Telefonica Trials

A confused post about Telefonica…

Life in Spain is good most of the time. Despite the ‘little annoyances’ we have been subject to over the last two years, it is still a great place to live, no question. But when things go wrong I wish we didn’t nearly always encounter the ‘manana problema’. And it is a refreshing change when ‘manana’ turns out to be today… or perhaps it doesn’t…

I will explain…

To publish a post to this blog I need to use the Internet, obviously. But in actual fact, I am writing this entry on a blog poster and hoping it will eventually be published, as at this precise point in time we do not have access to the Internet; at least, not reliable access anyway.

This is not an unusual occurrence. Our ‘rural ADSL’ has its moments of being offline at some point every two or three days, but usually only for a few minutes or a couple of hours at most. Sadly this time it could be intermittent (or offline completely) for a few days.

Internet Statement by altemark on flickr

Telefonica are very proud of their rural ADSL network, and I guess, all things taken into consideration, they have a right to be. Spain isn’t an easy region to make available to the internet, with its mountain villages tucked away everywhere off the beaten track and the rather haphazard system used for the telephone lines. And recently, rural ADSL has been upgraded; no longer do we have to wait for ever for a webpage to load or give up the opportunity of watching a funny YouTube video because of slow download speeds. Now our line speed is respectable (well, respectable for rural ADSL anyhow…). We can log on and browse with the rest of the world and not forego pages which are heavy to load.

And when you consider where the telephone boxes are situated in most rural areas, it is no mean feat that they work at all. In our village, the switch box is housed in a ramshackle hut down an alleyway between two houses. It looks like it would make a great hiding place for local strays, allowing they could find their way through the heavy locks which look sturdier than the shack itself (and nothing appears to deter the local stray cats and dogs).

But so far the switch box has weathered most (but not all) storms and the wires do not appear to have been chewed into or disturbed by anything. There again, allowing for the current situation, I could be wrong.

Two days ago our phone lines went down. Not an unusual occurrence either. But a telephone call to Telefonica (with the constantly repeated phrase ‘English’ given to the answerphone message) and an explanation to the English speaking operator (always easier…) got a fairly swift response. The engineers fixed ‘el problema’ the very next morning.

Not so the Internet however.

I was working in the kitchen when I heard the neighbour’s telephone ring and I thought “great, now I can get on with my work on the net”. But it wasn’t to be. The little ‘msn messenger man’ spun round and round trying to log me in, with no success. Never mind, I tried loading Firefox , as Internet Explorer is a pain in the backside loading anyhow. But nada, just the ‘this webpage isn’t available’ notice.

So still no Internet.

After checking all connections in the house, my husband reluctantly called Telefonica again (he hates having to repeat ‘English’ several times to the answer phone…). He explained the situation (“Si, ahora tenemos una linea, pero no, no tenemos el internet” repeated several times, just to make sure…) and the woman on the end of the line said she would call the engineers again, but it may take a while for them to respond.

I guess they hadn’t thought to check that the Internet switches in the telephone box were still working when they checked out the phone switches. An easy mistake to make, I guess, after all, no one had thought to mention that we had no Internet, we assumed they would realise this as the phone lines were not working…

Anyway, within a few hours the engineer turned up to check the Internet switch in the phone box. Sure enough, it was faulty. He rang us to say it would be ‘manana’ before he could fix it and went away. The woman from Telefonica rang to inform us as well, ending her call with the usual “Is there anything else I can help you with? Have you considered getting your TV through our ADSL lines too…?” (My husband was tempted to reply that it would be nice to have a working ADSL line before considering that one, thank you…).

But strangely, as I am typing this post, the Internet is flickering on and off. Sometimes it is loading, but very slowly, sometimes nothing at all. Either way, that wasn’t happening before. Whether or not the engineer came back early to fix it, without telling us, I don’t know… It doesn’t seem to be considered important to tell us what is going on when something is mended, only when it is broken… but I do know that ‘flickering on and off’ will be a bitch to explain to the Telefonica help line if it continues…

So, if this post ends up on my blog at the same date I gave to the publication, perhaps the ‘Telefonica man’ did solve the problem without waiting for manana.

But if he did, he didn’t do a complete ‘fix’. And if he didn’t, I guess he is coming back manana… or perhaps not…

Pictures Of Heath Fires Near Our Village In Spain

The weather here in Southern Spain is very, very hot at the moment. Most days temperatures pass 37 degrees centigrade (99 Fahrenheit). Some days they go well above this.

Going outside during the hottest parts of the day is a pastime endured only by ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’. More sensible people (including us) remain in their homes (or the local bar) in the relative cool of the air con. The risk of sunstroke is too high to be ignored and the sheer exhaustion summer heat brings is not to be taken lightly.

High temperatures in Spain are causing other ‘problems to health’ as well. Over the last few weeks, heath fires and forest fires have raged in many parts of Spain. We have watched them on TV and hoped they didn’t come this way. But now they have reached our village.

Is that a helicopter?

A few days ago, we were sitting in our lounge, when the peace was interrupted by the loud drone of a helicopter. The noise was so loud, it sounded like the vehicle was outside the door. We have the occasional ‘helicopter visit’ (usually by the Spanish trafficos, trying to catch out unsuspecting speeding motorists), but they never fly this close.

So we went up to the roof terrace to have a look.

Whats That Smoke?

We arrived in time to see a fire helicopter pulling away, after it had dropped gallons of water onto a heath fire which was raging all across the mountain at the top of our village.

The shot above is of only one fire – there were several burning away all along the top of the mountain.

Here’s one from another angle:

Heath Fire

The smoke you see in the foreground, is from the fire closer to the village that the helicopter crew were trying to put out first.

Heath fires and forest fires in Spain are hard to put out. Access for the usual fire service vehicles is often difficult, owing to narrow or non-existant roads. In any case, it takes even a speeding ‘Bombero’ (Fire Service) vehicle many wasted minutes to get to a relatively isolated mountain area. We have to rely upon the skill and dexterity of the helicopter crews from the Spanish Civil Protection Unit.

And, as in this case, one helicopter…

Getting Close...

The helicopter flew away to fill its ‘bambi bucket’ with more water. We waited and watched the largest of the heath fires raging and getting ever closer to the pine trees at the top of the village. It seemed like an age before the helicopter returned. It was actually about seven or eight minutes before we heard the drone again and saw…

The Fire Helicopter In The Far Distance

The fire helicopter was returning. It was so far away it is only a spot in the photograph above.

The helicopter crew had to do a number of ‘runs’ to put all the fires out. The shot below was taken after three separate attempts to damp down the biggest fire, and the fire was still fighting back.

This Heath Fire Took A Lot Of Damping Down

But eventually the helicopter crew got the upper hand of the heath fire. The shot below was taken after a couple more ‘dampening runs’. The crew returned with more water, to put out all the residual fires around the main one (and the smaller ones still burning away across the mountain top).

The Heath Fire Almost Out

And eventually peace reigned again in our little Spanish village.

I’ll tell you what. I wouldn’t want to have been a member of that helicopter crew. They had to ‘dive bomb’ those heath fires again and again to drop the ‘water bombs’ from their helicopter. That takes real guts.

As an afterthought. No one seems to know why the fire started. It could simply have been the intense heat of the sun working on a broken bottle or a discarded cigarette end, and the warm breeze fannning and spreading the flames. It could even have been a ‘controlled burn’ of scrubland which got out of hand (although no one is saying this and it is unlikely to have been the case).

Either way, if you are travelling in Spain this summer (or anywhere else where it is really hot). Please don’t throw fag ends out of your car window (or leave used bottles lying around).

The results may not be nice…