Aldeacentenera

One of the big debates in Shetland at the moment seems to be the imminent arrival of Tesco. I can see how that will change shopping patterns in Lerwick, and perhaps not entirely for the better either in the long run. It’s interesting to note that here in this part of rural Spain, small corner shops specialising in their particular chosen produce are still thriving in the way that they used to do in the UK 30 or 40 years ago.

Yes, there are big supermarkets here too - Dia, Carrefour, Corte Ingles, Lidl, Eroski, etc, but they are mainly in the bigger towns and cities. Rural Spain is still very much a place where little shops rule. You will find shops that only sell a very narrow range of products, and people know that it’s the best place to go to if they need that kind of item.

Maybe the situation will change eventually, and I see that a Hipermercado (Hypermarket) is due to open in Trujillo, our nearest town that’s about the same size as Lerwick later this summer. Will that drive out the little shops? No. The Spanish seem to really appreciate their little corner shops and they will continue to use them as they always have done. This is a country where everyone and everything is allowed a place. It’s hard to define exactly, but they just seem to have an accommodating nature that works.


Rural Spain is actually a lot like the Shetland I remember of around 30 to 40 years ago. OK, so the weather is different - no gales, no snow, and lots of hot sunshine - but it’s the people and how they live and behave that reminds me of an earlier time when I was growing up. The crofter mentality is alive and well here. People love to have some land where they might rear some sheep, several pigs and a few hens. They will also grow some vegetables and maybe some fruit.

The friendliness and generosity of the people here is simply amazing. We have neighbours who are forever giving us lettuce, oranges, lemons, pomegranates, figs, grapes, or whatever is in season. Sometimes we struggle to keep up. At Christmas we were given some reestit mutton from Shetland. In an attempt to return some of the generosity shown to us here, we made a big pot of reestit mutton and taatie soup, made lots of bannocks and invited a bunch of our friends along. They loved it! I played a Shetland fiddle music CD too, which also went down well. I almost felt homesick.


The old and the modern live comfortably side by side here in Cáceres province. In the quiet country roads you might come across a man riding a donkey one minute, and then be overtaken by someone driving a brand new Mercedes the next. This was a very poor region historically, but they have pulled themselves into the 21st century in a way that is quite admirable. There’s a tenacious spirit here in Extremadura that has a “why not” attitude, rather than a “we can’t do that” attitude.

A perfect example of this happened a few years ago when the Junta de Extremadura decided to change all the government office computers in the entire region over to the free and open source Linux operating system instead of the expensive Windows operating system. They did it over a single weekend and saved millions of euros in the process. Meanwhile, the city of Munich in Germany has spent several years planning a virtually similar operation, which the world’s IT community has been watching with interest. Munich still hasn’t made the changeover; Extremadura just did it, probably because they didn’t know they couldn’t.

When the oil arrived at Sullom Voe in the early 1970s, Shetland was quite a poor place. The people soon discovered though that they had a new found power that they could put to good use. No longer did they feel insecure and second rate. The county of Shetland moved forward in a very positive way, gaining in confidence and prosperity all the time.


Spain is a bit like that now. They have recently come out of the Franco era where repression was a part of life. The people lost confidence in themselves, felt second rate and behaved that way too. Now that is changing. Spain has embraced everything that the EU can offer. They have replaced their old roads and now there’s hardly a bad road to be found. Every village, no matter how small, has broadband in place as information exchange and education is seen as being very important for the future.

Spain’s latest demonstration of “why not” happened on Sunday evening when they took on the mighty German football team and won the Euro Cup 2008. Their elderly manager summed it up by saying that he had told the players before every single match that there was absolutely no reason why they could not win, so they simply went out and won every single match.

It’s hard to describe the ecstatic reaction this country has had to the football victory. We were in Trujillo watching the match with friends. Afterwards we went to the Plaza Mayor, the town’s main square, to join in the celebrations. At least 10,000 people were there, many of them, like us, from surrounding villages.

Young people were dancing in the large central fountain, cars were circling the square with horns blaring, strangers were hugging each other, flags were waving, people sang themselves hoarse, fireworks exploded constantly, and all this went on for at least three hours. And that was in one small town. Can you imagine what the entire country’s reaction must have been like?


With all the noisy celebrations going on among such a huge crowd of people, we did not see a single drunk person, or a single policeman either. There was absolutely no trouble of any kind - just very loud celebrations. The Spanish celebrate and may take a drink or two - or not, unlike the British who often seem to need a drink or two to celebrate. The entire nation took Monday off work and every employer expected it to be the case too and accepted it as inevitable.

It feels like this country is finally shrugging off the chains of the Franco era. The Spanish team winning a major football tournament may seem like a minor thing in the overall context of things, but it has been a catalyst, a kind of awakening that has strengthened the “why not” attitude. The slogan throughout the tournament was “Podemos” - “We can do it” - so we simply did it.

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