You might think that the spectacle of a floor strewn variously with the detritus of the bar-fly would be a little off-putting for the casual visitor to Salamanca. It’s true that English day trippers here often voice their disgust at such scenes. Read the rest of this entry »
Perhaps it would have been a mercy had we blinked out of existence when that blasphemous engine the Large Hadron Collider was turned on last week. Well that’s what watching the news on a regular basis does to your outlook. With head in hands I read recently that plans for a child surgery centre in Valladolid have been widely criticised by many working in Salamanca’s health service. Read the rest of this entry »
Presuming we haven’t all been sucked into a black hole by now (thanks to certain devil may care physicists), I’d like to mention my first visit to Salamanca. It was twilight when I arrived 15 years ago, and the first thing that struck me was that all the shops around the centre were on that charmingly small scale that we haven’t really seen in Britain since the early 70’s. But the world moves on and vast retail concerns dominate more and more in Salamanca. A little at a time the evocative shop signs of the past are being replaced by aesthetically ill considered examples. Read the rest of this entry »
As summer drags through its closing weeks some of us are eager to feel the kinder breath of autumn once more. And as the sun leaves so do the tourists taking with them a thousand hastily purchased mementos of the city and leaving, we all hope, a million or so Euros in their wake. I’m often reminded by locals that Salamanca is desperately dependant upon the spending habits of holiday makers: “the city has no other asset” a barman told me recently. Read the rest of this entry »
I don’t know if you spotted the article in a local paper last week about HIV infection rates amongst older Salmantinos. Despite the awfully sad subject of the piece, there was a note of a much lighter nature. It seems that research has not only revealed a higher percentage of older folks falling victim to this terrible disease, but also that many older people here are enjoying a full and (one supposes) satisfying sexual life. Read the rest of this entry »
