Workman

Marines

January 12, 2013 Workman No Comments

When you first see Marines as you drive north from Llíria to Olocau it looks like a white painted housing estate, but in fact it is a genuine little Spanish village and fully recognised as such by the regional government. Strictly speaking, it is called Marines Nuevo to differentiate it from Marines Viejo a few kilometres further on.

There’s none of the twisting narrow streets of most Spanish villages, denoting its Moorish origins, for the simple reason that the Moors had long gone when the grid street plan was laid. The village owes its existence to a much more basic, if not considerably more frightening, event than the settling of the moors during their seven-hundred years in Spain. It is there because of the devastating floods that wrought havoc through much of the Valencian Community in 1957.

Not only were vast funds made available to build an enormous channel around Valencia City to stop the regular flooding when the Rio Turia bursts its banks, (which now gives us the Jardines de Turia, the dried up riverbed with gardens, sports grounds, and the City of Arts and Sciences), but the regional government decided to build a complete village to house people who’s homes had been destroyed in the torrential floods, and so Marines came into being – although building didn’t actually begin until a decade later.

Unlike many so-called ‘new towns’ where the designers throw up hundreds of same-old, same-old boxes without a care for the needs of the people who would actually live in them, the chaps who laid out the urban plan for Marines thought of everything. There’s a church with a fountain in the square and a town hall to the side, restaurants, cafes, banks, butchers, bakers (the candlestick makers were redundant by then), a cultural centre, and there’s even a theatre.

The streets are generously wide, with parks and small public spaces dotted everywhere, usually with thoughtfully provided benches to have a natter on. There are four types of houses to suit different family sizes, from the big family affairs to the small bungalows for pensioners. Each has a little garden in front and most have a spacious patio at the rear. All of the buildings are of Mediterranean design and include copies of calles partidas, streets where the first floor extends over the ground floor to create a shady, arched walkway. The design is Castilian in origin but similar designs can be found all over Spain. Everywhere is white, white, white, apart from the octagonal tower of the sports centre, with its band of green tiles.

These days many of the houses in Marines are second homes for city folk living in Valencia, but there are still enough permanent residents to give it a proper village feel. It’s not the place you’d go for a historical or culturally charged visit, but it is worth a look to see just how pleasant somewhere new can be when a bit of thought goes into the design and that not every new development has to include a golf course at its centre.

Derek Workman is a journalist living in Valencia City, although his work takes him throughout Spain and Morocco. You can read more of his travels at derekworkman.wordpress.com.

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Sagunto

October 29, 2011 Workman No Comments

The owner of the ceramic shop at the bottom of the steep incline up to Sagunto Castle probably wonders why he sees so many white-kneed Brits giggling and taking photos of his shop sign, much in the way they snigger behind their hand when they order fartons, the sponge biscuit that accompanies the delicious Valenciano drink horchata. In uneven hand-written lettering, the sign tells you that the shop is called Ceramicas Arse. Giggleworthy it may be to the Brit with a limited knowledge of Spanish history – in other words, practically everyone – but Arse was the name that modern-day Sagunto was known by when it was an Iberian settlement – and there weren’t many tourists to laugh at the name then!

These days Sagunto is a busy city which owes much of its recent growth to its proximity to Valencia. But the former is much more ancient than the latter, and remains of settlements as far back as 1,500 BC have been found. Name an invader, Moors, Romans, Visigoths, and old Hannibal himself, and they have all stamped their mark on its history, and much of it still lives on in the narrow, meandering alleyways of the old town.

The original Plaza Mayor is surrounded by arched colonnaded walkways with overhanging accommodation known as calles partidas. This was designed to give extra space above street level but also provides much needed shade during the searing summer months.

The casco antiguo is full of wiggly streets and arches, the best known being the Portalet de la Jueria, which gives access to the area known as the Jewry. It is also known as the Portalet de la Sang, the Little Gate of Blood, which may say something about the bloody history of Jewish oppression in Spain.

Little has changed in the topography of the streets of the Jewry since their expulsion by the Catholic Monarchs in 1492 – at the same time as ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue’ – and the area also has more churches and hermita’s than you could shake a rosary at, although in that time-honoured Spanish fashion, you can’t get in to see the stunningly decorated interiors except at mass times or during fiestas.

However, you can get a glimpse inside the Ermita de la Sangre, conveniently placed on Calle de Nueva Sangre, (I did say Sagunto had a bloody history), on Saturday mornings, when the Confradia de la Purísima Sangre de Nuestro Señor opens the doors to display twenty gloriously gilded, painted, carved and ornately adorned ceremonial images that are carried through the streets of Sagunto during the liturgical parades of Semana Santa.

These carrozes, floats on which stand images of Mary, Jesus and a host of heavenly attendants, need up to twenty hearty young men to carry them, each dressed in a flowing monk-like robe and wearing a tall conical hat that totally covers the head, with only holes for the eyes and mouth. The most important is La Soledad, a great gilded platform on which the Virgin stands, draped in rich dark velvet, covered in curlicued gold embroidery, and shaded from the elements by a starstudded canopy of the same material. Sixty thousand euros worth – minus the lady.

There has been so much debate about the reconstruction of the Teatro Romano, the Roman amphitheatre that I obviously have to go and see to add my two pen’orth. When I enter the Teatro through the dark, narrow corridors of ancient stone I can almost hear the rumble of the crowd of two millennia ago, waiting for a performance to begin. When I emerge into daylight, though, all sense of antiquity disappears.

The top of the scaenae frons the back wall of the performance area was totally destroyed during the War of Independence in the early years of the 19th century to make a clear shot for the canons from the Castillo above. Heavy-handed restoration at various times during the 20th century did little to achieve an accurate image of the Roman theatre and only served to distort its original structure.

In front of me is a two-storey wall of pale cream brick with a few elements of the Roman construction fixed to the wall with metal clamps. Only about a quarter of the seating original remains on either side of the amphitheatre, but these sections are roped off. The performance area is a strange layout of curved walls, terraces, walkways and pillars, but without seeing a performance it is impossible to tell how good the acoustic is, although as a young couple walk across the gravel-covered area in front of the stage I hear the footsteps of a cohort of legionnaires on the move. Demolish it or leave it? On a beautiful early summer’s day, with only the sound of a light breeze blowing through the trees and the twittering of birds, all thoughts of architectural debate fall into nothingness.

Having girded up my loins with a beer and bocadillo, I set off up the steep slope toward the castle. An ancient set of stone steps provide a short cut but disintegrate into avalanche-strewn rubble half way up, making me think that the long route might have been best after all.

Unkempt, rubble-strewn, over-laden with cement in places the Castillo may be, but there is no doubting how mightily impressive it is. At almost a kilometre long, you can’t but be in awe of the sheer effort that went into its construction.

You could say that this is the Arse end of Sagunto civilisation because it was here that the first Iberian settlement began. The existing perimeter is mainly that of the Islamic fortress, but successive conquerors added and subtracted until now it is an architectural rag-bag of styles, the most important section of which is the Plaza de Armas, where remains of the Roman municipal forum, public and religious buildings and some of the original Roman buttressing remains.

Like some mythical labyrinth you are drawn through portal after portal, the urge to see what’s around the next kink in the wall irresistible. The reality is that there isn’t much else to see, just more cactus plants, rusted signs and mounds of rubble, but don’t let that put you off.
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What a Tosa!

October 24, 2010 Workman No Comments

When you are lying flat out on your back, with your underpants around your kneecaps and John Thomas languidly lying there, and a young lady with sexily slim glasses and long, dark flowing hair, says “Tosa,” to you, you can’t always be sure whether she’s giving you an insult or spurring you on to action.

Fortunately, in this case I could, because the dark haired young lady was a Spanish doctor, and she was telling me to cough, as she gently strobed a bit of medical equipment over my family jewels to see if I had a hernia. I didn’t, but the cold gel she put over the head, (the equipment’s, not mine) certainly made my shy little parts jump a bit.

It’s a man thing, but we’re always a bit nervous when the person examining our naughty bits is a svelte young thing and not some hulking brute with tobacco stained teeth and hairy nostrils. We lie there hoping one of two things; a. that we’re not suddenly going to get an unexpected – and in this case, unwanted – rise, and b., infinitely more embarrassing, that little jonnie hasn’t hibernated totally and will at least be showing himself in some sort of semi-manly condition.

When I’m told to drop my underpants and hold my pene straight up so that she can have clear access to my testiculos, at first I think she means hold it up in the air, i.e. at 90º to the body (I’m lying down, remember), but before I embarrass myself I realise she means straight up my body. This gives me the chance to do what all self-respecting chaps would do, and that is carefully cover it with my hand so that no comparisons can be made with the chap who came earlier. (Non self-respecting chaps would simply flop it on their belly and put their hands behind their heads, as if to say, “So what do you think of that, sweatheart!” The answer would be, “Nothing.” They’ve seen plenty of pricks in their life and you and your manhood are just two more.)

I don’t know if it’s a shortage of specialisations, but in my experience anything to do with ears, nose and throat is dealt with by a male doctor, whereas anything below the belt line is handled (not physically, obviously) by a female. It was the same when I had my vasectomy. The doc that did the snip, the one that anesthetised the poor little chap and the two attending nurses were all ladies – and I mean that in all its senses. Terribly polite, they were, making all sorts gentle conversation that avoided totally any reference to the parts under inspection.

It was also a woman doctor who I made laugh when she gave me the result of my sperm test a few months later. “Everything’s fine,” she told me, “your results are negative.” “Thank you, doctor,” I said. “That’s the first time in my life I’ve had zero result in a test and been happy about it.”

If you would like to know more about Spain, visit my web site, www.derekworkman-journalist.com , and http://derekworkman.wordpress.com . http://valpaparazzi.wordpress.com are random thoughts about life in Spain.
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Pennies from heaven

October 4, 2010 Workman No Comments

One of the main criteria I have when looking for a new home is that I must have somewhere to grow a few plants. My apartment in Ruzafa in Valencia City is wonderful, with a 40m2 terrace that was totally empty when I arrived, apart from a cracked bathroom sink, a grubby towel, three odd socks and a lifetime’s worth of pegs.

The sink made me wonder, It didn’t take me long to realise that, being on the first floor of my apartment building, and my terrace being the first flat surface that something encounters from its fall from the washing lines of the six storeys above me, I was going to find myself with a fair collection of oddities, most of which were of absolutely no use to me at all.

I could have been like the disgruntled old sod we all encountered in our early years who would keep any ball that went over his wall, but what value to me have a red sock with a bunny on the side, size 3; a rucksack with the straps about three inches apart and suitable for a nine-year-old; a blue gingham plimsoll; a pink hand towel with a frayed edge and faded ‘Te Quiero’ – ‘I love you’ embroidered in the corner above a heart (obviously not intended for me!); a …. Perhaps best not to mention that one, and a couple of dozen pegs. None, is the answer (apart from the pegs), so I devised a way of returning them to my vertical neighbours without causing embarrassment.

When you come into my building you enter a small foyer, with a couple of steps up to the lift. Between the foyer and the lift are a pair of doors, which are usually jammed open with a folded cigarette packet. Just before the doors are two small marble-topped pillars that cover some of the very iffy electrics in the building.

If something is small enough I tuck it through the brass handles of the doors. This serves well for most things and nothing usually hangs around for more than a day. Some of my neighbours are kind enough to say thank you for the return of their footwear and bathroom impedimenta, although most don’t (sadly the landlords have allowed for a certain lesser quality of clientele to accommodate themselves on the upper floor, but what can one do). I feel I provide a valuable recovery service, delivered (almost) to your doorstep muy rapido (although I have to admit that the skimpy red satin panties with the embroidered sweetheart on the front below an enticingly tied lace bow did linger a little longer than is perhaps decent, before they were returned. I am human after all!)

The strangest thing of all to cascade onto my terrace arrived this morning. I went to hang out some washing and saw a peg lying on the tiles. At first, I thought it was just another one come astray from someone’s washing, but as I got closer I saw that the peg was clamped around a folded piece of paper, with the word ‘Hola’ showing. I un-pegged the note and found a message written in capital letters on the back of a torn-off piece of calendar.

‘Hola: Soy Gay’ (it read)

‘Tengo 57 años y me gustas tu y tu terraza.

Un Saludo

Sigfrido

-telf …..’

(For non-Spanish speakers,

‘Hello, I’m gay

I’m 57 years old and I like you and your terrace

Greetings

Sigfrido’

Somebody likes me! Unfortunately for Sigfrido, I’m straight, and, quite frankly, I’d much rather the note came from a Sigfrida, but at least someone on God’s earth thinks I’m worth dropping (literally) a billet-doux to!

I was tempted to send a message to the phone number, saying thank you, but I’m unreservedly hetro, but thought that it might be someone having a joke, so decided against it. There again, perhaps it was my terrace he was more interested in.

So I continue returning the size 3 socks, the gingham plimsolls and the frayed-edge hand towels. But just you wait till the red knickers fall again. Possession is nine tenths of the law, after all – and them buggers is mine!

If you would like to know more about Spain, visit my web site, www.derekworkman-journalist.com , and Spain Uncovered
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The age of the machine

September 21, 2010 Workman No Comments

A couple of days ago I escorted a lady friend of mine to the underground car park near my flat, and on the way out I fancied a snack, so I passed by the vending machine to buy a bar of chocolate or something else to satisfy my craving. All the usual suspects were there…Oreols, Twix, Kit-Kat, Pipas sunflower seeds, chewing gum, Durex….Durex!

The one thing you can be sure of with most vending machines is that they will usually only have things to fulfil an oral fixation – something to eat, to drink, to chew – but this is the first time I’ve seen a combination of things that went beyond the gastronomical.

But it set me athinkin’…we’re so used to buying the odd bar of chocolate and packet of crisps from the silent salesman at almost any hour of the day, but if we can now buy a packet of jonnies along with the packet of nuts, what else is available?

My car park meanderings might have come to nothing if the next day I hadn’t strolled past the kiosko of my friend Pepe. Defunct kiosko is probably a better phrase, because he and his lovely wife, Carmen, retired a couple of months earlier. Where once a couple of delightful people dispensed newspapers, magazines, sweets, chocolates and big smiles, stood a machine that dispensed cans of coke, packets of crisps (chips to anyone outside the UK), disgustingly lurid, teeth-rotting tubes of sugar-saturated sweets – and not a word about how your day had been. What a loss to the barrio.

So… I decided to find out just how far this vending machine malarkey went…and I’m happy to say that if all we can buy in Spain is a can of fizzy pop and an overly salted packet of industrial waste, then we aren’t doing badly, thank you very much!

It’s easy enough to buy a packet of ciggies from a machine, although made difficult now for the juveniles because they have to ask the barman to give them the key that unlocks the ‘under-age’ button – which shows that I’m not a smoker because I’ve no idea what the laser-key actually does, but I believe it’s to deter under-age smoking.

In Tokyo, they go one-step further because their vending machines have electronic eyes that evaluate customers’ skin and wrinkles to determine whether they are old enough to buy tobacco. With the state of my skin, they’d probably refuse on the premise that I’ve obviously done enough damage to my health that I don’t need another fag.

In some of the more fancy Canadian bars, the ladies rooms are equipped with vending machines with flat irons to allow the dears to defrizz their golden locks – not something I’d need to use, being almost as bald as a coot.

But you have to hand it to the Arabs for the one-upmanship of putting machines in upscale hotels that dispense gold bars and coins at more than $1,000 an ounce.

It seems that we like to do more of our buying ‘on the hoof’, without having to talk to a hoity-toity sales person. As far as shops are concerned, it’s becoming so expensive to rent property and pay all the overheads that a machine sat in a good position is pretty cost affective. And it’s not just a can of Coke or a bar of Dairy Milk you can buy; Body Shop are offering skin care products with ingredients like hemp and vitamin E in deluxe machines at airports, and will soon be installing them in shopping centres. There was one place in Washington, called Shop 2000, that offered eggs, nappies and condoms that met with a roaring failure and was shut down. Perhaps if punters had bought more of the latter there wouldn’t have been a market for the product in the middle.

So, it seems that the vending machine in my local car park may be the thing of the future, with its couple of spiral shelves of Durex. Although I think, we’ve still got a long way to go to catch up with Asia where punters can buy underwear, umbrellas, toys, pizza and organic strawberries. Although I hope – very, very, sincerely – that they come from different machines.

Censured Already!!!!!!!!

September 10, 2010 Workman No Comments

Good God (I am allowed to say God, aren’t I?) I’ve only had one blog on-line and I’m getting the red pen put through my carefully scripted words already! So much for the freedom of the press!

In case you are wondering what my ire is all about (and boy, can I ire when I’m in the mood) I sent a perfectly sensible little blog entitled…well I can’t actually tell you what it’s entitled because that’s where my robust prose is deemed a bit too much for TIM’s ‘sensitive readers’ (the red pen wielder’s phrase, not mine).

As with There’s nowt so erotic as rubber, the second one has a bit of a mucky title, but those who read it just for the smut would be sadly let down by the content, although personally speaking, I think it’s not bad in its own little way. It’s a bit like internet dating; the nifty looking bit of totty in the photo sadly doesn’t always give a fair resemblance of the actuality – at least that’s what they say about me, anyway.

So if you want to know what the banned blog is called, and what it’s all about, you have to go here, but don’t go shouting at me if it upsets you. And if you want to read about all the muckily-titled blogs I’ve written, go here.

Meanwhile, here’s one that I’m sure won’t offend anyone.

Which menu, sir, Chink or Dago?

I was meandering home on my bike this afternoon when I saw something that made me smile, in a sardonic sort of way. I’d been coming back from the centre of Valencia and had detoured through the back streets behind the gorgeously kitsch Estación del Norte, the central station, to visit a small Chinese deli that sells a particularly spicy sauce I like and can’t seem to find anywhere else in the city. I passed a sign that said ‘Restaurante Español’ – and that’s what I smiled about, although viewed from distance and with Valencia being the third biggest city in Spain, it might not seem all that strange to see a sign advertising a Spanish restaurant. But that’s not what he was doing. The sign wasn’t in fancy lettering painted on the window, or neatly written above the door; it was in capital letters as big as his printer could print them on pieces of A4 paper and stuck across the window. What he was saying was, ‘I’M A SPANISH CAFF, WITH SPANISH OWNERS AND SPANISH CUSTOMERS!’ although he might not have used those exact words.

Until as recently as five years ago, the criss-crossed streets that ran alongside the Central Station, Calles Bailén, Pelayo, Troya and Julio Antonio, with a smattering of others, were barrio barrio, streets full of ordinary working class people, many of whom have lived there for generations. Despite it being mere spitting distance from the posh centre of town, most of the shops would have been your little mum and dad grocers, a scattering of butchers and veg shops, the odd photographer (and that’s not meant in the prejudicial sense), the inevitable Mercadona supermarket, hairdressers by the dozen (there’s always hairdressers by the dozen in a vecinidad, a neighbourhood), pastry shops, knicker shops, and all the other types of shops that keep body and soul together, and it was the last place I ever saw horse meat advertised for sale. Over the last few years, though, there has been a steady flow of Chinese businesses opening in the city, until now it’s become a flood.

Now don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a diatribe against an Eastern Invasion. Far from it, my barrio is about as mixed as you could possibly get and I love it, but back to the Central Station.

Like most cities, Valencia has sort of divided itself into districts over time, mainly as certain areas would attract the immigrants who live in those areas, thus attracting more immigrants, etc. etc. New York has Little Italy as well as a dozen other Little ….’s; London has its Chinatown and Manchester it’s Indian Village in Rusholme. But there are divisions between the separate communities and their businesses, at least there are in Valencia.

It’s impossible to go to any one-horse-town in Spain – and probably anywhere else in the world – and not find the Chinese equivalent of the Todo a Cien. This was the mainstay of basic life, where you could buy anything from a pan to a packet of needles for one hundred pesetas, about 60 centimos in today’s money. Many of these shops existed on the sales of ends of lines, slight seconds, bulk purchases of fire and flood damaged goods etc, and was a boon to those living on the borderline. My favourite shop when I came to Spain was Domti, and I’m still using three pans and two casseroles I bought there ten years ago. Unfortunately, when Spain and most of the rest of Europe succumbed to the Euro, the floodgates opened and thousands, literally thousands, of Chinese cheap-jack shops opened, flooding the markets with what are called here, ‘yellow goods’. I’m not knocking them, the one on the corner of my street is my first port of call for all my basics.

Go to almost and city and the world and if you want a cheap bed for the night look to the area around the station – and Valencia’s no different. Cheap hostels, cheap caffs, cheap food shops, cheap knick-knack shops, cheap everything – including cheap property rentals. So it’s not just the Chinese who’ve set up shop, there’s a whole assortment of Latino bars and clubs as well, but the Chinese are definitely the dominant population.

A few Spanish cafes, shops and restaurants are still open for business in the area, as well as one of the most famous bookshops in the city, Librería Paris Valencia, but even if a cafetería appears Spanish from the outside, there’s no guarantee that you won’t be eating with chopsticks if you go in. When I went to the Café Pedro a few weeks ago – a name as Spanish as Spanish can be – I was there because I friend of mine had told me that you could get a bowl of noodle soup ‘as big as your head’ for only four Euros, but I was the only occidental face in the place.

So I can understand the ‘Restaurante Español’ sign. I’m sure the owner wasn’t being racist, he was just letting everyone know that, if you wanted it, a Spanish option was on offer. Personally, after eleven years in Spain and enough paella, albondigas, and queso manchego to sink a battleship, I’d rather go next door and have a bowl of noodle soup the size of my head.

There’s nowt so erotic as rubber

August 22, 2010 Workman No Comments

Sauntering the streets of any city eventually gives you your own ‘patch’. I don’t mean a small area of green – usually wilting – but somewhere you gravitate to, whatever the time of day, when you need to get out of the house and take a walk. Nowhere is better than anywhere else, mainly, I suppose, because it’s yours. What you see in a ten-minute stroll is probably totally different to what anyone else sees – but so what, it’s your patch. You may live within two hundred metres of my flat but your patch will be different. Mine revolves around a barrio called Ruzafa in the centre of Valencia.

I wander into a Bolivian bar. I’ve been here often enough for a quiet beer, but this weekend it’s fiesta time so the place is packed. The music is probably really good Latino, but I can’t hear it above the noisy family chat at the tables. Gracias a Dios, at least here the spoken word – more often shouted word – gets precedence over a €15.65 CD of Los Mejores Canciones de …….

I lean on the bar. In a John Wayne movie the peons sat at the table nursing their half glass of beer would have glanced out of the corner of their collective eye and settled into an uncomfortable silence, waiting to see ‘wut the stainger wus hea faw’ while he ordered his shot of Red Eye. Me…I’m totally ignored, mainly by the barmaid who is completely enraptured by the dusky, low-slung hombre with the shoulder tattoo and nearly razored skull. He’s the sunny side of nineteen, I’m in the shadows of – well, never you mind – bald, a bit overweight, skin like a recently discovered Aramaic parchment. Even I’d ignore me!

Eventually I’m rescued by a lady of a certain age wearing a pair of surgical rubber gloves. I’m not certain exactly what her age is, but at least it’s closer to mine than the infatuated chica salivating over tattoo boy at the end of the bar. Somewhere between a badly done to forty-five and a pretty nifty sixty-two, I’d guess, given the grey hair and slight – more than slight, actually – over-trouser roll not quite hidden under the loose polo shirt. Still, who am I to argue – at least she’s got hair, and my polo shirt hangs like an A-frame dress.

I toy with the idea of what the rubber gloves are for but my fantasies are soon floored when she plunges her hands into a sink full of dirty glasses, rinses one and pulls me a glass of beer. I drink it and leave, ruminating on the possibilities of buxom wench and a pair of Marigolds.