Spain stigma cornered

Why haven’t I felt great about Spain? Happiness inspired by a healthy climate, mediterreanean diet and robust red wine is tainted by the relentless exit from England of a type who’s prime aim is to recreate a sunny version of their crabby lifestyle around the Alicante and Benidorm apartment complexes that were the flagship of the generation that took package holidays from conception to reality but were never chilled enough to become Hippies.

I have been to mainland Spain 3 or four times in the last 3 or four years. There is still a splinter in my deep English heritage that pings a Southern European need in me. Its partly fuelled by my hatred of the English winter and partly fuelled by my persistent need to experience culture and lifestyle variation across continents throughout the world. Murcia has a draw. The coastline isn’t particularly beautiful but that helps dispel the tainting element. Sadly it is Polaris World. Polaris appear to be attempting to take the apartment and villa scene to a new hierarchy of modern utopia. They are doing some progressive things. I even got tempted by their relentless advertising to go look at the stuff. I even considered buying a Polaris box. Luckily for me I had been to Murcia town the evening before ‘deposit day’. Murcia town was what I had been hoping for. We sat in a square in the early evening drank a local robust red wine and ate a main course of seafood paella after a starter of sauteed vegetables and muscles. Our waiter looked like a Spanish version of Alfred Hitchcock. He was aided by a dark haired beauty from the opposite gender who had the type of smile that renders all male customers completely incapable of complaining should there have been anything to complain about. The whole thing was just marvellous. It was how Spain can and should be. Warm, friendly, foreign, interesting and satisfying. Polaris got steadily shelved and dreams of a town apartment with hopes of a bell tower visible across a pigeoned roofscape, of shuttered window openings, and a jungle of building corners owned by closely built dwellings in the chase for shade, of open evening windows and waves of Jasmin scented air coaxing one into soaring highs of rest, relaxation and pleasure.