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Spain is my second home.
My parents Rosario and Joe Senior rewarded themselves with a holiday home in Spain when their central heating business (Navco) prospered in the late 70s. After years of struggle, starting with nothing and zero qualifications they made a successful business and migrated from a terraced house in Walton with an outside loo to a smart detached place (with two inside loos) near a beach in the Liverpool suburbs.
These were halcyon days. Regular trips to the Atlantic Tower restaurant for prawn cocktails, steak & chips and rum babas. Grown up nights out for mum (in a procession of fashionable hairdos and huge designer spectacles) and dad (in purple velvet tux and bow tie). Riotous dinner parties with copious wine and Spanish brandy, Streisand and Julio on the turntable, a family sing-song followed briskly by a family row with voices raised in pitch and volume and doors slamming left and right. (I was in my punk phase and sat in a corner scowling at it all).
At some point in all this an expedition of scouse tradesmen set off to discover holiday properties on the Costa Blanca. Thousands of holiday-lets and high-rise hotels were popping up on the coast and the Spanish government was offering deals to lure in foreign currency. My parents, being a canny pair, snapped up a three-bed apartment with a terrace overlooking the med.
It was our family retreat from the 80s on. Mum lives there still, my sister and family are up the road and dad was buried here (meeting his maker in an Everton shirt, beach shorts and sandals).
My first visits were with university and work friends, then partners and eventually children. Revisiting the same beaches and bars, taking paella at the same restaurants and never tiring of it. My granddaughter will have her first holiday there later this year.
Shots from La Vila and other favourite Spanish places too numerous to mention are in this gallery. The tower at the top left (Malladeta study) is part of the skyline from mum's terrace.
Spain is good for street and landscape - see London and Kent for my preferences on each. My Spain settings are mainly about timing.
There is really only one rule or Spain - don't shoot in the middle of the day. Have lunch, take a siesta, go for a swim, read a book, do something romantic with your best gal/guy and put the camera away. The light is too bright for photos.
Get up early before it heats up and everything slows down. Go out late when the sky fills with colour and everyone heads out for the evening.
Go for feast days and fiestas. The solemn processions during Holy Week in March / April with ornate floats led by hooded penitents (Nazarenos) and the summer fiestas when the entire towns put on their glad rags and inhibitions are lowered.
If you like any of the images in this gallery, send a message here. Limited edition fine art prints are available in sizes from A5 to A0.