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.

Funny weather we're getting

A couple of weeks ago it looked very much like Spring, both in the Alpujarra and here in Scotland. There's still a little bit of winter left in Southern Spain yet, with snow highly possible this coming weekend in Juvíles, with the cota de nieve at 1200m and over, although it won't stick. Unlike the top of Ben Lawers in Tayside, where I was braving the elements last Saturday (see right). Still, I'm sure the sun will be shining in the Alpujarra at Easter time in a couple of weeks, where THERE IS STILL AVAILABILITY TO RENT OUR PLACE DURING THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS.

Portuguese Water Dog

The Spanish media showed grudging approval for Obama's choice of an Iberian breed for First Dog last week; Portugal is just next door after all. Adorable though this fish-herding canine may be - it's described by Sabine Durrant in this Guardian article as giving "every impression of being a person zipped up in a dog suit" - round our bit of Andalusia they prefer an altogether more elegant creature called the Podenco Ibicenco (below). Thought to be traceable back to the Pharaoh hounds of ancient Egypt, the Podenco was probably brought from North Africa to Malta and then on to Ibiza and Andalusia by the Arabs. (If true, this is interesting in itself, as modern Muslims aren't generally keen on dogs at all.) If there's anything better than a Podenco at hunting rabbits, it's the lynx, which is both nearly extinct and highly unlikely to let you take the rabbit off it when it's made a kill. Podencos coincidentally are said to be the most cat-like of dogs and have an impressive ability to leap into the air to get a good view of their quarry, then to pounce and grab the little blighters by the neck. Go rabbit-hunting with a Podenco, and you can leave your rifle at home. There are a few of them in our village, including one particularly handsome devil, solid sand in colour, who came into our house once while helping to deliver a fridge (long story). He then disappeared, and his owner Antonio practically accused us of kidnapping him. But after an extensive search of our back bedroom, he was found in the village square with his nose up another dog's bottom. The Podenco that is, not Antonio.

Get to know Antonio's Podenco, Vraclaw the Czech family's part long-haired daschund and part something else, our gentle old mongrel friend Luna and any number of fearsomely professional sheepdogs - not to mention cats, goats, sheep, chickens, horses, birds and lizards. Simply book a week or two at our beautiful Juviles village house. Sleeps five from only £200/€250 a week, and STILL AVAILBLE FOR EASTER.

Anyway, is it just me, or is there a serious inconsistency in publicly declaring that you're going to take a dog from a rescue centre, and then specifying that it has to be one of the rarest and most expensive breeds in the world? Maybe the logic is that the Obamas say they want a Portuguese Water Dog, thousands of thick Americans still suffering from Obamamania go out and order PWD puppies for themselves, realise they can't look after them what with not having any fish to herd, and give them to the Washington DC equivalent of Battersea Dogs' Home. Obama's little girls then get to take their pick from hundreds of pups, they get a PWD for free and they do their bit to help out the poor abandoned doggies. Aww!