They’re after your money

The Costa Blanca News recently warned its readers about scam emails and now the British Embassy in Madrid is echoing that warning.

The original scam email that the newspaper unveiled said it was from HM Customs and Revenue requesting bank details in order to pay a tax rebate. And now a further email doing the rounds supposedly comes from the Spanish tax office (Agencia Tributaria AEAT). Neither are of course genuine. The third type of scam are emails asking for urgent funds to be sent to help friends or families in distress.

Unfortunately, these email scams are becoming common place and are largely targeted at ex-pats.

The advice provided by banks is never to give your banking details via email. Since neither HMRC nor AEAT have my email address, it would be extraordinary for them to contact me and I know my bank will never contact me in this way.

However, I was asked recently to send a copy of my credit card by email. Since the company only needed the last four digits to confirm the details I had given them via their secure site, I carefully erased the other numbers so they were totally illegible. If I hadn’t the software on my computer to do this, I would have covered them with a piece of paper.

Sadly, there are some very unscrupulous people out there determined to try and con us out of our money by any means at their disposal. It is up to us to make sure they do not  succeed by applying common sense when using the Internet.

Cheaper than a new computer

If your PC crashes for no apparent reason, you keep receiving error messages and don't know why your PC runs much slower than when you first bought it, the chances are you have a problem with your registry. I personally use TuneUp Utilities to keep my PC happy but here is another product which might work well for you.

Digeus Registry Cleaner

I would not have this in my house!

If one of the purposes of art is to spark controversy, then this sculpture succeeds

The work by the artist, Eugenio Merino shows the Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco set inside a fridge.

Merino says "Always Franco" is meant to be a comment on how the former dictator continues to make headlines in Spain and adds, "It represents the idea that in Spain people are keeping the image of Franco alive. We don't stop talking about him, debating about him. A fridge is where things are kept alive and fresh".

The piece is currently on show at the ARCO art fair in Madrid. If you want it, then the Barcelona-based gallery ADN will sell it to you for about 30,000 Euros.

Previous works by the artist include a sculpture of the British artist Damien Hirst shooting himself in the head and "Stairway to Heaven" which depicts an Arab man on his knees praying, with a Catholic priest on the Arab's back also knelt in prayer and a Rabbi in turn standing on the shoulders of the priest.

I understand that, if Damien Hirst shot himself, his works would increase in value but does he or we need to be told that?

I ask you, “whatever happened to art that was meant to convey beauty, the human spirit and serenity; art that uplifted the soul?” 

Don’t get me wrong, art has always courted controversy as a theme but usually in a more acceptable form. I think you could say that I don’t care for either of these!

The come back

Aurelio Murcia, who is in charge of Town Planning in Bigastro, has once again challenged the ex mayor, Raúl Valerio Medina by asking him to explain why two of the five outstanding bills for work to improve irrigation pipelines in the town were not paid. He says that the money for this work came from the Generalit in Valencia and should therefore have been paid to Pavasal, the company that completed the reformations.

The Councillor also denies that Villas Andrea owed money to the Council and points out that, if that had been the case then it should have been dealt with in 2007 when Valerio was in charge of finance. He says that the ex mayor is lying and making up debts that do not exist. 

To use a tennis analogy, I think the score is now 30 – 15 with Murcia scoring two aces so far.

Damn it, we missed the parade

The Carnival Parade in Torrevieja is almost a must on our calendar but this year we have missed it. There are two parades, one in the afternoon and one at night. The night parade starts at 10pm so we normally would go to the daytime one but that took place last Sunday when we were otherwise engaged.

Reading about it in the Coast Rider, it sounds like this year’s parade lived up to the usual high standard with 30 comparsas taking part. It was apparently very cold though, especially for those dressed in next to nothing. I expect performing the elaborate dance routines helped to warm the participants up a little but it would have been cold for us standing there for over four hours.

Turning back the clock

I read in the Guardian this morning about a town in La Mancha that has reintroduced the peseta but just for one month. There are still millions of pesetas in circulation according to the Bank of Spain, lots of people clung on to them when the country changed to the Euro in 1999.

The move has turned out to be profitable for local businesses  because people from around the area  have taken the opportunity to visit Villamayor de Santiago to spend their old currency. At the end of the month, the shopkeepers will take the pesetas to the Bank of Spain in Madrid to exchange them for Euros. Since the rate of exchange was set at 1 Euro = 166.386 ESP, they will have large bundles of notes to take with them.

We won’t be going there

It was entirely predictable that the combination of traffic going to the market in Orihuela and the work on the high speed train line was going to cause chaos in the area of the Recinto Ferial and it did. That was the reason why the local council proposed moving the market to the area around Ociopia.  The market traders objected to the move and so, yesterday the market reopened in its original location.

Pam and I have only been to the market twice at the Recinto Ferial and twice was enough. To find a parking spot, you have to be there early and we don’t do early anymore. Go at a sensible time and it is a devil of a job to find somewhere safe to park your car. And that was before work started on the high speed train line.

Yesterday was apparently a nightmare with traffic crawling along the roads, especially the routes from Callosa. It will be absolutely awful for those people who live in the area, I imagine they won’t even bother trying to move their cars on Tuesdays for the next two years.

Carnival time

On Saturday 18th February, to mark the last Saturday of Carnival, the Merchants Association in Bigastro and 15 of the bars, cafes and pubs are organizing a costume party in the town with a cash prize of € 300.00 along with various gifts which will be delivered on Sunday from 4:30pm onwards.

1. - To be eligible, you must be in disguise and buy a drink in at least 5 of the 15 bars participating in the contest. They will then stamp your card in one of the five spaces.

2. – All the bars will have a box in which you can place your completed card.

3. – On Sunday February 19th from 4:30 pm, the various draws will take place in the bars.

4. – In cases where the winners are under age, the awards will be delivered to their legal guardians or carers (over 18)

My friend  German, from the Ayuntamiento, tells me that the parade will take place at 5pm, Saturday on Calle Purisima. 

PS That very much sounds like a great photo opportunity for El Willo! See you there.

Figures for El Altet look bleak

El Altet airport at Alicante had 10% fewer passengers in January compared to last year and 20.2% fewer flights. Cargo flights also dropped by 10.9 percent at El Altet.

The biggest problem for El Altet has been the loss of flights by the budget airline, Ryanair who cancelled 20 routes from the airport because of the instance by Aena that they must use air bridges to load and off load passengers. Summer looks as though it could be even worse because Ryanair threatens to cut 300 flights per month during the peak period. 

To put these figures into perspective, flights to and from Spain during January dropped by 2.9% overall in comparison with last year.

Medina fights back

Defending his position as ex mayor of Bigastro, Raúl Valerio Medina accuses the present government team of colouring the truth in their comments to the papers because they would have been aware of the debt of 376,000 Euros of which 80,000 Euros was interest because it was included in a report prepared last October. To be fair, whether they knew previously or not is kind of a mute point.

Medina goes on to say that part of that debt occurred because Andrea VIllas, the company that Aurelio Murcia was part of, owed over 65,000 Euros to the Council for work constructing 180 houses in 2006.

In his report to Informacion , he acknowledged the claim by the company Idearco of 7.5 billion Euros for losses related to the building of an apartment complex at La Pedrera.

Finally, Medina maintains that the actual debt of the town is 17 million Euros and not the 31 million claimed by the PP/UNPLC. Now we all know that over exaggeration is a trait that politicians specialise in and 17 million sounds a lot better than 31. However, even if Medina’s figure is correct, for a town of 7,000 people it is still a hell of a lot of debt.

From one rubbish dump to another

Visitors to Orihuela in recent weeks cannot have missed the piles of uncollected garbage that have strewn the streets. The problem was caused by workers, on strike because they had not been paid.

On Friday, the strike was called off and the rubbish started to shift but that has now caused a further problem.

Garbage from Orihuela used to be collected by Proambiente, the company owned by Angel Fenoll and was dumped near to Crevillente. The new contractor has nowhere permanent as yet to offload the garbage and so is dumping the waste at a site near to Villamartin which is intended only for garden waste.

Naturally, the local residents complained and so the Guardia Civil from Guardamar were called out to investigate.

One man’s waste is another man’s fortune

It is surprising how much money there is to be made from garbage collection. However, having it dumped on your doorstep does not make you best friends with the guy bent on making his fortune this way. 

A sleepy town with a noisy problem

You hear so often about the problems caused by young people in England drinking to excess at the weekends, the so called “binge drinking” and assume that this is peculiar to our native land but apparently that is not the case.

This morning I read about similar problems in the small hamlet of los Palacios, near to Formentera del Segura. Apparently weekends in the pedania are a nightmare for the local residents.

It all starts with chairs being taken from the local bars, cars coming and going and a throng of young people congregating in the streets where the bars are located. The car doors are left open to provide a mobile disco and then the party starts.  The noise and the revelling carries on until the early hours of the morning. On Fridays and Saturdays the bars close at 3:30am so that is about the time when things start to quieten down.

It isn’t just the noise levels though that people complain off, it is the fact that the streets are littered with bottles and glasses and the stench of urine which lingers permanently in the air. That is not what you would expect in a sleepy little Spanish hamlet.

People have complained to the police and the town hall.

In 2006 the area around the bars was declared to be “acoustically saturated”, bar licences were revoked and regular patrols by the Guardia Civil were instigated. Since then though, the problem has got worse. There are more bars and therefore more people and more noise.

The local people have asked for a greater police presence with constant patrols rather than just the odd car driving past. Some have even decided to try and sell up. Fat chance they have of doing that!

It isn’t just in Formentera where this problem exists, visit any Spanish town or city during the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning and you will likely find a similar scenario. It might be convenient to have a flat in the centre of a town but it certainly will not provide you with a quiet life. For that you need somewhere outside like Villas Andrea. Even here though, we suffer from groups of young people carrying their bags of bottles up to La Pedrera to party in the summer. You have to be sound asleep not to hear their noisy return to the town in the early hours of the morning.

Some say the problem has been worsened by the high levels of youth unemployment; I’m not so sure about that. Perhaps I am wrong, but I believe this is a social phenomena brought about by modern attitudes gleaned from American television. Like the introduction of junk food into the Mediterranean diet, it is the inevitable McDonaldisation of the world and the spread of American culture across the globe. It's as welcome to older Spaniards as the law preventing smoking in public places.

La familia Grau

I have told you before about our neighbours and how delightful they are. Yesterday we were privileged to enjoy a meal with them in their beautiful house across the road.

Armed with a bottle of wine, we made our way across at the appointed time and were greeted by the two dogs, Luka and Nero along with the daughter who has the same name as her mother. It is apparently quite common here to call a child by the parents name.

Our first stop was the kitchen to see Pepe and Eladia (senior) finishing preparations of the first course which was to be seafood. At the same time, Pepe was preparing a paella for us with pieces of sea bream which had been cut across the fish. I watched carefully as he added the ingredients making mental notes of how a Spaniard goes about this traditional dish. I was particularly keen to learn how you get the rice to be of a sticky consistency.  I think I understand now but could still do with another lesson or two:-)

From the kitchen, we retreated to the dining room where the table was beautifully set out for us. At the table were Pepe, Eladia, Eladia (the daughter) and her boyfriend Quino (I have probably spelt his name wrong).

As I said, the first course or entradas were mariscos served of course with bread, olives and crisps.

Then came the paella which was served on its own but with alioli and a squeeze of lemon to garnish it. There was also a bowl of lettuce of a type that you find typically at this time of year.  See the finished dish here.

For the dessert we had a special pudding that Eladia has adapted from a German recipe. I could best describe it as being similar to bread and butter pudding but with the addition of cinnamon which is a very popular spice here in Spain. It also had layers of apple and a squeeze of lemon inside. Certainly it went down well leaving just sufficient for them to have today.

We rounded off the meal with coffees and brandy. Pepe was clearly in a relaxed mood because he followed his brandy with with a couple of gin and tonics.

A memorable meal in the company of wonderful people. Many thanks to Pepe, Eladia, Eladia and Kino for making our Sunday so special. 

Orihuela is under siege

This time though it is not the Moors trying to capture the city, it is plants and insects.

Apart from rats, mosquitoes and cockroaches; the invaders include the processional caterpillar, the red palm weevil and the Arizona cactus.

Lat year the Environment Department spent 192,000 Euros controlling pests added to which the Health Department spent morey controlling rats and cockroaches.

There are also problems with the paleras that produce chumbos figs, chumberas and agarves* which are being attacked by cochineal beetles that lay white grubs in them. These are not native plants and so are not on the list of protected species. NB You’ll find paleras growing on the side of the road down into the town just before the water station. Once the fruit are ripe, peel the skin off to reveal the sweet flesh inside.

The fruit of the palera is sweet.

However, the major challenge for Orihuela is the red palm weevil because it is in danger of affecting the unique  palm forests of the area. A trip along the road to Los Montesinos will show you what happens to palms affected by the beetle. 

Last year, 36,000 Euros was spent on spraying trees in Orihuela and a further 13,600 Euros on felling affected specimens.

* We had that problem, the plants just pulled out of the pots leaving a disgusting sweet odour. As dug out the soil, I could see it it was filled with fat white grubs.

Further allegations against the ex mayor

The ex mayor of Bigastro, José Joaquín Moya is now being accused of misappropriation of public funds, fraud and extortion. These accusations all relate to the mystery of the VW Toureg which was supposedly given to the mayor as a gift. In fact it transpires that the SUV may well have been bought using public money.

It seems that 14 payments were made to the company Torrebir amounting to 117,000 Euros supposedly for work done in the municipally. However, some of the payments that total 60,000 Euros look as though they could have been used to buy the luxury vehicle instead because no evidence has been provided of work done to justify them. No doubt, the fact that there was no proper records for these payments, will be described by the accused as “simple errors”.  The more you read, the more you discover there were a number of “simple errors” in the Bigastro system of accounting. 

Also implicated in this are the secretary and treasurer at that time, Antonio Saseta and María Carmen Grau because, they along with mayor, would have signed the cheques and the two businessmen, Manuel Nortes and José Almarcha. These people have all been called to give evidence on the 23rd February.

Justice has many faces

Francisco Camps and Ricardo Costa received ‘not guilty’ verdicts in the long-running Gürtel case which involved corruption in the PP regional governments of Valencia and Madrid but Judge Baltasar Garzón did not fare so well.

He was found guilty of recording the conversations as he attempted to prove some lawyers were involved in money laundering. The supreme court said Garzón not only illegally wiretapped the prisoners' conversations but committed a second crime by doing so in the full knowledge that he was breaking the law.

That might be true but other investigating judges have used the same methods without facing charges. Although, Garzón’s supporters admit he might have overstepped the mark, they claim that this was a conspiracy against the judge and the punishment was harsh.

As a running sore to the PP, he had to be dealt with and that is what they have just done.

Security gets in the way

Over the years that I have had internet connections, I have bought hundreds of items online from scores of different companies – it is my favourite way of shopping!

The process is usually quite straightforward; you create an account with your email address and a password, provide the address that your credit card is registered to and then you are ready to go. All you need to do then is to enter the credit card details; name to which it is registered, number from the front, expiry date, the security number from the back and the order is complete. The online seller can verify that all  is kosher and at that point you can sit back and wait for the friendly courier to bring the goods to your door.

Of course there is a lot of fraud going on out there so it pays to be vigilant about the sites you use and make sure that the site is secure (https). It is reassuring when companies use the Visa security systems where you have to enter further details from a password to complete the transaction. 

However, things are not always that easy.

The other day, I wanted to order goods from a well known hypermarket chain in Spain via their online system. Sure enough, I had to register an account by providing the usual information and not unusually for Spain, I had to provide either my DNI, residency card or passport number. When it came to my credit card, the site used the system whereby my bank sends me an SMS message with a six figure security code to verify that I am in fact the holder of the card.

Having done all that, I thought my order was complete and I would shortly receive the goods. In fact I got an email to say that my order had been placed satisfactorily. However, when I went to the online site to track the status of my order, it showed that my data was incomplete. When I checked the small print about setting up an account it explained that, once you had provided details, you then had to send by fax or by email copies of your identity document, your credit card (showing the last four numbers) and a signed note authorising them to use your card for payment.

When I queried this, I got an email confirming what it said online. I dutifully complied and sent an email with the document copies inserted. Sods law, the lady who I am dealing with wrote back and said she needed the documents attached to an email. So now I have sent the documents  both attached as jpegs and as a pdf file they can read with Adobe Acrobat Reader. I have my fingers crossed that one or other of those methods works.

The good side to this story is that the company are obviously keen to protect both themselves and the shopper by making sure that the purchase is genuine. The bad side is that jumping through all these hoops has been a pain in the backside. Without a modicum of IT experience not to mention a scanner and the software to produce the documents in the right format, I would have given up. I know quite a few people who would have had no choice but to cancel  the order and either go to the shop or try elsewhere. Oh yes I nearly forgot, to cancel an order I’m sure you have to send a fax or an email with copies of your documents!!

Keeping their fingers crossed

Winter is a trying time for farmers, even in Spain.They plant crops in autumn to be harvested in early spring and hope that the weather will be kind to them.

Although planting an early crop can bring better prices it also carries risks. A spell of cold weather with ground frosts can ruin vegetables like artichokes, beans and potatoes. On Wednesday night, the temperature dropped down to the point where the delicate crops would have been frozen and thus blackened. Night time temperatures will remain low for the rest of the week. 

The good news for farmers is that second crops, planted to be harvested in March, should be alright.

Spanish artist dies

The Catalan artist Antoni Tàpies, who saw his art as a meditation on 'the void', has died aged 88. His art works have been described as 'highly intuitive, enigmatic images that have the potential to change our perception of reality'.

• In 2003, he won Spain's top art award, the Velazquez Prize.
• Tapies' early work was strongly influenced by surrealist painters like Miro and Klee. But he later developed his own style, featuring built-up surfaces that were often scratched with letters, numbers and signs.
• His gritty and raw art installations often included everyday items, such as his 1971 sculpture Mattress. The work featured a bedspread, which was painted with blood-like stains and ripped in the centre to reveal horsehair stuffing.

Google his name and see what you think for yourselves.

Winter fuel allowance

A very thorny subject in our house! Those who by good management or dint of fortune happened to be in England at the right time when they were of pensionable age get it but not Pam and I.

To qualify for a Winter Fuel Payment for the winter of 2011/2012 you must have been born on or before 5 January 1951 and you must have lived in Great Britain or Northern Ireland on any day in the week of 19–25 September 2011*. You can't get a Winter Fuel Payment if you moved to another European Economic Area country or Switzerland and didn't qualify before you moved. But, and here is the sore point, you can continue to get it if you moved after qualifying even if that was in a previous year.

Almost annually, some crackpot MP in Britain questions whether ex-pats in countries like Spain should still get this benefit but nothing comes of it. Clearly, the said MP never lived in Spain during winter! It might not be as cold as it is in Britain but it certainly feels it to us.

So no help forthcoming at Casa El Willo, we have to struggle on manfully paying for our heating without assistance. After Pam reached 60 she would have got £200 per year, now that I am 65, she would get £100 and I would also get £100. That is over 238 Euros per year that would go nicely towards our winter gas bill SIGH!

* Note the word ‘lived’ not ‘visited’. Even if we had been in England during that week, we would not qualify.

PS In case you misunderstood me, I don't hold a grudge against those who continue to get payments now they live in Spain, I just wish we could get them as well.