Christmas 2009. The Floods

Christmas 2009. The Floods

    2009 was a Christmas to remember for another reason. It had been raining on and off for a few weeks before Christmas, but over the holiday period we had a mini tornado.     It blew in from Cadiz and caused damage across the countryside in-between before eventually reaching Olvera around  midnight. The wind was ferocious and the rain torrential. I was caught in my friend Alfredo's  bar during one of the first of many storms and waited for the rain to pass. When it was safe to go out again I walked along the low side of Olvera to my house. The noise of the river in flood in the valley below was a constant roar. It was only later that I learned the extent of the damage caused by the flooding.

                                          Torre´s new river.

                                    The flooded valley on the way to Setinil.
 Torre Alaquime had the worst damage. It lies on a bend in the river where there is a flat alluvial plain. During the night the river changed course and moved a hundred meters away from its normal route. In fact, anybody who lived along the rivers edge that night was in real danger. The rainwater that flooded down from the hillsides carried sand, rocks and boulders, making it an irresistible fluid force of enormous power.
    Concrete fords that were laid down over pipes a metre in diameter, which, normally would allow the river water to pass beneath, were now blocked with trees and rocks. The sheer force of water lifted and overwhelmed the fords. The weight of the concrete fords must have been around 20 tons, but the flood  carried them downstream to bury them in sand, silt and ultimately, consign them to oblivion.

The soil on many hillsides became saturated with water and turned to liquid mud. Landslides began to cause chaos. Roads were covered in  sediment as the soil began to move en masse.  The Grazelema road was lifted from below in metre square pieces. I don’t know how quickly these landslides happened, but I would not want to have been driving on that road that night and suddenly come upon a  one metre high moving wall of mud and rock.
Later on a trip to Malaga I saw that half a football pitch had slid away on a hillside in Ardales. Some of the roads had subsided and were dangerous for weeks. Some were only repaired in 2012
A farmer near Setinil had parked his car outside his house. During the night the little brook near his house turned into a torrent of mud and rubble. His car was buried up to the windows. It was still like that a year later. Eventually he dug it out and towed it away.

The river in Setinil rose and eroded the soil from under the road  along the rivers edge.

Christmas and New Year 2009

2009 was a turning point in my life.  I was in the most beautiful countryside I had ever seen and I was to enjoying every day. I was sharing it with people I liked and having fun.  
    My friends and I together arranged a Christmas meal in one of the local bars. I had roast leg of lamb, but there was a big choice on the menu and everybody was satisfied with their meal. A local estate agent had brought Christmas puddings from the coast and given instructions to the Spanish chef on how to cook them. We played charades after the meal and the evening was a howling success.

 We had already had a meal in the OAP centre before Christmas, which with the end of term school dinner made quite a round of parties.

 
    This was my best Christmas in Spain.

We also had a New Year party and watched the fireworks from a rooftop. This was a riot too, with karaoke and the customary twelve grapes to be swallowed in time with the Church bells at midnight. I could not have been happier. The Christmas spirit was in the streets with presents and trimmings in the Orange trees of the pueblo.

The Cádiz Carnaval

        In 2009 I saw an advertisement for a trip to Cádiz in a local travel agency window. Cadiz is only an hour and half away from Olvera. The trip cost 12€. and left Olvera at 7pm. returning the following morning at 9am.This was for the annual Carnaval of Cádiz. I had always wanted to see a carnival.
        I had never been to the English version, Notting Hill, in London. I thought this would be like them, with fantastic floats and costumes.
        I had no idea what I was getting myself into until I met the other passengers ready to board the minibus.    

          The coach left from the Olvera bus station at 7pm. and arrived in Cádiz at
around 9pm.  The delay was caused by the traffic entering  Cádiz from outside.
All the way down from Jerez the traffic built up to an eventual gridlock as you
entered  Cádiz. I was in a minibus with fifteen young girls in party mode.
         The other lines of traffic waiting to enter Cádiz were full of youngsters
wanting to join the party. I was sat next to the driver so I could not see what was happening in the back of the bus.
        I did see what was happening in the lanes of traffic alongside us. The boys were mooning from their car windows and people were getting out of their cars and passing round drinks in plastic cups and rolled cigarettes. The traffic jam was already a party in it's own right.
       When we did get into Cádiz at seven o'clock we were dropped off opposite the Plaza de España.  By now everybody was high on the atmosphere that was developing in the streets.  This is when I realized I had made another mistake. Everybody had brought their own drinks. Shoulder bags, rucksacks, carrier bags. All were full of bottles of booze and mixer. I had assumed that the bars would stay open all night. I was wrong. At two o’clock in the morning all the bars closed.

        If you had closed the bars half way through a party in England you would have had a riot. This would have been an invitation to civil war. All these youngsters drinking huge amounts of alcohol, taking drugs and smoking Marijuana was an army primed and ready to fight.
       Yet I never saw fighting or drunkenness, (Although everybody was drunk.) I never saw a policeman all night.  I watched bands in the streets, groups of people singing. Everybody was dancing and happy to enjoy themselves.
       I am not sure of the actual figures, but I think there must have been between three and five thousand youngsters in the streets of Cádiz that night. All in fancy dress, very happy, very drunk. I faded pretty fast. I used to work 12 hour nights, but I cannot drink 12 hour nights. By four o’clock I was laying on a park bench waiting for the dawn. All around me were the savvy Spanish youngsters in sleeping bags laying on the grass. The more energetic were still partying.
    When the minibus picked us up in the morning I was happy to sleep in the comfortable seats all the way home. As we neared Olvera some of the party chicas began to awaken. One of them kept calling from the back of the bus. She could speak a little English We arranged to meet again. She knew me though I did not know her. She lived very near to my house, but on the other side of the road.
    Her and her mother turned out to be long term friends. Cádiz Carnaval, which at first looked like a mistake, turned out to be one of the best moves I ever made. It was also the best party I ever went to.    

The parties

The Parties
            From time to time there would be birthday parties, or just parties when the mood took us. Many local people joined in and the atmosphere was good. This is a photo of one of the parties outside a local bar. Isabel is dancing with Mari Carmen (On the right), who's son Paco, is going to break the hearts of chicas in Olvera in a few years time.

 

          At the summertime ferier I took a photo of Paco laughing at something that was happening onstage. I later painted a picture from the photo and this was the result. Later on I painted the grandfather of Paco. He is called Paco too, paco´s son is called Paco too just like his dad. If you stand in the middloof Olvera and shout Paco fifty people will turn round to see who is shouting at them.
Anyway, this is Paco juniar followed by Paco´s grandad.

 

 

 

The first Spanish classes Christmas party was in a big hall on the edge of town. The hall was huge and we only filled a quarter of it. All the classes from Olvera were there, together with everybody from the local from the local villages as well. The food was spectacular. I think we paid 20€ a head, but we got a lot more than that in value. After the meal we all danced and everybody went home happy and content. The important thing is that we were with Spanish people and not just a group of Brits. I enjoyed these days and have some of my best memories of Olvera from this time.

The first photo is of the dining room. We only filled a third of this space. 

 

The dining room. We only filled  a third of the space. 

 

 

 

                          Our table.

              Dancing later. Our teacher for that year is the tall lady in the centre.

 

Once after a party in a local bar some of us decided to go to the Olvera nightclup/ disco.

Daryl and his wife had their dog with them. When they tried to go into the disco the doorman quite reasonably refused to let the dog in. There was a little argument and in the end he agreed to let the dog in. Everybody had to have their hand stampped with a rubber stamp so they could leave and come back later or go outside and have a smoke. The little white dog got a rubber stamp on the top of his head. By this time we were all rolling around laughing, but the dog went in the disco with us.

 

 

 

 

  

My first paintings

To see all my paintings over five years click here.My first Painting.

 My first painting was of a scene that I knew well, very close to our South landing area at the foot of Lijar. In the background are the twin peaks of Lagarin and Malavar. The farm is now abandoned. The trees have been cut back, or cut down, no doubt for fuel. The land is still used, but by somebody who does not need the buildings. They sold within a week of hanging up and were my first sale of pictures in Spain. They are both in the United States now.

The third picture I took back to England and is of my Daughter and grandson.

Primavera was painted from a photograph and it went through many changes before it ended up like it is. This sold much later to a bank manager.

Mi Pueblo sold early on too. The scene is a made up one combining different elements from the same village in one picture.

It was around this time that I met a fellow artist in his bar here in Olvera. Alfredo began his training as an architect. He trained as a painter with his uncle. He was my first Spanish friend and still is. He explained the different techniques and styles of the painters over the centuries. We still meet once a week to paint in our attic club above the library loaned to us by the ayuntamento of Olvera.