Web Site Again

110mb.com seem to be back in business, so my web site can also be found here.

CV + Web Site

I have put an English translation of my CV, shortened from the Spanish original by omitting blank pages, online in my box.net box, here (PDF).

In other news, 110mb.com has started acting up. I have been unable to read or update my web site. Since 110mb.com have been pretty reliable in the past, I shall give them a week or two to fix things before taking any action.

In the mean time, there is always my backup web site on byethost22.com.

Boiler Saga: The End

The Saga of the Spanish Combi Boiler has finally ended.

Boiler Saga

The Saga of the Spanish Combi Boiler continues.

More Photos: Nash and Swansea

I have added old photos of Nash (16th June 2006) and Swansea (August 2006) to my web site.

Spanish May Elections

They had the Spanish May Elections yesterday. I didn’t vote for the official Green Party. I wonder if that means I should be expelled?

And I almost managed to vote in the Valencian Community elections as well as in the municipal elections.

The elections use party lists, notoriously the worst of the proportional systems, and the same system as is used for the list part of the Welsh Assembly elections. The difference is that you vote by putting a copy of the list of your choice in an envelope and then putting the envelope in the box. You don’t have to mark anything (and, indeed, marking the list in any way other than folding it to fit it into the envelope counts as spoiling your vote). There are piles of lists in the polling stations, more than enough for everyone, but some parties also include copies of their lists in their electoral bumf (the Castilian word is propaganda).

Before the day, I had done some homework, and established that there would be two elections, a municipal election using white forms for Castellon de la Plana city council, and a community election using pink forms for the Corts Valencianes. As a foreigner, I was  entitled to vote in the white election but not in the pink one.

I had also established that there were two Green Parties standing. The official Green Party have a pact with the Valencian Nationalist Party, and go under the name of Compromise Coalition. The other one was a coalition of Greens and Ecopacifists; they are the ones whose candidate for the Madrid municipal elections was assassinated in Valencia in February.

I was inclined to vote for the Greens and Ecopacifists, as I didn’t want to vote for a Valencian Nationalist, but I decided to leave the final decision to the day of the election.

On Sunday morning, before I went out to vote, I read the electoral bumf which had been filling my pigeonhole.

There was one letter from the PSOE (Spanish Socialists), written in English, and including only a white voting list (i.e. not a pink one). The PSOE are targetting the expat vote in Alicante, and they had obviously done their homework. Of course, there is no way I am ever going to vote for a party which allied itself with Blair and Brown, but good marks for writing to me in a language I understand. That is more than some Welsh parties can manage.

The other two letters were both from the VNP/Green Compromise Coalition. They included both white and pink voting lists (i.e. they had not done their homework) and they were bilingual in Valencian and Castilian, with Valencian first. No way I was going to vote for them.

So off I went to the polling station. According to my polling card, it was supposed to be in a school, 16 Calle Pintor Sorolla, but it wasn’t. The particular table listed on the polling card was actually in a government building just across the street in 23 Calle Pintor Sorolla. I have voted before in Spain (in the Euro elections) and suspected this might happen, so I asked the PSOE minder who was standing in the school doorway if this was the right place, and he directed me across the street.

Spanish polling stations are rather jolly places, not like the grim polling stations we have in the UK, and people tend to congregate there and chat. On the way in to number 23, I had to push my way past a crowd so that I could pick up a white Greens and Ecopacifists list and a white envelope to put it in. With these in hand, I went to find my table.

The table had four people sitting behind it. It also had two boxes on it, one for white votes and one for pink votes, which was odd, as I thought it was the special table for foreigners, and the special table for foreigners shouldn’t have a pink box. But the pink box was definitely in use, so I asked the two helpful ladies sitting on the right of the table if this meant that I could vote in the pink election as well as in the white election, and they said I could.

So I went back to the doorway and collected a pink Greens and Ecopacifists list and a pink envelope to put it in (I thought briefly about the anti-taurine list but decided to stick with the original plan) and then went back to the table. I folded the pink list and put it in the pink envelope, folded the white list and put it in the white envelope, and then handed my polling card and passport to the lady on the right.

The lady on the right handed the polling card straight back, and handed the passport all the way along the table to the guy on the left, who checked it against his computer.

In the mean time, the lady on the right checked her paper list, found my name on it (it wasn’t hard, as I was the only one on it with three forenames and I was right at the bottom as it is sorted by nationality and RUN comes after ROM), found a ruler, and ruled a line through my name.

The guy with the computer decided that my passport matched the data on his computer, confirmed that I could vote, and handed the passport all the way back along the line so that the lady with the paper list could hand it back to me.

Then I handed the two envelopes, the white envelope containing the white list and the pink envelope containing the pink list, to the second helpful lady, the one sitting right of centre. She was just about to put the pink envelope into the pink box when the guy with the computer noticed what was happening and shouted at her. Which, although legally correct, was rather rude of him.

So she handed the pink envelope back to me and put the white envelope in the white box.

I never did find out what function the fourth person at the table performed.

Essays: Credit Card and Creativity

I have added two more short essays: the Saga of the Credit Card is now online as there has been a recent development, and the first draft of some comments on Creativity is now online because I have finally got around to uploading it.