0
0
I am in Spain for a month. Early indications are—beautiful, fulfilling, peaceful. In a region few reference, to see a city far from front pages, I’m happily getting to know a semi-rural landscape of red hills and pines like something from a dime-novel Western, with more of my Italian being converted into Spanish every hour. I am a man who finds most measures of time rather unsubstantial, and who measures his life and the sort the events therein by spaces of domestic living sandwiched by travel periods, and travel periods themselves as the larger chapter markers like years. Spain, therefore, is the first meaningful time that a chapter heading has borne a coda: 2.
I went to Spain in October 2021 and found it excellent, and was always eager to go back. Yet every time I thought to explore the Basque country, see more of Andalusia, or hear the Galician language, there was always another option. And this option was to see another, completely novel country. That was always the option I took, and barring a vacation with my wife, I never imagined ever taking the other. Why would you use your hard-earned money, and in my case—time away from home as granted by my patient and wonderful spouse—to see something you’d already seen rather than something completely new? Why see more, slightly familiar Spanish beauty than set eyes and feet on the Indian subcontinent for the first time?
In this case, the choice was decided by the concourse of opportunity—to travel when otherwise would have been unduly stressful for my family, slightly in advance of their own arrival for their own designs, in the provinces south of Valencia. With that in mind, I was looking at the first bit of luxury travel alone since 2016. I was slightly worried I’d forgotten how to do it, and that I was by now too accustomed to hitchhiking and foreign fevers to remember how to travel well in Europe. Yet this was all more than slightly exaggerated, and I have yet to encounter any major discomfort or disorder that couldn’t be dealt with given a moment of good Wi-Fi.
So, Spain. One of Europe’s Big 5 economies, prolific consumers of pork, siesta takers, sangria makers, and so on. Actually, there’s a lot not to like about Spain, por ejamplo, the fact that shops spend more time being closed than open, that apart from those catering to foreigners and young people, restaurants open for dinner at 8:30 p.m., and that there is a distinct lack of spoken English even in areas that see routine tourism. I don’t have enough experience in the country to say for sure, but it’s also a routine frustration of this trip that even in the heart of jamon country, an appetizer of the famous cured pork is always for two. And they have so far been reluctant to offer me the choice of a half plate, or a plate that’s half cheese and half ham. Maybe you’ll say that’s in bad taste to twist their traditions—like ordering a caccio e pepe and asking for no pepe—but it’s just ham, cut with a knife, and put on a plate; there’s not even any cooking involved!
Plus, I’m in Europe, and if there’s one place where everyone enjoys a little perfection, it’s on their trip through Europe; such an attitutde would never arise in India or Colombia.
To leave something of a tease for the next dispatch, I’m traveling through Aragon, a community with little fame around the world not imparted through a famous book about a teenage dragon rider. In a way, Aragon has allowed me to count Spain 2.0. as a trip more or less to a new part of the world. Hundreds of miles from Andalusia, and nearly beyond the reach of the Muslim conquerors of the Middle Ages, Aragon presents as a much different Spain to the one I have seen. By hopefully connecting enough with the region’s past, present, and future, I can add another land to the list of lands I have visited, with India in May being followed by Aragon in November. It seems more correct to think this way in any case, since it seems ridiculous for someone to say “I have been to Spain” when in reality they’ve visited naught but Barcelona or Madrid.
By the date of the next dispatch, I will be in Zaragoza, a beautiful city surrounded by beauty and curiosity. By then I will hopefully have nicer things to say about the manners and customs of this large and famous and beautiful country.
