Housing

I am not sure whether it’s a general British idea or just mine but, I always had an idea of what houses in Spain were like. To be honest it wasn’t anything hugely specific, possibly a courtyard, usually a pool, obviously a terrace, but always houses of one type or another.

It seems however that I was mistaken; here they all live in flats. What’s more, they’re small flats. Many do have pools and communal gardens. Most are new and have lifts, underground parking and aircon. Very few in Madrid have terraces.

On first moving here I just took it for granted, I had somewhere nice to live and there was so much to adapt to that I didn’t have room in my head to consider the things that might be harder to adapt to in the long term.

I have always lived in a house, not a big house, but a house with two storeys and a small bit of garden. It’s not flash but it’s what I’m used to.

One thing I can definitely say is that I have not adapted to this flat-living thing, and I am not likely too. It’s not the size of the flat that I have a problem with, it’s more than big enough for me to deal with. No, what I hate is the sensation of us all being stacked up on top of one-another, like a house of cards; one puff and we all fall down.

On a practical (and probably slightly less fanciful) note, living in a flat is annoying simply because your happiness and comfort can depend so much on the thoughtfulness (or lack thereof) of your neighbours. For example, our current neighbours are pretty good but everyone has their moments: this morning we were woken up when the couple upstairs started having a blazing row and apparently organising a cavalry charge (feet stomping etc) – we know exactly why they were fighting, we could hear every word of it.

I also don’t like the idea that my home depends on my neighbour’s state of mind at any given moment; what if they accidentally leave the water running or the iron on? Will their moment of forgetfulness result in me losing a lifetime of memories; irreplaceable knick-knacks that seem like crap to everyone else but are priceless to me?

There is no private outdoor space: Nowhere to grow anything, nowhere to create a private world with a little bit of air and a patch of earth.

The communal pool is gorgeous, it’s enticing, and it’s costs us a fortune every month (even though it’s only open in the summer).

I have also never used it.

Think of all of those American high school dramas / series / films that you have ever seen, picture the, so-called “popular” set – well that is the way the communal poolside is ordered in our “Community of Neighbours”. The pool is mainly the preserve of the “President of the Community”, his wife, their children, the deputy President and assorted hangers-on. Everyone stare avidly at everyone else, and they all gossip.

So this is my main issue with flat-living: There are no secrets in a block of flats; no private rows with partners or children, no raising or lowering of shutters, staying out all night or even trip to the bathroom that goes unnoticed by someone in The Cell Block,

The most problematic thing about this situation is that there are no real alternatives.

In Madrid the cost of an actual house, rather than a flat, is usually somewhere near the 1€ million, that is a detached house with a garden. If you want a tiny (smaller than my flat) terraced house with a 2m squared patio then you can get that for about 400,000€. The latter option doesn’t solve the problem of being constantly overlooked. In other words, it’s seriously out of my price-range to stay in Madrid and get away from the curtain-twitchers and gossips.

So, move out of the city? I used to commute to London, a journey of at least an hour, and had no problem with it, but, I am not sure that I want to extend my commute here too much given that the roads in the city are generally in a state akin to a car-park and, when you are moving, there is always someone around who seems quite intent on killing you.

Public transport? I really would actually prefer this option to driving any day but, the Metro here (which I love as it is air-conditioned, cheap, safe and clean) is not as extensive or as fast as the Underground. Madrid has been growing so fast that the network barely reaches the outskirts of the city (where I already live) let alone beyond where there might be an affordable house. And guess what? The towns that have a train station with a direct connection to Atocha or Chamartin have houses that share their price-tags with Madrid’s.

In short, for me, housing here is a real problem.

Beyond The Cup

It is strange how a World Cup can have repercussions that are felt far beyond football or sport. For evidence of this, I need look no further than what happened in Spain during the 2010 tournament.

As you already know, unless you live somewhere that couldn’t give a toss about football, Spain won. The place went wild and the party has, so far, lasted days rather than hours. The team did an open-top-bus parade around Madrid; it was supposed to last 2 hours, in the end it lasted 4. Over 1 million people flocked to the city centre to welcome the boys home; all were waving flags or painted with flags; dressed in red and gold, or with the colours striped through their hair. Even now there are still Spanish flags everywhere.

To me, this outpouring of national pride seemed pretty normal. As a Brit I am used to seeing the national colours come out and the flags wave at the slightest provocation. To be honest, at home the national paraphernalia can be seen everywhere before the tournaments even start.

I didn’t realise until the day of The Final that, in Spain, this is not normal.

A work colleague said to me, “I am off home, my daughter wants me to paint her face again; I did it for the first time ever for the semi finals. And I just bought her her first Spanish football team shirt; she insisted I buy one for myself. I never even considered buying one before.”

I was a bit bemused by this, never even considered wearing a Spanish team shirt? But, Spain won the European Championship a mere two years ago; didn’t he do all this then too?

Apparently not. And here’s a potted version of why:

Until very recently (1975) Spain lived under a fascist dictatorship headed by Francisco Franco. When they came out of it the majority of the people, understandably, wanted nothing whatsoever to do with fascism, an important facet of which is nationalism, flag waving. Hence, throughout the post dictator era and continuing to this day, showing national pride in the form of waving a Spanish flag or wearing the national team’s strip was a big social taboo. If you did it, everyone considered you a fascist. A supporter of the oppressive ex-regime.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Spain is a country divided. In many of the autonomous regions it has, relatively recently, become taboo to consider yourself Spanish rather than, say, Catalan (this revival of non-Spanish nationalism also has its roots in the oppression of the Franco era). To show any support for Spain is often considered a betrayal, and can be dangerous.

But this World Cup has gone a long way towards lessening these taboos. For the first time in many people’s lives it was OK to hang a Spanish flag from your window or put one in your car; no need to fear reprisals. You could walk the streets painted in red and gold and everyone would shout and hoot and applaud. There were images from plazas around Spain, including in Catalunya and the Basque Country, which showed people plastered in Spanish flags, cheering on the Spanish team.














This change may be permanent, or it may merely be transient, but, for that one brief moment, the country was united; everyone was proud, everyone was Spanish and no-one was afraid to show it.

Semi-Final

Granted this should have been posted yesterday to be relevant but, it wasn’t. I wanted to post something a little bit longer about Wednesday and what it is like to be somewhere like Spain when their national team is making history.

2010 is the first time that the Spanish team has moved beyond the quarters in the World Cup so it Wednesday was going to be a historic moment win or lose.

A friend and I decided we wanted to soak up the atmosphere and so headed to the Bernabeu where Hyundai have set up some massive screens and a Fan Park area for open-air viewing of the games. We arrived an hour before kick off and the place was heaving, lots of tourists, lots of kids and vendors hocking stuff. I bought myself a flag, which has been thoughtfully donated to hubby, who is, after all, the Spaniard in the relationship.

The downside; it was about 35ºC in direct sunlight and there were a good 20,000 people there (an estimated 50,000 by the time the match finished). We were there for about 30 minutes before we started to feel seriously ropey and decided to head for home, where there were cold mojitos and a sofa-view of the match.

Managed to snap a few pics of the atmosphere down there before we scarpered so here you go:

The Metro was a *little* bit busy

Walking up to The Bernabeu, an hour before the game

In case you didn't know, Spain beat Germany 1-0.The Spanish Queen went to the changing room after the game to say hi to the team, Puyol was in the shower at the time so had to shake her hand wearing nothing but a towel.

People are very excited about the game, they really can't believe that they are in the final.

Everyone here is loco crazy mental about football. I was living here when they won the Euro Championship and the place just went mad. In my opinion, not many nations know how to party like the Spanish, that is to say, they party hard, usually until the sun comes up, but they don’t seem to get particularly violent. Here in Madrid I don’t have that sense of danger that I often had at home, or in Barcelona.

I can’t imagine what the party will be like if Spain manages to pull this one off but I REALLY hope I get to see it.

¡Vamos España!

Life is made up of….

As you’ve probably seen before on my blog, I have found moving overseas to be full of challenges, I don’t think that the cultural differences have been so hard to grasp, more the issue of picking up a new language. Funny how the simple things that we all do every day become fraught with pitfalls; when just working out how to say “hello” in whichever situation can cause a few minutes of frantic memory searching and word repetition.

I have also found my capacity to work around these problems and to adapt to my (now not-so) new country and language remarkable. (I am sure this is true of everyone in my situation but I can only actually speak for myself).

Yesterday I had an epiphany moment which showed me just how far I have come in the 1 year and 9 months that I have called Madrid home.

The realisation, as with all the best moments of enlightenment, came to me in a bar. This bar to be precise:

I had a meeting in the city centre yesterday morning and so jumped in the car, zipped into town (some hairy driving on the way of course, couldn’t possibly post without mentioning driving now could I?), headed straight for the car park nearest my meeting, dumped the car and then trotted happily off in the sunshine. I arrived early and decided that I should get a coffee and kill some time. On the way I had seen a guy dive into a likely looking place and had made a mental note. I retraced my steps and headed into the bar.

Really great little bar by the way, very Spanish, or rather Madrileño; go in and head down a couple of steps; standing only area at the actual bar with a small restauranty bit off to one side. As I walked in I was greeted with a sturdy “buenos días” by the barman. Appropriate response made, coffee ordered, milk selected to my taste and there I was. Coffee in hand pondering how marvellous life can be and how simple things can make you smile and then The Epiphany came upon me.

6 months ago just navigating into the centre would have been a major issue, forget finding the car park and I wouldn’t have even thought about going to order a coffee at a little local bar like that on my own, without a Spaniard to back me up. This one of those places where the waiters chat to you after all. I would have not been able to deal with the idea of thinking of and then making the appropriate responses, I would probably have broken out in a sweat at just the thought of it but yesterday I did it without thinking. And I was happy doing it. I enjoyed the bar, the waiters, the coffee and standing there on my own in the heart of the Spanish capital, not a Starbucks in sight.

Cue proud face because it hasn’t always been easy.

Incidentally, I really recommend going to a place like this if you are ever in Madrid, they’re not posh or swanky but they are really Spanish.

Today I had another cheers-cheers moment: I called a doctor’s surgery and made an appointment. As far as I can tell I made it correctly, with the right doctor and I have noted the time and date down right. You will be the first to know if I have screwed it up.

Life is made up of…small victories and tiny things that can really make you smile.

One of my perennial (petty and stupid) rants

You may have noticed that I rant, quite a lot, on my blog about driving in Spain. Here's a perfect illustration of the attitude to driving over here that provokes the aforementioned rants. I don’t want to be too sweeping but, many people here approach driving & road use with the kind of selfishness that would normally be preserved for something more tangibly own-able, like chocolate, or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. It’s an “I-own-the-road-and-have-the-right-to-do-precisely-as-I-please-without-regard-for-other-road-users” attitude.

The picture was taken of the road outside my house. As you can see, it’s a smallish two way side street in Madrid. I watched the guy park, actually let’s call it what it is; I watched the guy dump his car. It wasn’t that the space was tight; he simply could not be bothered to park properly, nor was he nipping in and back out; the Mercedes stayed parked like that for 3 days.

Ok, next post will not be driving related. Promise.

Driving force – The Sequel

Back in November last year I had a little mardy fit about Spanish driving. After more than a year of driving here I have a) something else non-ranty to add to it now and b) miraculously survived.

So. Traffic lights.

We all know what they are, they are the life-saving devices that allow us to work out whether we should stop or go at intersections (when our common sense and patience cannot be trusted to do this for us). In the UK we have three pretty colours of lights, each with their own specific meaning:

 Red: STOP

 Amber: PREPARE YOURSELF TO EITHER GO OR STOP (in London this is also seen as a dark green i.e. go anyway)

 Green: GO GO GO

Now, in Spain the system is rather simpler, they have red and green. Easy peasy we shout, stop and go!

You are wrong.

In Spain ALL colours of traffic lights are entirely negotiable.

Here are some handy tips for dealing with the lights in Spain:

1. Light has just turned from green to red: rather than stopping you must now put your foot down and speed through the red light. Ignore honking and pedestrians. NOTE; if the light has been red for longer than 5 seconds you MUST screech to a halt.

2. Light has just turned from red to green (without the handy amber warning period): stop faffing with the radio / doing your hair or makeup / shouting at the kids / reading the paper / cleaning your glasses. Floor it.

ALTERNATIVE

Carry on with what you were doing until someone honks. Floor it.

3. Waiting at a red light and all appears tranquil i.e. no cars to be seen: jump the light. There’s no-one coming (we hope).

Please remember that there is also the added complication of the flashing amber light. This makes its appearance at times of the day that are considered to be less busy traffic-wise. It basically means, “feel free to go if there is nothing coming, but do please slow down and think about it first”.

I have to admit that the rule-adherent pedant that lurks within the darkest recesses of me gets all cross, nostril-flarey and tutty when it sees this sort of rule-breaking. It also grudgingly admits that somehow it seems to work.

Of course, you get the occasional tosspot who throws caution to the wind and dices with death (their own and that of others) but generally it’s ok. Drivers (again, generally) look, assess and THINK and then make a decision on whether it is safe to go or not.

In my musing it has become apparent that this could be seen as a sort of (rubbish) metaphor for the Spanish attitude to many things. (My metaphors are not world renowned, just in case you were wondering).

In Spain you are expected to use your common sense and to try break as many rules as you possibly can. How refreshing.

Breathing space

I shall start this by stating an obvious fact that anyone would know. Spain is geographically larger than the UK. Very roughly put, it is about twice as large. Which, to the average Brit, is bloody humungus.

Spain also has a much smaller official population that the UK. Below I include figures and stats for those of you who care but, Spain’s population is roughly 1.3 times smaller than the UK’s.

Basically this should tell you that, in the UK, we live really close together and don’t have a lot of space to spread out. (Jeremy Clarkson talked about this very thing in his column in this week. He plans to invade France apparently).

I have to say that I noticed this long before I moved to Spain. When I was on my gap year I noticed that you could drive for hours without passing a house or a village, try doing that in the UK.

The Spanish are (obviously) used to the scale of their country. This is reflected in their language. To me, if you say something is ‘next’ to something else it means that it is, at most, a 5 minute walk. Here if they say that it means it’s roughly a half hour drive.

Every summer (mainly August) Madrid literally empties of everyone who is not a tourist as it is considered too hot for sensible people. I make no judgements on the tourists but the Madrileños are correct, it’s bloody hot. Anyway, the roads fill with people heading out of the city for the coast or the Sierra nearby (that’s the Spanish definition of ‘nearby’ btw, so roughly an hour or so). Off they drive on their hols, to the various coasts and they think nothing of a 3 hour plus drive, in fact, that’s considered to be pretty close really, all things considered.

I know people who drive 6 hours every other week to go and visit their families back in their pueblo. At least they have the decency to admit that 6 hours is a bit of a step.

I wonder what they (meaning anyone from a larger country than the UK) make of the UK. This is a place in which the farthest you can ever be from the sea is 80 miles. They must have constant vertigo. I mean, they have barely started driving and there it is, looming in front of them, The Edge. It must be very disconcerting.

I on the other hand consider any drive over an hour and a half to be really rather long and tedious. An hour or, at a push two, seems a perfectly reasonable time in which to reach the edge of the country and have a look over, just to see how the sea is and things.

I often had the sensation in the UK that I couldn’t get away from people. That wherever you go, you are surrounded or never far from people and things and noise. I may have been exaggerating slightly. I definitely didn't have that feeling in NZ or SA so I know what it is like to have a bit of space for your thoughts, a bit of peace. The sky also seemed bigger outside the UK, somehow limitless. You could really breathe it all in.

It is interesting to note that Brits are a pretty antisocial lot in spite of our proximity, or maybe because of it?

I could go on to comment on the sociability of the Spanish but that will make a post on its own so I’ll leave it until I can be arsed to write it.

Here’s a pic taken a 40 minute drive from the very centre of Madrid to give you an idea of how quickly you can get away and be largely alone here.

The stats

Spain’s population (as of Jan 08 which was the latest census) is 46,157,822. The UK’s 60,944,000 (projected population based on 2001 Census growth figures). Spain’s size: 195,884 square miles. The UK’s: 94,600 square miles (inc NI).

Bullfighting

I will get round to writing about bullfighting at some point, but right now, I cannot deal with the stream of abuse I would receive from the Legions of the Ignorant.

This columnist has a very valid point. My opinion is formed but I found this thought provoking, if rather preachy. The point about the British tendancy towards making statements that smack of Imperial Paternalism is embarrassingly true. We like to preach at people about things upon which we don't have a full grasp.

Hypocrisy is not pretty.

Sorry what?

I am currently suffering from a strange identity crisis that seems to be leaving me in a rather rebellious state of mind. I have lived overseas for a long period of time before (South Africa) but didn't feel enormously disconnected because I was in an essentially English speaking country. Moving to Spain, while geographically much closer, has proven to be an exponentially larger mental leap.

The first thing that happens when you arrive in a truly 'foreign' country (which for my purposes here constitutes a country in which English is not one of the main official languages) is that you realise that you can't actually communicate with anyone.

I wasn't one of these who arrives in a terra incognita expecting everyone to speak English. I arrived with a working knowledge of Spanish. I was by no mean fluent, but could make myself sort of understood using a clever combination of painstakingly constructed sentences using creaking present tense, laughably bad attempts at future and past tenses, along with expansive hand gesturing and meaningful looks.. I thought this was good. It worked well in bars, which, let's face it, are my natural habitat. It is only when I moved to actually live in Spain that I realised how total my linguistic impotence was, and what's more, how vulnerable and powerless that inability to communicate makes you feel. I am a communicator by trade and found (still find at times) the experience of being unable to express myself especially restrictive and frustrating.

All the colloquialisms people naturally use mean that what you learnt at school is completely bloody useless, overly formal and (to the Spanish) faintly amusing. Basically forget chatting amiably to people. Not only that, if someone veers off the 'script' in a shop or restaurant you are left blinking in confusion, startled and panicking like a rabbit-in-the-headlights. You can't make jokes or enjoy the true and deep connection that moments of real silliness bring. I miss those.

Another problem is that, well, how to put this...I am quite opinionated. I have things to say, points to make, valid and important things to share with the world *chortle* and with the language barrier it's a battle to sound even vaguely competent, let alone worthwhile. You sit there expressing yourself like a 10 year old child while quietly fuming. Fuming is bad for you. It adds wrinkles and gives me a headache.

The key here: you are taken back to a point in your life when you were learning everything for the first time. Your grasp of language and how to express larger concepts is pretty tenuous. You are effectively a child again and it is AWFUL! Something you have spent a lifetime perfecting is rendered totally useless.

A year on, I still get scuppered by simple things like calling a doctor's to make an appointment. And what about calling the police or an ambulance? Don't even get me started on trying to take out insurance or open a bank account. Things that you can do easily at home take real preparation and courage to do when you don't have a complete command of the language. It is not helped by the soul destroying amount of bureaucracy, paperwork and hoop-jumping there is to be done in Spain. There's also lots of queuing, but that's fine, you can queue in English, nobody minds, it's when you get to the desk the fun starts.

I am lucky; I work in a completely Spanish speaking environment and have Spanish friends and husband and live in a city where the grasp of English is not particularly strong. I have been forced to speak Spanish the majority of the time. This has meant that within a year I have been able to become passably fluent which alleviates some of the mardiness to which I am prone when thwarted in any way. I still have those moments of total impotence but they come with less humiliating frequency than before. I still struggle when talking about some of the deeper things in life but then I sometimes struggle to find words to express some of the things that I feel. Some things leave me speechless with rage regardless of language. Words are ultimately clumsy and often inadequate.

There is an enormous sense of achievement when someone looks at you and says 'wow, you have improved so much, you can hardly tell you're foreign sometimes'. They are probably being kind and encouraging but it is genuine enough.

So we come full circle to the 'identity crisis' I mentioned at the beginning. You find yourself wondering who exactly you are. You aren't who you normally are because you can't convey that person; there is no way to make her known to the world. You are just some (slightly mad) English girl in Spain with an amusing tendency to get caught dancing to her iPod in lifts, a stranger in a strange land. You can't be witty, or clever, or even express your frustration. Which is...well...frustrating!

As I mention, it has left me rebellious, wanting to kick out against the things that I see as holding me back, stopping me from being me, whoever that is. It has prompted me to re-examine myself, work out what is important to me, the kind of person I want to be, the things I am actually interested in and precisely what I want to get out of life. I have rediscovered my passion for some things; things that are really important to me. I am setting out on a metaphorical road to find out more, to learn, to actually feel and fight rather than stolidly accept. So actually, it isn't an identity crisis at all; it's more an identity redefinition or rediscovery. Ah. It's a good thing!

I still have moments of darkness and frustration when I cannot express myself as I would like to but I have just discovered a song with this line in it which I actually think makes a great point:

'Even as we speak we kill the mystique' – I'm Making Eyes at You, Black Kids.

Tele Talk - Part 5

I think I have vaguely lost the plot with this one but I will include it anyway, as, well, you know.  It’s my blog and I want to whinge and moan.  I just want to. 

5. And now, coming to you from across The Pond…

This is not a complaint about American tele - although I have seen some series that never made it to release in the UK, and could probably come up with numerous decent reasons as to why - it is a complaint about dubbing.

More specifically, bad dubbing.  Oh, and subtitling.  Again.  Bad. 

We often watch these programmes in their original forma and have the Spanish subtitles on.  As my knowledge of Spanish has increased, so has my realisation that the people who actually write the subtitles clearly have not got the faintest clue what the story is about or the humour.  I mean, a lot of what the write doesn’t bear even a passing resemblance to what is said.  I am talking about tone here, not the actual words.  Everyone knows that a language has it’s own way of communicating something.  But. It’s the tone that is wrong.  Sometimes though, it can even be basic facts born of incomprehension of pretty basic English.  Or, I suppose of not hearing what they have said properly.  Either way.  It isn’t the same programme when they get it wrong.  

The above can be said for dubbing.  

They dub a lot here.  Everything that is aired in that was originally in any other language is dubbed rather than subtitled.  It is normal here.  The people see nothing strange in it.  They are used to it.  Spain is one of the only Spanish-speaking countries to bother with dubbing at all.  Most Latin American countries just air the programmes with subtitles.  

Oh, and the voices?  Well, the voices don’t resemble to original voices in any way.  Karen from ‘Will & Grace’ is an example of a character whose voice belies, well, her character but also defines it.  Here she talks normally.  It takes away from the humour of the characterisation.  Homer doesn’t have the same voice, he doesn’t even say ‘d’oh’.  Homer without d’oh.  I’m sorry, what?  

It’s all well and good to say that something doesn’t translate well so they have changed it, but, in that case, don’t air it.  Or don’t dub it.  Just air it as is with subtitles.  Those who get it, get it.  Those who don’t don’t.  

Dubbing also has the added irritation of just being really counter-intuitive.  At least for me.  It’s the mouths moving but the words not matching thing.  There are also times when the mouths have stopped moving and we are looking at someone else but the original person is still talking.  It’s just weird.  

Thank feck for that, I have finished.  I promise, my next blogs will be a more reasonable length and may actually be interesting...although I make no promises about the interesting part!

Tele Talk - Part 4

Beware.  I have lost impetus BUT I have completed points 4 and 5 of my enormously long winded whinge.  Final part of large whining session that I have broken into separate long whiney chunks is about to continue.  Part 4 people.  Only one to go after this. 

We. Can. Make it! 

4. It’s all in the timing

Scheduling.  

I am well aware that here in Spain people keep different hours.  They eat later, stay up later and generally avoid the hot hot hot midday period.  People do however have jobs, most of which start at 8 or 9 and finish at 3 or 7.30 depending on lunch break time allowance and stuff like that.  So, people do actually have to wake up and go to work during the week.  Right, so, could someone explain the wisdom of airing a film that starts at 10pm and can run til 2am with ad breaks midweek?  Do people actually stay up to watch these things?  Clearly they do or they wouldn’t do it.  One show actually closes with a song which is meant for the kids (‘vete a dormir’ – go to bed).  The show closes at 10.15pm by which time most kids in the UK would be long in the arms of Morphius, with any luck anyway.

Actually, it is not so much the late timing of these things it is the fact that the published schedule bears no real resemblance to the times the programmes actually air.  

They always start late.  

Here I come back to point 3.  They start late because of the ad breaks overrunning.  They finish late because of the 20 minute long ad breaks that are inserted unceremoniously every 20 minutes. 

In short, everything starts and finishes later here, by accident or design.  

So, the pIanned schedule is generally later here.  You have to work tomorrow but don’t want to miss the film scheduled for late tonight so; you set your Canal+ (Spanish Sky+) to grab.  It grabs the timeslot as ordered and….you end up with 20 minutes of ads at the beginning and miss the final 20 minutes of the film, which is, let’s face it, when it becomes worth watching.   It would be absolutely certain to happen.

I would be annoyed.  Lucky for me there is nothing worth recording that I can’t watch via some other means.

Phew, that’s a relief.

Tele Talk - part 3

Hurrah, two posts two days in a row!  How do you like them apples??  

What the f*ck am I talking about?

3. Taking a break

Ad breaks.  We all know what they are for.  They are a quick break to allow us to do any of the following: 1) Make a cuppa 2) rush to the loo 3) channel surf.  You have nice little announcements at the beginning an end, giving you due warning that you have 20 seconds to get back infront of the box.  On some channels you get an extra few seconds as the sponsors put on some announcements.  

Not so here chaps.  

Ad breaks here begin completely unannounced and usually in the middle of the action.  I watched Bad Boys 2 a while ago (not a great film, but, you know, it was on) and, I kid you not, an ad for Activia began slap bang in the middle of an explosion.  Granted in this case the film is basically formed of one long sequence of explosions but this was a good sequence.  I seem to recall a car chase, a speed boat veering off a trailer and careering along a freeway…and something about Activia reducing bloating.  

That which begins unannounced ends unannounced.  Need I say more?  The film begins where it left off but without the slightest sign that this is about to happen.  It can be disconcerting.  ‘That forever-stay lipgloss looks good…oh, is that someone’s arm flying across the screen?  Does lipgloss do that?  Wait?  What?’

The confusion of the recommencement of programming is compounded by the fact that many ad breaks in the evening can last as long as 20-30 minutes.  This is absolutely true.  I only wish I was joking.  By the time the film (or whatever) restarts you have forgotten entirely what you were watching.

This said, some channels do restrict their ad breaks to 5 minutes and do announce them BUT, I have found that this happens mainly during the early evening programming and also ups the frequency of the breaks.  Basically, you should view the shows as an interruption to the advertising.

Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, the state-funded channels also have ads.  

Cue switch over to the beeb (no adverts – Hurrah!)

Tele Talk - part 2

You thought I would forget.  Well, I haven’t.  Yet.  

2. Balancing act

One thing that came as a surprise to me, naïve little libertarian that I am, was that the main TV channels (we are talking about the Spanish equivalent of the BBC here, not just some random channel that no one watches) are state funded.  As in, funded by the Government.  As you can imagine, this is not really all that conducive to balanced and unbiased broadcasting.  If there is a change of governing party (right to left or vice versa) the spin (I will use that term because, lets be honest, that is what it is) of a certain news topic can change direction so fast it’ll give you whiplash.  Someone who yesterday was persona non gracia suddenly becomes the flavour of the month. This also works the other way round.  Evil to good, good to evil.

As a result, I watch news coverage on TVE with a pinch of salt, change channels and compare it to other news coverage on other commercially funded channels.  Then, just for fun, I watch the British news coverage and compare.  I may have too much free time but it is interesting to see how the coverage can really diverge, even between Spanish channels.  

Not that I give more credence to the commercially funded channels either, it is just an interesting comparative exercise.  Neither am I saying that the UK news coverage is always the best or unbiased, no way.  For me, all news reporting should be viewed through the prism of scepticism; what is the story, who will benefit, why break it now, what other ‘smaller’ news stories are being obscured? Etc etc.  

Funnily enough, the tendency to bias I have noted here doesn’t just apply to state-funded TV, or to the news.  Coverage here generally has a bias of some sort or another, explicit or implicit.  Funding affects everything.  Commercial channels would NEVER be able to air (let alone produce) programmes like Top Gear or Watchdog, their commercial ad-space-buying funders just would not allow it.  If they did, you could bet that the car company that spent the most on advertising with the network would have produced the Car of the Year for whichever channel made the show.  

And do not get me started on the Grand Prix coverage.  I think that here the only person who actually races, is Alonso.  The main commentator happens to be rather a good buddy of Señor Alonso, which adds wonderfully to the balanced nature of the broadcasting.  At least an hour is spent on Alonso’s qualifying times, his car, any changes and possibly, what his haircut is like this week and how many times he sneezed on Monday.  Then there is the pesky interference of a couple of hours of racing, in which Alonso comes, well nowhere actually but his every move is scrutinized and breathtaking in its perfection.  After this there will be another 30 minutes of interviewing Alonso along with details of his finishing position and what he will have for dinner.  There is then a 30 second mention of the winner, unless it is Hamilton.  If that should occur, apparently, nobody won. Or nobody worth mentioning anyway. 

It could be worse though, it could be Italy. 

p.s. If you don’t know what I am talking about check out Berlusconi’s media holdings and you’ll work it out.

Tele talk

So, I am officially bad at blogging. It’s odd because I think, oh, I must write my next blog, stuff has happened and I want to blog about it, then, I sit down and can’t for the life of me remember what I wanted to write. Then of course I wander off, distracted by tea and the BBC.  

Yes. That’s right. The BBC. I may live in Spain but I can’t live without the beeb.  

The tele here is simply dreadful, and I mean DREADFUL. The Spaniards I have spoken to agree with me for the most part too. There are a few good programmes that are worth a look and are pretty informative, the highlights that I can think of are: Callajeros, Madrileños por el Mundo and El Hormiguero. For the most part however they are real tripe (not to say that many of the UK TV is not the same). I thought that I would do some bullet pointy ‘Top 5 Worst Things About Spanish TV’, you know, just for kicks.  

OK so, my Top 5 Worst Things About Spanish TV are:

1. Soaps, gossip, soaps, gossip…need I go on?

Ok, so the first gripe is that Spanish TV seems to be all about the soaps, or gossip programmes, which they try to sell as ‘current affairs’ but are basically an issue of Heat.  

I will start with the soaps. A lot of them are Latin American and bear more than a passing resemblance to the soaps aired by their North American neighbours. They are just so contrived. Comical even. The distressing thing is they are trying to be serious, whereas I think the American versions are rather more tongue in cheek. They honestly want us to have palpitations about the fact that (I am making this up now) Enrique, who is married to Conchita, is having an affair with Pilar who is incidentally Conchita’s closest friend and possibly her half sister though no-one yet knows that her father was a philanderer.….but I just DON’T care! They address no real issues, no real worries, give no advice and bring nothing out into the open for public debate. They always consist of beautiful, perfectly coiffed people who live in houses the size of Kent. Think Sunset Beach in Spanish, the dramatic music, the inability to act in any serious sense, the hair, the ridiculous cringeworthy plots (btw thanks for that experience Channel 5, it was enlightening!) It’s Footballer’s Wives but they take it seriously. Uh oh!  

There are other soaps that appear to have a budget roughly equivalent to 20p an episode. There is one that springs to mind that uses the same set for every single backdrop; they just change the props about a bit. It is so shoddily done everything shakes every time someone slams a door…which is quite often it seems. I can think of one which is called ‘Dame el Chocolate’ roughly, ‘Give me the Chocolate’. It’s set in a factory and they make, you guessed it, CHOCOLATE! Who came up with that one?  I include a YouTube link to this wonderous soap below if you fancy checking out a snippet. (couldn't embed because the functionality wasn't enabled on YT).

Dame el Chocolate

Now, the ‘current affairs’ programmes. Don’t be fooled, these are not current affairs at all, they are GOSSIP. If there is anything that the Spanish love it is gossip. They say that the national Spanish pastime is envy, of ones neighbours and friends and even family. The obsession with gossip ties in neatly with that. They absolutely thrive on it. We think the paps in the UK are bad but they could learn a thing or two from the guys out here. There are hours and hours of TV coverage dedicated daily to the antics of the latest ‘celeb’. The funny thing is that non-one here seems to object to being filmed, photographed and scrutinised, it goes with the territory as it were. The most normal person in the street will happily be filmed for hours on end about any old thing. People allow themselves to be filmed being taken away to hospital with an arm hanging off (not kidding). I personally find the spectacle of bereaved families weeping outside courtrooms stopping to give incoherent and inconsolable interviews to every TV station that asks for one particularly disturbing. The emotions and dirty laundry of everyone here seem to be open for airing and no-one minds. It is such a contrast. The Brits would (for the most part) rather shoot ourselves in the head than be filmed sobbing uncontrollably or screaming incoherently (literally) at some official we feel has wronged us, it is just not at all what we are about. Upon witnessing such spectacles in the ‘current affairs’ and even serious news programmes, I just mutter to myself in my very British manner. *mutter* never beaten *mutter* us in *mutter* battle *mutter* no bloody *mutter* wonder *mutter*. I am awful. I know.  

The knock on affect of the obsession with airing these soaps and gossip is that there are simply no decent Spanish drama series. At least not that I have seen but I could be speaking out of turn (see point 5 when I post it!). The standard of filming here, at least for TV, seems to be altogether lower. My (Spanish) hubby was quite simply astounded at the quality of programmes like ‘Rome’, ‘The Tudors’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’. He honestly couldn’t get over it. The natural history programmes too, Sir David Attenborough in particular, he just cannot get over the filming standard and the style.  

He’s a bigger fan of the beeb than I am.  

On writing this list looks like it is going to be long so, I will write it all and then publish in instalments, maybe that way we will get something resembling regular posting happening!

Echelon

Provehito in Altum

Driving force

I am not good at this…

….I have said it before and I will say it again, I am no good at blogging regularly, although I spend a LOT of time of the computer I never seem to get round to it. To make it worse, a lot has happened since I last bothered to write anything down and things have been bouncing around my brain ready to launch into cyber space but then I forget all about it. Which is typically me, I have definitely got some attention span issues. I am full of ideas; it’s the execution that fails me.

So much has happened that I have decided it is not worth writing much of it down, it’s just the account of one life among many anyway so not of much interest. There is one thing though that has been a recurring theme over the last few weeks that I think is worth a mention. I started this whole thing to observe differences in Spanish and Anglo Saxon ways of bumbling around on the mortal coil, more as a reference for me than for anyone else, although, there is an off-chance that others might be interested.

Anyway, blah blah blah. Driving. Driving in Spain is not for the fainthearted. For the first time in my life I feel genuinely brave when I go round a roundabout. Which is nice I suppose.

I don't mind driving here; you just sort of have to have eyes in the back and sides of your head. At the same time you have to pretend that you don't see anyone at all so that you can still muscle in and go where you want to go. Trick 1 of driving in Spain: Master the art of seeing EVERYTHING whilst appearing to see absolutely nothing and seemingly not caring one jot for your car. It is not easy. I have an irrational sentimental attachment to my car. And my life.

Trick 2: Please understand that indicators are optional extras on cars in Spain and it seems that most people don't like to pay the extra for this feature. That or somehow they charge here per usage of the aforementioned indicator. Whatever the reason, they appear very scarce. Endangered even.

Trick 3: my dad gave me one piece of good advice (ever) and it was "if you drive as if everyone is out to kill you, you may just make it out alive". This is indeed wise advice although it has done nothing to lessen my innate paranoia about the world.

Trick 4: Avoid women drivers. Yes. I am a girl and yes, I am all for equality BUT having said that, the women drivers here are among the worst I have seen anywhere. The problems are many and varied, they have: no sense of anyone else’s existence, the attention span of gnats and basically drift in and out of lanes in a rather listless and disinterested fashion, sometimes at high speed while talking on the phone, doing their makeup or shouting at their kids/boyfriends/husbands. They seem to genuinely disconnect from reality the minute they get in a car, they do the strangest things and then get really really outranged (and a outraged Spanish woman is something to see) when they drive into you or pull out without looking and you overtly question their decision-making capability. Spanish Women Drivers: AVOID AVOID AVOID (especially when outraged).

The next thing is less a trick and more a series of observations that relate to the drier more central and southern areas of Spain rather than the north. When it rains here, people crash, a lot. The roads in the city grind to a halt owing to the number of people randomly smashing into one another. The windscreen wipers on the cars here are different and they are basically not up to the job. Rain here is scarce so the roads get greasy when they get wet. They also don’t use cat’s eyes here on the roads. I had not really noticed the difference here; I drive at night and have street lights etc so no big deal. Well, it is a huge deal when the heavens open, the roads turn to rivers and you cannot see the little painted white lines on the roads. Cat’s eyes. I miss them (but only when it rains).

Found of Madrid

So, I had a small melt down at the weekend searching for an outfit for a friend’s wedding and it literally took me the whole weekend to find something that I liked! Well, this wedding is in the UK and it is in October. Sun dresses that I usually wear to weddings at home will not cut it in October methinks so I required a shopping trip to rectify my lack of outfit. If only it could have been that easy!

The thing I have noticed about weddings here is that people tend to dress much more formally, no light summer suit or summer dress or the like here, oh no, the full fitted works or at the very least something resembling a ball gown that costs well over 100€ or you just are not quite the ‘thing’. Every time I went into a shop and said I was looking for something for a wedding I was whisked of to the expensive sections where silk and petticoats reign supreme. A bit over the top for a UK wedding unless you are one of the wedding party really. It made finding something formal-but-not-too-formal rather a trial. Fear not dear readers (not that I have any), I found the outfit after 3 days of searching and running around different branches of the same shop looking for something in my size (Incidentally, I seem to be the same size as every other woman in Spain because nowhere has my size!) .

However, I digress, my point is not just regarding the differences in dressing up for weddings in Spain, it is more regarding the fact that, for the entire day I was driving around Madrid and the surrounding area looking for an outfit and…I didn’t get lost!

I can go to most places in the world and have myself pretty much orientated as to which way is up and how to get from A-Z within a week or so. With Madrid I have really struggled. I often say I navigate by using water as a reference point which is true and since Madrid lack a significant body of water (sorry but that is not really what I would call a river) I have issues finding my way around. I don’t know what it is, but Madrid has had me stumped and only now am I finding my feet more. The weekend was a personal triumph for me, not because I found an outfit (rather a bonus that) but because I found my way around completely by myself. And no, I don’t have a TomTom.