Sights and Sounds of Spring/Summer

Early(ish) this morning I heard the sound of high voices twittering, most definitely twittering, out in the street. On looking out of the window I saw that it was the parvulos, the nursery class, out on a walk, probably to a nearby playground. One supervisor held onto one end of a rope at the front of the line, all the tiny children held on at intervals along the length of the rope and another supervisor held the other end of the rope: a perfectly good way of walking a bunch of three and four year-olds along the road. Spring has definitely arrived: the tiny people are out for walks!

A short while later, when I went out to buy bread for breakfast, I saw a lady walking along on the other side of the road with a fan, a good old, traditional Spanish fan, colour-coordinated to match her smart outfit. As she walked, she fanned her face to keep cool. When I remarked on this to the panadera, she laughed and said that she had also noticed her going past the breadshop. We both agreed that no es para tanto - there's no need for that. The sun is shining and the spring flowers are out but it's nowhere near hot enough to need a fan yet. What will that lady do in August?

It is hot enough though for my Phil to venture out to the barber's shop. The spring/summer sun has been making him feel hot-headed, so time for a haircut! Also, it seems that it's time for the seagulls to start thinking about nesting in the chimney opposite. Apparently this is becoming more common, not just here but Europe-wide. The gulls find that the tall city buildings make perfect artificial cliffs for them to nest in. This causes problems as they can become quite aggressive protecting their young. It's already quite enough that, like the pigeons, they feel they have the right to land on the tables of cafe terraces to eat the leftovers, knocking crockery onto the ground as they arrive.

Even if the seagulls are abandoning the beaches, it seems that people are not. Many still hanker after that house close to the sea despite laws in recent years forbidding building too close to the coast. Unfortunately the law seems to have come in too late for some parts of Spain. According to El Pais, el periodico global de noticias en espanol, la sociedad se ha emborrachado de cemento - the country has got drunk on concrete.

Satellite photography shows that in Malaga and Alicante provinces, areas where an awful lot of Britons have their holiday homes, 52% of the first two kilometres of land on the coast has been built on, while in Barcelona province this reaches an astonishing 68%. In the province of Cadiz, down in the south, there are as many as 50,000 illegal dwellings (ie too close to the beach) in 17 coastal boroughs!

Galicia fares a lot better with only 24% of the first two kilometres of the coastal area of Pontevedra province being built on. There are, after all, some advantages to not having had wall to wall sunshine during the big periods of tourist development!