JimenaPulse's very first item - originally published on March 5, 2007

Title: WALKING ALONG THE RIVER
(Picture missing, will try to find it!) Along the Hozgarganta River, on the village side, is a footpath that was probably created originally by the Romans, who carved their way into the limestone rock (see picture). Later, in the XVII Century, a foundry mill (known today as La Fábrica de Bombas, The Bomb Factory) was built at great effort and expense, near the present bridge at Pasada de Alcalá. However, due to miscalculations about water levels in the summer (there ain't none), it only functioned for eleven years and was abandoned in favour of another similar mill near today's San Pablo. See the original here. Given that this is our anniversary month, we will be putting up some of our old articles, and stats, and other bits and pieces - always supposing we have the time between trying to earn a living. WATCH THIS SPACE!

Have you seen the services we offer on the sidebar?

If you scroll down from here (yes, dear, use the little arrow on the right to move up and down, or the little wheel on your mou ... that's it, good for you!) you will notice a section of the sidebar that looks like the picture that illustrates this article. Each of the pics are linked to whatever it is you might be interested in. From top to bottom: How to pronounce letters in Spanish; THE WeatherWidget; Useful stuff (like emergency numbers, etc.); School start/end and holiday dates; Our photo albums, all of them; Local holidays and fest days ... just thought you should know as rainy weather is ahead. Of course, if you do use any of the links you might like to consider a donation to JimenaPulse. It does take time and effort to offer you these things and finances are touch and go as we come up to our 5th anniversary.

Saturday Market

NO SATURDAY MARKET AT JIMENAPULSE TOMORROW, EITHER. SORRY! Please pass the word!

SEND US YOUR PHOTOS!

WE'RE LOOKING FOR YOUR PHOTOS: Parties, Halloween, trips, journeys, travels, people, places, things - whatever, as long as the subject is Jimena or the photographer lives here. We'll put them up and make a feature of them, with your name and the title of the photo. Just attach them -maximum of ten up to 150 Kb and in JPG format, please- to an e-mail with your name (or anonymously if you like) and a little info such as where you live and/or where the pics are taken. Quality doesn't matter but we choose to publish or not. Write to this address: jimenaprospero@gmail.com. Easy!

A new look to part of the sidebar - just for you

(Click to enlarge)

We've been revamping the sidebars a bit. Thought you should know. The image is a screen shot of the links you can find there, below the 'crease line' (old-fashioned newpaper parlance for what is now the bottom of your screen on the main page of any site). We have added something called Very Useful Local Info, which is about ... yes, you guessed it. It contains all sorts of phone numbers and will be seriously updated when we get a moment (in 2077) - but needs your help, like with what you think might be useful.

The list is divided into Partners and JimenaPulse series. The former links to some of our partner sites (i.e. out of the same stable: OneLine Publications), and we've added All About Jimena, which is also on the right sidebar, in readiness for our Great Leap Forward on Facebook (yes, we have no alternative but to succumb - Twitter, here we come!).

The latter (you still with us?), aside from the Very Useful Local Info link, offers a new look to our earlier series, including It's Choreetho, Not Choritso (how they make chorizo around here), The Story of Health Care in Jimena (yup, you got it), Living and Dying in Southern Spain (what to do when and if...) and How Did That Cork Get in Your Bottle? (the whole, complete process from tree to bottle - fascinating, if we say so ourselves).

New WeatherWidget on sidebar

Having received complaints that our previous WeatherWidget was not working properly, we've decided to change it, although it's from the same source. You will find it on the right sidebar. At the bottom of it, in tiny writing, it says '+info' - click on that for a seven-day forecast and a lot more weather stuff. Enjoy!

Spanish conversation classes start today - but why bother?

You know more than you think!

Why study Spanish? If you speak Spanish, you can communicate with almost 500 million people worldwide. If you want to travel, a little knowledge of Spanish will go a long way. If you want to do more than just say "¡Buenos días!" to your neighbour or the girl in the supermarket, you can increase your vocabulary and knowledge, string words together more easily, getting it at least partly right - by joining our Spanish Conversation Classes for as little as €10 per week! (Call Alberto on 685 298 820 for more information. There are a few places left, and anyway, you can join at any time.) But here are some more reasons to learn Spanish:>>>

Get the latest papers in English here!

Well, not here exactly. At the Jimena Real Estate/JimenaPulse/TranslationHelp office in the village. Calle Romo 41, to be correct. Opposite Bar La Parada, around the corner from Correos (the post office), across the street from the primary school. We try to bring the latest issues every week; aside from The Olive Press, none of the others can be bothered to deliver to Jimena, though they all claim to do so. You can also access the press from all over the world if you click on the International Press icon on the left sidebar, right under Weather (give it a try: click here).

More photos added to 'People of the Summer (4)'

Just a few new pics added to that album. You can see all our Picasa Web Albums by clicking on the picture of the baby on the sidebar. Our albums are in constant upheaval as we store some 15,000 photos there - yes, 15,000 pictures we've been taking since JimenaPulse went online in March 2007. It is important for our readers to note that all our photos are COPYRIGHT; you may not use them for any purpose whatsoever without our express permission. To do so means you could be prosecuted. We are working on a way for a selection of the better ones to be available for purchase.

See our photos on our Web Albums

Picasa Web Album page

If you've been having trouble seeing all the photos we took over the feria, or at any other time, just CLICK HERE to go to our Picasa Web Albums. But please note that ALL OUR PHOTOS ARE COPYRIGHT and you may not download them without our express permission. You can get that by e-mailing us with a request.

OUR APOLOGIES FOR AN ABSENCE OF ITEMS TODAY

We hereby grovel, Dear Reader, in apologies and other such grovellings, but we have had a technical hitch all day with our connectivity. In other words, we have had Internet connectivity issues since early this morning and as it is now thirteen hours later we have decided to shut shop for the rest of the 24 hours and see if we can get back some of the sleep we lost with worry at siesta time. The tech gods willing, we will be back tomorrow as usual.

We appreciate it

Received with donation: Thanks for all the work you do on Jimena- and CampoPulse - hope this helps you keep up the good work. Thank you for the donation and the kind words - it's nice to be appreciated. All donations are anonymous unless specified otherwise, in writing. You can donate via PayPal (click on sidebar icon), as this donation was, or any other way: just let us know. We try to make it easy (well, we would, wouldn't we?), so brown envelopes are accepted eagerly, too. Seriously, thank you.

Looking back on our history

In an effort to bring ourselves up to date, and in preparation for moving all our sites under one roof, we have spent some time looking back to the very beginnings of JimenaPulse. We realize that we have actually been pretty funny, serious, fighting-your-corner, investigative. Here are some examples of some of the items we brought to CampoPulse on the dates they were originally published: Have you ever thought what you get for the price of a coffee?; European citizens no longer need 'residencia' card; What is the sesentaycinco card? and how you can get one; Alternative energy or hot air? for Jimena (we admit we adjusted the headline to the present - its about an Irish investor); About 'huevos' and fish, not to mention female chickens (not hens) - it's about language, and funny if we say so ourselves... These are from 2007, with our fourth anniversary coming up next month. But you can peruse the old JimenaPulse site at your leisure, which we highly recommend. And we will continue bringing such items forward, slowly but surely, as it's very time consuming (any volunteers? it doesn't need any high tech knowledge, only time). This item also appears on CampoPulse.

How do you like our new look?

 

We like/want/need to hear your opinion, Dear Reader. As you know, we're undergoing some changes here and this is merely the beginning of several such that will be taking place during the new year. The same applies to our major partner site, CampoPulse, with which we expect to be able to merge entirely a little later on. PLEASE COMMENT BELOW! (P.S. Is there some reason we don't know about that we're not getting as many comments as usual? Please let us know - and those who do comment regularly, please write in to say how easy it is to comment ... it might help your more reluctant fellow readers.)

Just a little confusion sorted

The image shows an item published on December 28, 2007, Spain's equivalent to April Fool's Day. It apparently threw a good friend into some confusion when she googled (yes, it's a verb now) 'jimenapulse' (She commented there: I am sorry about this , but if nobody pays Alberto for all his hard work, what do we expect? for which we thank her.) Alas, Google has yet to register the fact that JimenaPulse is now published exclusively on Blogger, as opposed to WordPress, where we used to be. If we close down the WP, we would lose some if not all our partner sites such as Jimena Property Listings, JimenArte and JimenaLinks. We are working to transfer these and update them, and others, but it takes time we don't seem to have...

Several reasons for a General Strike in Spain

We have been asked several times over the last few days about the reasons for a General Strike, scheduled for September 29 (tomorrow week). There are numerous reasons -and lots of consequences- but we received an e-mail from Izquierda Unida with a link to a YouTube movie that explains it well, albeit in Spanish. Equally, we might as well announce here that we have every intention of not working that day. In fact, we have that intention every day, but this time we will have an excuse. (This item also appears on CampoPulse)

Jimena is Miss Universe 2010

Yes, you read that right. This year's Miss Universe is called Jimena Navarrete. She was Miss Mexico, and was crowned on Monday at the 59th edition of the pageant, held this year at the Mandalay Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact, Jimena is a fairly common name in Mexico, as you can see if you choose to waste time (as we have) by Googling the name... There's a very popular singer by that name, apparently, and a hurricane was called that last year. It is the name of the legendary mother of Bernardo de Carpio (no, not Di Caprio, silly), whoever that was, and Jimena Díaz was the wife of El Cid, of course. King Alfonso VI of Castile (c.1040 – 1109), called The Brave, had a mistress called Jimena Muñoz ... and then there's JimenaPulse, JimenArte, Holidays in Jimena, Jimena Property Listings ... Well, done, Jimena!

New site feature and What Have You Missed On CampoPulse?

You may have noticed our new 'You might also like' feature at the bottom of each post. The items that come up there do so automatically, and refer to previous posts, so if you see something you might like to check on, just click on the image. As you will have noticed, too, there isn't much going up here on JimenaPulse, but that's because there's more going on in the Campo de Gibraltar than in this little corner of it, so make sure you head over there every now and then to catch up on our surrounding area. (and don't forget that we'll be moving everything over to that site by the end of the year, so put it, CampoPulse, in your favourites already, why not. Oh, and we're reviving the Readers' Choice and Have a Laugh weekend features, too - watch this space!

A blog for expats

If you scroll down you will notice a new feature on the sidebar called Expat Blog. Clicking on the image there you will go to a fascinating site run by expats from all over the world. Registration is easy and participation also. Enjoy!

What's Feedjit?

If you haven't scrolled down to the bottom of the sidebar recently you won't have noticed something called Feedjit Live Traffic Feed. We thought it would be interesting for you to see where our visitors come from (we haff uzzer methods you don't see) at any given time.  Then, just above it, there's a very solitary looking 'Followers' widget that we'd love you to jopin (it's harmless and you won't be getting any e-mails as a result!) They're just gadgets to make you, Dear Reader, use the click thingy on your mouse and explore JimenaPulse more frequently and fully - there's a lot of things to see... And by the way, please consider: When was the last time you made a donation to this highly informative site?