El bueno, el malo y el feo

The good, the bad and the ugly - some images taken around our current abode.

When I first came to Spain to meet Cesar's parents in La Flecha, the place was a small but rather spreadout little development of individual houses, all with gardens in an area about 5kms outside Valladolid town centre. It used to be a bit ramshackle in that the people who lived there - like Cesar's parents - had bought plots of land and built their homes with very little intervention from the authorities.

My in-laws' home could be in the middle of the countryside when you look around the garden and I have captured a few images that I have grown to love over the years.

Looking up from the back door, you see the little balcony that leads from the kitchen area in the upstairs where we are currently living.

View from the balcony looking down











There are little 'things' in every corner - symbolic of the habitual horder!

The cat isn't ours but was sitting on next door's wall and looked just right! Is he good, bad or ugly??

In the intervening years, La Flecha has become an urbanisation, with a network of narrow, often one-way streets, a local authority building, a large new library, several 'plazas', shops, supermarkets, a big primary school, swimming pools, even a bullring.. and new homes in the form of apartment blocks - or 'pisos' - that have been gradually expanding the boundaries of La Flecha so that it is now a very substantial place.

View from the front of our house to the right - you can see a small plaza there where the children go to play most evenings.

And to the left, you look towards the main square - La Plaza Espana - which is just down the hill from the house.

And this is the front balcony of our house - and yes, I do put my washing out to dry here - works a treat!!

On Saturday, there was the grand opening of a new bridge that links La Flecha with another urbanisation that has sprung up with considerably less elegance. The road and the bridge are impressive; the area it goes through is less so.














Here you can see the effects of the current economic crisis as building works have been abandoned, brand new pisos unfinished, unlived in and deteriorating rapidly. Awful waste.

 Oh - and of course, on Wednesday, the first stone was laid on this site - of a new IKEA!!











And pertaining to none of the above directly, a picture I captured on the way back from Aguilar de Campoo - and which I rather like - Sunset Christ near Palencia.