Day 67 - "Holidays in Spain?"

Spanish Practices

Today do you think you will be taking your summer holiday in Spain this year? Dirty deals behind closed doors and road works.

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Day 67 Holidays in Spain?

Day 67

We have reached Thursday of Phase 1, Day 67 of Lockdown. So many numbers, so many days so far.

The sweet sound of the birds singing in the trees, the gentle roar of the sea in the bay in the distance has been replaced by a terrific roar of the road gang who are re-surfacing the main road through our Estate,

We own the road although the local Town also are supposed to help us keep it roadworthy as it leads up to the Campo, the countryside beyond.

They have kind of glued a new surface to the old. The danger of doing anything more is that a lot of the services run just a few inches under our road.

Back in Britain many roads were in a shocking state. The High Street in the town we lived in – Chelmsford was little more than a dirt track with an open sewer running one side of it.

It took the mighty Victorians to invest heavily in the infrastructure of the United Kingdom. Build proper drains, tarmac the roads properly through towns. They used the money they were raking in from the Empire, they did a very good job. The sewer system still has a lot of Victorian tunnels in operation still.

Here in Spain that golden time never happened. A much poorer country the infrastructure was left to the local Town Halls to organise. I have to say locally they did a fairly poor job of it. When it rains heavily in the little town of Salobreña all the roads flood at the entrance.

The Spanish don’t do drains, and when they do they don’t do them very well. We are lucky being on a private Estate, there are gulley’s and culverts that take the mountain rainwater away and down the hillside.

We have our own cesspit that sorts the sewerage and we buy water from a local hotel’s well.

The water is then pumped up to the top of the mountain into two great big covered depositos – water tanks. Then gravity brings it down in a big grid of pipes down to the houses and our water meters.

But all of that has to be paid for by us. You will only find utility companies, as you might know them, in the larger cities.

If you ever decide to buy a holiday home here, and I think there will be some real bargains coming up in the next few years. Then the first thing to worry about is where does the water come from? Is there electricity and how many kilowatts, some Spanish homes only have two kilowatts of power, that is enough to put a kettle on, but not the toaster.

Is the property legal, does it actually have a licence of first occupation, is it on an Urbanised site, like out house or out in the country, a rustic property?

It is very easy to be completely beguiled by the beautiful countryside or the azure blue of the sea and get yourself into a lot of trouble.

Saying all of that we really love living here, there have been many challenges, learning curves, but that is all part of the fun, er well life anyway.

Thursday and the weather has really picked up the temperatures are hitting about 26c and sun is shining, it what makes Spain so attractive yo visitors.

If Spain opens up to tourists in July there might be conditions of travel from other countries, rather like Greece has instigated. Currently visitors from the United Kingdom are not allowed into Greece until the UK has the viral rate and figures under control, the same might happen for Spain.

For those Brits who have booked their holidays before the virus took hold, this might come as a very hard blow. It would be a shame if families who were planning a summer holiday will have to move it to the next year.

I remember as a child we rarely had any kind of holiday, and spent the summer playing outside, building dens, climbing trees, going out a playing with friends.

A foreign holiday isn’t a necessity but a fairly modern luxury. This year will definitely be good news for the traditional seaside resorts, already Southend on Sea has seen the beaches packed with holiday makers.

The pictures made the Spanish television news. My friend Carmen was aghast at what was happening in the UK. The Spanish are generally better at following rules, for instance if you don’t wear your mask in the supermarkets or shops you will be thrown out by the security guard.

Tomorrow is Friday and we look forward to moving to the next phase on Monday, or the criteria has been passed allowing that to happen, only a political decision would change that.

Meanwhile in Parliament, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has done a deal with a political party with links to the terrorist organisation ETA, so that he can extend the Lockdown, in return he is going to dismantle the Labour reforms of the conservative PP party, there are lot of dirty deals being done behind closed doors.. but hey, that has always been the case here in Spain.