Spanish Sunday Afternoons #7

Neighborhood vetting committee.
@ Caceres, Spain

Do We Want to be the Same?

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

It seems like the mighty New York Times can never quite get it right when writing about this country. Many paella-moons ago I remember a diplomatic meltdown that almost took place when a Times travel writer published an article that happened to make a passing comment about how more than a few Spanish parents dressed their children in clothes that wouldn’t look out of place in colourized World War II photographs. The then nascent social media was set ablaze with indignant Spaniards whose pride had been mortally wounded by a fleeting line in an article that then went on to praise the modernizing wave that was then sweeping across the peninsula. According to the protesters, Calatravas and Guggenheims were the New Spain and frilly dresses and short trousers no longer fit in on the modern Zara streets. Now comes another NYT article that, according to some, once again dares throw stones at glass houses. The piece, along with many others in papers around the world, echoes some of the findings of the parliamentary commission set up by Mr. Modernity’s government that is looking into the possibility of returning Spain to its pre-Franco time zone and attempt to increase productivity by bringing Spanish work habits, and more precisely hours, more in line with the rest of Europe. Op-Eds spilled ink about the revival of the black legend and one again the tweetsphere was set abuzz with furious attempts to prove the falsity of siestaing Spaniards in 140 characters or less. Praise from both sides of the political spectrum rained down on the modern Ibero-European workers who, like their Nordic counterparts, are chained to their desks with soggy sandwiches and Starbucks coffee for sustenance. 7 minute lunch breaks and competition among our electric companies are now the norm. Conclusive proof that Europe indeed continues beyond the Pyrenees for some, harbingers of the coming apocalypse for others. Once upon a time in this country, yet not so long ago, you were allowed to make an adult choice between syrupy American sweetness or a cold beer from vending machines on sweaty August cercanias platforms. People once trusted their neighbour’s craft rather than being handed down the definition of safe cheeses and wines by some tax collecting EU bureaucrat. Butane bottles cost less than a trip to Ibiza and we could boast of a truly public healthcare system second to none, not to mention of course, the audacity of a month’s vacation. Accountants weren’t needed to tally everyone’s consumption after those old-fashioned long lunches and people tended to bond with other people rather than dogs. Hurray for sameness, ‘regular’ schedules and someone telling me when to go to bed. Well, at least here in Caceres we still have the kids in uncomfortable shoes and doilies, and of course, the odd siesta in July.

Hash Assassins in Alamut, Iran

The Crusaders might have had a more difficult time getting here and the bus is surely faster than Freya Starke's donkey, but the windy trip into the ancient realm of the mythical Hashshashin is still a modern day adventure. Deep in the Alborz mountains an 11th-century sect hounded the invading Crusaders with fierce warriors stoned out of their minds on hash who descended out of impregnable mountaintop fortresses. Their ferocity gave birth to the word ""assassin"and this valley was their home. Today's residents however are far more welcoming (and sober!) though the inaccessibility of the now ruined fortresses still holds true for all but the most intrepid hiker but the stunning views make the effort worthwhile.

#adventure #hiking #history #mountains #camping #views #getaway #castles #fortress #adventuretravel #remote #11thcentury #warriors #crusade #crusades #fortresses #freyastarke #assassin

Originally published in Trazzler

Saint Who?

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

I’ve come to know a fair number of saints, both dead and alive, since I moved out here to one of the last stops before you start hearing Portuguese and yet I’m always surprised when there is yet one more to discover and then puzzle at its English translation (try both major and minor St. Jameses on for size).

In fact, these holy men and women have become such a part of my day to day life that I now feel totally comfortable being on a first name basis with them. Just the other day I strolled through Santa Maria on my way to meet someone in San Juan, who lives down in San Blas, in order to talk about what we were going to do on our day off, which was of course thanks to Santo Tomas de Aquino. I never forget my youngest daughter’s birthday because it happened on San Jorge and when I cross San Francisco, he no longer takes offence that I had once thought of him only as an earthquake prone city on the west coast of the United States.

The worship of all of these do-gooders or in some cases done-bad-toers seems to make more sense to me than fawning on the venerable virgins that grace every village, mountain, stream and town from here to the Pyrenees. Monotheism and the first commandment aside, the image of a dapper sword-swinging saint chopping the heads off of your wrong-religion enemies surely lends itself to a fiesta more readily than that of a doe-eyed 13-year-old girl dressed in billowy whites, but that could be a question of taste.

It’s not the first time, however, that I’ve managed to adapt to local mores. While living in South East Asia I became quite familiar with the Bodhisattvas that kept the drinking jars safe all the while keeping snakes at bay. I’ve even managed to chalk up a few celestial points on visits to several different Marabouts all the way from Rabat to Hadhramaut, of course when the fundamentalists were looking the other way.

Who am I to refuse a little extra protection? After all, there are more poisonous snakes in Laos than there are political parties and the nearest hospital was across the Mekong in Thailand. Whether it was the patron saint of this fine city or that particularly hard working midwife working in the San Pedro de Alacantara hospital who helped safely deliver my daughter is for the Minister of the Interior, Fernandez Diaz to uncover. He isn’t shy to let on that his sources inform him exactly which supernatural power is interceding in the lowly day to day affairs on this peninsula.

I might not know whether or not the aforementioned patron is a double agent working for Catalan separatism or if Santiago has anything to do with Real Madrid winning the Champions League but I do know now that it isn’t only the capital of Chile and can now put names to a lot of anguished faces on the walls of the Prado. The strangest thing of all, given that I have all these saints around me, is that I will probably have to read the English press in order to be reminded whose day it is today.

OK, the farmers are happy...

Rather than doing a 'please stop raining' dance, I've decided to look at old pictures and try to remember what summer once looked like.

Where better to start than the Greek Isles?

About a day's sail out of Rhodes or maybe more, days melted into each other like ouzo, ice and water. Turkey was always somewhere on the horizon and the sky as clear and blue as the empty sea below it. Morning coffee came after tumbling into the already warm water. Sunburnt bald islands like scrubby blots above the waves until the colors of the towns came into view and called us into port.

Name that village?

Swedish Archaeology Finds in Extremadura

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

Bright ideas for bright places

One of the things that foreign friends visiting Spain for the first time never fail to comment on is their surprise at how late Spanish kids stay out playing in the parks during the summer. I usually keep quiet and wait until the next day and let them discover for themselves one of the main reasons for these midnight’s children. 

After exploring the often deserted old town and surrounding area, we usually venture out into the haphazard new town in search of life. It’s out here in the neighbourhoods of the city that my visitors stumble across their first epiphany. There under the fierce midday sun lies the tired, bleached Swedish plastic that kept the children occupied last night while their parents sat drinking sweaty cañas at tables at a nearby terrace in search of that rare cooling summer breeze. The only shade to be seen is thrown by the swings hanging like the stripped bones of a dead camel sticking out of a cement sand dune. Useless to anyone for long stretches of the day, unless of course you’re looking to avoid the constant electricity hikes and wanted to fry some eggs on the glistening slide. 

Though it may not feel like it now, we all know that winter passes quickly in this part of the world and when the heat finally comes, it comes to stay. The recently announced upgrade of the Parque de la Concepcion has given me hope that we will no longer have to venture so far out of the old centre of the city in search of the sounds of children’s laughter. 

If the town hall's intention is to draw people towards the centre, I’ve always wondered why parks like the one in San Juan are solely meant for less than civic dog owners. La Conce, as it's called, needed a change and it can provide strolling families a shady alternative to the sloping sun-baked Plaza Mayor and it’s attached litter box. Now it remains to be seen if some actual thought has gone into the planning or if it is going to be just another archaeological find withering under the summer sun.

Hiking in the Sierra Grande de Hornachos

You've really gone off the beaten path when the GPS in your rental car shows you are literally off the map. You're out here castle hopping your way north from Andalusia just as the Moors did a thousand years ago. A beautiful mountain range rises out of a carpet of vineyards. Set in the Sierra Grande de Hornachos, this ideal spot has attracted humans since cave painting was the "in" thing. You'll catch sight of  an eagle in this protected area as your hike through the lavender-scented trails leads you up to a beautifully ruined Arab castle, reminding you to not always listen to your GPS.

#hiking #history #wine #birding #mountains #vineyards #castle #muslim #castles #offthebeatenpath #offthegrid #moors #birdwatching #freelance #moorisharchitecture #sierra #alandalus #muslimspain

WOMAD, Caceres

Arabic ouds, Senegalese drums, and Mongolian fiddles bounce off 10th-century walls and reverberate onto 15th-century churches but have no fear, this is no military invasion. Spanish grannies rub shoulders and trade dance steps to the bouncing beat with dreadlocked Dutchmen, while pierced locals teach newfound Polish friends that it's not a sin to mix wine and coke. This is WOMAD, a festival that's been pulsing within the old city walls for nearly 20 years. Every second weekend in May, four days of free concerts by musicians from all over the globe are set in a fairy -tale setting, where the only rules are tolerance and, of course, pick up after yourself on your way home (though that last one often gets forgotten in the fun).

#music #architecture #festival #party #concerts #dance #historic #dancing #getaway #musicfestival #livemusic #unescoworldheritagesite #drumming #unesco #free #diverse #old #diversity #oldcity #global #15thcentury #worldmusic #10thcentury # #fest #womad #worldofmusic #artsanddance

Originally published in Trazzler

New Year's Revolutions

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

It’s hard to tell which Americanisms will get adopted in foreign lands and I suppose it’s even more difficult to predict just how these foreign trends will morph as they become fixed in the host culture. Unfortunately, these days it seems that my old neighbor to the south is exporting less Thomas Jefferson and more baggy pants and Miley Cirus. Even things that don’t necessarily originate in the good 'ol US of A often get rebranded in Hollywood and are exported via the latest blockbuster. A perfect example is Santa. The popular myth that Coca Cola turned the monk from Turkey red still holds fast with many but the influence the Americans have had on the figure the Dutch call Sinterklaas can’t be denied. Spanish cabalgatas de reyes (xmas parades) are far from being under threat but the fat man’s presence here in Spain grows every year. I’m always amazed at how easily Santa and the semi-autochthonous Reyes Magos coexist together in the minds of the great majority of Spanish children, but I suppose when you are getting presents from two sources, why ask questions? One holiday tradition that is particularly popular in the Anglo-Saxon world and that hasn’t really taken root here in Spain is the insistence on making New Year’s resolutions every year and then shouting them out to everyone who will listen. I guess I have seen some of the Spanish press taking AP lines and adapting them to the local market but they never really venture deeper than quitting smoking and improving your English. Reflection, while seemingly unpopular amongst the political class here, isn’t a bad thing and at times it can help when trying gain a clearer perspective on things to come...when bread and circuses no longer cut it. A new year lay ahead of us after more than half a decade of very hard times. There’s talk of brotes verdes (green shoots) but on the streets where I live and work, I only see the rain that continues to fall in Extremdura. It’s time to ask questions, and not about the provenance of Balthazar and crew nor whether Saint Nicolas is a CIA plot. Tough questions that uncover answers to why we’ve fallen so far need to be asked and a little more investigation into the who. Here’s to hoping the new year brings to Spain a little more Greenwald and Woodward and a little less American Idol.

Stale Bread Before its Time

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

My father-in-law, a wise and decent man from a small village in the northwestern corner of Extremadura called San Martin de Trevejo, tells a tale from years ago, climbing the mountains that surround his village. 

It was early in the morning and they walked into a bar to pick up some bread to go with the homemade chorizo they were carrying with them. The barmaid was happy to serve them coffee but told them that there was no bread because it was still in bed. This seemed a bit odd but his brother-in-law, who was never short of words quickly retorted, ‘well tell it to get up’! 

This was obviously years ago when life was perhaps simpler and people, and the bread they ate, got more rest. Here in Extremadura, you invariably sit down to wonderful foods dripping in divine sauces that beg to be swept clean from your plate but when you look around for the appropriate tool for the job, you almost always find the most uninspiring companion. Festering in the basket next to you, you find a supposedly wheat-based product boasting the visual appeal of a bleached sock that dusts your palate like a spoonful of dry bread crumbs. 

Dress them up as Italian chapatas, sprinkle them with a bit of flour and call them 'rusticos', or even claim they have been fired with loving care in a wood stove in a quaint nearby village, but the end result is always the same, the gastronomic equivalent of elevator music. 

A recent tour through France reminded me of what bread can be. The Gaul’s have started a movement to reintroduce ‘real’ bread, golden, crusty loaves that retain their aroma when cool and whose crusts beg to be enjoyed rather than amputated and thrown to the dogs. Lovely yet, irregularly shaped pieces of art that, when opened, reveal uneven cavities made to order to clean your dish. And in true French style, this tradition has even been enshrined by law. 

But there’s no need even to travel so far, in neighboring Portugal, which lies about 100kms away, they have a popular refrain, 'Only in Hell is soup served without bread' and by bread they mean something that accompanies the dish rather than the disguised cracker sold as pan de pueblo all over this region. In a city that takes its rest seriously, regulating noise limits during the summer siesta hours, even today, perhaps it’s time to not only stop musicians from keeping up the neighbours but also insist that our daily bread gets some rest too. 

Spanish Time Zones

Writing in the local paper. Local issues with a global take. I never translate literally and the editor trims at will to make it fit. Here's my version, then theirs.

One of my first memories of Spain is how time felt completely different here than it did anywhere else I had ever been. During my first few visits I remember feeling like I was always an hour or two ahead and it couldn’t have been the jetlag because most of the times we had just come from France or Belgium. True, this was almost twenty years ago while I was touring with a band from New York City called Little Mike and the Tornadoes. I can remember being thrown off by the late dinners and starting concerts around midnight whereas we would normally start around nine or ten in the United States and would have probably eaten two hours before stepping on stage. I recall getting a few hours sleep and getting up early to explore the streets and wondering where everyone was at nine and then being confused when they disappeared again at two. That was a long time ago and now my stomach doesn’t start to rumble til two and my wife complains that I eat dinner later than most Spaniards on holidays do. It now no longer seems strange to me to say buenos dias at 1pm and buenas tardes at 9pm and I definitely think twice before calling someone at 4pm (siesta?) but there are still times when I feel an hour or two off. That is until this recent time change. The other day when the clock fell back, it seemed to slide into place. True, my two and a half year old daughter hasn’t recognized the change and is now getting up at seven rather than eight but when we step outside, the light seems just right for going to school on a brisk autumn morning. One thing I am sure of, tomorrow night, two decades later, I’ll step back on stage at 11.30 here in Caceres with my old New York friend and I’m sure it will feel like time hasn’t gone by at all.