What cars tell us about their owners

This is just something that occurred to me this weekend. As some of you may know, this last weekend was one of our major fiestas in the village. It's called Nochevieja en agosto, or New Year's Eve in August. It has been going on for about 16 years and is just what it says... here we celebrate NYE on the first Saturday in August. The fiesta dates back to when the village suffered a power cut on December 31st and no one could celebrate the event properly. It was decided to do it when you could guarantee good weather and when everyone would be up for a party. I digress slightly.

This fiesta is huge and very well known. National and regional TV cover it almost every year. On Saturday the usual population of Los Bérchules rose from 800 to 10,000 for one night only. People come from all over Andalucía and Murcia and we even get foreigners making a special effort to see what the funny Spanish are doing in such numbers in the middle of nowhere.

I spent about an hour sitting on a wall just watching people as they arrived. We don't often get such rich people-watching opportunities up here and one of the things that really caught my attention was the way in which I was able to watch a vehicle drive towards the village and know pretty accurately, before I could even make out the drivers and passengers inside, what they would look like. I knew that a big, well-preserved, old model Peugeot sedan would contain a couple in their sixties with the younger family members in the back. They would most likely park up, open the boot and bring out picnic table, deck chairs and cool box and create their own little back-yard right here. I was right.

I then noticed a new Opel Tigra convertible round the corner by the police station in Alcútar. Big-haired girls with plenty of make-up and clacky heels. Check. Customized 10-year-old VW Golf GTi? Young lads in Capri shorts and mirror shades heading for a botellón (self-supplied, open-air booze party). Check.

More than anything else, it seems that the car you drive says more about you than even the clothes you wear although the two will be easily comparable. It tells the world how much disposable cash you have and your priorities for spending it. It says what you want it to say about your taste, your attitude towards consumerism and the environment. It confesses to your fastidious nature or the absence of it. You can probably tell more about the character of a person by inspecting their wheels than you can by reading their Facebook home page or by knowing someone's age, occupation and marital status.

Reading cars is almost as much fun as people-watching itself. Read, match and digest... and read whatever you will into my 8-year-old, bashed and scratched Fiat Punto base model. It will give you a far more honest answer than I'd ever fess up to.