Is Andalucía backward? Frontier living

Es atrasada, Andalucía? Is Andalucia backward?

In the bar Lopez the other day, the conversation turned to guns. Where would we get a licence, I asked Pepe? The thought was brought on after Sandy bought an air gun for the children: he pretended he was going to use it on the local guerrilla cats, Jack and Mabel. “Maybe I would like a gun,” I suggested. I started to whine: “I never get anything – you all get quads and guns, what do I get? Anyway, I can shoot.” Not true exactly, though I have had a go. “It’s very remote where we live: what if someone tried to attack me?” Sandy was quite amenable and informed me that, in Spain, you are entitled to shoot intruders, and even if you kill them, it’s ok. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

The subject of guns made us instantly popular in the bar. Pepe is an enthusiast, as the boars’ heads on the wall, testify. He showed us a plaque with several boars’ teeth mounted in gold, and his name underneath. His wife, brother and father in law gathered round the table. The brother offered to take Sandy’s military ID and exchange it for a gun licence – how, was not quite clear. There are lots of wild boar round where we live, he said, he would take Sandy out if he wanted to go. What if I want to shoot? Pepe said I could do a 3 day course in Arboleas. In the old days, he said, you didn’t need any of that, but now they want to make sure you don’t shoot someone by mistake. I can’t imagine anyone checks what you do up where we live. The conversation moved on to laws in Andalucia: there are more than there used to be, but not that many. Yes, it is “atrasada” he said, backward. We had the first wave, which was construction, people coming to live here. Now we need the second wave, infrastructure. Apparently, in two years there will be a fast train to Madrid from Almería, stopping at Vera – things are on the move.

I heard various other opinions on this subject last week, a large part of which was spent trying to get the residency sorted out. The last I had heard of this was early in the month, when Inma had told me to call her back on the 12th, when she would be back in the office. I called.
“No, Inma isn’t here,” the man on the other end said. No surprises there: she is usually out having a coffee when I call. “She’s still on holiday.”
“Oh,” I said. “When will she be back – next week?”
“No, the week after.” Hmm – after my date with the Almería, which she arranged, and for which she and I need to do the paperwork. I got a bit irritable while explaining this.
“She told me to call her on the 12th – I need to do all this paperwork before Friday,” I said.
“Well, what can I do, she’s not here,” her sister said. “She’s on holiday.”
In the end, I called Pedro, the lawyer, who had introduced me to Inma, and got him to call them. A woman called back and said Inma would call me later that day, not to worry. No te preocupes. If I didn’t worry, nothing would happen, would it? What would have happened if I hadn’t called Inma? Would she have called me? I explained to the lady that Inma needed to ring the house number. She usually likes to call the mobile, but it doesn’t work in the house. Fine, fine, no te preocupes.
Inma didn’t ring that afternoon: I knew she wouldn’t. In the morning, Pedro rang and asked if she had called. No. A bit later, Inma finally called and said she had left messages on the house answerphone. I explained that there wasn’t an answerphone; she must have called the mobile. She insisted it was the house, so I agreed there must have been a mistake. Anyway, we got a meeting for Wednesday in Albox, famous for its hundreds of illegal houses, occupied by Brits.

In between, we had the people who sold us the pool heating over: Johannes is German and Marianne Dutch. They have lived here for four years and don’t speak Spanish, so are very much ex-pats. They talked about the things that were wrong with Andalucía – how long it all takes, how the banking system is insecure, how the whole economy is a house built on the shifting sand of the corrupt construction industry, which will fall away before long. How Zapatero isn’t really clamping down on it at all – how Vera is full of the Russian mafia. (True, you do see a lot of women wearing gold and leopard-skin skirts and a lot of bling in the day - apparently Russian). How the train to Almería will never be built in two years, more like ten! During all this I got a bit bored. I mean, it may well be true, but they came and lived here, didn’t they? They like the climate, presumably, they like the way of life. Complaining about it is like marrying a girl because she is beautiful and temperamental and then moaning that she doesn’t keep time and isn’t a good housewife. I suppose that often happens, particularly, I imagine, if the man is German and the woman Spanish – not that I have ever met a couple like that. It is unlikely, like a horse mating with a zebra. Being an ex-pat is a strange way of life – you are neither one thing nor the other. This is always going to be the case, even if you learn the language to a high standard, but I can’t imagine it is comfortable, long-term, if you don’t – like always travelling and never arriving.

Frontier country

I went to Albox on Wednesday – the first time I have driven there since we lived here. It was an interesting drive – the shortcut had road works, so I ended up on a dirt track, as so often happens, then hit more road works in Arboleas, and drove a way in the dry river bed before finding the road again. There are times when you wish you had your husband’s 4x4. This all contributed to the strange, Wild West feeling of going to Albox, which is a bit like a cross between Hurghada, where we used to dive, and the Hove, with a bit of Alabama thrown in. The main street looks to me very like the main street in a cowboy movie, only bigger. It also has that feeling of being on the frontier, of rednecks and pick-up trucks, and dust. There is construction everywhere, and mis-spelt English signs hanging on one chain, saying things like “All your legal needs HERE!” in different colours. There are quite a lot of large people with tattoos walking about, but there is an alternative life too: for instance, a health food shop, run by a nice lady who reminded me, weirdly, of the deluded woman in Catherine Tate who obsessively dates people on death row. I used to think Albox was just an armpit, but now I see there is something about it. The Brits who come here come here because it is cheap and sunny, but you have to have guts to get up and go, and you can feel that in the air. They are rough round the edges, but at least they have edges. More importantly, for the Spanish, they are the mainstay of the local economy. The Mercadona supermarket in Albox is one of the most profitable in Spain - and almost all the shoppers are British - living on the profits of the house they sold in the UK, their pension or savings, the income they can make shuttling back and forth to the UK to work, or, Sandy cynically suggests, to sign on.

I did all the paperwork for the residencia – it took a couple of hours, including waiting for Inma to walk to the bank and get the paper stamped to show I had paid 6 euros for the process. She was very sweet, and I felt bad about getting cross with her, especially as you can hardly be cross with someone who has a jar with about 50 pencils with fluffy things on the end, and a lot of pictures from kids saying “Inma I love you” all over her desk. How long will it take, I asked her. Oh, months, she said, there were hundreds of Romanians and Bulgarians coming in, which was slowing everything down. We would have to wait months for the certificate, which we would have to return to pick up later, once notified. We had a conversation about Andalucía; I asked her what she thought about the corruption. She said it was getting a bit better: before, you could just build a house anywhere – in the middle of a rambla, dry river bed, if you liked. Now, it was a bit stricter.

Afterwards, I bought the children’s stationery for school. The process here is that you get a list of what the children need on the first day, then take it to a shop. The list has odd things on it, like “a cardboard box”. I had started in Lubrín in the local shop, Maria P, who was out of a number of the things required because there were more children in the school year than expected. I asked her if it wouldn’t be easier if the school gave her the list in advance, and she agreed, but said they didn’t do it like that. The Albox shop had everything you could think of, but needed to be paid in cash, as did the health food shop – presumably because you can’t trust a cheque in Albox.

Slow, slow, quick again

More experience of the Andalucian slow, slow then quick rhythm. On Friday, we went to the “Office of Foreigners” in Almeria, to complete the residency process. We turned up, clutching the email confirming our meeting, and the passports, photocopies of passports and forms. The office was modern, surprisingly smart and quite empty, with an electronic queuing system, and a few people sitting waiting for their numbers to come up. However, my heart sank when the man on the desk said that Sandy had an appointment, but not me. I envisaged another few months bureaucracy. Go over there, he said, pointing to another desk. There, the lady briskly consulted the computer, then told me to give her the paperwork. She looked at our forms, and processed them in about five minutes, handing us back our residency certificates. I looked at her in disbelief. Is that it? Yes, she said, these days we don’t bother with sending out cards later. You just get a certificate, and that’s it. Take a copy and don’t lose it. That’s amazing, I said. She said it was quicker, and with all the hundreds of Romanians they had every day, they needed to be quick. What do they do here, I asked. She shrugged and grinned. Some of them work, some don’t. Now they are in the EU, they can live anywhere, whether they have work or not. I wonder if it’s as quick if you are Romanian. I suspect it is – in this way, the Spanish are much less finicky than the English – they didn’t give a damn what animals I brought in when I arrived whereas DEFRA clearly requires you to fill in forms in triplicate for months before you can bring your dog back.

Some things come into focus

Things are slowly resolving themselves, and while we are still on the frontiers, the dust of the language is beginning to settle. In Almería, I found I could buy Epson printer ink in the Alcampo supermarket, which is the size of Bluewater, and I found out from Sylvia that the reason you can’t buy answer machines is that Telefonica have an automated service like BT Call Minder. I managed to get this without difficulty – and was pleasantly surprised that I understood the conversation and the instructions of how to set my personal message. Learning a language surprises you that way – just when it seems you are not getting better at all, you suddenly realise the focus has improved, like a fuzzy picture slowly becoming clearer and more detailed. The children, too, are beginning to speak Spanish surprisingly fast – what sounded like a foreign language is now at least partly familiar, with the landmarks of words like “pencil sharpener,” “scissors,” and “cardboard box.”

Sylvia was on the phone from Madrid the other day, and overheard me talking to the electrician who was on his way out. His accent is about as thick as they come. How on earth do you understand them? Sylvia asked, having a French moment and sounding rather disapproving. I expect I’m getting used to the Andaluz accent, I said, soon I’ll be leaving the “s” off the end of words. Sylvia tutted, but I pointed out the people were very nice. “Nice, well yes, I am sure they are nice,” she said, dismissively. But you can’t dismiss it. Long ago, when I worked at Savory Milln, my secretary, Anna, a large lady who would have fitted in quite well in Albox, had a notice on her desk that said “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” It was aimed at all the bankers she worked for, who were all a lot more important than they were nice, and I don’t miss them a bit.

I dont know how different Andalucía is from Spain, but it probably is "atrasada", at least here in Almeria, the poorest and shabbiest part of the province. You do queue up and wait for ages in shops. People don't necessarily do things when they say they will; their sense of time is more elastic. The legal framework is probably less rigid. There is illegal construction, and corruption in local government and no real evidence that they will capitalise on the money flowing in from British immigrants. What happens when people stop buying in Albox, when the construction stops? According to Johannes, the economic plans put forward by the local districts largely involve plans to double, or triple, the number of residents they have. There is little evidence of sustainable industry beyond agriculture, food processing, and some low-end tourism. In the middle of all this live the British, shopping in the Mercadona but largely using UK plumbers and electricians, and the Russian mafia, laundering money through the developments on the coast. You have to wonder where it will all end. Whether you like it here or not is another matter - down to whether you like it hot, rough and ready, and don't mind the scruffy construction and tattoos, or you prefer it picturesque, professional and elegant in Florence or Provence. There are no sights here, no horse riding, or country walks, except those you find out for yourself. Most people dont like it enough, which is why our Spanish builder can't attract English money to buy his old farmhouses. Could I help him, he asked me, find some English buyers, preferably with money? I'm in two minds as to whether I want to do that. I'd like to help Juan, but the fact is, I like it the way it is, not the kind of place Tony Blair would ever go on holiday.