Life in La Unión

There is a proposal for a new Citizens Security Law in Spain, La Ley de Seguridad Ciudadana, which is Orwellian in its scope. Unauthorised demonstrations will be outlawed, taking videos of police officers or insulting police officers can lead to fines. Fines can be up to 600,000€ for certain offences such as unauthorised protests at a nuclear power station. Turning up for a protest wearing a mask or anything that makes it difficult for a protestor to be identifiied can lead to a fine of 30,000€. Obstructing a public official from going about their normal duties could also cost 30,000€. There is lots more. Now there are plenty of laws in Spain to deal with violence and public disorder but the problem may be that the courts are just a bit too woolly for our present government. The Vicepresident, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, had a bunch of people protesting outside her house about the current spate of evictions. She took 27 of them to court but, back in May, the judge threw the c...

Being alone is shrinking my world. Basically for four days of the week my life is ruled by work - well that and the laundry. Then I have a splendid long weekend but with nobody really to share it with I'm staying close to home. Even this weekend, a bank holiday weekend with Constitution Day on Friday and Immaculate Coception on Monday I haven't done anything special. Sofa time as my students call it. Telly time. Christmas has just about arrived in Spain. Most towns have their lights on now and the shopping centre car parks are more dangerous than ever - car park design is not a Spanish skill, add a touch of driver indiscipline and you have a sure recipe for bumps and scrapes. On the telly Christmas means seasonal ads. Perfume mainly. But there are at least two institutional adverts. One is the Freixenet sparkling wine advert which I've only seen so far by looking for it on YouTube and the other is the commercial for the big Christmas lottery draw. This year ...

More than once I have used the example of Spanish filling stations as one of the sure signs that Spanish business is badly organised. There are plenty of self service places, like the one in the photo, but usually as you pull up on the forecourt someone comes to serve you. I wonder why, with self service pumps, they pay someone to do a job that they could get me, the customer, to do for nothing? When I ask Spaniards about the reason I often get something about keeping people employed. Given that we seem happy enough to live in a capitalist system that answer just adds to my grave doubts about how Spaniards approach business. A couple of times, usually at night, we have pulled up at service stations where the lone employee is firmly locked inside the petrol station and a prepayment system is in operation. You have to hand over your money before they allow you to pump fuel into your vehicle. I went to a local petrol station today, late morning. Nobody came to serve me and the pumps...