Costa Cash

For much of the day a layer of cloud persisted from sierras to sea, with little wind to blow it away or break it up, so it was pretty humid and tiring. 30C heat in the afternoon thinned the cloud into haze, but that's the first time since I've been here that there's been no bright blue sky at all. I picked up Patricia and we drove to San Pedro for the coffee morning, where I was regaled with stories about traditional cash trading culture and how this had been taken advantage of by international money launderers. Modern rules based digital banking exists here in Spain as in any other EU country, but alongside it there's still an attachment to cash trading, using effectivo as they call it, which is far less easy to regulate and pay tax on. Britain is much more tightly regulated, but this hasn't prevented mega rich Russians and Arabs from investing in UK property, pushing house prices up to ridiculous levels.

I noticed at the ham slicing fiesta that all purchases of food and drink were cash in hand. No debit or credit cards, electronic no tap and pay systems used. Maybe it's impossible to impose a fully accountable system of recording trade in such a free market situation. At the end of an evening, stalls will have taken hundreds of thousands of euros between them. Depending on how each business is set up, some earnings may go home in supermarket bags for life, whereas others will be delivered to banks by armoured security car. I understand it's still possible for someone to buy an expensive car, a house or a piece of land with the correct documents, and pay for it in hard cash, if you can find lawyers willing to make it happen for the right fee. It's still a matter of who you know will act in your best interests, rather than who has trustworthy professional credentials. Or at least, so I'm told. 

Perhaps this is true in the rural agrarian economy which is not entirely taken over by big food industries, but still has a place for campesinos - small farmers working on family land. Sadly, this way of life is becoming unsustainable and the countryside and its villages are being drained of population. There are stories of a deserted villages with land and habitable houses being sold for the price of a town house because there's no work for the rising generation.

At the end of the coffee morning we met Rachel and Paul, who are having their wedding anniversary blessing at church a week tomorrow. They've been married twelve years, and covid denied them the possibility of a tenth anniversary celebration in this area, which they visit often having honeymooned here originally. Now they have six children, so they have a lot to celebrate. I think we've got everything sorted out and approved now. It's just a matter of service sheets and music supplied by YouTube to get organised.

It was three by the time my lentil extravaganza was cooked and eaten. With the weather being so humid I have washing to do every day, which takes up time even if it does dry quickly. It was gone six by the time I walked along the senda litoral to the port and back. The sand dredger is no longer chugging away off-shore, and the earth moving equipment on the beach replaced by holidaymakers again. There's a new layer of fine sand all along the seashore, good for making sand castles it seems. There's very little seaweed on the Playa del Cristo and the Playa de Seghers, but further west along the foreshore there's a lot of sea week at the moment, just like there is on the Playa de Rada. I wonder why.

There was a superb documentary on BBC One Wales this evening called 'Who needs Banksy?' It was shot in Port Talbot, where earlier this year Banksy did a subversive mural on a back street garage wall. Sadly it didn't stay there long. Despite local campaigning to retain it, the mural was sold to an art dealer. This awakened an amazing response from local graffitistas, and the Council gave £20k to artists to cover the walls of the town's underpasses with original street art. It's drawn in people who have never used a spray can in their lives, plus a contribution from a Bristol street artist, commission to paint a head of actor and local hero Michael Sheen on the side of a house near one of the parish churches. I couldn't figure out which one it was from the brief glimpse. This outburst of street art is like a love letter from Port Talbot people to their town, so powerfully portrayed in Michael Sheen's 'Port Talbot Passion' of ten years ago. I imagine Banksy would be pleased at this little 'people's revolt'.