La Vida Alcalaína

Visitors caught short in Alcalá will search in vain for a public convenience, but ´twas not ever thus.  During the short-lived Second Republic of the 1930s, the town's socialist administration provided the good people of Alcalá with a number of facilities previously lacking: a museum, a covered market, a library, and a public urinal.  However, it was nearly as short-lived as the Republic itself. Here is its story (an abridged translation of an article by Jaime Guerra Martinez on the Historia de Alcalá de los Gazules blog). The hexagonal public conveniences, a short hop from the bus stop What disappointment was suffered By the sons of our city Over the public urinal Built opposite Bernal's This verse, sung by a band of street musicians during Alcalá's Carnival in the 1930s, reflected the popular reaction among the less prudish citizens to the introduction of a charge for using the recently-opened public urinal in what was then the Paseo de la Repúblic

Last Friday  a 53-year-old woman in the Basque Country threw herself out of the window of her 6th floor flat while the bailiffs were coming up the stairs to evict her for failing to keep up her mortgage repayments to La Caixa.  She was a former councillor, married with a 21-year-old son.  None of the neighbours were aware of the family's financial problems. On 23 October a young man threw himself off a road bridge in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, after losing his job, his girlfriend and his home in quick succession. On 24 October a 54-year-old man in Granada hanged himself in his patio after receiving an eviction notice from BBVA.  He had lived in the area all his life, and bought out his brothers' share of the property when they inherited it, but could no longer afford the repayments from the little he earned running a street kiosk. On 7 July a 56-year-old disabled woman facing eviction threw herself out of the window of her eleventh-floor flat in Málaga city.  She got cau