There is a frog in my pool

To mark the passing of the seasons I note the first of this or the last of that. Summer officially started for me when the cursed socks were relegated back to the drawer. In the village where we live Donkey is back in a nearby field and chomping daily on the carrots myself and another neighbour provide him.

The Swallows or are they House Martins are back and are busy making their nest in the front porch; designing it with geometrical accuracy so that when they pooh over the side it will land on any visitors head if they happen to be passing through the front door. We use the back door just in case.

The warmer months encourages nature’s creatures to strut their stuff. A frog has taken residence in our swimming pool and has cleverly worked out that if he sits in the skimmer it works like an echo chamber so giving him the loudest croak in the village! This boy racer frog will soon no doubt have the lady frogs hanging off his frog legs! In respect for his ingenuity I don’t have the heart to turf him out. This is apparently usual behaviour for frogs as a friend of mine who used to clean pools for a living told me of a frog that he removed every week from a clients pool and took him to a rambla. Every week afterwards the frog was back and as summer went on he got paler and paler as the chlorine bleached his skin; maybe that’s how Michael Jackson did it?

I mentioned Mini Cine in Albox last week and then discovered an outdoor cinema running every Wednesday evening throughout the summer; La Montana Restaurant near Bedar hold their movie nights in conjunction with Desert Stars run by Laurence and David. Recently they showed the Almodovar film Volver starring Penelope Cruz. Screened in Spanish with subtitles it was not only very funny but I for one picked up a few new Spanish words. Every fourth week a film will be shown in Spanish so giving us all a chance to practice the language. This week is in English with the film Calendar Girls and next week is Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo. It costs 2.50€ per person with the full menu available pre-film and then snacks available during the movie featuring hot dogs, fries, and popcorn of course.

Francisco Franco – an early history

Until November 1975 Spain was ruled by a dictator who styled himself Caudillo de España, por la gracia de Dios, or Leader of Spain by the grace of God or Francisco Franco as he is better known. A through and through military man Franco was born in 1892 at the El Ferrol naval base in Galicia into a naval family. His ambition was to be a naval officer but after the Spanish navy was obliterated in 1898 by the American navy in Cuba and also the Philippines budget cuts meant instead he joined the infantry academy aged 15 in Toledo. He married a devout catholic in 1923 Carmen Polo.

Franco volunteered for service in the Rif War in Morocco and rose rapidly through the ranks becoming in turn the youngest ever captain, major and colonel. Aged just 33 he became the youngest general in Europe since Napoleon Bonaparte and commanded the Spanish Legion in 1926 winning 13 medals along the way. During his tenure in clear defiance of the Geneva Convention signed in 1924, the Spanish used mustard gas, phosphene and other agents against the Berber tribesmen until 1927 in revenge for losing 13,000 soldiers at the Battle of Annual. The poison gas was supplied illegally by the German Government.

Franco returned to the Spanish mainland and in1934 there was a workers general strike in the mining areas of the Asturias. In case the regular army refused to attack their own countrymen the government instead sent Francos Foreign Legion in to quell the revolt. Murdering, torturing and raping as they went with Moroccan mercenaries castrating the dead over 2000 people were killed and thousands injured.

In 1936 a general election was held and the Popular Front a republican government was voted in, the last elected government in Spain for the next 40 years. General Franco offered military support to the outgoing Prime minister if he wanted to annul the result. He declined and the new Prime Minister Azańa cleverly moved suspect generals away from Spain, General Franco was posted to the Canary Islands. As military generals planned a coup Franco refused to lend his support and gained the dubious title of Miss Canary Islands for his delay. Franco rightly believed the coup would fail and actually wrote to the prime minister warning of potential catastrophe but the Prime minister never replied so Franco sided with the plotters.

In July the coup started and garrisons across Spain rose up and martial law was declared. Although large areas of western Spain were won by the rebels most of Spain supported the republicans including the main cities of Madrid and Barcelona.
Importantly for the republicans the industrial north remained in their hands aiding their struggle. The civil war started as neither side had a clear advantage and about half the armed forces including the air force remained loyal to the government. General Franco was picked up in a chartered aircraft sent from Croydon Airport and flew to Morocco to rejoin his legionnaires. His 30,000 Legionnaires were stuck as the air force would not move them to Spain. Hitler got involved lending Junkers 52 transport planes and two battleships to Franco to transport his soldiers to the mainland at Algeciras where they quickly took over much of south west Spain.

Franco moved his army towards Madrid and on the way his army defeated the republicans in Badajoz. His soldiers murdered many people including 2000 shot in the town bull ring. The revolt however in Toledo had failed and 2000 rebels had been under siege for two months, Franco rushed his army to rescue them and in the process took bloody retribution. Atrocities were done by both sides during the civil war however Franco had a habit of never forgiving or forgetting hence high numbers of casualties both during and after the war.

The perceived risks of travel

Flying is 23 times safer than driving a car

There’s been plenty of fodder recently for comedians with all the reported delays at UK airport terminals, not so funny for anyone caught up in the queues. The fear business is alive and well and the huge sums spent by Governments which we pay for via higher taxation and the inconvenience caused is all cleverly justified in the name of keeping us and our borders safe.

At Gatwick luckily a book shop still exists and I found a book called ‘Risk’ by Dan Gardner. I can highly recommend ‘Risk’ to anyone with a curious mind who questions the propaganda we are meant to believe blindly. We remember 9/11 and maybe recall that 3000 poor souls lost their lives. In the USA fear caused people to shun flying for about a year afterwards; driving instead. In that one year studies show an extra 1595 people died in car accidents on American roads.

Road accidents don’t make the news as much as a terrorist attack and yet those 1595 extra deaths was a figure six times higher than the amount of people that died on board the three doomed airliners. If governments and the media had not hyped the risk with George Bush for example declaring that the survival of the USA was at stake; then those 1595 people may have lived.

In the last 100 years there have been less than 20 terrorist attacks that have claimed more than 100 lives yet each year in the USA 36,000 people die from flu and related illnesses. Flu doesn’t sell newspapers so instead we get our shoes scanned after 2001 and the infamous failed ‘shoe bomber’ Richard Reid was caught on a plane whilst clumsily trying to light a match to set a fuse alight.

The media are adept at stirring up mass hysteria; remember bird flu, swine flu, mad cow disease, road rage and crack cocaine? Funnily enough we are all here and reading the Sol Times. Either governments have done a fantastic job in saving the world or perhaps the risks were ever so slightly exaggerated. I maintain the position that Al- Qaeda win without firing many shots at the western world at all. Consider all the inconvenience that we suffer every time we want to take a flight anywhere when the risk of dying from a terrorist bomb is less than one twentieth the risk of getting killed when driving down the local shops.

In these days of retina scanners, body heat detectors, x-ray machines, physiological profiling, back ground checks, intelligence gathering, and good old common sense why is it that all of us are suspected terrorists when passing through major airports?
Surely if a terrorist wanted to destroy a plane they would target a smaller airport where the powers that be deem that security can be much more lax.

I did get the last laugh at the Gatwick Gestapo recently when I brushed myself down after my complimentary rub down; in my coat pocket that had been X-rayed I found a forgotten 250ml bottle of juice.

Cant afford the petrol? then walk instead

It’s easy to criticize service standards when out eating and drinking in Spain so I want to share a good recent experience. Clients with me had their disabled grand-son Bertie with them and we stopped at the restaurant in Saliente by the petrol station. The food there is usually good and I knew there’d be plenty of room for Berties wheelchair. When the staff saw Bertie they could not do enough to help and a special meal appeared instantly for him and we were all excellently looked after.

I promote green issues as we only have this one blue planet and we need to look after it a lot better than we do. Lame reasoning from anyone that doesn’t even bother recycling for instance normally runs along the lines of what difference can one person make? Or there is nowhere to recycle. There are recycling points even in the smallest villages and its really easy because the blue bins are for paper, the green ones for glass and the yellow ones plastic and tins.

Bars are often the biggest culprits; one owner told me that they don’t recycle as it would take two hours a day to put the bottles in the bottle bank due to its shape?!? The bar must be doing excellent business indeed if two hours are needed every day just to get rid of the bottles. So the bar in question instead dumps the bottles in the bin which is only ten paces away from a bottle bank.

Currently with the high fuel prices it costs 50€ to fill up even my little car and selling houses means I do a lot of travelling. Recently I got a round robin email asking me to boycott Shell and BP to force them to reduce the prices at their pumps. Simple maths says this just won’t happen as most of the price of fuel is tax and duty. In Britain for example a £1.25 litre of fuel includes 21p VAT and a whopping 59p in excise duty leaving 45p for the oil company. Even if BP shaved 10% of their prices it’s only four pence off the price. Unfortunately we live in a carbon based economy and we all use oil in some way or another. Most of us drive a car and we buy food that has been delivered to the shops by road. Even the logs used to heat a house ecologically have been cut with a petrol chainsaw and delivered in a truck.

Simply we must all use less fuel. Is the journey really necessary? Walk if possible or ride a bike, share a lift. As the little jobs mount up around the house why not do them all in one car trip rather than lots of separate journeys. More electric and hybrid cars are available each year and okay not many will be suitable for long slogs on mountain roads but they are ideal for use in larger towns and cities. Murky Donuts have realised all those placcy bags they currently dole out free cost money and they too will be charging for bags from February. How many thousands, even millions of plastic bags will Mercadona save each year from their new policy? Quite a few less will be seen hanging from bushes or floating in the sea.

Mr Edisons’ original light bulb design will soon only be found in museums as only low energy light bulbs are now being manufactured. Every single person that does their bit to conserve the environment and reduce their fuel use has an effect when others do it too. Duracell now sell rechargeable batteries and they are not doing it just for green brownie points as they will make money from it. Our spending habits make businesses change as they need to make money. We cannot wait for governments to make laws instead our spending and lifestyle habits will make change happen quicker.

A Road Trip

Living in Almeria it is easy to forget what a large place Andalucía is and its easy to understand why for generations Almerians have felt more closely aligned with neighbouring Murcia rather than the far west of the country around Seville which is the administrative capital of Andalucía. Seville has the largest historic quarter in Europe and well worth a visit especially for culture vultures.

I have a house on my books near Baza and the owners have a donkey which they got from a sanctuary located at junction132 on the A92 motorway to Seville and so on the way we diverted and visited El Refugio de Burrito where over 70 donkeys live in comparative luxury. Very friendly docile animals it’s hard to understand how anyone could mistreat these hard working beasts. Some miniature donkeys there had been rescued from a zoo in Naples in Italy. I suppose the next step is to adopt a donkey and I picked up the form.

Close by is the Fuente de Piedra lagoon, the second largest salt water lake in Spain and it is home to a huge population of flamingos. The breeding grounds here are the biggest in Spain and the second largest in Europe with 6000 chicks hatching last year. There is an information centre but if anyone unable to read Spanish will be out of luck. Take a long lens camera and binoculars to see the flamingos at their best. The lake did not dry out this year and so the population has stayed. Salt was extracted here from Roman times right up until 1951.

Onto Seville and being the third largest city in Spain it is surrounded by industry but the ugly views soon give way to wide boulevards and there are glimpses of the Guadalquivir River. The cathedral in Seville is absolutely colossal being the third largest in the world. It is also the biggest gothic cathedral in Spain and construction started in 1401 after a large earthquake in 1356 damaged the mosque that stood on the site previously. The designers apparently said the following before building “Let a church so beautiful and so great that those who see it built will think we were mad”. According to the minutes of that day, the new church should be: “a work such as good, which like no other.” One of the only parts of the mosque to remain is the huge bell tower which is easily climbed.

More impressive however is the Real Alcazar located next door. This started life in the ninth century as a military fortress but had a change of use under Abd al Rahman II and was converted to a royal residence. In 1364 King Pedro of Castile who was keen to use existing Moorish buildings had the palace extended and cleverly used a mixture of Christian and Moorish artisans and the result is the finest example of Mudejar architecture in the world. Room after room of beautifully frescoed walls, huge tapestries and stunning gardens. The whole site is easily a rival to the Aljambra Palace in Granada and for my money is actually more impressive.

The Plaza de Toros is the oldest in Spain with construction starting as long ago as 1749. Whatever views anyone has of the sport of bullfighting it’s an impressive building and should be seen. The annual Feria de Seville is held here each April and is one of the best known bullfighting spectacles in the world. By coincidence a bullfight was organised the day we visited with two of the most famous in the business booked to appear so I got a photo of DVenturas luxury tour bus.

For shopaholics Seville is heaven with street after street of shops that for us living in the Almerian backwaters can only marvel at. Take plenty of money as something will surely tempt you. For ice cream aficionados there are many stylish places to indulge in the guilty pleasure and I had the best chocolate ice cream ever. Then I had one the next day just to make sure.

Remote Mountain Views

As I stood on a thousand metre mountain watching a glorious sunset yesterday I reflected that this is one of the reasons I love sometimes having clients that want a rural retreat rather than say an apartment on the coast. Over the past four and a half years I have been lucky enough to explore many areas of Almeria and areas of Granada and Murcia. Areas that if I were not taking a property on, or visiting with a client then perhaps I would never have found in the first place.

Many clients prefer to have a villa with pool close to services or a town house perhaps so I have always made sure that there is a good selection of these for sale as well. Otherwise the bills would not get paid and my working life would be more difficult. Clients that are retiring often sensibly chose to buy a villa as for one thing everything is normally on one level, the house will be fairly new and so maintenance issues will not normally jump up and bite them on the bum. Fellow English speakers may also be closer at hand so the language barrier is not so hard and friends can be made more easily.

Four years ago Jose Luis a lovely Spanish colleague of mine told me of a huge cortijo for sale situated high in the mountains near Seron. He had not yet been to the property so we set off on a beautiful road that goes up over the Filabres Mountains close to the Calar Alto Observatory which leads finally to Gergal on the A92. Going cross country after we left the main road we stopped high up in the middle of nowhere. At times like these it’s good to have trust in people as there was no way on my own that I would have found my way back to civilisation. Off we yomped climbing steep slopes and fording mountain streams until after about an hour we found the ruined house. As a treat we had brought a simple picnic of bread, ham and fizzy pop and we sat in autumnal sun easily 4500 feet up in old money admiring one of the best views I have ever seen. Jose Luis having lived in the area all his life pointed out all the different mountain ranges that could be seen in the far distance towards Velez Rubio, Oria and Castril. Then we raced to safely retrace our steps as the sun started to set behind Calar Alto the highest peak in Almeria at 2168m.

Other work based excursions have taken me high into the Sierra Maria near Velez Blanco and one fine house in particular sits in 50Ha of farmland and mountain side. It is so remote that the nearest electricity supply would have to come from seven kilometres away so water comes into the house via a solar powered pump from a year round spring. Any client wanting to view this house is always told firmly that the house is in the middle of nowhere and then luckily only the intrepid make the trip. It takes an hour simply to get to it from Velez Blanco.

Another property I have for sale is in a beautiful yet almost secret valley between Albanchez and Lubrin. On the details it says that the house is remote and the nearest shops are 30 minutes drive away yet however much I warn clients they are never put off. When we get there the comments are always along the theme of ‘I did not think it would be this remote.’ Maybe dictionaries give two meanings of remote.
A client once said ‘well 30 minutes on a motorway is not bad so I thought it would be similar.’ It’s a beautiful property but only for someone wanting tranquillity and preferably in good health. That’s because it is remote.

Avoid ambulance chasers

Twice during the football season Andrew Brown the manager of Currencies Direct phones me without fail. It is always a few days before our respective teams do battle together on the playing field and last week was no exception as Liverpool FC got ready to travel to Old Trafford to play their biggest rivals Manchester Utd. Talking before the game means that neither of us will call after the match to gloat. By the time this is printed the match will be over and one of us will have been elated the other deflated.

With many couples moving each year to Spain to spend their retirements in the sun it is unfortunately possible that one or other will either get ill as they get older or perhaps sadly pass away. Often then there is the decision to return to the UK and the former home in Spain is put for on the market to sell.
‘This is a strange subject’ some may think to write about but the fact is that working in property sales for over four years here in Almeria I am still disgusted by the way some clients or ‘ambulance chasers’ try and then buy these properties at far less than market value. The poor surviving spouse normally relies on this money to support themselves on an expensive return to the UK. So if anyone out there is in this unfortunate position then I have full sympathy for you.
If anyone does make a ridiculous offer then please find the strength to tell them to ‘Go Away’ in very rude words.

I have had clients in the past that have openly talked to me about looking to take advantage of someone else’s misfortune. One chap even told me he was hoping to find a widow so desperate to sell her home she would accept a knockdown offer from him. Clients like that are quickly discarded by Findmeahome; let them try their disgusting tricks via another more unscrupulous agent. The property game over here is fraught with perils as many of us can testify to so at least by us showing these ‘sharks’ the open door it’s a step in the right direction.

As I write the first of the heavy autumn rains have been falling for the last few hours. My mother gawd bless her visits twice a year normally in May and September and in four years she has yet to have a visit and not need a raincoat. Anyone with important plans for these two months next year should drop me a line and I can safely guarantee that as long as you avoid the days she has booked for her trip it will be sunny and glorious.

Sitting enjoying the sun and the glorious sea view in BBME on Mojacar playa and enjoying some good food and chilled music the other day it was good to see everywhere looking a lot busier than the same time last year. This very newspaper reported occupancy levels up during August so let’s hope the trend continues as the Almeria Costa is a great place for a holiday whether someone is travelling from abroad or already living here in Spain.
It did make us laugh though when various British holidaymakers were overheard practicing their peculiar ‘Spanglish’ language. “Hello mate can I have a zumo?” “Can I have the bill por favor?” “Two large beers please gracias.”
Certainly we all have to start somewhere I know and just last week when in a restaurant I asked the waitress for a doggy bag for the leftovers in what I thought was my usual passable Spanish only to be asked to speak Spanish as she did not understand the language I spoke to her in.
Hmmm more Spanish practice needed methinks.

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