EC was here .... and here .... and here ....

If you turn right at our front door, then keep right and walk up a slope you will arrive at El Castell. This is a marvellous edifice in tiled marble, three viewpoints, kid’s playground, notice boards telling the story of the town’s history in four languages. It stretches all along the old town that hangs, literally hangs over the river. To describe the water running below as a river may be stretching the imagination a bit but it is a steady, if small stream. Each side is paved some parts tiled, steps to nowhere in particular ascend with rhythmic style and sinuous curves. On both the north and south side you will eventually ascend flights of precise steps to meet a rather high and stately bridge.

Immediately before the bridge is met you cannot fail to notice the huge Euro Boards declaring how much this development has cost the EC, which means, us, me, you, emphatically not them. Started in 2007 it has only just been completed. 

Totally wrecked by 2013/14. 

You would not want to wander about El Castell out of pleasure, it doesn’t really go anywhere you can’t get to easier, you can’t see anything more worthy of your gaze than by turning to the east and seeing the sea. Apartment blocks don’t capture the imagination, nor does an overgrown stream with so little volume it is unable to wash the rubbish into the sea. Thankfully.

You really wouldn’t want to go there at all. It is foul with dog’s mess, everywhere. Every wall, even the stone walls are covered with the most hideous graffiti. You wouldn’t want to go there after dark either because if you go there in the daylight you will see that the smart retro streetlights have been filled and smashed with rocks wrested from the walls. Up at the castle lookout itself there are lights let into the floors, walls and parapets but what do you think they illumine? Yup, indeed and it’s not pretty, indeed I suspect it allows the dogs a degree of luxury as they do what they do after dark, with the owners looking on. At least the EU has allowed them to see the mess their dogs are making.

Until recently I worked and was taxed by HMG to pay for this folly. And so were you, or you are still.

Along the tram we’ve seen three if not brand new hospitals then three fairly recently built ones within 25 miles. Tell me, Blair, Brown, Cameron where in the UK will you find three new(ish) hospitals served by a modern tram within 25 miles. OK, forget the tram. Currently the tram stops at Voldemort and you travel five miles or so by coach to connect with the rest of the service. The Euro Boards inform me that Spanish are pleased to tell you that the initial 50,000,000€ investment for improving and upgrading to all electric is being met by EC. Actually, I apologise it’s only 49,800,800€.

As the cafe owner explained, half the cost will go to Eurocrats, half will got to politicians national and local then there will be a 50% overspend that will actually see the project started. That will be met by EU, naturally.

EC Blue Boards and flags are everywhere and the finished products are treated as dog toilets and graffiti opportunities.

The EC is totally unappreciated by anyone apart from corrupt politicians, even the Royal Family is being done for corruption, the news is full of bankers and beaurocrats in handcuffs, rightly so. The corruption is immense, the money from me, you and the rest of northern Europe is astronomical and in the end wasted. Utterly wasted.

Yesterday the news was full of Santander, San Sebastian and much of the north coast being damaged by storms but who did they interview, not local councillors complaining that central government cuts would mean it can’t be mended, no, they cut to Brussels and EC money men who smiled like a grandparent spoiling their grandchildren, there, there, of course we’ll pay, don’t you worry about a thing.

They won’t pay, you will. If you’re in work you will pay and if you’re not you’ll pay because your old hospital isn’t served to the door by a modern electric subsidised tram system. Even if we could have a blue board and a euro flag telling us that the cost of parking in every hospital in UK was paid for by EC it would be so little comparatively and it would be valued, I’m sure. It just seems to me that we get zero, and higher taxes. I won’t mention the price of wine in a supermarket. Nor the fish. I promised I wouldn’t mention the fish. Small, though. Very, very small. Lots too.

They have the weather and I’ll pay to share it, I’ll even accept being ripped off because it’s sunny. I love it here, I really do but we have to pay our way and when we do we try to look after what we’ve spent our money on. But if we’re given it and have it maintained by someone else then we’ll treat it as a dog’s toilet and spray paint randomly everywhere because we don’t value that which hasn’t cost us anything.

The sooner we get out of EC the better. Nothing else matters. Nothing. 

If this comes over as a rant, that’s probably because it is. But someone needs to and I don’t see our government of whatever colour fighting our cause in Brussels, do you?

I still don’t want to go home to windy, rainy, cold, grey days, though. 

And I have appreciated the escalators in the park. 

The EC funded that, too. And the free car park under the prom. The new schools and the police station have euro flags on them and the police, both varieties drive by very frequently. We used to see police at home occasionally, many moons ago.

The litter lady

NOTA BENE: This post was written quite a while ago but my editor in chief felt it portrayed the people who have welcomed us and made us feel at home in a poor light, however, our stroll yesterday made me think even harder so this post needs to be read in the light of “EC was here .... and here .... and here ....”

Beautiful morning. Lovely coffee. Marvellous views all round.

A lady has just returned to her new white Seat parked between two palms about 100metres from where I’m sat. She lifts the tailgate and proceeds to deposit her copious amounts of shopping in it but not before unwrapping the items and dropping the rubbish at the base of the palm behind her. She stands by the driver’s door, elegantly lights a cigarette and drives off.

I’m not shocked by this although a week or two ago I certainly would have been. She encapsulates all that is wrong with this place. It’s not ruined by the out of control building, it may be a blight but it’s just supply and demand and I have to admit that if I had to choose between Blackpool and having my legs broken and being sent to Voldemort I’d choose the latter knowing that if I ordered one early enough I could get a mobility scooter with wide wheels.

No, the blight that afflicts this place is the attitude of the people who live here to it. The rubbish dumped by every minor road as you leave or enter town is impossible to ignore. Mostly building detritus but a fridge, a TV, an old suite or whatever will punctuate every few metres and if the road is built on a bank there’ll be a local tip established.

The towns are pretty free of dumped goods, if not litter but nowhere is free of the results of a nation of uncontrolled dog owners. The puddles and piles are everywhere. The smell and satins left by the puddles are utterly obnoxious, some places far worse than others especially if you leave the main thoroughfares. So many dogs allowed and encouraged to do what they do by their owners in spite of the comprehensive and quite graphic signage requesting that they don’t. Some, but far fewer than a majority clean up afterwards.

However, a shower of rain and all is well for an hour or two. The smells decay and await refreshment which is very soon in coming but no amount of rain can wash away the graffiti. It, too, is everywhere. A few metres from where I’m writing this there is a small area graced by narrow streets, colourful houses three or four storeys high but only a couple of metres wide. At the top of one street there’s a retaining wall that has at some point in the recent past been faced with marble. In a couple of places the marble is obviously beautifully patterned by the geologic processes that made it. You have to look hard though as it is covered in the senseless spraying of the talentless and mindless.

All the graffiti is the same as you see in railway cuttings but here it’s not restricted to those places. Efforts are made to clean it off but on the Valor wall by the escalators in the park it’s got graffiti on graffiti. Not only mindless but tasteless, too, quite revolting in some examples. A building in Voldemort on the sea front called Edificio El Greco typifies the blight, irony comes as an extra.

Like the dog fouling, the wall fouling has been difficult to avoid these past weeks. It’s like they simply don’t value the place but on a massive scale. I know these blight the UK too, but nowhere near as much as here. I guess it could be that it has no value because it all comes easily when the club you’re in bails you out and the consequences are easier to live with than having to do something about it.

The height of ambition....

..... if not much else.

I wasn't terribly impressed by The Shard.
The Walkie-Talkie building didn't impress either, until it began melting its neighbours.
Love The Gherkin, now obscured.
Today I came across this.
It is huge.
It dominates.
It really is there.
It's not yet finished.
Only in Voldemort.
I''m just not sure why ...... or what statement it is making.

I could make a few though, in fact I did but there was only one to hear and I'm not sure that she was listening.

Voldemort revisited ... finally.

It was blue, then grey, then blue. It was undecided, like us, as to what to do.
Then the palms moved and it became obvious that this would be a coat day.
Thus we decided to go back to Voldemort for one last visit to see if we had judged it unfairly.

We thought we would try to find a tat free shop, a shop that did not need a torch to see into its furthest recesses, a quiet coffee stop, a bar worthy of the title, in short anything that came over as a decent place.

We wandered to the south, that's quite a way I can tell you.
We wandered to the north and that's quite an ordeal.

We had given up and were making for The Park to ease the ordeal when there right outside The Bingo Plaza we found a place that was going to give us a good deal, that was clean, that was bright, free of all things shiny and nasty.

Overjoyed, we went in and joined the queue.

I had a Big Mac and fries with Tango, the financial officer had a McChicken burger, fries and Coke.

A taste of what lies ahead?

A new month and it's like we've opened the balcony doors to another place.
A multitude of (very, very good) kite surfers exhibit their skills.
All the pavement cafes below us with one (small) exception are now open, including El Guitarra, the best of all pavement cafe bars.*
There is warmth but not an excess of it.
There is wind and when it gusts there is an excess of that.
There is sun but currently a mile or so offshore which is why I'm here typing having brought my drink and cold Spanish omelette indoors.
There are people in numbers greater than can be counted on one set of hands and feet.
However, the unacceptable noise of summer has arrived.
A pair of jet skiers plough their way up the shore, then down the shore, then up the shore again before . . . . you get the idea.
No doubt they are impressed with themselves as from my vantage point and watching the reaction of the strolling public they have yet to impress anyone else with whatever skill it takes to ride a jet ski one way, then another ad infinitum. Which, actually, is not a lot. I speak from experience here as I once got quite good on a jet ski only getting bored after half an hour or so and then getting purposefully capsized by the jet ski owner as I had failed to do so out of incompetence. I even got my hat wet.
What must it be like in summer?
I can only guess as I won't be here to find out.

*El Guitarra, finest pavement restaurante within wifi distance of us and it's thanks to their gracious generosity that this post as well as previous ones are posted. Indeed, before we return we will dine there and intend to leave a tip, too as the offer of recompense for their bandwidth was declined.
Such generosity, we are grateful.

A bit special.

You know it's a bit special when around about midday you stroll along a beach and the only footprints behind you are yours, it's even more special when after about a km or so you turn around to walk back and still the only footprints are yours.