Shine on Spanish Sun!

St Johns Eve, it has to be said, was something of a disappointment.

Instead of the crackling of roaring fires over which people were jumping with reckless abandon, walking through the streets of Terrassa was like being in the middle of an unconvincing sound effect of some tin pot African dictatorship undergoing a periodic coup with desultory street fighting.

The occasional explosion with the accompaniment of what sounded like sharp gunfire made one think that this must have been what the Civil War must have sounded like as the fascist forces began their systematic sweep through the loyal country of Catalonia.

There were a few flamboyant fuegos artificiales but not nearly enough to make me use my recently charged camera.

I don’t think that many witches were intimidated by the activity of the night and I warn all denizens of Catalonia to be wary, as the forces of evil remain unscathed!

The evening terminated with the interminable ‘Apocalypto’ another self indulgent piece of Boys’ Adventure Story mixed with half baked spirituality that is becoming something of a hallmark of Mel Gibson’s directing style. The basic storyline is simple: man is captured and has to escape and try to save his pregnant wife and child. The twist on this hackneyed story was that it was set in Central America just before the appearance of the Spaniards and the action was concerned with Mayans and, of course, another Gibson affectation, the dialogue was in the local language.

The violence was graphic and convincing, which was more than could be said for the Jim Henson jaguar which appeared at a climactic moment in the film in fulfilment of an inexplicable prophecy made by a dying child to the vicious captors of the film’s genial hero. I don’t care if the jaguar was real; they should have spent money on producing a more convincing real animatronic version!

I presume that Gibson (credited with the writing of this farrago) was deeply influenced by ‘Lord of the Flies’ as the end of the film is a direct copy of the book. The lone fighter against the forces of bloody unreason manages to evade his pursuers until he falls to his knees on the beach, easy prey, but is saved by the fantastic appearance of Spanish galleons and a boat crowded with Conquistadors and priests: representatives of ‘civilized’ society as opposed to the callous human sacrifice society we have been viewing up to this point. The pursuers fascination by the apparition of other worldly creatures enables the hero to escape back to the forest for ‘a new beginning’ little realising that the Spaniard’s civilization will entail the complete genocidal destruction of the indigenous societies.

There are other parallels too puerile to note between Golding’s novel and ‘Apocalypto’, I only hope that Golding’s estate gets a share of the royalties from this film!

After a lazy Sunday morning, with me champing at the bit to ‘do something’ to get us fully settled in Catalonia and being constantly frustrated because it is, after all, Sunday, we went to Carmen, Toni’s sister for a large family lunch. We had a take away, but that term hardly does justice to the excellent rotisserie just around the corner from Toni’s mum’s flat. The chickens are cooked on a long spit which is turned over an oven fuelled with aromatic wooden logs: the flavour of the cooked chicken is superb. This place also has extras like Russian salad; sliced grilled potatoes; marinated peppers; seafood salad and giant rissoles. I do like rissoles, especially the game you have to play guessing what ingredients might have been added to the melange to give that distinctively, softly bland texture and flavour that I love!

I will only mention the visit to the open air swimming pool and the relaxing sunbathing because I know that the weather in Wales was pretty poor.

I suppose it will be a sign of my having settled in when I stop looking at the weather forecast for GB just so that I can have a private gloat and convince myself further that the choice that I have made is the right one!

The sun shines still!