Would I want to reside on the costa del Sol?

WOULD I WANT TO BE A RESIDENT OF THE COSTA DEL SOL?

Where does one find large populations of migrants, often the majority community in places, which integrate with the indigenous people little if not at all, speaking their own language and hardly attempting to learn the local language?

A clue: the most popular paper among these swamping migrants is the Daily Mail. They no doubt tut-tut over stories of “unintegrated “ communities of immigrants in the UK (the development may even be given as a reason why they left). But most of the British living in Spain, especially on the Costas, are a mirror (no pun) image of the Daily Mail monstering stories: lots and lots of them, keeping to themselves and not supporting Spain in football or anything else.

There is one key feature about this unintegrated migration which is absent in other countries, including the UK. The economies of most of the Costa are, in the most literal sense, built round it. The grim urbanaciones have been thrown up to house the foreigners and vast numbers of locals are employed in the business of servicing their pleasures and needs. (There is the faintest of analogies with London, with much of luxury and not so luxury new residences being built with a view to being sold to overseas buyers; but the analogy breaks down in terms of the numbers who actually come and live in those properties.)

Therefore at one level there has been a mutually beneficial symbiosis between migrant and native. By and large, the migrants either don’t work, and direct their UK pensions into the local economy, or they work in the service and building industries, where has been more than enough opportunities in the wake of the foreign influx – until the economic crisis, that is.

Where migration cause no great economic stress, and there are no huge cultural or religious differences (leaving aside the youth “culture” on display in certain resorts, which is not generally that of the wider migrant communities), then populations seem to rub along beside, but apart from, one another. It is possible to live in Spain without ever learning a word of Spanish, because your neighbours are all British, you drink in British bars and, when you go to Spanish restaurant, it is one where the menu is bi- or tri- lingual and the waiters understand an order given in English. Shopping at a supermarket can be done wordlessly.

And yet, there are strains. Spain’s economy has been very hard hit. Unemployment, especially in Andalucía is high; and the cornucopia of service jobs is perhaps not cornucopia enough. Spanish jobseekers may come to point a UKIP-ish finger at working migrants.

Also, the Spanish public services infrastructure, including but not limited to health services, is greatly stretched by the migrant populations. Under EU rules, the UK gives Spain a capitation payment for each UK citizen resident in Spain. Those payments depend on the UK citizens registering their residence. This a lot of them don’t do, out of ignorance, laziness or for shadier reasons (tax avoidance, crime, evading creditors?). There is therefore a large official underestimate of the numbers of migrants, but very real and increasing demand on the Spanish state by the actual numbers.

The lack of Spanish language skills among many of the British migrants has a serious consequence. As the British population ages, in most cases having arrived not in the first flush of youth or even middle age, the need for social and health services proportionately rises. Spanish healthcare professionals cannot operate like waiters, with a functional repertoire of tourist English. Both parties must well understand each other. When this is often not possible, the Costa healthcare services have translators sitting in on consultations between professional and patient. In the case of complicated or serious conditions, or hospital admissions, this is a necessity which is potentially very inconvenient and distressing.

I would consider living (part-time at least) on or near the Costa only if I could achieve a level of proficiency in Spanish which would allow me live outside, or leave at will, the Costa British bubble. I would vow to sustain an interest in Spanish history and culture and, indeed, politics: about all of which many migrants and their local English language news sources are largely indifferent, except where politics concerns local developments which may directly improve or diminish the amenities they enjoy.

How to live in Spain and avoid being enticed into the bubble? A starting point would be to find a town or village where the Daily Mail is not offered for sale -  which will undoubtedly not be a place on the Costa itself.

March 2015

THE SPANISH VILLAGE WHICH WAS LOST AND FOUND

THE SPANISH VILLAGE WHICH WAS LOST AND FOUND

I have written briefly about the village of El Acebuchal in a larger piece on Nerja, Frigiliana and, among other things, their histories in the Spanish Civil war. This pieces looks a little more closely at the fortunes of the village, past and modern.

Acebuchal lies in a mountain valley about 7km north of Frigiliana. The “main” tarmacked road through Frigiliana ascends the mountain foothills in a series of the usual bends (it will eventually wind back to Torrox to the south West); after about 3 km , on a straight section of road, one passes a large plantation of poly-tunnels and immediately there is a sharp right turn off the main road. It is marked by a helpful signpost to “El Acebuchal” and its restaurant.

This side road is narrow and twisting, and made of carelessly splashed concrete, such that the edges and varying contours are difficult to read. A slow but not particularly dangerous drive, past a lot of “Campo” properties (however an anxious driver may well be rendered more so).

Soon after this road reaches its summit, there is a distinct dip, where a short stretch of a side road to the side road is indicated to the right: “El Acebuchal”. Turn here; and either park just below the road, where a mountain track begins, and walk the rest of the way, or, if one’s nerve and suspension are robust, drive along the stony track for about 1.7km down to the village in its valley.

Walkers must follow the same route from the turning off the main Torrox road. Before that they have a choice. Either they must slog up the main road, stepping aside for traffic (the road is wide enough for walking not to be dangerous if vigilance is excercised); or they can take a rural side route which will be certainly be less troubled by traffic and is probably a little shorter if a little steeper. It does not, however, cut out the last section of the main road (about 0.5k ) before the twisty turning.

So: leave Frigiliana to the North on the main road. Pass a garage and within about 100m turn left down a side road by a restaurant. Just beyond the restaurant is an information board with sketchy details of walking routes. At this stage you won’t find the information of much help. However the board itself and others like it are markers.

Walk on. Eventually you come to a hairpin bend round which the road goes up steeply. At the bend there is a big goat pen, which may be full or empty depending on the time of day  (the goats get driven somewhere up the mountains at certain times). There is the vestige of a track beyond the pen. Ignore it and continue up the road.

Around the next corner you will see ahead of you, branching off to the right, a more distinct track. You will know this is correct way as another information board can be seen a little distance up it. Follow this track and soon you will rejoin the main road, 0.5k below the signed turn off to Acebuchal.

As you drive or, more likely, walk down the final length of track you soon catch sight of the village (hamlet, rather). Traces of its history – abandoned in 1949 and re-populated, or at least rebuilt, from the mid 1990s- are not immediately obvious. It appears as another neat, if remote, example of modern tourist Spain, in, and with the welcome constraints of, the National Park. Villas, lawns and swimming pools are in view, albeit on a small scale. Where is the “lostness” of the lost village? You may well wonder.

Before reaching Alcebuchal, you pass a still abandoned house, on the wall of which is a large mural of dense narrative. It tells of a family whose parents, perished; whose grieving daughter stumbled for help through the winter pastures; who became a holy poor woman; and after her death, a saint. It is breathless and incongruous stuff. One cannot help thinking that it is a sainthood which has fallen flat as, apart from this lonely and wordy memorial, there does not appear to be any sign of devotion to the saint is this part of Andalucia (but I stand to be corrected on this observation).

The last bend before the village has a signposted path going off it steeply up into the hills. This path is part of the old long-distance mountain routes from the coast towards Granada, and was key to Alcebuchal’s former existence and prosperity  a relative term, of course).

Mule trains would travel up these paths. The village was a stopping point for the drovers of the trains. It is said that, in fact, truly only the drovers stopped: the mules went stolidly on, while their masters sank a few fortifying glasses before catching up with their beasts.

The village has been renewed, and more, as earlier suggested. In 1949, Franco’s Guardia Civil ordered its abandonment – by some 70 families. According to the book  by David Baird, Between Two Fires ( a phrase coined to describe the situation of the village itself), the hold-out Republican guerillas of the Sierra used Acebuchal as a place to re-supply themselves, whether on a voluntary or forced basis.

It is difficult to imagine now, with even rudimentary road and track connections, how the village was effectively beyond the continuous jurisdiction of the Guardia Civil. But take away modern roads (however rudimentary) and public lighting: then a 7 km distance in mountains was far, and the village remote. Guardia Civil patrols doubtless confined themselves to daylight, leaving plenty of time for the guerillas to materialise.

Alcebuchal was rendered a No-Man’s land. Or, in the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: “Solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant” – “They make a desert and call it peace”.

The guerillas were finally eliminated in the early 1950s, all hope of intervention by Western powers against Franco swallowed up by the Cold War and Spain’s convenient strategic position. But the village continued deserted. Doubtless mule trains had been replaced by trucks. It took the Andalucian tourist boom, which affected not only the Costa but also the pretty mountain villages like Frigiliana, to suggest the viability of a resurrection.

So it came about. A local man, Antonio, who was a child at the time of the eviction, led the reclamation. His family began rebuilding the ruins.

Pride of the village, and its main or only attraction, is the restaurant they have created, which serves wonderfully sauced dishes, including (local) wild boar.

But although the restoration is to be applauded (and the restaurant well worth the walk or drive), the village today is one more tourist destination, with most of the new buildings second homes or holiday lets. Only four local families now live there.

Luckily the National Park surrounds. Sitting outside the restaurant, one looks at steep wooded slopes. But apart from old photographs inside the restaurant, there is little continuity between the old, remote, village, which, in the 1940s, was at the front line of a vicious civil war, and the somewhat bland Costa outpost of today.

March 2015

WALKING FROM FRIGILIANA

WALKING FROM FRIGILIANA

The largely ancient village of Frigiliana stands on one side of a fertile valley in the foothills of the Almijaras mountain range near Nerja, in the province of Granada in Spain. The valley is thickly dotted with modern houses, and one or two older farm buildings. ( Photographs from the 1980s show uninterrupted cultivated fields and groves.) At the back of the village is a steep rock, upon which once stood a Moorish keep or fort, the site of a desperate late c16 siege. On the other side is a precipitous gorge, in which flows or, in dry periods trickles, the Rio Higueron.

The gorge marks a sharp boundary between timeless, rugged, rural Spain and the “Costa” Spain of tourist and retiree development.  Most of the hilly or mountainous land around Frigiliana lies in a National Park, so there are no buildings to desecrate the pine-covered slopes and valleys, unless you count ancient Moorish stone watercourses (acequias) and ruined shepherds’ huts.

Thus, on one side of the Higueron gorge near Frigiliana the landscape is green and wild. But on the other side, modern expansion of the village has roared right up to the lip of the gorge, there to halt precariously, with a screech of architectural brakes, and await the day when the face of the cliff (a mixture of limestone and softer rock)   will surely crumble and send swimming pools and terraces into the abyss. (At the siege mentioned above, by Christian troops of Moorish rebels, many of the defeated Moors did throw themselves into the gorge – see blog…)

One odd effect of this arrangement, “Costa” crowded up against “Campo”, is that one can be walking on the Park side of the gorge, picking a way along the ridge, with wonderful views of mountains to the East and North and sea to the South, when suddenly the view to the West opens up: a row of stacked white holiday apartments at the same eye level and seemingly only a long stone’s throw away. This is disconcerting; but also provokes the thought that, should one suffer an accident, help could be halloo’d for, if the wind stood right- and the season was one when the apartments are occupied.

The gorge of the Higueron is deep, but mostly wide enough not to provoke claustrophobia. There is at least one exception: to the south of Frigiliana the gorge (though no longer extremely high) narrows to a vicious canyon (I am prejudiced by vertigo) where there is no way forward for a walker, or mule, except by an artificial open ledge on the rock face, ending in a long, arching, open on both sides, stone stair over the torrent.

By contrast, the valley floor North of Frigiliana is, for several kilometres, wide enough at most seasons for the river to share space with a dry stony track, though the proportions of river and dryness alter very frequently.

On either side the cliffs, covered in vegetation and tough trees, rise up, mostly pretty vertically. But there are opportunities here and there for steep paths.

One of these goes up not far North of Frigiliana, just past what is claimed to be a Moorish reservoir, which has the present appearance of a ruined and mis-measured lido (big notices forbidding swimming reinforcing the illusion).

This path is part of the “Gran Senda de Malaga” (a big circular trail) and also serves a network of local walks. It is steep and twisting, and involves some rocky scrambling. Walking up is a 200m plus ascent, with a slow emergence into the sunlight towards the top. Pine trees and wildflowers and herbs, and a changing vista back across the gorge are the pleasures of the climb.

One doesn’t often meet any other hikers, so a sense of romantic isolation is rapidly manufactured (remember Frigiliana is not far away).

There has been recently one notable interruption to this idyll. As we walked one day up the gorge towards the path, a small convoy of four or five off-road motorbikes roared past in a smelly cloud. When we turned up the climb, we could still, annoyingly, hear their echoes in the gorge. As we laboured up the path, we gradually realised  that the revvings and stutterings were coming from above: the wretched machines were somehow being ridden or coaxed up the trail we were also climbing.

The mechanical ascent must involved a lot of dismounting and manhandling bikes over rocks, so we foot-sloggers were in fact overtaking the bikes. This meant that, in addition to the ghastly noise of distressed engines, we were eventually inhaling, not the clean smells of the valley side, but undispersed diesel fumes.

We had to halt several times several times to allow the vandal column time to get ahead to a tolerable nasal and aural distance. When we emerged at the top onto the valley ridge with its spectacular views, there the riders all sat, eating oranges. A Spanish-speaking member of our party remonstrated with them politely concerning their various pollutions (not to mention the damage caused to the path).

They shrugged and, discarding the orange peel, soon revved off down the Gran Senda. Luckily we were then headed in a different direction.

March 2015