Serious reading matter - discovering things about Franco’s Spain.

 I’ve been reading, and then re-reading, a very long novel in Spanish: Las Tres Bodas de Monolita by Almudena Grandes. I had to re-read it because there were so many intermingled stories that I wanted to get straight. The author told the same events several times over from different character’s points of view. Nothing is really recounted chronologically. An event is hinted at and the details gradually revealed in a time-shifting fashion. And yet it works extremely well.

Much of the narrative is woven around real people and real events, leading me to investigate some of them on the internet. Manolita’s three weddings refer to a system where a priest at the Porlier prison in Madrid, where republican prisoners were held in the post Civil War years, arranged for a quite large price for women to have conjugal visits with prisoners, conjugal visits in quite disgusting conditions! The priest was making a fortune from the misery of others. Manolita and other fictional characters are part of this system.

Manolita also regualrly took food parcels to her father, and later to her fisnce, in the prison. Wives, daughters, sisters of prisoners queued up to provide food parcels for men who would otherwise be severely undernourished. The same happened for Republican women held in the Ventas prison. A sense of community developed in the queues for delivering parcels and visit prisoners.

Manolita and her fiancé Silverio eventually lived together for some years in a “house” constructed by Silverio and his fellow prisoners in the Cuelgamuros valley where prisoners were building Franco’s monument to the soldiers who had died fighting on his side in the Civil War. 

This was the Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen, its name changed officially in 2022 to Valle de Cuelgamuros, changing it from a monument to fascism to a monument to all Spaniards who died in that conflict. Franco was initially buried there but later exhumed in 2019, in an attempt to prevent glorification of his dictorship.

Throughout the Civil War Silverio, a skilful engineer, worked in an underground munitions factory in the unfinished metro station Nuevos Ministerios. Because of the non-intervention pact the Republicans had great difficulty purchasing munitions but this underground factory helped keep up the defence of Madrid, albeit an eventually unsuccesdful defence. This was an aspect of the Civil War that I had never heard of before.

In her notes at the end of the novel, Almudena Grandes tells us of her meeting with the real Isabel Perales, the name given to the sister of Manolita in the novel. Under a system that I had again never heard of before, children of Republican prisoners were sent to be “educated” in boarding schools. The real life Isabel Perales was one such. The novel sends her, aged 14, to one such school in Bilbao, together with her much younger half-sister. The younger sister receives a good education, if indoctrination in good Catholic values and the belief that their parents were mistakenly bad, could be considered a good education. The older girls like Isabel, who had been excited at the prospect of learning to read and write and learning new things, were set to work in the school’s laundry. Like the real Isabel Perales, the fictional Isable has a severe allergic reaction to the soda used to wash sheets and tablecloths and clothing, and bore the scars for the rest of her life. But in real life, she went on to a career in the costume department of cinema and television.

Another real life character incorporated into the narrative is Roberto Conesa Escudero, one of Franco’s men, awarded honours for his work in capturing and extorting confessions from Republicans after the war. Throughout the novel the reader is aware that this supposed Republican, member of all the correct organisation during the Civil War, and an infiltrator on the post war years, is not to be trusted. The friends and comrades of his youth are undecided and he leads to the downfall of real and fictitious Republicans. Researching him on the internet I found he was crucial in the capture and execution of a group of young Republican women, whose story I had read years ago in Spain; Trece Rosas Rojas. 

And so the circle goes around. So many things still to learn.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone! 

Saving the world? Saving POTUS? Staying alive.

It was already hot at 8.30 this morning. We’re supposed to have a top temperature of 31° here today. Goodness knows what it will be like in the hotter bits of the UK. But it’ll be okay; Andy Burnham is going to chair an emergency Cobra meeting as the 5th heatwave of the summer hits us.

Private Eye has been commenting that they’re having difficulty putting out the fires in the New Forest because all the water is being used up by date storage centres!!

And here’s a First Dog on the Moon cartoon:

Etna is still erupting. They’ve been having an earthquake in Colombia. And there are typhoons in China. The earth seems to be fighting back

There have been quite a few cartoons about President Trump secretly switching planes by hiding in a catering cart, to avoid a threatened assassination attempt. I wonder of he enjoyed the drama of the moment. Here is a selection of cartoons’

And here’s  comment in reaction to that moment of drama:

“”It appears that the idea was we can reduce the danger to President Trump by offering up 100 or so people to be killed by the Iranians in his place,” said Steven Cash, executive director of the Steady State and a former CIA intelligence officer and senior adviser to the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence branch.”

No comment!

Some more serious stuff! Here’s a link to an article where 12 women tell what life is like for them in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Their bravery and powers of endurance are impressive.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Solar eclipse and hotel prices. Water problems. Add consequences of digital and AI stuff.

 There’s going to be a solar eclipse tomorrow. The media is giving us information about the best places to see the eclipse. And hotels in those places have reportedly been putting up their prices. In Reykjavik tourists have been paying £587 on average to secure a room for Wednesday night, a 98% increase on the same night last year. As well as Iceland, Spain is said to be a good place to see the eclipse, and they expect 460,000 overseas tourists to go there just for the celestial phenomenon. (I can think of better reasons for going to Spain.) So the rate for rooms in A Coruña has gone up 135%! The increase is less steep in Mallorca, where you should be able to see the eclipse on the horizon at sunset, room prices have gone up by a mere 24%, while in Santiago de Compostela and Bilbao, hotel room prices have risen 34% and 67% respectively. What a strange situation, all about something you won’t be able to look at directly, but will need special glasses! No doubt lots of eclipse-selfies will be posted.

Today the sun keeps shining normally. Imagine your taps suddenly running dry in this summer weather. Well, according to this article residents of flats in Tower Hamlets, London, have had that happening to them, it’s probably nothing to do with the heatwaves. There seems to be some argument about the cause of the problem. 

But here”s a cartoon by Martin Rowson on the drought and Britain’s water companies, commenting that while the hot summer and hospipe bans continue, bosses at many utilities firm recieve payrises.

I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day, putting the world to rights as usual. He was predicting that banks will have to rturn to “physical banking” with chequebooks, etc because of AI facilitation of digital fraud and theft. Shortly after that I came across this report:

“Don’t bother trying to download a digital ticket from Vauxhall to Waterloo, the terminus for many trains to London from the west – or on a number of other routes, apparently including from Norwood Junction to London Bridge, where many services from the south coast hit the capital. For those and some other routes, you will now need to collect a physical ticket from a physical ticket machine, after operators found that up to 95% of tickets on some short routes were being used fraudulently.”

Cheque books and actual tickets for trains! Attempts to put the genie back 8n the bottle!

There”s some interesting vocabulary connected with the travel fraud business:

“short-faring” – a trick by which passengers buy a last-minute digital ticket only for the final part of their journey, even if they boarded in a station without barriers much further away.

“quick scanning” - buying a ticket on your phone seconds before being approached by an inspector.

“tailgating” - squeezing behind a paying customer as they pass through a ticket gate. 

“donutting”, a scam by which a passenger buys a cheap ticket covering the first part of their journey and another covering the last, but avoids paying the higher cost of the full trip.

Interesting times! 

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Free apples. Health warnings. Eruptions and ancient shipwrecks. And rwspecting graves - even fictional ones.

Last autumn we started finding bags of cooking apples on the wall of a house on out usual route around the village. There was a notice inviting passers-by to help themselves. Yesterday we discovered that the owner of the apple tree has started his giving again, just rather earlier this year. Apple pie coming soon.

It’s another fine day here but not too hot. I did hear rain on the skylight windows late last night but not for long.

Here’s something from the newspapers:

“Warning of likely impact to health service as amber heat alerts issued for swathes of England

Amber heat-health alerts have been issued for five regions of England from 9am on Tuesday until 6pm on Wednesday: the West Midlands, East Midlands, south-east, London, and the east of England.

Amber alerts mean an increased likelihood of health impacts for those aged 65 and older and people with pre-exisiting conditions, although there may also be impacts to younger people too. The weather impacts are likely to be felt across the whole health service under this category, which is below red, the most severe.”

And here’s a photo of people resting in the shade as fallen leaves and parched grass are seen in St James's Park, central London. It seems more parched down in the south than it is around here. However the milkman tells me he has been over to Wakefield and everything is very dry there as well.

In Sicily good old Etna has been erupting again or maybe that should be still. Flights arriving at Catania, Italy’s fifth busiest airport apparently, have been suspended after volcanic ash from a fresh eruption has drifted into airspace. I’ve seen Etna in eruption … rather impressive!, 

By the way, here is a link to an article about a Roman shipwreck which has been found off the coast of Sicily. I wonder what is in the 500 amphorae in the boat? 

In one of the Harry Potter stories, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, it seems there is an elf called Dobby. 

When they made a film of the book Dobby was buried  on Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Fans who don’t seem to realise this is a fictional character come to leave stones reading “Here Lies Dobby” despite being asked not to do so by the land owner, the National Trust, because the beach is an ecologically sensitive site. 

There was a plan to lay a very expensive energy cable connecting the UK to Ireland but Dobby fans have protested because it would pass through the site of  Dobby’s grave. So they have rerouted it. Now it goes quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, which  include urns associated with human burial.

Hey ho! We need to get our priorities right!

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Electric scooters. Bicycles - rented, electric, ordinary. Relics of World War II emerging from mud and ashes.

Travelling home from Rochdale the other day with our daughter in her car we stopped at traffic lights, as you do. A young man on an electric scooter wove his way through the waiting vehicles, ignored the red light, moved forward into the junction and waited for an opportunity to take his life into his hands by making a right turn. Madness! But it happens quite often. 

He wasn’t wearing a helmet - another bit of madness - but according to our daughter this is often a deliberate move to prevent the police from pursuing them. Apparently the police are told not to pursue scooterists without helmets in case of accidents which could leave the police open to accusations of malpractice. They can’t win; they’re supposed to stop dangerous scooter-riders but they’re not allowed to pursue them.

Electric scooters are a hazard in modern society, ridden at top speed on pavements and on bridle paths, used as get-aways from robberies and other crimes, as well as weaving through traffic on busy roads and causing accidents. 

Cyclists by the way are also guilty of ignoring the highway code and of riding at speed on pavements and bridle paths. Well, some cyclists are and they give a bad name to more sensible, law-abiding two-wheel travellers. 

Here’s a link to an article about Lime bikes in London. It seems that rental bikes are often used by young people to commute to work in the city. Personally owned bikes are vulnerable to being stolen apparently and rental bikes offer a solution. With the sunny and dry weather we have been having, the writer tells us, “many pubs are enjoying a bike-driven boom on summer nights, with the bright green bikes glowing outside like lurid cocktails before their riders wobble home”. But these cyclists on rented bikes are responsible one third of accidents with pedestrians requiring police intervention, probably as I said before, for riding at speed on pavement.

We don’t see rented bikes around here but we do see far too many cyclists on pavements. I have ranted on more than one occasion about the fact that in my youth “pavement bikes” were for small children and at a certain stage in your cycling life you progressed to a “road bike”. Yes, I know there is more traffic around than in my youth but that’s a different problem. 

Oh, and there is also the question of bells. Cyclists should be aware that creeping up behind you on a pathway and saying quietly “Excuse me” or “I’m behind you” is no substitute for a good loud bell!

The article finishes like this:

“Unless divided, expensive cities such as London build more affordable homes, provide more widely available public transport, and make bicycle ownership less vulnerable to criminals – in other words, make mobility and housing less competitive and hierarchical – the sometimes petty, sometimes dangerous rental bike wars are likely to carry on. But at least we won’t all be stuck in cars.”

Quite so!

Now for something else. 

i’ve mentioned the extremely low water levels in the Danube. It seems that this has led to material from World War II emerging from the depths, including an ancient motorbike. Here are photos of the bike before and after cleaning.

And it seems that wildfires in the UK have led to similar consequences. Dunwich Heath in Suffolk has suffered badly.

Locals and visitors have been kept away from an area of Dunwich Heath because the fire exposed unexploded ordnance from the second world war.

The past is coming back to haunt us.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!

Sunshine. Net Zero. Ceuta repercussions. Pubs. Vertical drinking. The importance of community.

Another fine day and it’s forecast to remain fine and sunny for a few days ahead. 

Here’s a link to  Sadiq Khan warning about the dangers of ignoring the climate crisis and urging our new prime minister not to abandon Net Zero.

But there are reports that the government might go ahead with approving plans for the jackdaw gasfield and the Rosebank oilfield in the North sea, two projects  granted permission by the Tories and then suspended after a court challenge by environmental groups. Time to move away from fossil fuels!

The Ceuta ‘invasion’ continues to have repercussions. Italy wants Spain removed from Schengen and in retaliation Spain now wants border checks for Italians entering Spain. A cat has definitely been dropped among the pigeons.

Last night we could hear people in the garden of the pub next door chatting and laughing. (It’s not really a garden but a section of the carpark which was converted into an outdoor seating area in the latter days of Covid.) They weren’t especially loud: you could really only hear them if you went outside or if you stood in the bathroom with window open. I suppose some if the drinkers were not seated but were engaged in what I hear is now called “vertical drinking”. 

And apparently the government is trying to stop “vertical drinking” because it leads to rowdiness, brawling and other such antisocial behaviour. Or maybe it’s not the governement as such but Westminster Council. This is from the Guardian:

“No 10 has vowed to confiscate powers from local councils which try to restrict customers from standing up while drinking in pubs or ordering at the bar.

It comes after the Guardian revealed on Thursday that Westminster council in central London recommended not allowing “vertical drinking” or ordering at the bar in its new draft licensing policy.

The draft document, now out for consultation, recommends that pubs applying for new licences allow only table service rather than bar ordering. It also suggests new pubs in popular nightlife areas including Soho call last orders at 10pm, to reduce noise and disturbance.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “Busy pubs full of people talking to each other is not a public nuisance, it is British life, and it is thousands of jobs.”

I found myself wondering what the average Italian would think if a law was introduced that you had to sit a table to drink your coffee - the coffee, the espresso, that so many Italians order and consume quickly, standing at the bar, on their way to or from somewhere. And now I wonder if standing at the bar ordering and drinking a pint or even just a half pint of beer comes from a tradition of working men (and it would be men in the first instance) stopping at the pub to slake their thirst on their way home from work. 

Here’s a link to an article by Simon Jenkins in The Guardian, where he argues that the pub is an important social hub in most communities. It’s a place where people,of all ages and backgrounds can meet and can talk to each other or not bother to do so, as the mood takes them. 

This brings me on to the fuss that is being made in some articles about how Andy Burnham’s Catholic upbringing must have influenced his attitude to community. Here’s a link to some letters to the Guardian about that. I suspect  that it’s not so much the specifically Catholic aspect of his upbringing but a reflection on the times he grew up in. He’s considerably younger than I am but still grew up in a time when their were community activities connected to the church or to other local organisations, when it was likely that most people in a neighbourhood knew the children who were playing in their street and kept an eye on them. We’ve perhaps become more self-centred, more individualistic as a society and have lost some of that sense of community. Yes, I know there are places where “community” still works but we need more of it. The governments of the world need to concentrate on that and not on buying and selling and providing weapons of war!

That’s all.

Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!