Welcome Huelvans

We won't be in our lovely house in Juviles for Christmas this year, as we're going to Mexico instead. (I know it sounds extravagant, but it will be the first long-haul we've done since we embarked on restoring the house back in 2006. And we booked it months ago, when I was getting loads of work...) So we're delighted to have accepted a booking from a family from Huelva, who are arriving Christmas eve (Nochebuena) and staying till after New Year's Eve (Nochevieja). I just hope they have some idea of just how cold it can be between the Noches at an altitude of 1,250m.

Huelva is the Andalucian province - the capital city has the same name - that butts onto Portugal, in the far West of the community. It's quite a long way for our guests to come, despite being still in the same general region - probably a six hour drive or more. An interesting city little visited by foreign tourists, Huelva was heavily influenced by the British industrialists of the Rio Tinto mining concern in the late 19th century. Amongst other achievement, the Brits founded the first football club in Spain here - Recreativo de Huelva is still the oldest professional team in the country - and built a remarkable garden suburb reminiscent of Port Sunlight or Letchworth. Here's a shot of a typical street in Barrio Reina Victoria - or Queen Victoria District - it's only the Spanish street lights that give it away. What was home-from-home for British mining engineers in the 1890s is now a predictably gentrified corner of a modern Spanish city.