Lean Lenten days

Linda Hall

SPAIN lustily embraces any excuse for a fiesta, including those not traditionally their own, like Halloween and the commercialised version of St Valentine’s Day.

Now the hearts and red roses have all been sold, and the next big date on the calendar is Easter, although the welcome for chocolate eggs is still on the lukewarm side.

The Spanish continue to prefer an Easter mona, a sort of round fruit loaf without the dried fruit, topped with an unshelled egg. Even so, an international vibe has crept in because the smaller ones omit the egg but come in all shapes including cute animals with sprinkles for children.

Lent comes first of course, preceded by a noisy and colourful Carnival instead of Shrove Tuesday pancakes although both are based on one final blowout and a good time before Ash Wednesday descends, heralding Lent.

In pious times this involved eating less meat and more fish, which inland meant salt cod and even in these im ­ pious and well ­ communicated times it currently features in a display in my local Consum.

By the end of the 60s, Lent was less grim than those my husband remembered as a small child although his non ­ churchgoing family ignored doctrine anyway. They’d had enough of short commons immediately after the Civil War when fasting was not a devout choice but the outcome of fighting for the wrong side.

Showbusiness came to a halt in Holy Week but was compensated by God business and processions. Spanish television, nothing special at the time, was even worse during the days preceding Easter and the radio was dominated by sombre music. Except once.

Between one dirge and another I was stunned and delighted to hear Dionne Warwick singing ‘Do You Know the Way to San Jose’.

I imagine whoever compiled the playlist saw San Jose and deemed it suitable listening for Holy Week. Or were they as numbed with worthy piety as I was and slipped it in deliberately?

They had a customer ­ let’s call him Geoff. Now Geoff had bought a couple of small oil

Cassandra Nash

YOLANDA DIAZ is Spain’s Minister of Labour and Social Economy.

She is also its Number Two vice­president (there are currently four) and opinion polls consistently name her the country’s most respected minister. The last one placed her in front of Pedro Sanchez, who heads Spain’s government, with a 41.4 per cent approval rating compared with his 36.7 per cent.

Third in the popularity rankings on 32.6 per cent, came Iñigo Errejon who occupies no position at all apart from leading the Mas Pais party.

They are all left ­ wing but only Sanchez belongs to the long ­ established PSOE party. Diaz represents Unidas­Podemos, a loveless marriage of convenience between Izquierda Unida, which incorporates what remains of the Spain’s Communist Party, and Podemos founded in 2014,.

The party emerged from the Indignados movement which occupied the Madrid’s Puerta de Sol in 2011 before the municipal elections in May, claiming that the PSOE and Partido Popular filled heaters from the ferreteria near him, but he wasn’t happy with them. He thought they were defective as his electrics frequently tripped when he was using them. He then called NEATER HEATER and told them the size of the rooms he wanted heating. Both small bedrooms at 9sqm. He was provided with two 600Watt heaters. no longer represented their interests. Meanwhile Errejon’s Mas Pais party is a breakaway from Podemos, of which he was a founder member.

When fitting these heaters Tony and Richard looked at the small ferreteriabought heaters and saw that they were each 2,200 Watts. In total 4.4 kilowatts. Geoff said that they just about took the edge off the cold. (He also only had a 5kW allowance, so when he put the kettle on the electrics tripped). Anyway, his bedrooms are warmer now, his electrics no longer trip, and he is saving 3.2 kilowatts every hour! In fact, possibly more as NEATER HEATERS have thermostats to further reduce consumption.

NEATER HEATER ­ Letting your money go further.

Looked at dispassionately, Spain’s far ­ Left is a fragmented mess of old wounds and new ambitions.

With municipal and regional elections in May and a general election before the end of December, Diaz wants to unite all the parties that lie beyond the PSOE in a new alliance called Sumar.

The PSOE would probably like to see Diaz on its own list of candidates, which is unlikely if not impossible. Meanwhile the socialists suspect that if the far ­ Left parties decide to go it alone, they will not get enough votes between them to shore up the PSOE regionally in May or nationally in December.

The PSOE is consistently the mostvoted party although it cannot be denied that those votes have dwindled with each election under Pedro Sanchez. He needs Diaz to succeed in uniting Sumar, aware that if she does not, or cannot, he could be returning the keys to the Moncloa come January.

PEOPLE rely on their garden tools to help them achieve the precise trim, proper watering or loosened soil they need. Once the temperatures start to drop, it is time to give the tools attention in the form of cleaning, maintenance and repairs where necessary.

Gardeners should set aside some time to give their pruners, shovels, rakes and other hand­held tools a proper once­over before they put them away for the winter.

The first step is to clean them up with warm water and a brush. Spades may still be covered in the soil left over from the summer, and there