First of all, I am talking about rural Spain, and rural southern Spain to boot: I live in the olive-farming town of Montefrio, 50 km NW of Granada, population 8,000, with only one foreign resident, myself (and my 8 year old daughter, whose mother tongue is Spanish - the language we speak at home). Here, many people are still functionally illiterate and practice subsistence farming backed up by the PER, the notorious system of agricultural unemployment benefits. Most women still stay home and mind the babies; their husbands work in the fields by day and in the bars by night. Politics, although democratic in name for the past 20 years, is still run on the old "cacique" system of patronage and clientelism. Most people have never been to Granada for any other purpose than to visit relatives or go to the doctor - and the few that have visited the Alhambra Palace (the pride and glory of Andalucian culture) have usually done so as school children, in noisy busloads.

This is simply the reality that exists, not the would-be, politically pleasant version thereof cultivated by well-intentioned university grads of Hispanic Studies in the US and UK. Several years back, I decided to give more meaning to my 35 year old relationship with the montefrieños by getting into the political forum, joining hands with a number of democrats to oust the town's Stalinist mayor (he's actually a personal friend of Fidel Castro's), who had over 12 long years built up a power base that seemed impossible to beak, composed of both working class cronies and right-wing entrepreneurs (who saw him as a leftist with whom they could do profitable business). I used my literary and artistic talents to run a year-long private campaign against him, in the form of illustrated circular letters, known here as Las Cartas al Pueblo, at considerable risk to my own safety. The mayor lost the election by only a 5% margin, in spite of the many votes which he openly purchased. I think that all this is enough to justify my statement that Montefrio - and many other rural parts of what is still essentially a rural country - has in many ways more in common with Third World, undeveloped countries than it does with, say, Belgium or Germany.

As I have said, my own qualifications for making statements about Spain and the Third World were called into question by one of the members. Before I defend myself, I would like to point out that the term "Third World" is in itself a bit of a joke nowadays, since there is no more Second World for it to be Third to, and in any case there are very few countries left which do not have some region which is approximately up to First World standards. So the black-and-white concept of different "worlds" is nonsense: we live in one world, where there are parts which are more advanced and others which are more or less backward, and invariably trying to catch up with their wealthier neighbours. I have lived in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries since I was 12 - that is, over a period of 42 years, 2 of which were spent in a favela in Rio de Janeiro, and 2 on a church mission in the interior of Haiti. I speak 5 languages including créole and currently work as a translator for Unesco, specialized in sociological and cultural matters, and, also, as a simultaneous conference interpreter in the south of Spain. I recently launched a "rural tourism" project here in Montefrio, based on 3 peasant cottages which I rehabilitated and currently rent out for short stays to adventurous foreign visitors who would like to see what life in a Spanish town unspoiled by mass tourism is like. The name of my venture is "Las Casas de Lorenzo" and is described in http://www.w-world.com/travellr/europe/spain/lorenzo.html in case you don't take my word for it.

Furthermore, I have been urgently requested by our new mayor, Antonio Garcia Avilés, to take all measures to involve more people in this activity, which he sees as an ideal way of bringing more prosperity to our village. He has also requested me to write a guide book for Montefrio in Spanish and English, which I have done. "Roads and Trails of Montefrio", an archaeological and historical guide, is at the printer's and will be published this summer. I hope that this will clarify my position and assuage the wrath of those who felt it necessary to reprimand me for my outspokenness. It is indeed a good sign that controversy can exist in cyberspace, rather than just the courteous exchange of useful information about practical matters, and I can assure all of you that I will continue to say what I think about the country whose nationality I am about to take on, in substitution for my current British one, whenever it pleases me!