But then, England has Cummings and Johnson.

Today, however, cases in Spain are increasing once more at a depressing rate, and lockdown measures are having to be reintroduced. Just as they are in England. Although in England they seem to be targeting the Midlands and the North first of all, as though the Conservatives want to punish traditional Labour areas for having the audacity to vote for them instead.

Spain has an additional element of suffering. It’s also having to cope with Corona problems of the other, more ancient variety. The ones associated with the Crown. Especially since its previous occupant, Juan Carlos I, erstwhile King and now King emeritus, decided to do a bunk, fleeing abroad to some destination that has yet to be made public.

Juan Carlos I: ex-King who did a flit, and who knows to where?

His flight was precipitated by the ongoing investigation of his financial affairs. In particular, the judicial authorities find that his bank accounts in Switzerland raise a number of questions they’d like answered (yes, the understatement is deliberate).

This is sad, because Juan Carlos was the designated successor to the dictator Franco but, instead of maintaining the dictatorship, he oversaw an orderly transition to democracy. A referendum adopted the new constitution, still in force today, less than three years after the dictator’s death.

What’s more, not three years after that, when a coup against the new regime was launched by disaffected members of the paramilitary police and the army, Juan Carlos spoke out powerfully against it, rallying the nation to the cause of legitimate government. That ensured the coup’s failure.

Guardia Civil Colonel Antonio Tejero invading Parliament

Now, I’m a bit of a cynic and I share the misgivings of many over the length of time it took the King to come out with that statement. The initial attack against the Parliament took place just before 6:30 in the evening and the King’s broadcast went out at 1:14 in the morning. He recorded it around an hour earlier, but even that was six hours after the coup was launched.

There are those who say he knew in advance that it was going to happen, and only came out firmly in opposition once it became clear not enough of the army supported it. I don’t know how true or false that is. It is interesting, however, that there are those doubts, and that even as long ago as 1981 there were therefore some suspicions clouding the admiration felt towards the King by the Spanish people.

Which may have been a harbinger of what has happened now.

Even so, there are over 600 streets and squares called after Juan Carlos I across Spain. I am, indeed, in one of them now, as I write this piece from the flat near Madrid my one-year-old granddaughter inhabits and kindly shares with her parents (and, right now, us).

Today, a number of councils are facing motions from the Left suggesting it may be time to change the names of those streets and squares.

The government, too, led by Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist but on the Right of his party, is having to fight off moves from his coalition partner, from parties on whose parliamentary support he relies, and even from Socialist colleagues, to review the legal position of the Crown in Spanish politics. It is an offence, for instance, to insult the King, though that could be changed simply by new legislation. More problematic, the King can’t be held accountable for his acts either, and to change that would require a constitutional amendment.

Not the moment, Sánchez argues.

Ah, yes. He has a lot on his plate. Spain is closing down discos and bars again as the scourge of the virus builds again. The country has a shattered economy to rebuild. And now it has the distraction of a monarchy with a former King who’s beginning to look as toxic as the virus.

It amazes me that in today’s world we still have regimes led by men entitled to deference by right of birth. That strikes me as something to fix, so I’d like to see all three questions addressed at once. And perhaps in Britain as well as Spain.

But I can see how it makes the uphill struggle that Spain already faces even steeper and longer than it already was.

So spare my adopted nation a little sympathy…

Postscript: when the military knows how to respond to a coup

On the night of the coup, 23 February 1981 (so the event is referred to as 23F), the only city that was taken over by the military was the one where we live now. Let me quickly say that the two things aren’t causally connected. It’s just that the military region of Valencia was commanded by the general who supported the coup most actively.

Things went reasonably smoothly for him, until he sent tanks out to the airport at Manises, to get the air force unit there to join in. He got a dusty reply from the colonel in charge, according to the story a minister of the time later told:

“I have a Mirage on the runway with its engines running and armed with air to ground missiles. If the tanks heading for the base don’t turn around and pull back I’ll order it to take off and attack them. And I have another Mirage fighter ready on the runway just in case.”

The tanks retreated.

Peaks among the mountains

It’s odd going on holiday in retirement. I mean, a break’s always a good thing to have. But being retired is like a continuous break anyway. A break from a break? Seems odd.

But odd isn’t bad. And this break was great.

How should I begin to describe the greatness?

I suppose a good starting point is the place itself. We travelled to Cantabria and Asturias, on Spain’s northern coast. Once there, we spent most of our time in the mountains.

Forests in the mountains of Cantabria

The same mountains, under conditions more English
Except that the temperature remained pleasantly mild

This was only my second visit to northern Spain, and the first proper one. Back in about 1967, my parents didn’t like the idea of visiting the country while the dictator Franco was still in power. But, having got down to Hendaye, in South-West France and right on the border, they decided we should at least pop across and take a quick look. We had a day-long visit to San Sebastián before beetling back to the (politically) safer territory of France. De Gaulle, still President back then, had at least had the decency to be elected to that office, rather than seize power militarily like Franco.

My mother with her sons on that day trip, way back then

In 2020, we could take a little time and let ourselves be enchanted.

We discovered a restaurant we enjoyed enormously. So much, in fact, that we visited it three times rather than try anywhere else. It’s the Mirador Peña Colsa in Cabuérniga if ever you want to try it, and I recommend you do. The local specialty of Cocido Montañes is worth a visit for its own sake, the mountain setting is superb, and we particularly liked the proprietor, with whom we struck up such a relationship that she gave us a bottle of wine as a leaving present after our last visit.

Her attitude was exactly right. Brimming over with friendliness, as so many are in Spain, where rudeness or hostility seem limited to a tiny minority. On our second visit, she announced, “Ah. All my tables are reserved,” and then added, looking around, “now, where can I put you?”

She was a specialist at squeezing people in. We even saw one couple lunching at a table in the car park.

A couple enjoying their at a table on the edge of the car park

Then there were the remarkable landscapes. Occasionally one comes across places one can only think of as magical. On this visit, that was a series of waterfalls – well, at the cascade level – in woodland at the top of a long valley. ‘At the top’ meant a long and weary walk, but the water, without being freezing, was cooling enough to provide all the relief we needed.

Woodland cascade in Cantabria

Even the poodles enjoyed it, with Luci going so far to take a swim to cool herself down.

Luci enjoying the woodland pool

Equally memorable, but for qualities more dramatic than magical, was our visit to the Picos de Europa. These are not the peaks of Europe – the high Alps are far higher – but they are the first sight sailors would see on returning to Spain from the West. The ‘Peaks of Europe’ told seamen tired of the long Atlantic crossing that they were nearing home.

That’s where we had an experience that illustrates one of the other qualities we’ve come to know and, in a rather special sense, love in Spanish authorities. About twenty or thirty kilometres out from where we planned to start our walk, we came across a ‘No Entry’ sign alongside another announcing that the road had been closed for work.

What? After driving so far? They wouldn’t let us get to the start point of our hike?

Now this is something that keeps happening in, say, Madrid. A road will suddenly be closed, with no apparent good reason, no notice and no attempt to set up a diversion. “Sorry, mate,” someone in the local administration seems to be saying, “you’re just going to have to find another way. And if there isn’t one, find something else to do.”

There certainly wasn’t any other way to get where we wanted to go. And, indeed, while we sat and pondered, we saw more than one car turn back. But then we chatted with another driver and we collectively decided that, since they hadn’t actually put a cordon across the road, we might just have a go.

Which was just as well. The road wasn’t closed. There were roadworks happening, at three places – bulldozers hacking great chunks out of the cliffs, in fact – but as long as you accepted that you might be caught by a temporary closure, and have to wait to be waved through, you could still get to the top.

I suspect the men doing the work simply didn’t have any warning signs about possible delays. “Oh, heck,” they probably said to each other, “we’ll declare the road closed. And for good measure, put up a ‘no entry’ sign. The bold and the rebels will come through anyway. If the others go home, well, at least there’ll be fewer cars for us to deal with.”

We enjoyed the hike in the mountains. It was exhausting, and we had to turn back before we reached the top of the pass we were aiming for, but we saw eagles and we saw chamois, as well as spectacular. What more could we want?

A chamois herd enjoying its lunch

And the whole experience was given additional spice by knowing we’d braved a no entry sign to undertake it. All contributing to a great break-from-a-break.