spain

When Liz went off to work in Italy last year, people asked me how I was doing “living the life of Rodríguez” (the title of this post). This is what men left at home are called. It comes from the back end of the Franco era, and suggests a bloke, wife and kids on holiday for the traditional month or so, left at home, working. The sense is that Spanish men in the sixties were not exactly self sufficient when it came to home life. Now in my situation, it’s not quite the same; Liz is off working for a start, and I’m not incapable in the kitchen, but still…

Feos : not pretty

So once again I am living the life of Señor Rodríguez while Liz is working really rather hard.

Sr Rodriguez went to the cinema last night. I was going to see a French kids comedy (Little Nicholas) but when I got to the cinema I changed my mind and went for Spanish fare instead. I saw Que se mueran los feos (which could be translated as ‘Death to the ulgy’ although that sounds a bit harsh… ) it was the sort of lightweight comedy set in a rural village we’ve seen a million times in the UK (and Ireland) but it starred Javier Cámara (who I would watch in anything ever since seeing Torremolinos 73). He played Eliseo, the balding socially-inept lonely fortysomething with a limp who longs for a partner but knows he’ll never have one and he actually brought a little depth to what could have been a terribly one dimensional character (I wouldn’t say it was complex and two dimensional, maybe one and a half dimensions). The rest of the cast I recognised by sight, if not by name, because they’re all on TV a lot, in fact one review I read said it was like watching an episode of Aida (a rather popular comedy series). That’s not a bad thing in my book.

Pepe wonders about mud and sun

As the weather improves, the chaps (and chapesses) in Grupo Naranco get more cheerful. The amounts of clothing, gaiters and umbrellas gets less and less, people stop scanning the sky as we head out on the bus, confident that it won’t be as grey as in the winter. Pepe works as a security guard up at the hospital and I bump into him most weeks on my way to or from the classes there. We say hello and wonder aloud if the next walk will be sunny or not, or if there’s finally going to be a walk without mud (it is an unwritten, and unspoken rule that all walks must contain a section on either a very muddy path or up or down a stream). It hasn’t happened so far.

Coming down

Sunday was forecast to be glorious, until Friday when the forecast changed to hazy, then cloudy. So far so normal for Asturias. Friday and Saturday had been balmy in the city so we had high hopes. We were heading to San Isidro, the ski station (I’d say resort but it’s not big enough… what do you use when it’s a place to ski but not really big enough for a holiday? Resort seems too grand) in León. We’d walk from there North into Asturias. As ever the landscape is stunning, patches of snow amongst the limestone and grass, with hundreds of tiny daffodils… a host? a hostess? We walked up to Peña de viento, and as we got to the top, as ever, the clouds covered everything north of us (ie everything in Asturias). We stopped for a snack and to watch the clouds coming up and over the peaks, enjoying the sunshine when it appeared.

Hulooooo

We descended on snow slopes rather than ankle snapping scree, enjoying the softness of the spring snow, where you can put your heel down hard and be sure of not slipping. All too soon we were below the snow, and the cloud, filling up water bottles with icy meltwater. We stopped in a meadow formed from moraine dam and ate empanada (basically a foccacia baked with chorizo and pork fat (Liz took the pork fat out of hers, I didn’t)). Then down a track for a couple of hours along the side of a big valley, passing high altitude bee hives and heather covered hills… and a couple of muddy sections. Just enough time for a shandy at the bottom before a snooze on the coach home.

The view for most of the way

The last day of this section started earlier than planned. Liz was woken up in the middle of the night by some banging and howling outside. Some local yoot were up to no good. Julio got up and made sure the door was locked but Liz said the noise was a bit of a shock (I dozed on unaware, having left my mp3 player earbuds in to drown out the symphony of snoring that the six other chaps in the room were producing). The day dawned, cloudy but not raining, so we got everything together and set off as far as a bar round the corner for breakfast. A word about breakfast in Spain, it has as much importance here as The Star Spangled Banner has in Huddersfield, ie not a lot. Although the coffee is good, the accompanying squares of fairy cake (bizcocho), while pleasant enough, leave you with the sensation of not quite having prepared for the day. In the bar we were served two packaged cakes each, 8am is too early for the kitchens to be open in most places so the far more filling pinchos have to wait until later.

The main altar at Vilabade

In the ten minutes it took to eat it had started raining heavily. Stepping outside, I opened my umbrella to see that it had a couple of snapped spokes and a hole… it was a cheap one, but I hoped it would survive the day. We walked up the last uphill stretch for the time being and through yet more pine forests, this part of Spain is full of plantations serving a few paper mills, it’s pretty big business. The path was better today and we made good time. The rain stopped as we came down through Vilabade, where there was a big grey church which used to be part of a monastery. It reminded me of rural Ireland, mossy grey buildings and slate roofs and an overwhelming sense of catholicism. In Castroverde we stopped in a bar, where my rucksack became the departure point for the dozens of ants that had hitched a ride  from the albergue decided to make a dash for it. The sun came out, then went in again as we set off.

Only 5km to go, Liz takes a break, she's not dead.

We kept up a fine pace and didn’t feel particularly tired until the last 5k to Lugo (it was a longer day than the others, 30km) which was a pain. We had planned to eat in Lugo so we were running on empty (and energy bars). Lugo is on a hill but that hill is pretty small and surrounded by bigger hills so we didn’t see it until we crossed over the motorway. There had been some discussion about our plans. Julio had originally wanted to stay the night in Lugo and get the bus back the next evening, we had thought about getting the first bus out of Lugo and getting back to Oviedo as soon as we could. We eventually compromised and said we’d get the bus at 8:45 that evening. We headed to the albergue to dump our rucksacks, it was early, 3:30 so we were in time to eat. The chap in the albergue gave us a recommendation for where to eat and we did. Julio was determined to eat cocido gallego, which is a Galician stew, but nowhere served it while we were there so he had to content himself with knowing he could phone ahead for the next stage and pre-order.

Lugo in the rain, Julio's umbrella was as bad as mine

After lunch we took a stroll, it had started raining again, stronger this time and we took refuge in the cathedral. A warden noticed our muddy disheveled looks and came over to stamp our credentials. Then she offered to give us a tour of the cathedral, which is basically listing all the saints and virgins (I particularly liked Holy Mary of the big eyes) and a bit of the architectural history of the building. The rain had not stopped so we suggested to Julio that we get the earlier bus, leaving the town for the summer. Unfortunately there were no places left so we had to stick to our original plan and console ourselves with a wet walk on the roman wall. Lugo has an intact roman wall (originally with 85 towers) and I’m sure it’s lovely when the sun shines, but what I remember are the numerous houses with collapsed slate roofs, the damp and the moss and lichen growing on each wall. We killed time in a cake shop and then in a bar until the bus was due and then slept for the five hours back to Oviedo. The final part will be in the first week of August, it’ll probably rain then too.

Julio in the mist at the hospital chapel

I’d like to say that the next day started bright and sunny. I can’t though because it was more of the same, I put my umbrella up as we left the albergue. The other pilgrims had capes of various sizes and colours and everyone had the same ‘oh well, what can you do’ expressions. Breakfast was from the coffee machine in the albergue, when I say coffee machine I don’t mean a Gaggia, no, a Nestle special accompanied by a Kit Kat from the other machine. No matter, we thought, there’s a town just 8km away, we’ll have a late (or Spanish) breakfast in a bar there. More wandering through pine plantations and muddy tracks occasionally looking up to see if there was a view (not often) and then looking down to avoid the biggest deepest puddles and mud pits. The path follows the main road to Lugo but is a little more direct, which means there’s a steepish slog up to Montouto, a pass where there are the remains of old hospitals. I’m not sure why they put hospitals in these places, maybe to ensure that when people reached them they’d need hospitalizing. The hospital at Montouto dates back to the 14th century, founded by Pedro the cruel (great name, I can imagine it “Sire, what name will you be known by?” “Well, I think… ummm… cruel, yes Pedro the cruel… it’s got a certain ring to it no?” “Ummm….” “off with his head!”). We arrived in Paradavella hungry and ready for a coffee or something warming but had forgotten that it was Good Friday. The bars were shut. An old lady peered out of her doorway and looked anxiously at the three of us, Julio asked if there were any bars nearby. Four kilometres along the path. Ah well, a museli bar and a gulp of water would have to do for the time being. The path joined the road and then left it, joined it again and left it. Julio began saying phrases like ‘me cago en la puta que le parió’ (I crap on the whore that gave birth to him: quite strong language) when it became clear that the path went steeply down only to go steeply up later to rejoin the road.

Caldo, chorizo, pan, vino = happy

Finally we rounded a bend and saw a village, Julio, stomping ahead in the rain, turned and waved jubilantly. An open bar. We shucked our things and sat, it was only 12:30 but we were going to eat anyway, who knew when another bar would present itself? What have you got? we asked the old chap behind the bar. He indicated to the back, I’ll ask the boss. We’ve got caldo, he said. We nodded, caldo is good warming stuff. I can give you a chorizo too. Warm? we asked. He shook his head. It would do. We sat. His wife bustled out and said she’d make us a tortilla with chorizo. So pretty soon the table filled up, galician bread is thick and crusty, you could live on that and wine, and we set about the doorstops. The chap brought out wine in tankards, Julio asked for some soda (he likes his wine weak and fizzy) and the owner shook his head and said that wasn’t possible, you couldn’t do that to his wine. Good food, good caldo (according to the guidebooks they use grelos, which are turnip tops) good chorizo, good tortilla, acceptable wine. Then we asked for some cheese and the guy brought out a half round (about two kilo’s worth) and a knife and said have what you like. We finished with a coffee and an orujo (again, the bottle dumped on the table with a shrug). Replete, we asked for the bill, seven euros a piece. So full and happy we headed back into the gloom.

Happy walkers but wet

From this point on the Camino Primitivo is much less up and down, the paths improve a bit, less mud, more towns. We rolled into the albergue at O Cádabo at around 3:30 and had a little siesta. The houses in this part of Galicia are traditionally made or clad in pale grey granite which looks incredibly depressing in the rain. In fact, they use granite here as fenceposts instead of wood, probably because of the speed of rotting the damp climate would cause. We strolled around the town (took about five minutes) and decided on a place for dinner, ate and went to sleep.

waiting for tortilla

First of all we had to get back to where we had left off which meant a four-hour bus ride deep into Asturias. As we got near to Grandas, a group we assumed were pilgrims got on the bus… blatant cheating, but it had been snowing on the high pass and they claimed incipient hypothermia. What that meant though, was Julio became a little paranoid that there wouldn’t be any spare places in the albergue (the pilgrim’s refuge) so as soon as the bus stopped he was away, grabbing his rucksack and marching smartly towards the town hall. As it happened the three pilgrims were looking for a hotel, they wanted the extra heat and the chance to warm up. We found the albergue almost empty, a couple of guys from Galicia and a Frenchman, and a cyclist and his suspiciously clean bike. As ever, a place to eat was next on the list. We tried one bar in town where they said it was too early (8pm) and we’d have to wait. So we went to another where the guy said he’d ask his wife and gave us pinchos de chosco (a pressed ham that they do here which is rather good) while we waited. She brought us out a tortilla which was brilliant yellow with waxy soft potatoes, that we ate while the bar filled up ready for Barcelona v Arsenal on the telly. The only other entertainment in town seemed to be the ubiquitous protests about the head of the ethnographic museum being fired. We headed back to the albergue to sleep in the almost suffocating heat (the heating was turned up to ‘dry everything’).

not raining yet, but look at the lush green, it's just a matter of time

Next morning we walked away from Grandas and out of Asturias. There were a couple of villages left to pass before we made it to Galicia, but the buildings were already showing signs of Galician influence. There’s a lot of slate around there, and roofs are normally made of it, but with interlocking tops so that the stones can’t blow off in the wind. The weather forecast was not the most optimal for walking, predicting showers and snow down to 900m (our route over Holly Pass, el puerto del acebo was at 11oo or so. It hadn’t started raining at that point so we enjoyed the verdant rolling hills as we headed up the steep-ish climb.

Moss and slate giving a clue to the sunny climate...

We stopped for a rest in Penafonte, where there’s a quite impressive slate and granite church. Julio is keen on getting his pilgrim credentials (the piece of paper you need to demonstrate your journey and to let you use the albergues) stamped everywhere he can. At the moment there is a preponderance of bar stamps. This may be because of the local priest shortage. Although there are a lot of churches and chapels, it’s hard to find a priest when you want one. The

churches in these remote parts have services every few weeks if they’re lucky. As we left the shelter of the church porch it started raining.

The high point of the day found us walking under windmills which loomed suddenly from the mist. For the top kilometre we were in snow and sleet. Then we passed a small slate with the words Asturias | Galicia and that was that. We’d walked out of Asturias. The rest was downhill to the coast.

Liz thinks it's going to burn off

We walked on, descending though extensive pine plantations until we reached a hamlet. There was a bar but it was shut, looked like it never really opened. A few houses later on we asked someone and they said there was a restaurant just a bit further on. The restaurant was called the catro ventos (Galician for the four winds – quatro vientos). They say you eat well in Galicia, they’re not kidding. We had caldo gallego to start (Galician soup, which is basically stock with potatoes, beans and turnip leaves) and then I had a steak which filled a big plate (rather more than I expected seeing as the price was not much more that €6).

Some very fine tentacular action

As we got nearer to A Fonsagrada (a note on Galician names, A means La in Castillian Spanish, O is El, basically the Galicians couldn’t be bothered with the first consonants in the so A Fonsagrada means The sacred spring) Julio asked an old guy where the albergue was. He said there wasn’t one. The albergue is actually in a little village further on called Padrón. Sigh. We arrived, a little damp, and signed in. This albergue is run by the Protección  civíl and is a bit more than just one room. We had a room to ourselves and a lift back up to Fonsagrada to have a look at the town and to eat octopus. Many people have told us that the best octopus in Galicia can be found here (a long way from the coast). So even though we had eaten a reasonable lunch we tucked into a plate of pulpo which was at least as good as any I’ve had elsewhere in Spain.

There will be none left in short order

This week Spring has most definitely sprung. One of the signs here (as opposed to the UK, where Spring seems to be marked by the same shot of someone having a butty in a London park without a jacket) is the sudden appearance of strawberries in vast quantities. Liz cannot pass up the opportunity of fruit, so she bought a crate (no punnets here, just little crates, holding 2Kg) at the frutería just around the corner. We have some requesón (cream cheese) ready and waiting.

Pretty near the hospital

“How’s are you?” I asked, sitting down and getting my books out of my bag as the doctors put their white coats on and stuffed their pockets with scraps of paper, reference books and stethoscopes.

“It’s not a good day.” They said, “How do you say despedida in English?”

“Depends what you mean, can you explain a little more?”

“Yesterday some doctors were despedida’d and sent home.”

“Fired or made redundant?”

So it turns out that yesterday, with no warning fifty-some doctors were made redundant. This was a bit of a shock. Many had more than ten years service in the hospital. So now they face having to move to another part of Spain to find work, because all over Asturias the lack of tax revenue due to the economic downturn, la crisis means that public sector workers are facing a difficult future.

One of the problems is that to get a job in the public sector you have to do exams called oposiciones or opos. That’s for pretty much any public sector job. You want to be a rheumatologist, there’s an exam; a teacher, exam;  a council worker, exam; police, prison guard, you name it, there’s an exam.

Except when there isn’t.

In the hospital, in that department, there haven’t been any opos for fifteen years because there are no available places. If you get the top marks in an opo, you get the job you want and it’s for life. Which is why so many Spanish folk are preparing for them (I know half a dozen people who are in the process of doing opo preparation, there’s a whole industry of academies and tutors out there). If there are no opos you may still have a job but it’s an interina, a temporary job and you can be tossed out like these doctors were (with no more than one month’s pay).

Oposiciones were instituted, I’ve been told, in response to the old way of doing things, which was to know the right people, and to have the right politics (and it was right being the Franco era) in order to get a job. The exams were supposed to bring about a certain egalitarianism in candidate selection. Which it did. But then it went a bit far according to some Spanish friends, and the whole job-for-life at the end of it seems to encourage a certain lethargy  in those who have achieved that holy grail.

So to be a doctor, first you need to get the degree, then do an exam called the MIR in order to get onto a speciality (if you do well you can pick your speciality, if you don’t then you’re headed for wherever they tell you, you didn’t want to be  a GP? Tough.). then you have to complete the residency requirements and then to progress from temporary contracts to permanent, the oposición. Up until that point you have no more job security than anyone else, and, in these times of crisis, it seems, less.

oh, there you are, taking photos again...

The forecast said sun. But it also said that there was a cloudbank heading in from the east, snowing heavily over the Basque country. We were hoping for some stunning views of the Picos de Europa, that planned walk was to take us up the hills just to the north east of the Picos and if all went well we’d have the snowy peaks on one side and the sea on the other.

As it turned out, the tops were in cloud and we all felt a little disappointed. So we made up for it with snowball fights when we decided we were high enough (ie, just below the mist) for the team photo.

So yet another peak we have to go back to, what a damn shame.

Pompeyo's nose

Liz was off running with her new running chums so I took advantage of Pompeyo’s offer to go skiing.

I’d already been to San Isidro and Fuentes de Invierno so we decided on Pajares (Valgrande-Pajares, to give it its full name). Pajares is the original Asturian ski resort (seems funny to call it a resort, in Spanish they’re called estaciones de ski, ski stations: resort seems a little grand). It’s bigger than Fuentes de Invierno, even has a brace of hotels/hostels. As we drove up there Pompeyo told me that the first time he went there was in 1986, when there was only one charlift (wooden slatted chairs) and a ton of button lifts.

It’s popular, on a good weekend it’ll be packed full of folk. Being Spanish, of course, they mainly arrive a little late so as we got there at 8:45am we had the pick of parking spaces. The lifts opened at 9 and there was a gaggle of kids in matching ski-club outfits ready to go up that we had to negotiate. Unfortunately the ski-club yoot had a competition going on so one of the pistes (the best one according to Pompeyo) was shut.

As we started, the weather wasn’t too bad, a bit windy up top because it’s much more exposed than the other ski resorts I’ve been to here. We enjoyed powdery hard pistes (refreshing after a couple of trips with spring wet snow).

Is this a red or a blue?

After a couple of hours the clouds came down and we skied on in very poor visibilty. At times the tiny snowflakes were driven hard into our faces by the wind, and the combination of that, and the ice forming on our goggles meant that on a couple of occasions we really had to work hard to figure out where the hell the piste went.

Another entertaining difficulty was that the ice on the piste markers made them all the same colour (I don’t think it was my colour blindness). So I have no idea what colours the pistes were. The majority are either red or blue, but they’re wide and smooth so they’re easy reds (even the last one which we did with zero visibilty).

All in all a good morning. We bailed as the weather closed in, three and a half hours of skiing (€16 for the half day pass) and were home by 1:45. According to the web site there’s a bus we can get up to Pajares so I’ll have to go up there with Liz at some point.

It was a learning experience for everyone. Pompeyo had raised the issue at the AGM (and a few times before, sounding people out). What about those members of the group who had never in their lives put a pair of skis on? Why not use the knowledge of the group to give them a taster of skiing so they could decide whether or not they liked it.

They don't know what they've let themselves in for

It seemed like a reasonable idea, a few people agreed. So that’s what we did.

The ‘knowledgeable’ folk were: Pompeyo, Carmen, Me and Liz.

So we were teaching (coaching, pulling up from the floor, encouraging, trying not to wince) some absolute novices. Let’s be clear, we were not trying to teach them to ski, only teach them enough to stop (turn if at all possible) and to use the lift, and of course, let them have a go at putting on boots, getting up after a fall, that kind of thing. It didn’t  hurt that the plan included a discount on gear hire (€10) and the option of a big lunch (€12).

We went to Fuentes de Invierno (I took my camera but the visibility was so bad that it never left my pocket). Spring snow (i.e. wet). We had a quick recap of necessary vocab (ski tips: espatulas, the back of the ski: talon, edges: los cantos, bindings: sujetadores, brake!: frena, snowplough: cuña) in the car and off we went.

Chaos, absolute chaos... like herding cats

We marched up the bottom of a long flat green piste and set to work.

There’s nothing like watching absolute novices to show you how much you have learned (and to demonstrate some appropriate cursing, meca is the Asturian equivalent of “bugger”, because it is basically the short form of me cago en el mar (poo in the sea!) although you can soften it even more by using “me caches el el mar“). As expected there was much falling, flailing, yelping and laughing. What seemed to us painfully slow was for them frighteningly speedy, but they all seemed to enjoy it. I’ll be interested to hear from Noel what he thinks about teaching real beginners. Fuentes de Invierno has a ski school, but there seemed to be a huge number autodidacts today (that would be, all over the place).

After a few goes down this little slope, Sabi, one of my charges told me to say los giros not las giras (ie masculine not femenine) for the turns, as the femenine means a tour. This was a long way from being my only mistake in Spainsh today (I paid special attention to the ski instructors I passed later in the day for good phrases: no te tiras! (don’t lean back) was one of the most used).

After lunch Liz and I went up to tootle around (in the zero visibility) and the others (those still standing/willing) paid for a single go on a lift. There were only a couple of injuries, despite the ma

ny falls, nothing too serious (fingers crossed). I think it was a success, half of them will be back, I’m sure.