Life in La Unión

Maggie and I have lived in several flats in Spain. When we were in Santa Pola the block we were in at first was more or less deserted for most of the time we were there but as summer approached and people started to come back cooking smells wafted in from some of the other flats. We left before the full summer onslaught so we remember it as being a quiet place. In Ciudad Rodrigo the family next door, or at least the children of the family next door, used to have a mad half hour around 9.30 but they soon settled down. In Cartagena the next door neighbour had a hearing problem and he seemed to become fixated with a few songs that he would play over and over again. Again though it only went on for a while and, although it was noticeable, it wasn't really a problem. The other flat in Cartagena had a main road running past the front door and as the weather hotted up we had the choice between ventilation and having the telly drowned out by traffic noise. So our experience of flats ...

There are reasons, lots of logical reasons, for me to live in La Unión. I've rehearsed them all in my head dozens of times over the last few days. Basically it's financial, a nicer flat for less money still relatively close to my teaching job in Cartagena. Now that now that I'm fending for myself I just couldn't afford the sort of flat that Maggie and I shared in Cartagena. There are other reasons too though I'm not sure that I've convinced myself yet. La Unión is a town in Murcia. The town exists because of the mining. The Romans and the Carthaginians dug silver, lead, iron and zinc from the hills and valleys around Herrerías and el Garbanzal and shipped it out of the port of Portman. With ups and downs, that continued till the final shut-down of the last mine in 1991. Somehow most of the money that La Unión produced enriched nearby Cartagena rather than La Unión and although it has a couple of very impressive buildings there is nothing like the wealth of s...