El Lechazo / The Suckling Lamb (or Eating Young Animals Continued)

Today, ladies and gentlemen - and the rest of you maladroits - I was invited to a small town in the province of Palencia for a barbacoa. That's Espanish for "barbecue". Actually, our word comes from their word. But really - we know that our word is better.

Unfortunately however, I forgot to bring my camera, but what we ate was something divine and I hope my words are enough to convince you more than any multi-megapixeled image. We ate something out of this world. Actually, we ate something that had only recently BECOME PART of this world, and that particular thing was el lechazo, or a very, very young suckling lamb. Roasted whole. For hours.

It's appropriate that the province of Palencia is well-known throughout Spain for having the world's third-largest Jesus statue (which I think I have commented on in a previous post), because this recently-deceased lamb had a taste of divine proportions. And, gente, I'm happy to report to you that like a true adventurer, I ate the little bastard's brain. Yes, that's right: all the knowledge possessed by this little lamb (which, contrary to popular refrain, never belonged to anyone named Mary) has been assumed into my own body of understanding. That is, of course, how things like this work.

Have any of you ever eaten brains?

Segovia - Roman Arches, Jewish Graveyards, Muslim Fortresses, and One Little Pig

            It was Sunday and I was sick as hell of lying in bed.

Here in Valladolid, and in Spain as a whole, Sunday is dead. You’ve surely heard of the Spanish custom of “siesta” – napping (or at least not working) between about 2:00 and 5:00 in the afternoon. Well, Sunday is the weekly equivalent of a 2:00-5:00 PM siesta, only it lasts the whole day. Nearly no businesses are open, save a smattering of restaurants and cafés, and the city itself seems comatose. It reminds me of an old Western frontier town when the black-hatted villain rides in: the streets are cleared and only the bravest of souls have the cojones to venture out into the eerie calm.

Well I was sick of the Valladolid Sunday routine and I knew I had to get out of dodge or risk being suffocated by a Spanish tumbleweed of boredom.

People have kept telling me to go to Segovia, an ancient city about halfway between Valladolid and Madrid. The town is in and of itself a historical landmark, a crossroads of many ancient cultures. Its most notable attraction is a aqueduct built by Roman engineers in the 1^st century A.D. (yes, when that Jesus dude was around). There is also a Muslim-Iberian castle called el Alcázar, which was supposedly the main inspiration for this dude named Walt Disney when he designed the castle logo for some company he founded. No big deal.  

It’s curious, that we folk in the United States miss out on, living in a place with so much documented history. Maybe if more of Native American culture had survived, or rather, had been allowed to survive, we would know a lot more about what our land used to be like and have a greater appreciation for history. For us, something “old” or “historic” is often “only” one or two hundred years old. Here in Spain, and in Europe in general, one or two hundred-year-old buildings aren’t considered landmarks. You need at least three centuries to considered meritorious of the label “historic”. Shoot, they still use buildings from a thousand years ago. I have a friend in Seville whose apartment building was built in 900. No, not 1900, but 900.

Dude.

It’s funny though, that in order to appreciate the richness of the past, at least in the historical places that I have visited so far, you often have to ignore the ever-encroaching influence of the present. It’s difficult to appreciate the magic of a 1,500-year-old cathedral when someone has spraypainted “I love you Sofía!” in eye-assaulting neon blue on the side. It’s very hard to transport yourself to a world of 2^nd-century Ibero-Roman legionnaires when you have to drive through monotonous miles of stucco-colored, 1960s-era apartment blocks in order to see the surviving evidence of the old world. It’s a jarring contrast if you’re not ready for it.

It’s a tough realization for us tourist-types in Europe (even those of us who live here) that when we go visit these incredible sites of history, especially if we’ve traveled long distances to see them, that in the past countless centuries since their construction, life has gone on in a big way. Especially in the past couple hundred years, modern society has changed so drastically and so rapidly that it makes sense when you have a superhighway next to Stonehenge, a parking lot next to the ancient Portuguese castle or a public housing project next to the 9^th-century Muslim-Iberian fortress.

It’s on us, then, to use our creative minds to extract ourselves from the grind and concrete of the present era and try to transport ourselves to another era. We have to do something as adults that we don’t normally do much anymore “as mature people”: use our imagination.

There was hardly anyone on the bus itself – just myself and a few other wayward souls. However, while I was eavesdropping on conversations, I overheard a girl speaking on her cell phone in a sweet and mellifluous language, replete with nasally “ims” and “ãos”.

Dude.

Portuguese!

I sketchily moved to a closer seat, and once she got off the phone I asked her if she was from Brazil. She was! Who says we don’t know geography?

We talked for the rest of the bus ride in a strange mixture of bad Spanish (her), worse Portuguese (me), and universally understood hand signals. Once we got to town, she told me that she lived in Segovia and that she would show me the aqueduct. Now, this is the type of kindness from strangers that really makes your day brighter. That’s something I’ve been missing a lot over here in Spain. But I’ll complain about that later.

 So my Brazilian friend, whose name I cannot now remember, walked me to the aqueduct. I totally could have found it on my own but I was perfectly glad to listen to her fantastic accent and her adorable confusion of Spanish and Portuguese for a little while longer.

Segovia’s aqueduct is really something incredible. It’s about 60 feet high at certain points and it must be over a mile long, snaking its way through much of the ancient part of the city. The importance of its historical attraction was evidenced by the multi-multi-multilingual signage sprinkled throughout the whole plaza. Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, English, German, French, and all of them were there taking pictures on their SLR cameras. 

I’m not a huge architecture buff or anything, but one fact about the aqueduct’s composition left me surprised and impressed: in all of its height, length and dimension, the builders used absolutely zero concrete. The thing is held together purely by the virtue of its own ingenious structural integrity. Pretty amazing. Even after 2,000-some years, it’s still standing.

I had had enough aqueduct-gazing, so I ventured down some appealing-looking side street with absolutely no idea of where I was going, but the general idea that I was going the “right” way. I suppose there was no real “right” way at the time, but on this type of spur-of-the-moment trip, one moves through his itinerary at the behest of an oblique network of semi-palpable, metaphysical forces. You see a cool looking building in the distance, and boom – you’re going to walk to it, no matter how long it takes. In this case, I saw a cool looking street and I knew that I was going to walk down it, and I had a pretty good hunch that beyond its cobblestoned-intrigue lay further captivating sights. 

My random amblings indeed led me to the Plaza Mayor of Segovia. For all who ain’t in the know, in Spain and many other Latin-descended countries, the Plaza Mayor (which translates to a mixture of “Major Plaza”, “Oldest Plaza”, or “Most Important Plaza”) is the nucleus of any city’s lifesblood. The city’s most important buildings are its major cathedral (and in Spain there is always major cathedral) is either in, next to, or very near to the Plaza itself. 

It was a gorgeous day so I continued my ambling, ambling around the Plaza itself and also ambling into various buildings of civic, religious, and historic importance, but that I will spare you the details of now.

[WARNING: BEGIN RANT ON RELIGION]

This is mainly because I don’t want to write about it anymore. When traveling in Spain, and perhaps in other Southern European Catholic countries as well, there is a phenomenon I like to call “Severe Cathedral Overload Disorder” (SCOD). This illness is caused when, as a heathen American or Northern European, you have visited at least five large cathedrals, ranging from “epic” to “tremendous” to “grandiose and self indulgent” to “shouldn’t they be worshipping God instead of building cathedrals?” Symptoms of this disorder include: not really caring how goddamn high these flying buttresses are; getting sick of seeing wooden, scarred depictions of worse-for-wear Jesus being tortured by equally wooden Roman soldiers; feeling jaded about the amount of gold-plating and gold-leafing the Catholic church does with its parishioners’ donations; and finally, not giving a fuck about seeing anymore goddamn cathedrals. 

At a certain point, ladies and gentlemen, each big-ass stone building with tons of peace-sign giving icons of saints and crosses and stained glass blends into the next. Now, I’m not religious, but I consider myself a believer in a higher power, and if you want to call that “God”, I’m fine with that. I also personally believe that Jesus is a wonderful teaching figure and while he’s maybe not the one-and-only son of God sent to save us sinners from ourselves, that he was a great man and he certainly had some good things to say. I don’t like putting a label on my spiritual beliefs, but I would call myself a “Christian” in that I believe many things Jesus advocated were good. In that same sense, I’m a “Buddhist” and a “Muslim” too, but that’s for another discussion another day.

 My point is, despite my firm belief in many of the teachings of Jesus, I’m not sorry when I admit honestly that I think building legions of ornate cathedrals and carving countless, expensive and surely time-consuming physical representations of Jesus is a pretty big waste of time, money, and effort. I would go as far to say that it’s almost blasphemous in the sense that all of that money and effort could have been used in much better ways, like actually helping people in need or advocating for the rights of the poor, hungry, and tired. It doesn’t help that many of these cathedrals are contemporaneous with the vile Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of all Muslims and Jews from the Iberian Peninsula. The Jesus I know (and I’ve read a good portion of the Bible) would not have done any of that. Sometimes, I think that the priorities of organized religion lie more with advancing human interests and not with the pursuit of goodness and justice.

Wait, did I say “sometimes”? 

 [END RANT]

Interestingly, I saw on the tourist map of Segovia that there was a Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town. Knowing that most traces of Muslim and Jewish culture had been assimilated and/or eliminated after the Inquisition, I knew I had to check out this relative rarity. I walked through the “judería” or Old Jewish quarter, which has by and large been turned into a residential district, I noticed that on the map what was marked “Old Synagogue” had been changed into a Catholic chapel. 

This kind of assimilation (“conquest” might be a better word) is very common in Spain, and a majority of Muslim and Jewish-related landmarks have been turned into Christian places of worship, or at times, completely extirpated. Some ignorant elements of Spanish society like pretending that these two brilliant cultures did not contribute anything to modern Spain, despite the fact that the Spanish language is filled with Arabic-derived words, and that it doesn’t take a genius to see the obvious connection between Muslim and Spanish architecture. Also, the impressive and beautiful rainbow of skin tones, eye colors, and physical characteristics of modern Iberians did not come from centuries of isolation (like the Vikings of Northern Europe) but from an absolutely dazzling mixture of peoples from all corners of Europe, Africa, and Asia. But I’m not going to start another rant.

The Jewish cemetery was not so much a cemetery with orderly headstones and respectful markers but what you might call a “necropolis”, or a massive burial site. It was located outside the ancient walls of Segovia on a hillside, marked by a few signs and an array of almost-hidden Stars of David, cast in iron and cemented into various boulders. This was all that remained of the Jewish community of Segovia. A few stars, a couple Menorah inscriptions, and one or two informative plaques. It was sad, but at least they got any recognition.

Next, in continuing my tour of Segovia’s almost-forgotten side, I went to the Alcázar, which is a beautiful Muslim-built, “Christian”-repurposed castle from the last millennium. This is one that that guy who drew the mouse really liked and decided to make a model of. Walt something.

 I didn’t get to go inside because the joint was about to close, but it certainly is a beautiful architectural specimen, position picturesquely on the side of a cliff and offering some amazing views of the countryside below. 

However, I haven’t even told you the most important part of my trip yet, and it’s a perfect segue from talking about Jewish and Muslim culture.

 In Spain, they really like eating meat, and they really like eating meat, and more specifically, they really like eating pork. Even better if it comes from a very young pig.

They really like eating pigs here.

I had long heard rumors of a Southern Castillian dish called cochinillo, which means “piglet”, which consists of, quite literally, a piglet that has been roasted for hours and hours until it tastes like the manna of God. With many Euros in pocket, I set out to locate this mysterious piglet dish and confirm or disconfirm its purported bomb-tastingness. I found a suitably-priced, classically-Spanish-looking “mesón” restaurant and initiated my culinary conquista.

Holy Mary Mother of God. Y’know, the same one all those cathedrals are for.

First, they brought me Castillian bean-and-meat soup, and I was pretty full after that. Bean-and-meat is an ever-popular combo around these parts. 

But then, ladies and gentlemen, came the piglet. Golden-brown, young and tender, smelling like what the odor of God’s smokehouse must be like, the cochinillo was one of the best things, if not THE BEST thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. I’m going to spare you a detailed, “foodie” description of the taste and the aroma, but let me just tell you that if this were a dish I had consistent access to, I would have already died of congestive heart failure. 

Alas, I could not continue eating the cochinillo forever, and it was getting to be time for me to head back to the bus. Full of young pig parts, I slowly ambled back to the bus station, and was surprised to find my friend Natalia there, also waiting for the bus. Natalia is from Aguascalientes, Mexico, and because I think I somehow know a lot about Mexico from having lived there for three months, we began to talk about her home country. And just like that, the bus ride was over and we were back in Valladolid, her sick of hearing me attempt to talk about Mexico, and me thinking I’m so worldly and cosmopolitan for talking to her about Mexico.

But on my walk home from the bus station, there was only one thing on my mind: piglets, and how goddamn tasty they are. And I can taste it now.

Hey dude! / ¡Oye, tío!

            I consider it a grand success that a lot of the students in my school now say the word “dude” a lot in English with me. It is fantastic to see that a new generation of international academics is learning the real way to speak English.

Excuse me, American.

Spain has several convenient muletillas ("little crutch", meaning crutch word) that function in a similar fashion, such as tío ("uncle"), macho ("male"), and the omnipresent hombre (d'uh). And it's not uncommon to string all three of them together in a single burst of convivial meaninglessness. 

Thus we have the perennial classic:

¡Oye, tío! ¡Hombre, macho!

And you've said so much without saying anything at all!

El perpetuo trabalenguas - The Perpetual Tonguetwister

            I’m not going to lie to you. At times, living in a country where another language is dominant makes you feel like your brain is pretty useless.

Now, I have studied Spanish for several years now. I have a degree in it from the University of Oregon – a pretty nice khaki piece of paper that says I have an advanced knowledge of the language, and I think it might even say I graduated “with honors”, whatever that’s supposed to mean. But sometimes, going into a bar and ordering a café con leche makes me feel like I have the IQ of a two year old who has been repeatedly hit in the head with a tire iron. This is especially true if I try to add any kind of flair to the sentence and really “make it my own”. I’m not sure how much I try to make English “my own” language; I normally say “Dude,” and then an semi-intelligible string of nouns, superfluous adjectives and even less necessary adverbs comes out, and what results is something most American English speakers can understand, but perhaps many others, especially older members of my own family, might have trouble understanding.

Dude, like, what type of tip is this dude on, right now, man?

Suffice it to say, then, when I try to make Castillian Spanish “my own”, an even less comprehensible concoction comes out of my lopsided mouth, and many native speakers here in Vieja Castilla are left bleating out a resounding “¿Qué?” in the face of this pale-skinned foreigner, the not-so-affectionate term for which is actually “guiri” (geer-ee). It’s sort of like the Iberian Spanish version of “gringo”, of which I’m sure everyone is familiar.

But there’s the interesting thing going on: here, what we call “Spanish” is not even really the native language in a majority of the Iberian peninsula. Of course, you’ve got Portugal where they speak Portuguese. Bien, that’s all fine, but even in Spain itself, “Spanish” is actually a misnomer that offends many people. Here, what we normally call “Spanish” is normally referred to as castellano, which means “Castillian”. This is the language that a vast majority of people in the country speak, and it’s the same language that all those big-ass countries in Latin America speak – Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, El Salvador, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and of course Puerto Rico (which ain’t a country, dude).

However, here in Spain, there are actually three – count ‘em – three other languages that are considered co-official with Castilian Spanish. In reality, there are many other minority languages in Spain, but only three have sufficient quantities of speakers to merit the consideration of "co-officiality" in their respective provinces. 

Here's a little breakdown:

The three main languages are (with their colors corresponding to the map):

 Galician – gallego in Castilian Spanish and galego in the language itself, this is a language very closely related to Portuguese, and it’s spoken in the northwestern corner of the country, appropriately right above Portugal.

 Basque – vasco or euskara in Castilian Spanish and euskera to the Basques, this is the language spoken by a minority in the Basque Country, and it’s one of the most insane-looking languages on Earth. It has absolutely no linguistic relatives in the entire world, and it’s what some people call an “indigenous language” of Europe. 

 Catalan – catalán to the castellanos and catalá to themselves, they speak this language in Catalonia, on the northeast coast of Spain where Barcelona is. Of all the minority languages, this one has the most native speakers (around 7 million).

 

Many of Spain’s minority languages are learned in schools, and especially with Basque and Galician, they are considered official languages more as a formality and method of asserting the peoples’ autonomy than as a matter of linguistic necessity. Many, many people in Galicia and the Basque Country do not even speak their respective “native” languages – only Castilian Spanish. However, in Catalonia, while many people are either bilingual Spanish/Catalan speakers or monolingual castellanos, many people, as I will soon recount to you, are so proud of their catalá that they would rather speak English to tourists than castellano, and this is due in no small part to the long periods of linguistic imperialism that the Spanish empire (both Francoist and otherwise) has embarked upon throughout its history.

And speaking of the fight for independence in different regions of Spain, I will segue into telling you a little bit about my time in Catalunya and Euskadi, or for the castellanos among us, el País Vasco.

La lucha lamentable

I know I've already written a lot on here about fascism and its lingering shadow in Spain, and I don't want to give the impression that everyone walking around Valladolid is throwing up Nazi salutes and perusing well-worn copies of Mein Kampf (which, unlike in English, is actually translated in Spain as Mi lucha, which makes it sound more legitimate). However, like I mentioned earlier I have seen far more open support of ultra right-wing ideology here in just under five months than I have in my entire life in the United States. It comes in the form of graffiti, wheat-pasted posters and stickers in public places, skinheads openly flaunting their beliefs on their sleeves, literally in the form of Nazi and quasi-Falangist armbands. The numbers "88", for "Heil Hitler" are graffiti'd in ubiquitous locations around town. It is truly revolting.
However, I saw something yesterday that disturbed me. On my way home from work, I walked past some kids horsing around on a park bench. They looked to be about 15 or 16 years old at most. There were two girls and one boy, and the girls were dressed like normal, coquettish Spanish teenagers, with the practically-compulsory black leggings and khaki colored skirts, with their hair done nicely. In short, they looked good, they looked respectable, they looked cute, like normal teenage girls. But the boy who was with them had his head shaved and was wearing a black leather jacket, and looked decidedly tougher than the girls, like he was from a different corner of society. But here they were, joking around and laughing, as any classmates do who have just been released from the stifling Bastille of high school for the day. The boy was looking at the girls in a way that suggested that he was trying to impress them, as any 16 year old boy would in front of two attractive female friends, and the girls in turn looked impressed by these buzz-cut renegade, tall and Doc Marten'ed, making those typical, manly Spanish gesticulations with his hands, as if he was telling them a story which he could barely believe himself.
As I got closer to the group, I saw that all over the boy's leather jacket were patches. At first I couldn't read them, but I thought they would inevitably bear the names of various punk and metal bands, which would be absolutely normal for kids anywhere, and especially in Spain (they like to bang their heads here, so to speak). But as I got within distance to read the patches, I saw that instead of Rancid and Iron Maiden logos, there were nothing but "88"s, swastikas, pictures of Hitler, and white power symbols. I was stunned, dumbfounded. I stopped walking, standing only a few feet away from them on the sidewalk, and I watched them interact, playing around and laughing like normal teenagers, oblivious to me standing there, mouth agape.
The worst part about it was not so much that the young boy was wearing the jacket. Like I said, it wouldn't have been the first time I'd seen something like that. But what really shocked me, what really made me feel sick, was that there were people all around us who did not act as if there was anything wrong. This was on one of the main streets in Valladolid and there were dozens of people around. And these two girls, ostensibly normal and mainstream as could be (if there is such a thing based on appearances) that apparently saw no problem with the views of intolerance that their friend was, quite literally, wearing on his sleeve.

And I stood there and stared.

Ir al puto grano

            Let’s just ir al grano here. (That’s Iberispeak for “get to the point”. For a more colorful option, you could also say ir al puto grano. I think you can figure it out.)

            I don’t have a good excuse for not updating my blog more often. I could tell you that I’m going to try to do it more often from here on out, but trying is something district courts do, not employees of the Spanish Ministerio de Eduación. I wish, like many defense attorneys in the aforementioned district courts, I could provide you with some piece of exculpatory evidence that would absolve me of my tardiness and vagrancy, but I have none. This glove does indeed fit, and it fits like…a glove. So there will be no sensational acquittals for your dear reporter.

            Like many others (I hope) I sometimes suffer not from writer’s block, but its exact converse. Writer’s overwhelmment. (That is now a word.) I have too many things to write about. My life is too fucking interesting to even handle. Or rather, my brain has too many narrative threads at all times to permit any one of them the privilege of being physically committed to Word processing. They are all too important. It’s like “Sophie’s Choice”, but with less child sacrifice.

            What, then, do I choose to write about? There are too many Sophies to choose from. People tell me I should just “tell my friends and family about my experiences, because no one else will read your stupid blog, asshole”. And then I reply, “That’s not true. Even they don’t read it, and I’m not an asshole – I’m more of an arrogant bastard.”   

            Do I talk about standing at the foot of El Cid’s tomb inside the totally-majestic-and-sweet-cathedral of the ancient city of Burgos? Or do I write about getting my picture tweeted by one of Spain’s most illustrious and lauded hip-hop MCs, as an estadounidense holding a ticket to his Valladolid show? Or do I write about throwing my first Spanish snowball (bola de nieve)?

            The question is, then, in what am I going to verbally self-indulge next? I could tell you that details are coming soon, but details are something crooked auto-body shops do, not English teachers in Spain.

            

Tiempo de niebla, tiempo de esperanza

            This is my fourth month in Valladolid and I’m beginning to come around to understanding its ways. If you’ve been one of the people whom have asked me how things have been going, I’ve probably given you a response that was only partially true. Truth be told, up until recently I have struggled with this city of Vieja Castilla. To catapult from being immersed in the friendly, outgoing nature of Oregonians, to the windswept reserve of vallesoletanos has been shocking. The cultural differences are more befuddling than any language barrier, the latter of which is no small obstacle.

            For weeks, I have felt lost, wandering these tiled streets. I’m sure many expatriates feel this same way during the first part of their sojourn. Many faces were scornful and uninviting, to my eyes at least, and the prototypical concrete-block apartment buildings that I now realize are so classically Spain became terrible eyesores, mocking my sense of pleasurable aesthetics. It was as if no one cared how I felt, even the architects. There were so many things that I couldn’t believe, so many things that I couldn’t stand. I was incredulous. And then I became scornful myself. I became distrustful.

            Throughout my “dark gray period”, one thing remained a luz at the end of the tunnel, and that was my students and my school. I have nothing but the utmost respect and love for everyone at IES Las Salinas in Laguna de Duero, and everyone there has been so great to me – the silly American. Despite the fact that many of my classes seem more circus-like than pedagogical, I have learned so many things from mis niños and I wouldn’t trade the time I’ve had with them for the world.

            Recently, though, the “dark gray cloud” has begun to lift. Things have not seemed so sin esperanza, people have not seemed so scornful, and I have found myself more confident and capable of taking on challenges. I realized that, to some extent, there’s no point in fighting the way things are, and especially the way people act. Sometimes, we have to make adjustments to our own minds and attitudes in order to adapt to the environment we find ourselves in. Then, and only then, can we change the world around us. Fighting it does no good.

            Valladolid is known throughout Spain for its fog – la niebla. Many vallesoletanos complain about this meteorological phenomenon, especially because it often comes hand in hand with temperatures bajo cero. However, after having spent the last five-odd years of my life in the Pacific Northwest, the chill of the fog hauls in a welcome wave of nostalgia for me.

            It was the other day, was on my daily walk home from work that I realized just how thick and all-encompassing the fog was. Instead of walking the mile or so straight to my house, I decided to take a right turn on a street that jutted off to the right, into a neighborhood I had never explored before. On both sides were low-slung rows of buildings, some of which had those classic, ochre Spanish-tile roofs (à la the quasi-Iberian architecture of Southern California housing developments, but the real thing). There were the typical grizzled men wearing flatcaps smoking short cigarettes clustered around the entrance to every bar. The smoke from their cigarettes mixed with their frozen breath and the fog as it wisped upwards. A school had just let out and there were kids everywhere, laughing, shrieking vivid obscenities, and wringing their hands to ward off the shock from the cold air.

            After a kilometer or so (don’t worry Americans – I’m just rounding up a little bit from half a mile), I came to a wall blocking the street off from the train tracks that bisect the city. As in any city in the whole universe, train tracks are the Shangri-la of ne’er-do-wells, graffiti-taggers, and general mischief-seekers everywhere, so I thought it would be a great place to take some pictures of the Real Spain.

The Real Spain is not the mosque at Córdoba, it’s not La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, and it’s not la Costa del Sol in Andalucía. The Real Spain, to me, is miles of lonesome train tracks disappearing into the distance; it’s a pre-1978-democracy warehouse that has been abandoned to the elements, both human and temporal. The Real Spain is an incongruous, Lego-assortment of buildings that looked like they were Tetris’d out of the sky, but in that very sense are perfect just how they are. The Real Spain is kids running out of school, screaming vivid obscenities, and the Real Spain is coquettish but serious-looking women looking at you but trying hard to avoid like they’re looking at you at all costs, out of habitually avoiding piquing the avarice and encouraging advances from their shameless, macho counterparts.

The Real Spain is a controlled-chaos circus that’s impossible to figure out, and the only way to give you an idea is to list some examples of its characteristics. The Real Spain, whom I have come to not only accept, but love and embrace, is a place of live ghosts and just plain life, and you have to be with it for a while to figure out how to not figure it out.

And like Camus, I’m really starting to embrace the absurd.

Oh, and you know what the name of the street was?

Camino de Esperanza.

(Get out your Spanish dictionaries)