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:: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 ::

Sketches of Spain

Here are some thoughts (and sweeping generalisations on a culture) from my experiences as a tourist in Madrid.

Language

Although Spanish is apparently one of the easiest to learn languages I am not naturally gifted in such areas. I've picked up a few simple phrases and can decode a menu reasonably well. This was helped by a passing familiarity with Portuguese (with which it shares 89% of its vocabulary) from a couple of visits over a decade ago and also quite a few similarities to French, what with them both being Romance languages (ie Latin based. Not that I have any Latin. I never had the Latin for the judging.)

Aside from this my working knowledge of Spanish was pretty much limited to what I learnt from Sesame Street, but being able to say 'Hello' and 'My toaster is broken, can you fix it?' isn't entirely practical in everyday conversation.

Aside from the people I met at the gig, who all seemed to speak perfect English (one of them was a translator), we met some Spaniards with enough understanding of English to enable us to stumble through a conversation in a mixture of the two languages, and others who confessed no understanding at all in which case the phase book and the international language of mime served us well.

Architecture



Before I left someone in the office offered this profound incite on Madrid. "Aw, the architecture man, the architecture is amazing. And the women. But the architecture... it's amazing." I didn't see much inspiring architecture in the first few days. Being in a hotel on the eastern outskirts of the city I saw mostly drab concrete and shopping areas. Even the tour bus of the city doesn't really show anything particularly interesting (with a few Art Deco exceptions), especially if you're stuck downstairs. But come the second half of the week when we moved to a hotel in Sol, "the heart of the city", that all changed. Its the same area the tour bus circled but you have to be down among the side streets and wondering in and out of the plazas to really get a feel for it. There is little if anything left of any medieval origins (as with most cities). What it has in abundance is buildings of the 18th century, what in England would be called Georgian architecture. Some of this is rebuilt following a fire. It's still pretty impressive though.





Women

Not that I want to objectify women or judge all of the women from one city based on a few examples, but they didn't appear to be as awesome as I was led to believe by the statement quoted above. Is there really anywhere where people are genuinely more attractive than anywhere else? Surely it can only come down to style and personal preference. However, what I can say is that women in Madrid appear to start well then go downhill badly. Mrs P, my ex-beauty therapist travelling companion agreed, and put this down to too much sun and smoking. Obviously there are exceptions, but if you want over generalisations I hope that satisfies.

Smoking

See above. Everyone. Everywhere. Spain will be one of the last countries to adopt the new EU anti-smoking legislation after they have judged how well it went in England apparently. Imagined conversation, "What!? Your daughter is 10 and she's not smoking yet!? Get some Lucky Strike down her NOW!"

Books

People in Madrid try to read on the Metro (the very good and amazingly clean underground system). They don't get very far. My survey says 80% of them never make in past the first 20% of the book. They do seem to like books. The second-hand book market is huge. Maybe that's because they don't finish reading them?



They also love Don Quixote. Statues of Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sit in Plaza Espanola.



Colourful children's books of the story seem to be as easily available as colourful children's books of biblical stories. Maybe I should have bought one as a learning aid?

Music

I mentioned in my summary of the gig, the Spanish audience seems to be highly open minded. Just my sort of thing. I love the fact they seem to be able to mix up the influences from all over the world and from any period in musical history without confusing people or feeling the need to classify everything.

Additionally to this we took in a live flamenco show. Even the guide book admitted it was a fairly tourist focused restaurant and the show didn’t seem quite as spontaneous as the one I saw in London last year, but it was still brilliantly engaging and impassioned. A great nights entertainment when ever you go.

Art

From the tour bus I remember being told that Madrid claims to have the highest density of paintings any where in the world. Or was it of classical paintings? Or modern masters? I can't remember now. I'm sure you get the idea anyway.

There are three must visit galleries. Of which Mrs P would only allow me to visit one. I chose the biggest, the Museo del Prado. Note it's worth carrying your passport with you as some attractions entitled foreign visitors to free entry on seemingly random days.

Here we saw huge numbers of Goya's (although not as much of the Black Paintings as I would have liked), seemingly endless horrific crucifixion scenes, a very odd view of the Virgin Mary squiring milk from her breast into the mouth of a kneeling praying cleric whilst a sinister cloaked character watches (wtf!?), some good still-lifes of food (which had too much fruit and not enough ham for Mrs P's liking), and the truly stunning hallucinogenic vision of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. The later alone was worth the visit.

I'd love to visit the city again so I can see the two other main galleries, for the sake of the rest of the Dutch masters and Surrealist (notably Dali's) they house.

Food

Imagine for a moment a Creature Comforts sketch. The voices of two British holiday makers are dubbed over a claymation scene of two animals out of place in the Spanish sun. Let's say their bulldogs. They are sweating profusely and wipe their brows with the back of their paws every so often. They appear to be well past breeding age and some cleaver usage of jewellery, thick eyelashes and lip colour has made one of them into a trophy bride and the other an east end hard nut. A microphone is sat between them and he answering an unheard question about the food. "I like my food simple see. Meat and two veg, steak and chips, you know. Not all of this spicy stuff. I can't eat that, it gives me a funny turn." She talks over him, leaning in from the background she almost whispers, "It's very greasy." She then grins in a slightly embarrassed manner as she adjusts her seating again and glances nervously sideways.

That stereotype was very nearly played out when we first arrived. In a hurry to get to the gig, and keen to eat something beforehand, we found that nowhere where Spaniards would actually eat opened before 9pm. We ended up in a Pizza Hut and suffered the worst service I've known in the chain, and they're usually pretty bad. Customers would come in, wait, see no staff, wait some more, peer out towards the kicthen, wait some more, then leave.

The following day we found ourselves in a café at lunchtime where everything on offer is either battered or encrusted with pastry. The slice of giant pasty like thing was ok. It was at this point I started to wonder about the diet, and Mrs P started marvelling at how anyone could eat like this and keep their figure, again putting the observed results down to smoking.

However, once we were in the swing of Spanish time keeping we realised that we had only been getting such bad food because we had been trying to eat at the wrong times. In fact Spanish food shares the usual Mediterranean aesthetics of simple food prepared well with a slight Arabian / North African spiced influence. Mexican food is also easily come by. It's really good stuff and it’s well worth hunting around to find the right place to sample it. Even dirty spit and sawdust bars provide tasty tapas while you drink. The nibble while you drink culture should be encouraged here in the UK where binge drinking is such a problem.

Other great meals sampled over the week included some beautiful sea food. (Odd as it's so far from the sea.) As part of a set menu I got some unidentified very finely sliced raw white fish with huge amounts of salt on it, that blew me away, it was the best thing I've eaten in ages. There was also a good paella, mouth watering duck, reasonable chill beef tacos, perfectly cooked calamari (a rarity), a massive tuna steak with a just slightly over powering tomato sauce, a presumably English tourist focused ham, egg and chips in the Meuso de Jamon (House of Ham), multiple potato omelettes (the spit and saw dust pub one was the best), and a selection of ham soups (although one was barely more than stock). To top off the week I decided to go out in style on the way to the airport and stopped for garlic baby-eels. They were a lot better than they looked and had a very soft noodle-like texture, but were lacking in flavour. I think I would have added some anchovies to boost the fishiness.



Drinks

On the first night I saw a vodka being poured that appeared so generous I made a quip about favouritism from the barman. Like most things I say that I think are funny this met with blank expressions. It wasn't long before I realised there was nothing special about the size of the measure, they always half fill what ever size glass it is with spirits. Mrs P can vouch for this having drank three of them in quick secession at the wedding. You wouldn't see that in the UK where alcohol is so heavily taxed that the government make sure they know exactly how much is in every glass.

Wedding

I mustn't forget the reason we were in Spain in the first place, which was for the wedding of the wife cousin to a Spanish girl he met an university (I think). They have been living in Madrid for the last five or six years, and the only time I'd met either of them previously was when they came over to our wedding. Mrs P knows them much better though so I felt I should stand at the back for the ceremony and save the limited seating.

The wedding itself wasn't that unlike an English one, what with the number of English people who were there. There were just two main differences, which were as follows:

The first was the time. It was due to start at 6pm and the first coach back to the hotel was at 2am. The last at 3:30am. We were on the first one. All of the people with kids had already given up and taken taxies. In the UK weddings usually start around noon and are over by midnight, but the Spanish do like staying up late. I was still struggling from the 3am finish from the gig two days previously. I'm obviously getting old. Another couple of days and I'd started taking siestas. I could get used to that!

The second difference was the speeches. Spaniards don't normally do these at weddings but they were still briefly included here to keep the Brits happy. However, tapping a knife on a wine glass, as an English person would do to get people attention, mearly means "my glass needs refilling" in Spain so stopping people talking proved to be problematic.

In terms of similarities there even seems to be a Spanish equivalent of the congo, with a snaking train of people dancing around the venue. It just wouldn't be a wedding without that now would it?

Indecently, the ceremony was performed in both Spanish and English and the couple looked very happy and there was all the normal confetti throwing etc. A DVD slide-show of the couple at various stages of their lives – in well matched childhood photos, through their courtship up until the present day, all set to music – was a nice touch.

Time Keeping

In Homage to Catalonia George Orwell wrote:

"In Spain nothing, from a meal to a battle, ever happens at the appointed time. As a general rule things happen too late, but just occasionally – just so you shan’t ever be able to depend on their happening late – they happen too early. A train which is due to leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leave at half-past seven. Such things can be a little trying. In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself."

I would never attempt to better this description. I read this during my visit and it seemed, from my limited experience of the country, to still ring true. For example, we were warned to arrive at least half an hour early for the coach to the wedding, "just in case." As it turned out if left an hour late. We later found out that the late departure was because it had been waiting for a notoriously unreliable belly dancer who had been booked for the wedding and who, to nobodies surprise, had not shown. (A shame, as it's this mixture of Mediterranean and Arabian culture is what makes Spain so fascinating.) The coach driver then proceeded to get lost on an industrial estate on the way, resulting in his flagging down of a passing truck to ask directions and holding up traffic in both directions for a minor eternity.

Complete photo set here.

Labels: Spain

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