Catching You Up

Friday, May 18, 2012

It has the makings of a busy weekend. Tonight we will go and see Nacho Diago in a play called Cardiovascular, Saturday we will attend a guitar concert put on by Los Amigos de la Guitarra. They have a new venue for their concerts – the Museo de Bellas Artes. I am curious about the change of venues. The Colegio de Luis Vives where the concerts were formerly held is located close to the gathering point of the many protests that are taking place here in Valencia and the change in venue may have to do with the noise factor. Sunday we will head out with our other Nacho and have lunch at the Asador Siete de Julio.

May 15^th was the first anniversary of the protests organized by the indignados protesting the state of things here in Spain. The concerns were both economic and political. The passage of a year’s time and the election of a new government have seen things worsen. Unemployment still stands at 25% with youth unemployment hovering at 50%. The government has put in place cuts in medical care and education. It has raised taxes both income and sales tax. It has also had to run to the rescue of BANKIA investing 40,000 million dollars of public funds to keep the bank afloat. Conditions promise to get worse before they get better. The solution will be hard to find since Spain’s economic boom was tied to construction and real estate and that sector will be dormant for years to come.

Wednesday was neither a very busy nor exciting day. On our way to have lunch we visited with Francisco at Ballando Nudi and then caught up with Jordi. We ended up having lunch at Vino Tinto, which has been open for less than a year. It is a very lovely space and the menu is varied with a variety of tapas, salads and main dishes. The food is good, but the service leaves much to be desired. It took fifteen minutes for someone to come and take our order. We lunched on salmorejo, which is a heartier version of gazpacho, several croquetas and a plate of octopus. We passed on coffee and dessert.

Yesterday Susan had a nail appointment and while she was out I continued to work on organizing my magic. I also played around with a few ideas for some new presentations of classic effects. We had lunch at home. Susan picked up two empanadas at El Parsien and we had them along with a salad. We read for a while in the afternoon and a little after 5:00 Susan left for Ofelia’s gallery space to take some pictures of her at work. At 7:15 I headed out for a meeting of los veteranos.

Pepe had taken his son, Jaime, to Jimmy Glass to listen to jazz and Gioco was among the missing, also. Juan Luis, Paquito, Gurrea, Jerito and I spent the next two hours talking about magic and each of us did a little something. Jerito shared with us a few of the books in his collection including the first magic book ever published in Spain. He also showed us how he catalogued every effect that he used to perform. It included the location of the effect, all the materials needed to perform the effect and the duration of the effect. Everything was written down on sheets of paper that resembled a doctor’s prescription pad.

After our meeting we ended up at a bar called Los Malagueños, which is your typical Spanish bar. We all ordered sandwiches and they were both immense and inexpensive. We polished off a couple of pitchers of beer and we ended our meal with coffee. When we were finished we all piled into Gurrea’s car and he drove us all home. I walked in the house at 11:30 and Susan was playing games on her iPad. We chatted for a while and we went to bed around midnight.