Been a while, but here’s another fantastico Notes from Spain podcast! It’s hot at last, we’re all loosing the seasonal depression that no-one knew you could get in Spain, I’m getting in trouble over how to eat salad, whilst coping with the biggest culture shock I’ve had in years: how to map my childhood experience onto the Spanish education system so I can make intelligent decisions about the future of my own offspring….
Photo: Not Greece (A great bar in great Malaga – Antigua Casa de Guardia, at Alameda Principal 18)
Spain:
‘Spain is not Greece’, ‘Spain is not Greece’ – it’s been all over every newspaper, national and international, for so long now, that everyone starts scratching their heads and thinking… Oh, maybe Spain is like Greece?! I suppose it’s a deliberate conspiracy to undermine the Spanish economy… Perhaps if we had months of headlines decrying “Spain is not Mars!”, or “Spain is not Las Vegas!”, then we’d all be wondering whether in fact Spain was a nice warm red planet, or a good place to throw away your life savings at roulette.
In any case, according to the BBC, Spain is “to unveil deep budget cuts amid EU economic fears” – just to make sure that Spain is not Greece, Spain is not Greece, etc…. (I wonder what the timeframe between ‘unveiling’ and ‘doing’ is…)
Not Totally Spain:
And now, for some good news… A few recommendations of things I’ve found interesting recently that have nothing or a just tiny bit to do with Spain…
1. A History of the World in 100 Objects is one of the most interesting podcasts I’ve ever listened to.
Each short episode is based around an ancient object from the British Museum (a 5,000 year old writing tablet from Iraq, a 10,000 year old sculpture of 2 lovers from the time when man invented farming…), and is filled with fascinating information about the world at the time the object was created.
2. I’ve been watching Simon Schama’s The Power Of Art – also totally fascinating, and especially interesting to Spain lovers is the episode on Picasso’s Guernica, his epic response to the bombing of the small Basque town by German military planes at Franco’s behest in the civil war. Really worth watching, and the other episodes are more than worth the price of the DVD too.
3. I’ve started reading The Grapes Of Wrath and, only 40 pages in, think it’s some of the best literature I’ve ever come across. I’m in no hurry to get to the end, every page shakes with the power of Steinbeck’s horror at the fate of man, every line is poetry!
And finally…
Feel free to start any comments by completing the following newspaper headline:
“Spain is not _________________”
You know you are getting more Spanish when the first heat of summer arrive with a bang, and you immediately start using ‘low blood pressure’ as an excuse to lie on the sofa all evening, avoiding the housework.
The key phrase to use here is ‘he tenido una bajada de tensión’, or for even more dramatic effect, una super-bajada de tensión, ‘bajadas de tensión’ (blood pressure collapse) being common amongst just about everyone in Spain when it’s hot, including it now appears, me as well!
Bajadas de tensión can be cured by various means, including: a) Rapid ingestion of Coca Cola/Sugary food, b) Doing nothing when there is lots to be done c) Telling everyone about your bajada, repeatedly d) all of the above. I’m getting good at this, and there have only been three days of heat so far!
On another note, as soon as the sun came out a few days ago, the Retiro park filled with people with bajadas de tensión stripped down to their underwear. Strapping young men in nothing but tattoos and tight boxers, women in bras and tangas (g-strings) – does this happen in your part of the world?
I’m sure it’s a more pronounced phenomenon than this time last year – am I just getting old?!
Apologies for the lack of illustrative photos to accompany this point – just think ‘slightly grungy lingerie ad with trees’, and you get the picture! Instead, here’s a favourite old photo of mine from 1998, of a man in the park selling chistes (jokes):
Anyway, that’s enough for today, I feel another super-bajada de tensión coming on, and I may barely make it back to the sofa…
Hola, anyone still here? I’ve been away for a while, working, learning, travelling… Here are my latest Notes from Spain…
1. Only in Spain do the lesser mountain chains look as good as this….
That’s a corner of the Gredos mountains. We spent a weekend recently in Avila, from where we made the hour journey up to the Gredos range, starting with a coffee in the Parador de Gredos, and taking the lovely circular walk through the pine forest below. At reception they’ll give you details of picnic spots up the road by sparkling streams, and directions up to the snow-bound Plataforma de Gredos where walkers head up to tackle the nearby peaks. You’ll need a car.
2. Only in Spain can you go on retreat in tiny valleys lost deep at the end of dirt tracks in magical pine-covered national parks, as far off the grid as you can get…
Only in Spain do you discover that when you walk up the hill behind the house, you get hell of a surprise when you finally get to look over the ridge at the top: a hundred-mile view you never imagined could be there, of a million olive trees rolling across the plains of Jaen below…
This was, ‘El Camino Natural’, a very special place If you are a yoga-meditation-retreat kind of a person.
3. Only in Spain, as we discovered to our wide-eyed horror, might the owner of a very rural guest house investigate the smell of gas (i.e. possible gas leak!) in your room by running a lit match along the rubber pipe connecting the gas ‘butano’ bottle to the boiler on the wall…
4. Only in Spain do you find stacks of crisps piled up against shop windows…
Last week we were in Asturias, staying in Gijon. It’s a small city, industry (pretty heavy), on one side of a river, a lovely old town and beach on the other:
Even in early March, the grannies are on the beach in the morning, getting undressed and stuffing their clothes into giant plastic bags while they prepare to brave the waves for their daily swim.
Postcard views from the old town:
And what food! The menu del dia’s in Gijon comprise FOUR courses, not three, and would often include a fish that you might pay 20 euros for in Madrid alone – in Gijon the whole 4-course meal cost around 9.50 Euros.
One more photo of Gijon, The wonderous Gran Cafe Dindurra. A haven for old floor-tile fetishists (like me!):
And a final one from down the road in Ribadesella:
Forget online communities for a moment, do you have a real, live one on your doorstep?
In Spain the collection of neighbours in a flat block is called a ‘comunidad’? But I wander what that means?
In our case it means saying hello to everyone, chatting to the occasional neighbour, feeling safe about the other people in the building. But there isn’t much ‘popping round for tea’, or ‘could you look after the kids for a minute while I nip out for (fill in the emergency)’.
Part of that is our fault. If our lovely English neighbour at the end of the corridor is reading this, then a million apologies for not having you all round for that cake yet – we will soon, as soon as a weekend looks like a weekend!
But I suspect that in big cities people don’t just pop in and out of each other’s houses any more for a cup of tea, or look after each others’ kids at the drop of a hat – like they did in the old days, didn’t they?
Do you live in that kind of real, close-knit, sociable community? Does it exist any more? Can it exist in big cities? We’d love to live it better, but wonder if that world still exists these days, or if people just don’t have time any more…
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you live in Spain, Ireland, Australia, or Timbuktu!
I love this comment from JoyceM (worth reading the whole thing) in last week’s Accustomed vs Resigned thread:
If they are going to enjoy 3 hour lunches, I am going to enjoy 3 hour lunches. If they are going to invite me out for a two hour coffee, I am going to go and enjoy the amazing flavors, the conversation and getting to know my new friends. By the way, I LOVE the fact that I never feel rushed in a restaurant. Contrast that with NYC and the pressure to “turn” the tables and as a customer, you will pick the Spanish way every time. Also, here you are able to get away with leaving “cheap” tips (the norm). Try that in NYC and see what kind of service you get.
I also love not being turned off a table once the meal is finished, even an hour after the meal has finsihed! Though I have to confess that it still makes the Brit in me nervous deep inside (“I’ve finished, I better go, they might want the table for someone else!”)
Meanwhile, some cool Spain links worth checking out:
– Anton’s blog about life in Catalonia – check out the post on Calçotada – Yum yum!
– Check out the lovely old photos of Madrid’s Gran Via in this post at A View Of Madrid, where Richard is fast becoming Madrid’s most eminent ex-pat historian!
– There’s a dark discussion going on in the forum about Spain’s worsening economic situation… including interesting links, such as “Spain’s intelligence services are investigating the role of British and American media in fomenting financial turmoil“
Many thanks to Raquel for passing on this classic read in the Times: “British tourists avoid Spain because it’s ‘no longer foreign enough’”
…which says a lot more about the Brits (who aren’t aware of strange out-of-the-way places like, say Madrid) than Spain, obviously.
I love this line about a recent survey on British holiday choices:
The survey showed that the US was the most popular destination measured by the growth of bookings, with some British tourists attracted by the prospect of “meeting a celebrity”.
[Head falls into hands in desperation…]
Conversation I had with a smart Argentinian guy in a suit outside a bookshop yesterday. Time Bookshop was meant to open, 5pm. Bookshop still shut at 5.10pm:
Argentinian guy: That’s why this country is in such a mess.
Me: It drives you a bit mad. The other day I went to the bank, it was meant to open at 9.30, didn’t open til 9.45! A bank!
Argentinian: See what I mean?
Me: In the end you get accustomed to it.
Argentian: No, In the end you resign yourself to it…
I wanted to tell him to lighten up. There is a big difference between getting accustomed to something, and resigning yourself to it, and I think I prefer the former.
In fact I think I’ll redo my Expat manifesto, to add the following:
7. When living somewhere you don’t originally come from, don’t resign yourself to the differences, just smile and get accustomed to them.
[Note: Please don’t use this post as an excuse to leave negative comments about Spain – they will be deleted! I’ve had enough trouble with that in the past!]
…when as you are going to bed exhausted at 10.30 pm on a Saturday night, you glance out of the window and see that guests are just arriving at the party in the student flat opposite…
… when you get up to coax baby back to sleep at 5.30 am, and the last of the guests at the party opposite are just leaving…
…when you finally start your day at 7am and the hosts in the flat opposite are just going to bed!
Then again, when I lived in London we used to extinguish our house parties at 7 am too, the only difference being that ours started 2 hours earlier at 8.30 pm, proving perhaps, that the Brits party harder than the Spanish 😉
Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis 