Day 79 - "Free Money"

Spanish Practices

Day 79 and slowly things are returning, restaurants are opening and the Government is giving away free money and claiming nobody died of Covid19.. although the regional Governments dispute this.

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Day 79 Free Money

Tuesday, and yesterday no deaths were reported due to the virus, but the regional Governments have disputed this. Our local hospital has only had a couple of cases last week and this week none.

The local beach has opened with a great many rules. They believe that the beach will hold 19 thousand people. Well even in the height of summer the local beach does not get that busy.

But the Spanish love to congregate together so now they are going to have to walk far from their favourite chiringuito bar to fulfil the rules of social distancing.

Speaking of social the local Socialist Mayor has been congratulating the Government on its plan for a minimum income for all citizens of Spain. I am not sure how the money will be awarded, or on how they will means test people, but I was amused by the cultural response from at least one person replying to the Mayors Facebook Post, who said in Spanish, “This is a good thing because people deserve a little rest from work.”

Spain has a reputation for a land of feckless idlers who would rather be sitting in a shady bar than a busy office or building new relationships than new buildings.

Anecdotally I agree that the pace of life is slower here, appointments get moved or forgotten and you can wait an age for something that might take a few days to do in the UK.

But the Spanish we have come across work hard. None more so than our construction team, they were here every day from 8 in the morning to 6.30 at night. Our work started last July in the blaze of the summer sun.

It is a very complicated thing to build on sides of mountains, the first thing that the construction company did was to launch a digger down the side of the mountain. I say launch because the driver just tipped the machine over the edge than crawled with at a great angle with equally great skill down to the bottom by carving his own road out as he went.

At the bottom he turned around, somehow, and started digging great chunks out from the mountain, all day every day, for at least two weeks. The dust, noise and general mess was almost unbearable.

Then Jesus the Grua would come with his crane and haul the earth into waiting lorries, some of which dumped their soil onto the lower part of the Estate, where we have created a new community entrance with planting, other lorries disappeared to who knows where to dump the spoil.

I do know that we had to pay a licence for removing the soil, the waste and so on.

Micro-piling was another very noisy operation. A thing that looked like the screw from Thunderbirds drilled down into the ground seven metres and a great rod of metal was then hammered deep into the mountain and then filled with grout.

We had to have fourteen of these to form the foundation. Then came the foundations themselves, cement lorries turned up in unison whilst the long elephant arm hung over our house pumping concrete into shuttered troughs.

It was a privilege to see it all so close at hand. They all worked very hard indeed.

The columns that formed the terrace were attached to the piles and grew like spindles up the side of the mountain, they were shuttered and joined together then the whole lot filled with more concrete.

It took almost the rest of the year to finish the job, everyday at least two people would be working, Juanee the tiler, then the bad tempered old electrician, the plumber who has put in by the drains something the Spanish rarely use and that is a U Bend.

I don’t really know why the u bend didn’t catch on in Spain, I mean the toilets have them, sometimes the bathroom will share one in the middle of the floor that will be covered in a little round tin top with a screw in the middle.

If you have ever stayed in a Spanish hotel that is often the thing that catches your foot in the night. If you open them up, we had to once to discover what was causing a blockage, there are a larger version of the thing you find under a British sink.

But frankly and I know this is the second Podcast in a row when I have mentioned plumbing, the Spanish plumbing is not as robust as its British counterpart.

They like to weld water pipes together with a weird press like thing, rather than use compression joints. In the flats it led to disaster when after five years the Town Hall got around to fixing the water supply and as a result of the increased and much welcomed pressure, every singly pipe in one block of flats utility point split open and flooded the whole place.

Hot water tanks also come with a relief valve that hangs off the bottom end of the tank and either drips or sometimes will relief itself and empty the contents of the tank onto the floor or kitchen worktop, as the Spanish like to stick a hot water tank in the middle of the kitchen rather like we plonk a central heating boiler in a kitchen cupboard.

Off to the Administrators our Gestors, these are the ladies that look after our tax and Chris’ self-employment paperwork. An hour of administration work, lots of copies of bills and the like. It is not easy to be self-employed in Spain.

I promise you that I will mention plumbing no more, but it is one of the cultural differences that you will notice if you come here to stay for any amount of time. Oh and ignore the old British saying of “If you must use any strange loos, put plenty of paper down first,” never do that as that will definitely block the Spanish pipes and come back to haunt you.