Andalucia Steve

...living the dream

Funny Things They Eat in Spain

Warning: Don't read this if you are vegan/vegetarian
 
It was during my first week in Spain that I ascended an escalator in a big supermarket, turned a corner in to the meat section and was greeted by a rack of pig faces. It was quite a bizarre sight! It looked as though the left half a pig's head had been placed in a polystyrene tray and wrapped in cling-film. There were dozens of them, all looking the same way, which of course prompted a question in my ever curious mind. Where were the right hand sides of the pig's heads? Was there another shelf somewhere with dozens of pig faces looking the other way? I never found out. I consoled myself that at least they all had their eyes closed. Were they open, now that just would have been weird!
 
Even though I'm a meat eater, I was still troubled the first time I bought what I thought was an oven ready chicken in a small local supermarket. It looked like the ones in blighty, again sitting in a polystyrene tray wrapped in plastic. However when I unwrapped it I was in for a surprise. The head was still attached and dropped onto the counter with an unexpected thud! What I was supposed to do with it I don't know to this day. I think I actually closed my eyes when I cut it off with scissors and threw it in the bin. Yuk!
 
Spain is obviously a different country with a very different culture to the Britain I grew up in. The food they eat here and the relationship to food and to animals takes some degree of adjustment. The first house I bought was a country house, and the owner had a shed full of rabbits he bred for the table. I had him remove them before I took possession of the house as I didn't fancy myself having to kill and butcher rabbits. However a short time after I moved in, a neighbour invited me around for Sunday lunch. He introduced my wife and I to our meal, which was a live, white rabbit that was hopping around in his garden shed. You know what's coming next don't you? Yes he killed and skinned the rabbit before our eyes. Within the hour, bits of poor bunny, including his head were on a plate in front of me. I understood being served the head was quite an honour, but one I could have lived without if truth be told!
 
Heads are quite a thing here. One of the restaurants in Cehegin used to serve roasted goat's heads on a Monday night. They were brought out on a tray from the oven and placed on the bar. Each head was sawn in half, and as I recall served face down, so you could see the brain, tongue, sinuses etc. I'm going back a few years, but I think half a head and a few roast potatoes was pretty good value for one euro fifty.
 
My rabbit murdering neighbour invited me out a few weeks later to go snail hunting. Eager to integrate myself into Spanish society I was accepting all such invitations at the time as it seemed the right thing to do. The day came and I went with him and some family members on a walk in the 'campo' along a quiet road where I was assured lots of snails would be found. Now I'd seen bags of snails for sale in the market and they all had ornate spiral shells, which I'd assumed was the hallmark of some special edible species. How wrong I was. All sorts of varieties and sizes of snails were apparently fair game, some looking distinctly like the ones I'd had to put pellets down for in blighty to stop them chewing my Hostas. After a while, we had amassed several buckets full of sundry snails, which my neighbour took to the kitchen of his country house. I was hoping they would be well cooked or at least boiled for long enough to kill any remnants of 'snailness' but alas no. All he did was put them in bowls of vinegar and pop them in the fridge. The next day I was invited around for a snail feast. They were served in some kind of sauce which I had not been privy to the making of, but it tasted quite spicy, as though some cumin and chilli was involved. Much to my surprise they tasted quite good, though I don't think I'd go to the trouble of making them myself. Incidentally, this incident revealed the answer to question that had puzzled me since I first bought my house. The grounds were fenced in, and the fence mounted atop a small wall, two breeze blocks high. Dotted around the property, ceramic tiles were lent up against these walls. It turns out they were snail hotels, deliberately placed to provide a cool, moist, comfortable space for the snails to repair to so they could be easily harvested. I'd inadvertently purchased a snail farm!
 
Probably the most unsavoury thing I've known the Spanish to eat are wild birds. I've not seen this with my own eyes, but someone who does it showed me the equipment he used. I visited the country house of a friend of a friend one Sunday morning for a barbecue. Breakfast barbecues are not uncommon on a Sunday in Murcia when the weather is good which is often. On this occasion we were eating six week old goat (yes I know, animal lovers must be cringing by now, but when in Rome). So we were talking about barbecue and the bird topic came up. The guy went into his shed and brought out a large black net and a device that looked like a camouflaged military radio. It turns out it was a bird-caller. He turned it on and within a minute or two, birds started flocking into the olives trees around us. He explained how he would setup the net between the trees, play the bird sounds, and when enough birds had arrived, he would gather the net entrapping them. Then he would pick them out of the net, and, miming the action, described how he would spike them on a skewer, presumably while still alive, and cook them on the barbecue. 
 
"Which birds" I asked, visibly wincing a little in anticipation of the inevitable answer.
 
"All types" he said. "Whatever is in the net."
 
As you can imagine, I was extremely glad not to be invited back to see that in action.
 
The same chap provided the meat for a birthday party I was invited to a few months later. He worked in sales and drove all over Spain for a living, so contrived to bring back two baby pigs from a trip to Segovia, which those in the know will tell you is the best place to go in Spain if you're into eating piglets. The pigs were placed on olive branches which were laid inside a bread oven. I can't remember the cooking time but I think it was a good few hours, and when the pigs came out of the oven, the meat was succulent and falling off the bone. As is traditional, they sliced the pigs up with dinner plates which were then ceremonially smashed, and everyone was served piglet slices on a paper plate, which seemed somewhat ironic. I must say though it was delicious. 
 
The list of odd things I've seen in bars here goes on and on. Pancreas was something I tried but didn't care for. I was hoping it would taste like liver but no, it tastes, well, like pancreas. One bar surprised me by selling frogs legs as tapas. On the bar in a glass case in lots of steel trays were all the usual suspects. There was Russian salad, eggs stuffed with tuna, anchovies, tigres (stuffed mussel shells), then, unusually, a tray full of frogs legs. The tapas was free with a beer so I had to try them. They tasted a little like chicken. I was surprised to see them in Spain. This was in a transport cafe on an industrial estate, so it is possible they were there to delight visiting French lorry drivers. I pondered for a while as to what happens to the rest of the frog when it loses its legs. Perhaps there were choruses of ribbiting frogs pushing themselves around in wheelchairs somewhere.
 
Possibly the weirdest thing I've seen someone eating was after a bullfight one day. When a bull is killed, the animal is taken out and butchered. The meat, known as lidia is quite prized, as a bull bred for fighting is in pasture for five years to gain the necessary weight for the ring. I've never eaten any myself but it must be along the lines of Wagyu beef. Anyway, I happened to be in a bar near a bullring one day after a bullfight and witnessed a chap chewing a raw bull's testicle! I know it's rude to stare but it was hard not to look!
 
Probably my favourite curious culinary delight is Mondongo. There was a gastronomical society that met once a month in Murcia, mainly patronised by elderly folk who revisited their youth by dining on some of the meals they ate during the Franco period. As a foreigner it was quite an honour to be invited to join the club and I went to many meals over a number of years. We were even featured on regional television, such was the interest in what we were eating. You may know, the Franco years were characterised by extreme hardship, so good meat was expensive and hard to find. Mondongo was an ingenious use of two cheaper more readily available cuts of meat, sheep's stomach and cow's knees! It doesn't immediately sound very appetising, but trust me it was delicious. The dish is rice based and cooked in a large paella pan (I know I know, you don't have to say 'pan' because paella means pan). The tripe, bones and a little stock is added and, as it cooks, something magical happens. The cow's knees have very little meat on them, but the gelatinous fat in the bones melts and gets soaked up by the tripe and the rice. When it is served, the trick is to get a palm full of oregano, then rub your hands together to grind the leaves over the rice, and then the flavour of the herb gets drawn in by the fat. I really couldn't believe how something so simple and potentially unpalatable could taste so good. I don't have much contact with Murcia anymore these days, but if there was one reason to go back it would be to relive the Mondongo experience!
 
 
 
 
 
 

The low down on Spanish weddings

What's it really like to go to a wedding in Spain?

 

I stumbled across a DVD I made a few years ago of a Spanish wedding that I was invited to. I've been to several in fact, and I've noticed there are quite a few differences to Spanish weddings, some of which may seem a little odd to outsiders.
 
Firstly, one doesn't necessarily need to know the bride and groom to be invited to a wedding in Spain.  In one instance I was very friendly with the groom's father but I'd never met his son or the wife to be. On the big day, although I attended the church, I didn't actually meet the happy couple for the first time until the reception where they shook hands with everyone on the way in to the venue. I used my pigeon Spanish to explain I was sorry for not having met before, but sensing my awkwardness, they brushed aside any embarrassment and welcomed me to join the celebration and enjoy myself. I did just that! The food was excellent. It was explained to me there were two function rooms used for weddings in town, one which was a bit 'posher' and this one which had better food. They must have had a large kitchen as there were hundreds of guests there, with waiters buzzing around like bees, bringing plate after plate and wine bottle after wine bottle. The father was milling around talking to people but kept checking up on me to make sure I was OK. 
 
"Did you like the prawns" he said, obviously knowing the the answer would be yes, given the huge pile of shell casings in front of me.
 
"Have another plate.."  He snapped his finger at the nearest waiter and another plate of prawns arrived. Now I'm no prawn connoisseur, but these things were damned good. Larger than most prawns and a deep red colour. I didn't know as I was shovelling them in my cake-hole but I made enquires about them the following week and learned they cost a euro each. I'd probably eaten my way through twenty or thirty euros worth!
 
Which brings me to funding. By convention, if one is lucky enough to be invited to a Spanish wedding, one is expected to contribute to the cost of the celebration. They way this is done is by making a discreet enquiry before the event as to the probable cost per head. Then one brings this money in an envelope as a gift to give at the reception. Some people, close family members and friends may give more, but the general idea is to cover the costs with hopefully a little left over to start married life together. I think it's a great idea and from what I've heard, the generosity of  the guests never leaves the bride and groom out of pocket. 
 
One thing I've seen at a lot of Spanish weddings, not just ones I've been invited to, but ones where I've happened to be a passer-by at the church, is when the couple exit the ceremony, fireworks are set off. I don't know how or why firing rockets into the air in the middle of the day became a thing, as the explosions are almost impossible to see in bright sunshine. The noise is most likely the reason. They also enjoy riding around town in a cavalcade of cars all beeping their horns in celebration. In a small village like Olvera it's impossible to not know a wedding is taking place!
 
Another difference at Spanish wedding receptions, at least the ones I've been to, is that there are no speeches. Nobody clinks their glasses or makes a toast. No 'best man' gets up and makes rude jokes about the groom. Having been used to the format of British wedding receptions, I recall feeling robbed of entertainment. I've also had Spanish friends tell me they have seen movies like 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' and were quite envious of this but in Spain, people just don't seem to want to take the leap to address the room. Instead of being punctuated by speeches, the progress of the reception seems to be marked by which course is being served. There are generally lots of courses, multiple starters, a couple of fish courses, a couple of meat, desserts, even cigars. At one wedding I went to each man was furnished with a big cigar and each woman with a miniature commemorative five-pack of cigarettes! 
 
As with wedding receptions the world over, when the feasting is over the dancing starts. All the weddings I've been to featured discos rather than live music. What is different is the duration. Even at weddings that take place at midday, you will still find yourself dancing at six o'clock in the morning and sometimes beyond. I've never had the stamina myself, but I've been assured that the celebrations often continue back at the groom's house up until lunchtime the next day. That's one thing you can't deny about the Spanish. They sure do know how to party!

Eight Great Reasons to Visit Spain

Why Spain is a great place to take a vacation

 

I felt I was unduly negative in last weeks blog post. To be fair, I was directly ranting at the folk in charge of tourism in Spain, not the country, which is rich in reasons to visit. So, to redress the balance somewhat, here are my eight great reasons to visit Spain.
 
 
1) People have been here since prehistory.
 
The first time I stayed in Cehegin, the town in which I spent my first six years living here, I booked into a hotel that had copies of rock art on the wall. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but these images were taken from cave art found in the Peña Rubia, the big hill behind the town. It's said that the Peña protects Cehegin from the worst of the rain as the clouds tend to go around it one way or the other. I'm not sure how true that is but the town does seem to have a favourable climate. It was some time later I learned about the caves and rock art in the Peña Rubia and I hoped to visit them but they were unfortunately closed for security, restoration and research. I understand the caves can be visited today if one makes a booking in advance with the tourist office. https://www.laverdad.es/murcia/planes/larutaconunpar/201405/07/cuentos-edad-piedra-20140505190930.html After I learned about it I often marvelled that as long ago as 3500 BC people had made the place where I was living their home. Of course, the Peña Rubia is one of many prehistoric caves containing early rock art in Spain, the most famous of which is Altimira in Cantabria, the discovery of which was the subject of a fascinating movie 'Finding Altamira' starring Antonio Banderas.
 
2) The Romans
 
The Romans had an enduring relationship with Spain which I first learned about when a neighbour told me the land on which my house was built in Cehegin was the site of a Roman cemetery! No names no pack drill, but a Spanish chap I met in the same town invited me round for a family lunch one day to his country house. The garden was full of Roman columns, statues, busts and frankly looked like a museum. He told me he ran a construction company excavating roads and railway lines. Work would often stop because another piece of history had been unearthed. Such delays were as unpopular with him as they were with the firm contracting him, so often isolated pieces would quietly disappear into the boot of his car so that work could continue! The rape of Roman ruins was not limited to the private sector though. I saw a group being guided around the ancient Roman ruins of Acinipo near Ronda in Malaga province. A woman stumbled across a piece of pottery which she showed to the guide, who much to my surprise told her to keep it as a souvenir!
 
 
3) Nightlife
 
The Spanish certainly know how to party. Ibiza is the party capital of the world but nightlife is great all over the country. My wife and I stayed with a friend in Alicante for a week while first looking for houses here. Towards the end of our stay, he suggested when went night-clubbing and he showed us around all of the local gay bars. There seemed to be dozens of them. I recall dancing along to something camp like Kylie Minogue in one of them, when I noticed video being played on the walls around the bar, then I realised they were filming the audience and playing the tapes on subsequent nights. I suddenly had an overwhelming feeling of sympathy for the future punters who would have to endure my interpretation of The Locomotion. Despite this it was one of the best nights out ever, as partying with gay people often are. You don't know you've lived until you've been 'cruised' by a George Michael lookalike in the Bang Your Head bar at 2:30 in the morning! Changing tack slightly I've noticed a marked trend for nightclubs in Spain to be empty one minute and full the next. It seems the locals move in packs from one bar to another, so if you happen to arrive at the wrong time you might think the place is not happening. Don't panic though, have a look for evidence of activity. If there are glasses waiting to go in the dishwasher you may have missed the 'pack', but if it looks 'clean', have a drink and give it half an hour. Chances are the party is on the way! (Also nightclubs in Spain never have the word 'Club' in their name - that is reserved for another type of establishment altogether where the dancing is more horizontal than vertical if you get my meaning!) 
 
 
4) Beaches
 
I'm not much of a beach bum but even so I've visited dozens of beaches over my many years in Spain, all the way from the Mar Menor in the East to Tarifa in the West. With over 5000 km of coastline, Spain has all kinds of beaches imaginable, so you're guaranteed to find something to your taste. My favourite is probably La Playa de la Cortadura at Cadiz which is a sandy shoreline so long you can't see the end of it. Even in the busiest part of the season you're able to find a quiet spot!
 
5) Quaint Villages
 
The Spanish landscape is pockmarked with picturesque towns and villages. I recall reading somewhere there are about 5000 though I've been unable to verify that figure for the purpose of this blog. While I've mentioned in previous blogs the threat of rural depopulation hangs over the future of many of these, it's also true that there are more opportunities than ever to find accommodation in them thanks to the Internet and services like Airbnb. I met some American cyclists recently (well, pre-Covid) who were riding from one side of Spain to the other with no formal plan other than accepting the hops that booking their next accommodation online took them. I thought that was a great idea. I wish I was brave enough to do it!
 
6) Architecture
 
Whether you love modern architecture or megalithic monuments, Spain has it all and everything in between. We have 2500 castles and just shy of a 100 cathedrals. Particularly notable in the south west of Spain where I now reside, is the influence of the Moorish period and the colonial period where huge wealth came back from the country's expansion into South America. Much of these riches came via Seville and spread out all over the region, reflected in fine old buildings all over the Western provinces of Andalusia.
 
7) Scenery
 
Spain has a remarkable variety of countryside. I've driven back and forth between Murcia and Andalusia many times and I'm always struck by the way the views change. Driving out of the elevated pastures of Caravaca that look like a scene out of the Sound of Music, I would round a bend at the other side of the Puebla de Don Fadrique to reveal a break in the mountains revealing a huge plain, then keep driving to see the snow capped mountains of the Sierra Nevada then beyond them on to the desert of Almeria. The landscape is constantly changing. How many places in the world can you be skiing in the morning and swimming in warm sea water in the afternoon?
 
8) Wine 
 
I don't think Spain's wines get the international recognition they deserve, which may well be because their focus has most recently been on the domestic market. Grapevines were thought to have first been brought to the peninsula by the Canaanite tribe of the Phoenicians roughly around a thousand years before Christ when they settled in Cadiz, (making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe). The Romans later fell in love with the sweet wines from Cadiz province, particularly from around Jerez, much more of which was turned over to grape production back then than it is today. The Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martialis wrote of the primitive sherry saying it was "highly regarded in Roman circles". Winemaking in Cadiz is currently undergoing a renaissance with many farmers replacing olive trees with vines. The olive oil industry is under threat from stiff international competition from New World countries however there is little to differentiate one brand of oil from another. Although wine faces similar competition, the difference in character between one bottle of wine and another is much more marked and so today's marketplace is rediscovering the wines of Cadiz with similar joy to the Romans 2000 years ago. 
 
These are my solid reasons for visiting Spain but there are many more. What is your favourite?

Tourism in Spain - why aren't they thinking ahead.

A rant about tourism

 

I received an official looking letter through the post this week. You know the sort, covered in barcodes and government logos. Roughly translating the label on the outside of envelope, it was from "The Institute of Statistics and Maps of Andalusia Council of Economic Transformation, Knowledge and Universities'. While mouthing the words represented by the three letter abbreviation 'WTF' to myself, I opened it up to find I'd been one of 5000 lucky people to be selected to take part in a survey about tourism. I say 'lucky', but reading the small print suggests that completing the survey is compulsory. I'd hate to be clapped in irons for not filling out a form, so I hastily took to their website to submit my responses online.
 
My first though was that I'd been singled out for selection as what they term over here as a 'residential tourist', which always makes me think we're regarded as foreigners who live here but they are expected to up sticks and go home at some point. But not so. This was a survey intended for Spanish folk, asking about their travel habits over the last few years. As the questions moved from past to the present  they were clearly designed to figure out what affect Covid has had on people's ability and desire to go on holiday.
 
I've read elsewhere in the Spanish press that certain bodies within the Spanish travel industry are pushing to refocus away from the international traveller towards the national internal market. I think this is quite a mistake. The whole point about international visitors is they bring wealth into the country that didn't exist here before. Encouraging internal tourism, trying to get folk to move around within the country, is only going to move around wealth that is already here, though clearly with the intention of sweeping more of it into the pockets of the folk behind all-powerful hotel lobby who are probably the authors of this initiative. In case you haven't come across the hotel lobby before, they were pushing to ban Airbnb a few years ago, alleging they were stealing trade from hotels across Spain. They didn't succeed but they arm-twisted government to bring in stiffer regulations to private landlords wishing to rent out the homes to tourists.
 
Tourism in Spain is in my experience a myopic, inward looking affair anyway. As I understand it, people need a degree in tourism to work in a tourist office but it doesn't seem to obligate them to speak English or any other commonly spoken European language. I've personally visited at least a dozen tourist offices here where Spanish is the only language spoken. Locally, strategy and planning to attract tourists seems frankly uninspired, seemingly going little further than adorning the old town with flower pots and slapping a bit of paint here and there. Olvera has its own official tourism website which is fittingly blank http://turismolvera.com Regionally and nationally, efforts to promote tourism seem to be equally parochial and archaic. I had a flick through the latest government report from the ministry of tourism, which was lamenting the demise of Thomas Cook and boasted of strengthening ties with the airline industry. To be fair I suppose, they didn't see Covid was going to come along and upset the apple cart. Elsewhere in the report though, there is a heavy emphasis on ecotourism and one gets the impression they are trying to attract a 'certain class' of client with a preferred profile. This is evidenced in the official Instagram feed of the Spain's Tourist board @Spain where images of cathedrals and churches outnumber beaches by about ten to one and gastronomy, nightlife or even wildlife pics are near non-existent. It's almost as if they are purposefully trying to attract the sort of tourists who do a lot of brass-rubbings!
 
My mission here today isn't to totally trash the Spanish tourist industry, but I would like to drop an idea their way. I did so at the end or the survey when they asked me for any other thoughts and I shall relay what I told them here. (Sorry to regular readers that I'm rehashing an idea I put forward in an earlier blog post but I think it's perfectly OK to plagiarise myself in the promotion of a valuable idea!)
 
The EU has in sight the phasing out of the internal combustion engine. Diesel engines are set to go by 2030 and petrol will probably go soon after, possibly as early as 2035.  (https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/end-fossil-fuel-car-eu-agenda)
 
This means that road traffic by tourists from northern Europe will be transitioning to electric over the next ten to fifteen years. 80% of tourist traffic in the past has been by plane, however Covid has decimated the air industry and the future of fossil-fuelled flight is almost as precarious as that of the petrol engine.
 
If however you try to map a route to drive an electric vehicle though Spain today you will find your journey is dictated by the paucity of charging stations in rural areas. Overlay the charging stations on a map of Spain and the image resembles the wheel of a bicycle. There is a dense hub in Madrid in the centre, then a fairly dense ring around the cities and towns in coastal Spain. In the interior of Spain is like an electric desert. 
 
One could argue that this will improve organically as the number of EVs sold in Spain increases over time. It seems to me though that the essences of attracting tourists, especially to a small town like Olvera, is by providing the transport infrastructure they need. If we had a Tesla Supercharger in Olvera it would be the only one between Madrid and Malaga. Imagine how many affluent northern European Tesla owners would see the charger on the map and plot a route to head through here on their way to the coast. Until another charger appeared somewhere else in this electric desert, this would be practically all of them!!
 
This is the way towns grow. My home town is Surbiton in Surrey. Before 1838 it was little more than a hamlet, at least compared with the neighbouring town of Kingston-upon-Thames. Kingston was an important stop on the route from London to the naval base at Portsmouth back in the day when Britain ruled the waves. As such, it had a well established and lucrative coaching house industry. When it was proposed that a newfangled railway line from London to Southampton would be running through Kingston, the coaching industry were up-in-arms that they were going to lose trade, so lobbied the council to reject the scheme. The line was instead re-routed through Surbiton. A station was built there in 1838, from which the South London commuter belt grew. The town never looked back. ( Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surbiton#History )
 
I have heard that attempts to install charging stations in rural towns in this part of Spain have met opposition. I don't know for certain but it wouldn't surprise me if this came from petrol station owners who are worried about losing trade. I hope not. I hope they see the future belongs to renewables and don't use their influence at a local level to discourage the development of the economy of towns like ours. As I mentioned in the blog post Spain's Problem With Rural Depopulation ( http://andaluciasteve.com/spains-problem-with-rural-depopulation.aspx ), towns like Olvera need every bit of help they can get to stay afloat. We should be lobbying like crazy to make Olvera an 'Electric Vehicle Friendly' town. Opinion!