(Probably) No Swine Flu in Granada

Cancelled your holiday in Cancun because of Swine Flu? You wouldn't have liked it anyway, it's horrible. Why not try the lovely village of Juviles in the Alpujarra instead? Our house is still available for most weeks during the summer and as of the minute, there are no suspected cases of the disease in our province. Anyway, if pigs get ill in the Alpujarra, it's nothing to worry about. You see when they die, they're cured.

Obama's Bo, the First Pup

I trailed the arrival of Bo, the Obama's Portuguese Water Dog, on this blog a couple of weeks ago, so in another shameless attempt to draw a bit of random traffic, I'm putting a picture of him here. Looks like an energetic little thing. To quote my sister-in-law, an experienced veterinarian, the President would do well to "get a Halti". NB: there are lots of cute dogs in Juviles, where our house remains available for most of June, the second half of July and all but the last week in August.

Birdlife chez Corot

While our Danish guests have been staying in our house in Juviles, we've been enjoying a week in Ville D'Avray, an affluent little town on the edge of Paris, in the home of some people with whom we swapped a week's accommodation. They were at our place in October, and now we've collected on the deal, so to speak. It's in a very beautiful setting, teeming with birdlife, like this thing - which is either a coot or a moorhen, I can never remember which is which - swimming around on Corot's pond. The proto-impressionist came out here from Paris to paint in the fresh air, and now there's a very upmarket restaurant here named after him. It's phenomenally expensive, so we didn't eat there. Perhaps we'll come back when the pound is worth something. In fact our trip to France has served to emphasise what an incredible bargain our part of Spain continues to offer, particularly as our beautiful three- bedroom house can be rented from £200 per week.

May is fairly busy for bookings, but currently most of June and July is still free. House swaps considered (NYC, anybody?)

The mystery of Semana Santa

Although I haven't yet lived full-time in Spain, I reckon I understand the country, language and culture reasonably well, for a guiri. But I don't get the Andalusian Semana Santa tradition of processions by cofradías of penitientes. Each Andalusian city has dozens of cofradías - brotherhoods or societies - each with its home church. During Holy Week they bring out a sculpture of Jesus or some such and process it around a set route. The sculpture and the supporting platform is incredibly heavy, and big, tough guys hide inside sweating and suffering, and anonymous hooded figures looking like the Ku Klux Klan accompany it. It's the same every year.

So far, so Catholic and odd. But the really strange part is the coverage. Acres of newsprint and hours of TV are devoted to in-depth analysis of every last detail. Pundits debate the relative merits of different cofradías and compare the current season's performance with previous years - and they go back decades. The weather, the turn-out, the intricate time-tabling of many different processions in the same streets are debated endlessly. Ideal, the Granada newspaper, today has an ecstatic report of the Holy Thursday processions reaching a "zenith...an apotheosis". But there's never much in the way of overtly religious matter in the coverage - it's all about spectacle, precision, skill and endurance. And being atheist and passionately anti-clerical - which is true of a surprisingly high proportion of post-Franco Spaniards - is no bar to taking Semana Santa processions very, very seriously indeed.

To me it combines aspects of sport, art, ritual and tradition in a way that's a little like bullfighting. Then it adds in the extreme parochial competition of, say, Sienna's Palio horse races, or English village cricket matches. There are echoes of the Inquisition's oppression; taking part was once a way of showing you weren't a muslim or a Jew, while the headgear meant that nobody would know if you kind of looked a bit Jewish or Arab. There's a strong element of Catholic (and maybe Fascist or Nationalist, I don't pretend to understand) triumphalism which has survived the evolution of Spanish society into one of the most secular and enlightened in Europe. And the gypsies get their very own cofradía. Baffling.

At last someone wants Easter...

A couple from Copenhagen (and their little baby) have confirmed for our house for a week from good Friday, so Easter is taken. Plenty of availability for summer - most of June, latter part of July and first three weeks of August still free.

Spring is in the air?

What with the clocks going forward at the weekend and the nocturnal antics of five energetic fox cubs in and around our garden, it's beginning to feel like Spring in Glasgow. Fortunately the same can now be said of Juviles - despite a surprising wintry reprise a week or so ago, they're now getting highs of 16 Celsius (60f) plus. Happily the forecast for Paris, where we're going for a week from Easter Sunday, is equally pleasant. Yesterday we had an enquiry for the house for that week - the potential customer hasn't got back to us yet so it remains available, but hopefully they'll confirm soon.