Day 92 "Dance Off"

Transcript (uncorrected)

Day 92 Dance off

Monday has come, I usually dread Monday as it always brings administration stuff which I really don’t care for.

By the way if you want to catch all 92 episodes with transcripts of Spanish Practices head over to THE secret spain dot com.

Today the administration was our Spanish Tax return, I say our, as we are married it has been done jointly, I get the classification of Woman, the form does not seem to have a code for Partner. 

The Spanish Tax year runs from January to December, unlike the UK tax year that runs April to April, it means that, certainly for a Brit you have to get your shite together straight after a major holiday of feasting and excess.

The Spanish celebrate Christmas differently, it outwardly seems a much more serious affair, Midnight Mass at the Church is a rather dreary occasion, I have heard carol singing from the children in the main town. Carols are sung in Latin which makes them sound beautiful if a little inaccessible.

We still haven’t got our Christmas quite right, it is fairly difficult to have a traditional Christmas here, several attempts at cooking a turkey has led us to give up and go for a chicken.  The main Spanish meal and celebration is on Christmas Eve, like it is in many other Catholic countries.

One year our friend Maggie got us organised enough to make a Christmas cake, she brought dried fruit over from the UK, it is quite hard to find here, even though a lot of it comes from nearby Morocco,

There is more than a physical divide between Spain and Morocco, it extends to a cultural one as well.  When the Moors were driven out of Spain by the Christians, the ones that remained were forced to convert to Christianity and as a kind of obvious test, a lot of local Christian dishes were pork based. Many of the exotic spices were now more difficult to obtain and were not used in the new Christian cuisine of the conquered area.

It does mean that the local pork here is quite delicious, but for our friends who are Jewish who asked me did I think there was anywhere Kosher to eat, the answer here is no.

The cake we made came out very well, Maggie told me to feed it regularly with Brandy.  So I fed it every day, turns out that it only needed a feed once a week, but I have to say it was far more delicious Brandy soaked.

But it does not put you in the mood to fill a tax form in, January is bleak enough without that.  There are personal allowances here, but less generous than the UK, there is also little incentive to save, no ISAs or as far as I can see opportunity to easily buy shares, up to now cash is king, it allows the Spanish to ‘protect’ there money from the onerous tax system.

I mentioned to Carmen that winning the lottery is probably the only way the ordinary Spanish can hope to amass a fortune. She told me “you are joking, they tax you if you win at 33%!” So good luck can turn into bad luck when the tax man comes knocking to take a share of your good fortune.

In the UK, I believe the tax is taken at source when you buy a ticket, in the long run the taxman makes more money taxing everyone than just the winners, but it doesn’t work like that here.

Speaking of Christmas, one year in the little village of Velez the whole village, well everyone who was in the syndicate won the major Christmas lottery – The Gordo.  Every person walked away with one hundred thousand Euros, many bought flashy cars and others improved their houses, for one-year Velez was a very lucky little village.

Monday and today the Alhambra has announced how it will welcome visitors back to the palaces.  No more tickets but a system that links your entry back to your Passport number or DNI number and I guess our NIE number.

The attraction will run at just fifty percent so a lot fewer visitors milling around could actually make the Alhambra