Face to Face in Spain

 Face to Face in Spain

You think seasons change slowly, from day to day though sometimes the change feels dramatic. A storm system rolled through bringing rain and colder temperature. Voilà it is fall.

in this way, I just roll along in my day to day life. Most things seem the same. With my focus on what I am reading, thinking, and writing, I miss much else until something breaks into my consciousness, such as this morning. I sat down in a cafe to have my breakfast of yogurt and granola with fruit when a pigeon suddenly flew up almost vertically in front of me. 

On the TV, replays of the encounter in congress between Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s presiden, and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo the head of the main opposition Partido Popular was playing.  After months of seeing this image weekly when I sit down … I mean,  this is news in Spain. Like a bullfight, the politicians wave capes at each other while hiding their swords. The only thing missing is a ground pawing, snorting ton of racing flesh, the bull.  I guess to each other, their opponent is that stinky and frightful beast with spear-sharp points on their horns. 

The debate per se is not what grabbed me. Like Spaniards, I am used to politicians throwing bull pies, at each other. Some of circular messes are fresher than others and splat, while others are hard and strike with a crunch.  One or the other, they stink and may hurt.

If we need to gather these redolent masses of bovine waste, I would rather it be as fuel for a stove to heat up some soup or a rich stew. We could all stand and sit together to share a fresh meal from a rustic stove, the kind that has fed humans for millennia.

The debate qua debate has not broken into my normal reverie of thought. Instead, it was three things. 

First, the country’s president and his main opponent or even the leaders of both main opposition parties, the two mentioned plus the ultra-right Santiago Abascal, stand at their seats in congress, in the hemicircle of wooden desks and chairs, as if the same as every other member of Spain’s lower chamber of congress, that of the deputies,

I cannot image a US president appearing in congress without first hearing the blaring sounds of Hail to the Chief played by a Marine band while everyone else stands to receive him. My county’s president needs a sound track as if in a hollywood movie and needs to have people show obeisance. 

In Spain, I have seen the president enter at the same time as other delegates, just one of the group of the country’s law makers and managers. This flattening of distance, literally because the US hierarch stands or sits on the dais raised above the members of congress arrayed before him—to date it has only been a him, stuns me. 

We Americans are supposed to be equals, though people love to reduce that to being equals in opportunity rather than in substance, while Mr Trump, the current claimant of the US presidency, wants to reduce it further and remove equality in his attacks on Diversity, Inclusion, and, Equality, the policy and training program that was found in many institutions throughout the country before a tide of orange tan sprayed it away. 

To vastly simplify, in the ritual and drama of our encounters between our president and congress, we emphasize hierarchy, exclusion, and difference, HED. This is an increasing norm in our supposedly class-free society. 

Second, Spain’s president gets sharp questions and slams to his face from his opponent, who stand for all the members of the opposition. You can imagine, Alberto Nuñez Feijóo standing up to the towering lodge pole that is Pedro Sanchez. 

Feijóo follows a custom I do not understand of some Spaniards using their maternal last name, rather than their paternal one, since his first surname is Nuñez. 

In any case Feijóo is reported to stand a respectable 1.79 m which translates to 5.79 inches. Nothing to sneeze at.  

In contrast, Sanchez is 1.9 meters, or 6’ 2”. You only really see the difference on TV when they stand close to each other. In congress they sit on opposite sides of the horseshoe- shaped forum and so seem much more equal, though the one is the president and the one is merely a deputy and the leader of the opposition party that came very close to winning the last Presidential elections. 

The head of government, Spain’s king, for the record, stands taller than Sanchez at 1.97 meters, or 6’ 5.52”. He is recorded as the tallest living king on earth.  I have to say I am surprised by how many very tall Spaniards I see on the streets around me. I often feel like I am in Amsterdam that way. 

Height aside, Feijóo has a strong intellect and experience. His team also spends hours tooling lines and data that can draw blood. His darts, spears, and sword are very sharp. He is very much a worthy contender. But then so is Sanchez sometimes, his are sharper and, they are often snappier. 

That the two submit to this public striking and bleeding is hard to imagine for someone schooled in American political life.  But in this ritual warfare, the public issues of the day are vetted and discussed, educating and providing talking points to the public.  

Third, these debates, and they are debates—not the schooled-for TV forums the US holds only during elections to show off the made-up, and well prepared candidates to the public in something that pretends to be a World Wrestling theatrical competition—take place regularly in what are called Control Sessions as part of congressional responsibility of oversight. 

In the US we hold committee meetings behind closed doors and call that oversight—well they do demand documents and so on, before hand, but the image is of a beleaguered member of government dominates. It is never the President sitting in front of a panel of inquisitors and always on the edge of burning with the hot chile that gets shoved down his pants.

As a symbol of democracy, the President of Spain appearing as an equal before the lower house is powerful. That it is frequent makes it even more stronger. 

In the land of thistles and olives, congress can also have the President of the country appear to answer on particular issues before the country and on the legislative agenda.  Today, for example, Sanchez will appear, comparecer to use the special verb in Spanish which rearranges power. Sanchez must respond to authority that is not him. He is the object and not the subject today. Just a day ago he and Feijóo did their thing in congress. In the US our President thinks he is always the subject and all of us the objects of his being. 

Can you imagine how this would rearrange power in Washington. His mighty orangeness would definitely fill his diaper were he subjected to such. 

We talk about co-equal branches of power, but that is a formality. The presidency has been seizing more and more power to itself. 

I shall not stay here before the TV. Instead I shall go look for leaves to kick through—oops, I forgot; I shall be lucky to find even one leaf. I guess I shall have to find pumpkins to carve. Nope, they are not here either. 

Well, I guess I shall just go hunting for things that like pigeons fly up before me. 

Rustlings

Dark has fallen like a velvet cape, heavy and black. Already blood and gore walk the streets.  

Not the hospital stuff, nor the politicians, people of all ages in costumes. Maybe a third of people promenading on the pedestrian street, or pushing on the sidewalks to get home from work or the store, are costumed. But the spirit of Halloween is here. 

I was surprised while reading about Spanish celebrations to note that the Celtic north east celebrates Samhain, the Celtic Holiday that became Halloween in the US. They always have. Besides their own customs, they are borrowing now from the transnational Halloween phenomenon.

Tomorrow is Todos Santos, All Saints Day and a national holiday. When I asked, earlier this evening, a server and graduate student with abundant dark, curly hair if he planned to celebrate tomorrow with his family. 

“Of course. Todos Santos is very important in Spain.”

There you have it. The day Protestants lost due to the Reformation, while retaining Halloween—the night before,  was reinforced here and has not gone away. If anything, it is reported to be gaining strength even against the media power of Halloween.

From what I have read, since I am a foreign guest in the country and not yet part of such intimate networks as family to be part of that celebration, families will go to the cemetery, clean and decorate graves. They will share stories of their dead, and will take dishes of symbolically important food to share with the departed. 

I was told there are tours tourists can take to the main cemetery tomorrow to see people’s  ritual work on their graves and their gathering together. 

Following Spain’s Celtic customs in Samhain, people here in Alicante, they say, will roast and eat chestnuts as well as sweet potatoes called boniato. They will also share sweet wine, from what I have read.

Towards evening, as people dress to walk in the streets, see and be seen, food trucks will appear, If I remember right from last year. Chestnuts will scent the air with their roasting. People will also look for Saints’ Bones which are made from marzipan and sugar syrup.

Many if not most Alicantinos will attend mass, even if they are not religious per se. 

Almost everything will be closed tomorrow, as the country turns inward to its personal and family life. 

Still, given the importance of flowers and food to this feast, the flower markets and the food markets will be open tomorrow morning until about 2 pm, about lunch time when people should be home. Then in the evening the time for promenading, turning outward again, street vendors will work their trade. 

Tonight, halloween, there will be festivities, noise and fierce darkness that the city’s lights will attempt to pierce. 

Maybe, though I doubt it, I will hear a “trick or treat.” That custom seems not to have been transplanted outside of the American expat community, 

Stranger in Someone Else’s Home

 

Moving to a new place, whether in your own country or to a different country, usually bring joys, tensions, and downright shocks.  You navigate a way among them and create yourself afresh, although seldom from whole cloth.

As you know, I live now in Spain, on its White Coast, and have for a year and a third. I also just signed up for an additional two years with approval from the Spanish government.

I speak Spanish and have since my parents introduced me into a Spanish American town in New Mexico. Yes, we spoke English. mostly—I mean, I came from coastal South Georgia and in my English had that coast’s lilt. If you say my first name in English with two syllables and a glide between them, you have won some love from me. 

My Dad did speak Spanish from having lived in Argentina for three years as a Mormon missionary, though his grammar was far from the best and his accent always hurt my ear. But he had an amazing vocabulary, because he was always reading books in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.  

The latter because he had removed my first generation American mother from Utah and moved her to different worlds: first to Nashville and the different culture of Tennessee and then to São Paulo, Brazil where they both learned Paulista Portuguese. 

My Childhood was in Spanish speaking New Mexico and then on the edge of Chihuahua. 

I have lived in Bolivia, Peru, and Argentina as well as spent time in Mexico, Colombia, and, to a much lesser extent, in Chile. Mostly, I just lived in the old U.S. of A. in various English and Spanish speaking niches, 

Now I’m in Spain, in a dialect region whose sounds seemed to escape my ear. Although I could speak, I often did not understand what was said back and people often paused when I spoke to them, seeming not to understand me either. The sociolinguistics of this are complex—though I shall not go there; nonetheless, the experience set me back.  

I still threw myself into the society, although as I looked around for groups to participate in, I first found expat groups in English. When I applied for my NLV (retirement) visa initially, I was told: “you will love Alicante because the ex-pat community is so strong”. I took pause because I had never participated in the community of Americans or Europeans abroad. Now I do. 

Things have changed, not just for me, but for Spain. It is part of the European community meaning that even within it, English is the common lingua franca. Normally, I avoid English and speak Spanish, but I have become part of that group of anglophone expats and have met many Spaniards from here and elsewhere through it who speak English and wish to do so fluently. I have also met many Europeans, French, Germans, Italians, Romanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, Poles, Russians, Czechs, and especially Ukrainians who use English. At the same time I have made friends with people from this city and province as well as the country through Spanish, even in the Anglo-phone groups. 

People often try to guess my accent in Spanish—in English, it is obvious, Anglo American.  A couple of days ago, a clerk in the Mercadona Supermarket, told me about my speech. He is a slightly rotund man with an engaging personality and a scruff-beard. He said, “you sound Mexican but you are not Mexican”. 

Elsewhere, people pick up the massive influence of South America in my voice and grammar, but here in Spain they seem to clearly get my origins from when I open my mouth. 

Though I spend time with expats and have friends, most of the time I speak Spanish here, though I do read and write too much in English. Sometimes it feels schizophrenic. But that is my new reality. I’m an English-educated bilingual, retired, adjunct professor. I just have to deal with it.

The American expat places on social media are filled with people complaining about things like the siesta, the lack of American products, a different style of life and different floor plan of homes, etc.  

While I want to snicker at their complaints, I remember when I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, I was troubled legitimately by such things. I could not find decent tortillas anywhere, nor could I find chile peppers.  The day I discovered in South St. Louis a Puerto Rican store that carried Mexican products I quickly transitioned to heaven. After that, every week I made a visit there. 

May other things in the Midwest would surprise me and not infrequently bite a chuck out of my posterior.  

Nor do I feel here the nostalgia that seems to inflict immigrants, including ex-pats who I insist are immigrants though generally the two categories are separated. 

Nostalgia can be an important, a cultural form. In Argentina it is the stuff of Tango and in Brazil it even has its own word, saudades—though it is not quite the same as the English nostalgia. Saudades just floats off the tongue even if it often comes with a feeling of loss and pain, as well as joy for having memory and having had the reality it speaks to.

What I have found myself missing, now in my second year, is fall colors. 

Not halloween, pumpkins, costumes, and phony webs everywhere, but trees in gold and red. I also miss the sidewalks covered with leaves. It is so fun to slide your feet through them. 

That takes me back to childhood in New Mexico.  (I suspect in coastal South Georgia we did not have much fall color either.)  

Nor do I go to the grocery store anymore and get frustrated with what I cannot find to make my food. That was the first few weeks, until I pulled myself up by the ears and turned myself around to look positively at what they have and to cook with that.  

Ok, Ok, I still miss the ease of finding Mexican products. It has been almos 400 days since last I had cotija cheese, for example. I have learned to find some stuff, work with what I have, make things I want—such as flour tortillas, for example.  I should write an ode to chorizo con papas, o chorizo with eggs.  I hare figured out how to make a reasonable version with Spanish products. did find some decent though dry, corn tortillas that have started appearing in the upscale El Corte Inglés near my home, or in a little Mexican store a little further away where I can find chile peppers now. 

I have pretty much given up on finding Mexican food I will like in restaurants here or even less in the streets, though the taquería in the central market is not bad. 

There just is not a very large Mexican population here. Sigh. 

Still I have become a sailor, well attuned to local currents and winds, while still piloting a vessel formed by almost seventy years elsewhere. 

What is the result, god only knows, because I do not. I am just enjoying the sailing.  

  

Storm and Spain on its National Day

The rain cut loose with drama. Lightning was striking close by and lakes of water fell, almost at once on the narrow street of tables. 

When I got here to enjoy my pain au chocolate (what they call here a napoleón de chocolate), fight off the pigeons, and write. I had wanted to sit outside, but all the tables were occupied. 

As a result I sat inside, in the darkish and narrow confines that included a row of maybe four or five tables and a counter-display case filled with luscious pastries. If you went further inside this narrow space you found the working bakery and maybe its owner / baker, a dry bread stick of an aging French man.

When it started to rain with the fervor of Evangelicals preaching on a street corner, drenching with sound and wet, suddenly the space overflowed with people. At first confused, I then realized these were the occupants of the tables outside. They carried their plates and cups of coffee and tried to figure out how to accommodate themselves into a much smaller space. 

A woman asked if she could take a chair from my table and, as a result, ice was broken. We talked briefly. I found out they were a group of visiting Rumanians, all women. Alicante has had relatively large numbers of Rumanians, though with rising prices in Spain without corresponding increases in income, the numbers have dropped. But these were visitors. 

One of them asked the server if there was grocery store open on this holiday morning. She had already been defending herself from customer demands in good Argentine sense—“Wait your turn. There is only me today and I cannot work any faster.” At that break i demands she lifted her thermos of hot water and refilled her gourd of yerba maté before taking a few pulls. 

While she drank, almost in unison, I and the similarly aged man sitting next to me in the dark corner, told them almost nothing was open because it was a major holiday.  

This led him and me to speak. Turns out, he is from Paris though his family is Andaluz and his new wife is from Alicante. We had a lovely conversation. At one point, he insisted Spain would be much better off it had cultural unity and just a single language.  I looked at him, with a slight smile and said “Oh I disagree”.  Well we were off, not arguing as you might expect, but dialoguing, two sides in a conversation. And we shall continue that conversation when next we see each other, and we shall, since both he and I live here and frequent that local French bakery. 

That passionate encounter took place on Thursday, the Day of Valencia which also celebrates its language, Valencian. Today is a bigger holiday and when I awoke, my patio was wet from substantial rain in the night .

Today is Spain’s National holiday, the Day of Spain, though there is conflict over its name. It has variously been called the Day of Columbus, the Day of HIspanidad (Hispanicity to coin an awkward term in English), and now the National Day. 

Spain is a lovely word with an ancient history that goes back at least to the Romans, though it probably predates them and may have origins in the Phoenecians who inhabited Much of Spain’s coastal areas (including Alicante). However, the word did not refer to what we today call Spain, but to the entire Peninsula though, in reality, the Romans who dominated the peninsula long enough to leave their language firmly entrenched—we speak a version of it today—made their word Hispania plural to refer to the peninsula. They called it effectively “The Spains”. 

Then Arab and Berber armies came from the same north Africa that had hosted large Phoenecian settlement of relevance to our peninsula, including the amazing city of Carthage. At that point the Roman unity broke and the peninsula became a set of Christian Kingdoms in the fringe of the north and an encyclopedia of Taifas, Moorish “kingdoms” with resultant instabilities. 

You can easily see the history of conflict written on the land in the vertiginous number of castles and watch towers throughout the land, many of them still in reasonably good shape.   

Once Castile and Aragon, the two most powerful Christian kingdoms, had joined forces in the symbolic and dynastic union of Ferdinand and Isabella and conquered the remaining Taifas, including the final one of Cordoba, there was a political union though, as the great historian Benedict Anderson noted, feudal states did not rely on a common language to unify them, but on political fealty which also included kinds of religious celebrations sponsored by kings and lords though the situation was far from one of a single religion, They did create widely shared bureaucratic and educational practices. 

Aragon and Castile had different though closely related languages. Numerous others were spoken in Hispania.

With the crown, now of Spain, taking over American lands and even a small part of Asia (the Philippines), Castilian as a formal written language now called Spanish (although not without argument) was born as an instrument of state. It pulled elites toward it, pushing their Iberian and indigenous tongues to become more and more like Castilian though there is still substantial diversity in the Hispanic world within what is glibly called the Spanish language and supported by the Royal Spanish Academy and the Cervantes Institute (meeting in Peru these days).  

The Romans were probably wise to make Hispania plural. Even today it is plural, although there are areas of unity if not undisputed and many efforts at creating unity.

On this Day of the Nation, one should not forget that about half of the twentieth century left it fractured as Franco and a Fascist wing including the Church performed a coup and drove out the clearly internationalist left that had won elections yet was fractured among itself. The conflict left a landscape saturated with blood and memories of horror.

Only now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century are intellectuals and people really grappling with that past and researching it.

On this day in 2025, nonetheless, Spain leads the European Union—of which it is a part giving it a wannabe nation state without full sovereignty. It tops the Community in terms of economic growth and, to a degree, even in political stability. 

Even if it does not have linguistic or cultural unity,  Spain is worth celebrating for its amazing, if troubled, history and its current, if troubled, success.