Life in Ciudad Rodrigo

Life in Ciudad Rodrigo is full of incident. Back in October I mentioned that two trains a day pass through town. One from Lisbon heading for Hendaya on the French border and another going the other way. We walked down to see the French bound train this evening. There were people at the station. We thought they were travellers but not a bit of it. Just like us they were there to see the event.

The raising of the pine by those coming of age. Well more or less. Raising the pine certainly. Quintos were originally the group of young men who had reached the age when they would be conscripted into the army so I suppose it has that idea of a group of classmates, of those leaving school or something similar nowadays. I'd seen the poster advertising the event as part of the fiesta in Peñaparda so I asked a Spanish pal what it meant. She described young men attempting to climb a greasy pole to retrieve a "Kewpie Doll." What actually happened was that when we got there a long, trimmed pine tree was lying in the middle of the village street. All 433 inhabitants seemed to be there to watch. A young woman gave us a bottle of beer. Then a telescopic handler bumped the tree around till the base was close to a deep hole that they had dug in the street. With a lot of tugging and cursing the tree was manoeuvered into the hole and raised by a mixture of the handler and people pull...

With just a couple of weeks left here before we head back to Culebrón we've suddenly begun to realise all the things we still have to do - the restaurants we haven't been in, the local food we haven't eaten, the bars we haven't drunk in, the photos we don't have, the nearby villages still to visit and lots more. One of the things that makes Ciudad Rodrigo Ciudad Rodrigo is its walls. They completely encircle the town. We walked them with our houseguests last weekend as part of our regular visitor itinerary. It was the first time we'd ever counted the gates. The six gates are Puerta de la Colada, Puerta del Conde, Puerta del Sol, Puerta de Santiago, Puerta de Amayuelas and Puerta de Santa Cruz

I've always liked bookshops. They have a nice sort of smell. Bookshops with a stationery section are even better - so many useful things and so colourful too. In general though I avoid going into Spanish bookshops. They are a commonplace sort of shop but they are dangerous places best avoided. The books are usually piled up, literally, with no order that I can ever discern. Sometimes there are thematic sections but their disposition in the shops seem to be quite random. In a bookshop yesterday I noticed that the children's section was next to accountancy. There was no subdivision of the section either - everything for children lumped in together - no alphabetisation, no division between literature and factual books, no age banding. In Corte Inglés , the big department store, there is always a book section. I had a title in mind but I couldn't find it so I plucked up my courage and asked. The assistant took me from stand to stand searching for the book and in fact came up wi...

The King's Shropshire Light Infantry were here in town last month to lay a wreath at the tomb of Major General Robert Craufurd. He died, leading from the front, when Wellington's troops stormed Ciudad Rodrigo on 19 January 1812. When Alan Crawford was here earlier this week we went to the Portuguese town of Almeida which, like Ciudad Rodrigo, has substantial fortifications. Almeida was besieged, and taken, by the French in 1810 as they chased the British back to Torres Vedras near Lisbon. In Fuentes de Oñoro, we tried to buy bread, but in May 1811 nearly 4,000 troops died there as the French attempted to advance back into Portugal from their base in Ciudad Rodrigo. They had been back in Spain sprucing themselves up after taking a bit of a pasting flinging themselves against those defences at Torres Vedras. These various jaunts made me realise that I didn't really know much about the Peninsular War, as we Brits call it, or the War of Independence as the Spanish call it. So h...

Ciudad Rodrigo is in the midst of a filming frenzy. There are more film makers here than bearded Brits with sensible headwear. A film called Pablo de Tarso (Paul of Tarsus, the misogynist Biblical, burning bush chappie*) is being filmed around the town by a local film company throughout May. To add to the fun the state TV broadcaster, RTVE, sent a team to do a report about making that film a couple of weeks ago. So this Monday Mr Crawford and I were in town to have a coffee in the main square. We came across a film crew outside one of the local bars. The people who were being filmed were dressed up as ramblers complete with boots, sticks and rucsacks. Knowledgeably I explained that the film being shot in the town was some sort of costume drama (I didn't know it was about Paul till I checked a local website) so all I could surmise was that the film must be using flashbacks along with the historical component to tell its story. You know the sort of thing - "Down here!, here'...

Back from our travels and I was writing my diary. I was just about to echo the words I'd used in the last post about wandering around Extremadura and "the Splendid Roman Museum" or more accurately the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano. As I wrote I was thinking forward to how to describe the trip around the monastery at Guadalupe and my pen hovered. In some ways the Roman museum wasn't that good. The building was great, the display was uncluttered, the labelling was relatively informative but there was no context - nothing about the place that art took within Roman society, nothing about artists, nothing about technique, nothing about changing styles over the centuries, no interactive displays, no opportunity to try your hand at something. And the shop was a joke; shops are obviously about making profit for the museums but, alongside the T shirts are the books and DVDs that continue the work of the museum. Not in Mérida they didn't. Not in Spain they don't. The Mo...

All of the famous Conquistadores, well the two I know the names of, Cortés and Pizarro, came from the region of Extremadura. The conventional wisdom is that it was such a desolate place that they were willing to do anything to get away. Even today it is one of the poorest regions of Spain but because it's the next region to the South of Ciudad Rodrigo and as we'd never been to the provincial Capital at Badajoz and because we had the "Bank Holiday" weekend we thought we should go and have a nosey. Everyone had warned us about Badajoz but we had taken no heed. It was as boring as they said. Two hours and we'd had enough. We headed for Mérida, the town that makes its living from the Roman remains. We couldn't find a hotel. This weekend of fun and frolic was turning into a mini disaster. We decided that we may as well come back home. By now we'd driven for some 4 ½  hours and done over 400kms but we were cross enough to just turn around and head home in the mi...

A few years ago, long before we lived here, Maggie and I were driving through Andalucia desperately searching for a roadside hotel. It was growing dark. We'd driven hundreds of kilometres. We were getting desperate. Then we saw a bright neon sign that read "Club - Hotel". We'd often been surprised at the location of the Clubs in Spain, we presumed they were discos kept, thoughtfully, well out of the town centres so as not to bother the non clubbers. This hotel was one of those, miles from anywhere. I went to see if they had any rooms and I was struck by the number of young women who were sitting outside the club door, I was equally struck by the shortness of their skirts. When a young woman wearing bright red hot pants and a red curly wig took me by the hand the penny dropped. I fled. A while ago we were driving home from some do in Elche. It was a cool evening and as we drove up the dark lane, the one that connects the avenue by the train station to the northern ring...

Shocking I know but today we celebrated the return of the prostitutes to the city of Salamanca. A tradition that seems to have spread to our own little town - we did it by going down to the river and having a picnic the main element of which was a local pie stuffed full of bits of pig. Actually we ate our hornazo in the kitchen but we were by the River Águeda in spirit and we did go to stare at the picnicers a little later in the afternoon to show solidarity. Apparently, back in the 16th Century Philip II (the one who got his beard singed by Drake) decreed that the prostitutes from the town brothel in Salamanca should be shifted across the river Tormes for the whole of Lent to ensure that the menfolk remained chaste. The women were put under the care of a priest, un Padre, who became known as Padre Putas (Father Whores) - it's quite amusing in Spanish but it loses something in the translation I feel. The women were allowed back into the city on the second Monday after Easter Sunday...

One of the places we took my mum to see in Salamanca yesterday was the Dominican Monastery of San Esteban - Saint Stephen's. It was a lot like most churches and cathedrals - big stone pillars, plenty of marble, cloisters, huge wooden doors - lovely ceiling, where else are we going before lunch? -  but somehow it was quite different.  It may have been that the monastery was much less dark and forbidding than most churches, maybe it was because it was simpler, though the altar in the main church would have to be the exception that proves the rule, or it may have been because there was a group of people dressed in their sports jackets and pullovers practising a Gregorian chant sitting in the farthest corner of the choir whilst we were there. Really though I think it was simpler than that; it was because there was information to say how different the place was.  The notices on the walls were droll, even ironic and amusing. There was a little room that had been used as a council chamber...

Everywhere, on every street, outside every bar, in every public space people are tidying up, sweeping, mopping, hammering and carrying things away.  Lots of the bars that have been open for days on end from early morning till early the other sort of early morning are now firmly shuttered and I imagine that the staff are fast asleep exhausted after days with hardly any sleep. The shops are open again and the streets are much quieter with the tourists pointing their cameras at the Cathedral, Castle, Walls and other monumental buildings just like any other day. Everyday fare. It's all, very definitely, over.

Bulls running through the streets and young men taunting them are so normal here at the moment that it's easy pretend it's all OK. We went out to watch the running this morning. A couple of bulls gave the lads in the Registro, the little plaza just outside the walls, a bit of a run for their money. It was all quite amusing in a sort of humiliating way. At one point a black bull put its horn underneath one of the guard rails and lifted it and the four or five people sitting on it about 10cm off the ground. Only later did I realise that the effort had pulled the horn clean out of its head and the horn was dangling, held on by bits of bloodied shreds of skin or tendons or something. Horrible.

I was going to pick my mum up from the airport and I heard about the Ciudad Rodrigo Carnaval on the national radio news. Apparently dozens of people had been injured when the bulls had done what we've seen them do several times over the last couple of days, turn around and head off in the opposite direction.  The news said that a 51 year old man had been transferred to Salamanca Hospital in critical condition and that with the mobile operating theatre and all the Intensive Care Units in the town completely overwhelmed the bullfight for this afternoon had been cancelled. When I got back Maggie said she had heard that the Headteacher of the school she works in had been injured. A bit og Googling and it turns out that he's the man they have taken to Salamanca.

You think you have a good spot. The bulls come and an electric thrill passes through the crowd. Everywhere people are running, shouting, scrambling up fences. You see very little but you were definitely there; a part of what was going on. Today the horses, or more strictly, the horsemen ride the bulls into town. They wield lances and gallop down the street penning the bulls in. They've been brought across open country and once the bulls are inside the fences, the agujas, the horsemen seem to relax. Certainly a number trotted gently back down the road, heading out of town just seconds before a cantankerous red fighting bull turned back for the countryside sending the crowd scurrying hither and thither.

We went in to see the Carretones, I thought it was going to be calves running into town but instead it was pretend bulls on wheels. It made me laugh a lot. For the first real bull running of the day all we saw was a lot of people fleeing and glimpses of the bulls through the fences. One bull was being really awkward and kept coming and going, causing all sorts of commotion. He had us penned in for at least half an hour. By devious routes we got to the place I work which has views over the main square. The same bull was now in the square being as awkward as ever. Several time the mansos, the meek bulls, were sent in to try and guide the big fellow out - that's what you have in the photo. Stubborn rather than brave I heard a Spaniard say. Later, after eating our way through some traditional empanadas and hornazo, we went on a round of the bars. The town is just heaving with people and life. With my head beginning to pound just a bit we stood around waiting for the fancy dress parade....

The shops along the bull run are boarded up, the safety fences are in place, the sand is down in the main square and the stands are complete. This afternoon the bands marched into town, people showed off their "club" colours or fancy dress costumes for the first time, the bell that warns us when the bulls are loose was uncovered and we have even had the (non fighting) bulls run through the town. The mansos, as they are called look like oxen and they have damned big horns. Their job is to learn the route so they can guide the fighting bulls along the course over the next few days. Actually, we had a bit of a do with the mansos. Normally they run into town, trot around the square a bit and then run back to their pens. Today they changed their minds half way home and turned back into town. We had just set off into the street when, all of a sudden, people were scurrying hither and thither and the town bell began ringing faster. I was slower than Maggie to get behind the fence and...

is that they've been there and done that. There have been things going on all week related to the Carnaval de Toros, the event that officially runs from this Friday evening until next Tuesday. For instance, as an example, a group of blokes, dressed in cloaks and playing lutes passed beneath our window yesterday evening on their way home from some little ceremony. Not something we got a lot of in Huddersfield. Maggie and I haven't been involved in anything Carnaval related so far this year so, when Maggie said that we were going to abandon the telly and go to see the official opening of the casetas (the temporary headquarters of the peñas- see blog of 12 Feb, A buzz in the air ), I was about as enthusiastic as we old folk get. It started well; Maggie bumped into someone whose brother was a member of a peña so we were invited into one of the casetas - we got free beer and snacklets. By the time we made our excuses and left all the peñas were giving away free food and drink. But w...

I feel this is may be for completeness rather than because of its nail biting excitement, traditional roots or insight into Spanish life. Today I bought a sandwich, a tortilla sandwich, plus a can of Casera Cola for 2.50€. That's the essence of the post. But the odd thing is that at least three people had mentioned Operación Bocata - Operation Sarnie - to me during the week saying what a good thing it was. Something not to be missed. In reality it was just the WI selling cakes and tea except that there were no cakes, no tea and no WI. The rolls in this case were made by volunteers with ingredients donated by well wishers and the money raised will got to Manos Unidas - United Hands, an anti hunger charity. I was there quite early so the crowds hadn't exactly built up hence the rather empty looking photo at the top.I noticed though, on one of the town websites, that it looked as though it got a bit busier later .

I like to think that I usually have some idea of what's going on and why but today it took a fair bit of Googling to find out what was happening within metres of where I work. I was teaching; the building I work in is on the main town square, and suddenly we could hear the sound of pipes and drums. I joined the youngsters at the window to see what was going on. Lots of women wearing traditional frocks accompanied by a drum and pipe band were crossing the square and heading for the Town Hall. I asked what they were up to and they told me it was just a "Charra" out for the fun of it. Trying to get a definition of a charra proved beyond their capability in both Spanish and English but we settled on a traditional music group. As a result of the Googling I'm not sure whether the word comes from Charro - the name given to the local landscape and hence all things traditional around here or whether it's from the name of one of the traditional instruments. In either case ...