Spanish Infantry Develop Rocket Arm

Remember Laban's trip to Asturias this time last year ?

"I really am surprised there's not mass civil disobedience. Their 1930s forebears - right or left - wouldn't have stood for it."

And our tour of the industrial valleys ?

As you drive up the AS117 through Langreo to San Martin, you could be in the Swansea Valley or Vale of Neath - in the days when the factories were still open.

It felt like early 60s South Wales - a main road and a railway along the valley, houses clustered above where the valley was wide and crammed in where it wasn't, factories below.

At San Martin, we passed the Pozo Soton coal mine and the Galva Zinc plant. The former is now the centre of what looks like a rerun of the 1984-5 UK miners strike.

Mining has been a key element in the local economy in the provinces of Asturias and Leon for centuries. Many miners fear that government plans to reduce subsidies from 300m euros (£242m; $376m) to 110m euros will doom their industry.

Spanish coal miners armed with homemade rockets and slingshots have clashed with police over the country's austerity measures. They fired on the officers in El Entrego near Oviedo close to the mine 'El Soton' which has been hit by cutbacks in coal subsidies. Strikes, road blockades and mine sit-ins have hit 40 pits as 8,000 workers in northern Spain continued their protests.

(incidentally, I note that the Mail's coverage is much superior to the BBCs, and that you'll search the left Brit blogs in vain for a mention of this story)


Two points. I'm not at all opposed to subsidies in the right place and time. The pre-Euro Spanish government managed to keep the mines going without bankrupting itself. La vrai France, so beloved of the English, the France of small family farms and little towns full of real shops, is a product of tariff and subsidy - and long may it remain so.

And rocketry - those photographs brought back memories of a much more irresponsible Laban, and of "battles" between student houses fought across streets from attic windows. It's surprising how accurate a tube-launched rocket can be - but when launching from indoors the loader also needs to have a paper plate or similar handy, to block the rear of the tube - otherwise the room soon fills with smoke, and the sparks can set things ablaze. Just ask Mario Balotelli. 

Spanish Libido Falls

70% off condoms. Times may be hard but ... yet the seaside bars and restaurants were crowded, and if the young men dining their senoritas at harbourside tables were boiling with righteous rage, they kept it to themselves.


















"City of Langreo - City without employment". A bit harsh - there are still plenty of hefty industrial plants about. Great pipework.





















I think this is a Bayer plant, but I may be wrong.



















They're two cheeks of the same fascist backside, I tell you! Some child in Gijon thinks there's not much between the socialist PSOE and the conservative PP. In Oviedo I saw graffiti supporting the Falangists.












Enough said.

There was a lot of graffiti directed at the housing boom/bust. Lots of half-finished and abandoned developments which obviously stopped when the bottom dropped out of housing. Still a fair bit of development going on though.

Bulnes

The path is steep and stony. It's blazing hot - every 20 minutes you stop and slather on more factor 50. You've been going an hour and two-thirds of the water's been drunk.




















It's also rather dangerous. Unbeknownst to you, when you were stuffing your daughter's jacket into your rucksack, wife and child have taken 'what looked like a shortcut' - concentrating on fitting everything back into the bag, you blindly follow, not noticing that the main path goes up and to the left. You're now close to the edge of a big drop and the path seems a lot smaller than it was.

Ten minutes later ...

"I can't believe the authorities signpost this path as a suitable route. You'd never be allowed to do that in England. Do people really take small children up here ?"

Fifteen minutes later ... the path is between a foot and eighteen inches wide. We've climbed enough to make going back probably more hazardous than going on. To the right, at the edge of the path, a drop to the river several hundred feet below.

"Walk carefully - stay as close into the hill as you can. This is dangerous. They must be crazy to designate this as a route"

"I wonder if we should have gone left instead of straight on when the path split"

"WHAT !"

We had to keep going. About another half mile and maybe thirty minutes on, our tiny path zig-zagged up to join the broad main path, which we'd been following a couple of hundred feet lower down the ravine. We'd added a somewhat twitchy hour to the walk time. And I swore never again to just follow without keeping my eyes open.

Walking on, the ravine opens out - higher up you can fill your bottles with clear, cold river water.

And then you come to what seems like a mirage - an oasis for hot, sweaty walkers, a dream of paradise, a beer advert come to life.

















There's a fountain of cool drinking water, shady trees about a river, a small bridge. And about six bars and restaurants! Bulnes was presumably once a very cut-off village - but a funicular railway cut through the mountain (and free to locals) now means that all the wants of the climber or tourist can be brought up.

After a walk like ours, to sit under a sunshade and sip a chilled beer feels very good. And the descent is a great improvement on the ascent - even the heat's less, with the ravine now in shadow. Lovely place - I can see why people rave about the Picos de Europa. Will come again.

The Spanish Are Bastards, Too

El Pais :

One out of every three babies in Spain is born to unwed parents, twice as many as 10 years ago. The decline in marriages, the rise in single mothers, immigration and a more secular society have all contributed to this trend, which brings Spain more in line with the European Union average.

Not quite up there with the Welsh or Scots (or Geordies), but well on the way.

Since 1981, when the law eliminated differences between children born in and out of wedlock, the proportion of the latter has risen steadily. If it was 4.4 percent that year, by 2000 it was 17.7 percent, and in 2009 — the last year for which the statistics office holds data — that rate had grown to 34.5 percent, or 170,604 babies.

That's nothing. We abort more babies than that each year in England and Wales alone ! But I suppose the low numbers reflect the ongoing demographic disaster.

"These are astounding figures," said Constanza Tobío, a professor of sociology at Madrid's Carlos III University. "Couples have become more modern, and Spanish mothers have quickly become almost like Swedish or British mothers on that front. This change is the result of the secularization of society, of tolerance, of mothers' autonomy — they no longer need the safety of marriage to procreate — and of legal equality for children regardless of their parents' civil status."

Does "autonomy" = Daddy State, as in the UK ?

I mustn't get too apocalyptic. On the evidence of a week trying to cram in everything from the dockside quarter of Bilbao and the industrial valleys of Asturias (puzzling Susan with my requests, as I drove, for her to take photos of 'that big chemical works' or 'the graffiti on that bridge') to the touristy beaches and the mountains, Northern Spain is not only a great deal more civilised than the UK - so many people, drinking so much, so late into the evening, and so little trouble - but they still actually seem to make things there. As you drive up the AS117 through Langreo to San Martin, you could be in the Swansea Valley or Vale of Neath - in the days when the factories were still open.

And that's not to mention the greatest natural resource of Spain - rock, the quarrying and crushing of which, despite its grand scale, makes nary a dent in the stony peninsula. I presume a lot of it ends up on their excellent and spectacularly engineered roads - the steep left hand curve and drop as you approach Laredo from Bilbao is enough to give you vertigo, as you realise that beyond the barriers* the city (and beach) are several hundred feet below.




* which flash on and off, warning you NOT to go straight on and pointing you left, adding to the computer-game feel of the drive. Could have done without them.

The Call of the Pipes

We're a bit strapped for cash, like so many families, so alas we pulled the mooted summer trip to Iceland, a place I've always wanted to visit and which is still pretty expensive - what must prices have been like before the crisis ? Instead we're going somewhere else I've never been, the Asturias region of northern Spain.

It was Cornwall for the last two years and Gower the year before - Susan insisted we get off the island this year. My suggestion of Arran alas was howled down.

The Spanish probably need what little dosh we have more than the Icelanders anyway. Iceland pulled the plug on its banks, took a big hit on its housing market and currency, but is now recovering rather well. The UK hosed its banks with taxpayer cash, propped up our insane property values, and we're in for a lost decade of stagflation.

Our young people are unemployed or under-employed, graduates are still living at home on £14,000 a year jobs at the age of 28. At the other end of the employment spectrum, fifty-something former project managers have been sat at home for three years, firing off ten CVs a day. Comment in today's Telegraph :

"I don’t know any extended family not supporting a distressed, disillusioned, despairing young person - often with a degree or good qualifications. And maybe sympathising with an older person, desperately jobseeking after redundancy.”

Our children, bar a fortunate few, will not be able to own the roof over their heads, something my and my parents generation could take for granted. We're going back to the days of my grandmother, who lived in rented accommodation all her life.

But compared with the Spanish, we have minor problems. 43% youth unemployment ! When you consider Spain isn't exactly flush with youths since the demographic collapse post-Franco, that's quite an achievement for Mr Zapatero's Socialists aka "the most loathsome government in Europe".

I really am surprised there's not mass civil disobedience. Their 1930s forebears - right or left - wouldn't have stood for it.

Where was I ? Dunno. But in solidarity with the young unemployed of Spain (sort of), we’ve booked a house this summer near the magnificently named Villaviciosa, famed as one of the very last towns to surrender to Franco’s forces, as well as being the birthplace of bagpipe maestro José Ángel Hevia Velasco. Be interesting to test the political waters.

Here's the man himself. Very Celtic - didn't realise the influences in that part of Spain - and it's cider country, too. The massed pipers at the end could be the Men of Lonach. You get a feel for the forebears of the Native Brits, making their way North from the Iberian Refuge as the last Ice Age glaciers retreated before them.

Those Awful Stereotypes

One Timothy Egan in the NYT :

Beware, they told us in the train stations of northern Italy, of the Gypsy baby trick — an old ruse by Europe’s most reviled underclass. A woman will suddenly ask you to hold her child, and then just as you fumble to respond another Gypsy will grab your wallet.

Watch out, they cautioned us in the lovely Turkish port city of Kusadasi, for the Gypsies who prey on tourists along the waterfront. And old lady will bump you, while a teenage hooligan grabs your bag. The Gypsy old-lady trick.

Those Gypsies, known by the less pejorative term of Roma, are getting kicked around the continent again, hardy perennials of European scapegoats. Unspoken characterizations based on ancient stereotypes — they are shiftless, clannish, prone to petty thievery and to begging, prostitution and dark motives — are now out in the open.

Funnily enough, I was given a similar warning in Malaga some twenty years back - 'watch out for the gypsy flower-sellers' said the girl at the hotel desk. Now Laban pictured someone sitting in front of large flower-baskets in the style of the late Buster Edwards at Waterloo, and wasn't too worried.

About to cross a road - a lady of maybe sixty blocks the way, thrusting a carnation at me and smiling. A younger woman with her.

"Cuanto es ?"

"Una peseta - para fiesta" (it was nearly Christmas and large fireworks were being sold from open street stalls - not at all like the UK)

(Rapid calculation - about 0.5p. Much too cheap to be kosher)

"No. No peseta. No fiesta"

Would you believe, she wouldn't take no for an answer, stepped up to me and started pinning it. I leapt backwards about a yard. Which pulled her left hand (empty) out of my right-hand rear trouser pocket. Impressive - my eye had been on the hand with the carnation, had not had a clue.

I spoke to them both in English then. They seemed to understand and went away.

It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

A feminist classic of Edwardian times, recorded in 1932 by the Spanish mezzo-soprano Conchita Supervia.

I once walked with her by the Arno, in Florence, where navvies engaged in road work put down their picks and stared in frank admiration as she passed. Supervia, without even a glance in their direction, sensed their admiration and visibly preened herself.

"You surely don’t enjoy men looking at you like that?" I asked.

"I do," she replied, amused at such a very Anglo-Saxon question. "I don’t find it unpleasant to think that they are all saying to themselves, “If I was a rich man, that’s what I’d want.”"

If you want to learn a lesson with the fan,
I'm quite prepared to teach you all I can
So ladies, every one, pray observe how it is done,
It's a simple little lesson with the fan.

If you chance to be invited to a ball,
And meet someone that you don't expect at all,
And you want him close beside you,
While a dozen friends divide you,
Well of course, it's most unladylike to call,

So you look at him a minute - nothing more
And you cast your eyes demurely on the floor,
And you wave your fan just so,
Well, towards you, don't you know,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

When you see him coming to you, simple you,
Oh be very, very careful what you do
With your fan just kindly play,
And look down as if to say
It's a matter of indifference to you,

Then you flutter and you fidget with it so,
And you hide your little nose behind it so,
And when he begins to speak
You just lay it on your cheek,
In that fascinating manner that you know,

And when he tells the old tale o'er and o'er,
And vows that he will love you evermore,
Gather up your little fan
And secure him while you can,
It's a delicate suggestion - nothing more ...

(When she takes a crack at an English song the results are quite charming.)

I don't have a clue ...

Who Gerald Warner is. But I like the cut of his jib :

The most loathsome government in Europe, outside of Downing Street, is in deep doo-doo and it is a joy to behold. The ludicrous regime in Spain of José Luis Zapatero has driven the country into bankruptcy. From its inception, as a consequence of a knee-jerk, eve-of-poll hissy fit by the electorate after its conservative predecessor stupidly blamed the Atocha station bombing in Madrid on ETA instead of al-Qaeda, the Zapatero government has been little more than a Spanish Civil War re-enactment society.

Why don't you stop pussy-footing and tell us what you really think ?

Persecuting the Church, trying to force doctors to commit abortion against their consciences, pulling down statues of General Franco and renaming streets in honour of Red murderers... no student union extravagance of gesture politics has been neglected...

If precedent is followed, Zapatero will soon issue the unemployed with government petrol to burn down churches. Of course, the really fun bit – if the historical parallel is fully adhered to – would be the emergence of another Franco and his dismantling of the whole shambles.

Hmm. Unlikely in a nation where they seem to have dropped off somewhere in the early 90s. Churchill wrote of Barcelona's cafes in 1935 as full of "eager-facd, black-coated young men purring together with glistening eyes about Spanish politics". Alas, young men are just what the current Spanish state is short of.

Spain - Doomed

Iwondered why Spaniards, long famed for their fighting spirit, caved in so completely to the Madrid train bombs. I hadn't realised the extent of the Spanish cultural collapse, which makes Britain's look like a little local difficulty.

This pollyanna-ish Times article by Thomas Catan :

In the dark heart of machismo shines a beacon of sexual equality. In 30 years Spanish women have gone from being mere chattels to the most liberated in Europe.

Is best interpreted in the light of these amazing demography statistics. Hit 'submit all' for the full horror. The Spanish have stopped breeding.

In 1975 the average senora had 2.8 babies - well above the 2.1 replacement rate. But that rate was passed in 1981, and is currently at 1.3, having been as low as 1.1 only a few years ago. You have to wonder who's responsible for the slight recent increase - Spaniards ?

Lets do the maths on a 40m population, who have all their children at 30. 50/50 sex split.

30 years - they've had 26m children. Another 30 - those 26m have had 16.9m. You've more than halved the population in 2 generations.

The excellent site however shows the population actually rising from 42 to 52 million by 2060. Based on ?

"The first situation considered is that the number of new arrivals of foreigners in Spain will evolve according to the most recent trend until the year 2010, after which they remain constant. The total number of arrivals in Spain during the period 2007-2059 increases to 14.6 million persons."

14.6 million high-fertility arrivals, by the look of it. These aren't Brit retirees. And that's assuming that arrivals stay constant after 2010. Looks like the Alhambra and Generalife might be returning to the previous owners.