Postcard from Spain - Build me up!

The Spanish love concrete almost as much as they like to stuff anchovies into olives to make tapas, or like to serve up cattle in wafer thin slices after killing them in traditional fashion…in a sawdust covered ring wearing very tight trousers (the matador, not the cattle).

In the southern Spanish province of Andalucia, building materials are at a premium – wood is required to, well, grow from the ground, come accessorised with fruit and is used to feed your family. The Spanish had already mastered building in adobe with red clay tiles (actually both local phrases for ‘posh mud’) but when concerete arrived on the scene, they must have thought ‘jackpot!’.

The olnly thing they like more than concrete is tarmac, this explains their love of roads…that and the fact that the little EU sticker in the corner of the banners announcing a new glorious six lane motorway through this region means that Northern Europe is paying for it.

The motorways are glorious though…and they are not even open yet. The Spanish have just finished building loads of two lane motorways…to use while they build the three lane ones! In a spectacular show of job creation (the party ruling in Spain at the moment has its roots in the region, hence all the investment) they appear to be building roads just for the hell of it – roads that divert miles out of their way to span spectacular gorges or bore through tunnels. The practice of naming every bridge and tunnel after somebody means that there will soon be more names highway structures than there are people to name them after.

Driving on them is fantastic. The roads are brand new – the black-top is smooth and unmarked as cake icing. And it’s not environmentally damaging…because there are very few cars. This is a poorish part of Spain and while everyone that drives a car does tool round in a new little three door hatchback or something, there just aren’t that many cars. This means that driving up and down the M-way is like driving in England in 1958, except all the lorries are transporting tapas rather than flanges, grommits or other wonders of British manufacturing.