La Vida Alcalaína

At the heart of Alcalá de los Gazules, literally and figuratively, is the Beaterio de Jesús, María y José. It is tucked in between the church of San Jorge and the remains of the castle, at the highest part of the town. The entrance is in the narrow street which bears the name of its founder, a priest called Diego Angel de Viera. The Beaterio opened in 1788 to provide free care and education for those in need. Today, this takes the form of a hospice for the elderly, and a school with boarding facilities for kids who don't have a stable home life, both run by a small but energetic group of nuns and volunteers. There is also a delightful chapel and a walled garden with spectacular views over the town and the surrounding countryside. Last Friday we attended a concert there to raise funds for a well to provide clean water and irrigation for a village in Kenya, part of a project undertaken by three Kenyan nuns currently staying at the Beaterio.  It was a great chance to...

Greetings from Sunny Spain!   In fact it's so sunny and hot we can't go out in the daytime, so we've been staying in and watching TV.  There's so much going on!  Some coal-miners from Up North have walked all the way to Madrid to complain that the government has kept some money from the EU which was meant protect their livelihoods, and spent it on something else. How daft is that!  But they are making themselves useful by helping burn the rubbish in the streets, entertaining the crowds with fireworks, and giving the police some target practice for their rubber bullets. (PS did you know rubber bullets are nearly as big as cricket balls?!  I thought they were little tiddly things that just bounced off, but apparently they can do you a lot of damage!) The police will need lots of practice, because all the unions are coming out to demonstrate about tax increases, schools and hospitals closing, pay cuts etc etc. The public sector workers are cross because th...

There can't be many people on the planet unaware that Spain has just become the first country ever to win three consecutive European and World Cup titles - hence the catch-phrase for this year's Eurocopa "No hay dos sin tres " (there are not two but three, the equivalent of the English saying that things always come in threes, or "it never rains but it pours"). There's even a song with that title, performed by Spanish pop star David Bisbal  with the Colombian duo Cali & El Dandee , which has been played endlessly on TV and radio since the tournament started back at the beginning of June, helping Spain to raise her spirits and put her economic woes to one side for a few weeks. Although la selección española were the bookies' favourites from the start, there were plenty of begrudgers complaining that the team had lost its edge, that it would never get past the ever-improving German side (in the event, it didn't face that test as G...