Back to Spain
6 comments April 26th, 2005
I am posting the following several days after it was written, due to problems finding an internet cafe – I shall write another update shortly. I am also in the process of altering this diary page to make it quicker to download, so apologies for any problems you may experience over the next day or so as I muck about with it.
It’s our last night in Portugal. We should have been gone far earlier than this, really; but Gary’s brother Neil and his partner, Lisa, came 
out to the Algarve for a week’s holiday in a rented villa, and so we felt it necessary to gate crash and take full advantage of the sybaritic lifestyle on offer. Neil came bearing suitcase loads of gifts, the kind of things one usually takes to slothful backpacking relatives – like mosquito nets, tarps, and new bed rolls. Unfortunately we have sent him back to the UK with rather more than he brought. We sincerely hope the accumulated stench of our discarded belongings did not cause him to be detained at Faro airport.
Amongst other things, he took with him our beloved tent. We are now solely reliant upon a “Basha” style tarp, which we can string up or peg and pole; and a mosquito net. The theory is that this combination will have the dual advantage of being both lighter than the tent, and also rather less conspicuous and more adaptable to different social environments. Time will tell, I guess.
We are now less than twenty walking days from Tarifa, where we can take the boat to Morocco. Obviously it may take us longer than that, given our enduring penchant for lush coastline, and the fact that once again we will have access to the noble institution of the endless Spanish lunch hour – but at this point we have every intention of walking fairly consistently South. We are also enormously heartened by our once again feather light (okay, slight exaggeration) packs. The loss of our cold weather gear and tent has made an enormous difference.
I am quite sad to be leaving Portugal. We have become kind of used to it; crappy phone system, balding paunchy retirement Brits and all. To commemorate we decided to indulge today by buying our last English Sunday papers and reading them over a late lunch, after we stopped for the day. And then I came across an article in the Sunday Times News Review that really struck a chord.
It was by Christina Lamb, a female War Correspondent who unwittingly became the inspiration for the heroine in Paulo Coehlo’s latest novel. The article was a personal story of her life as a journalist, and how she had met Coehlo himself. One particular paragraph stood out for me:
“My passion is Afghanistan…I feel strongly that people in such countries have values we have lost: the most important thing in human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk anymore, they don’t sit down to talk and listen….if we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around the fire and tell stories.”
I’ve never been to Afghanistan, and know nothing about warriors sitting around telling stories. But one of the things I have become accustomed to enjoying, as we have walked through Europe, and increasingly as we go further south, is the importance placed upon conversation and human interaction. In every café, it seems, in every restaurant, groups of people while away the afternoons talking, eating and drinking. On Sunday afternoons entire villages gather in the local restaurant to eat a communal meal and talk together. When we stop at an out of the way village café, the whole place stops, people pull their chairs close to us, and start talking. Even when we don’t understand the language, they will continue to talk, slowing down and using gestures to communicate. I cannot imagine anyone in an English speaking country showing so much interest in, nor patience with, foreigners. And there is no point, necessarily, to the efforts to communicate with us; it is just the conversation itself that is important, no matter how long it takes nor how laborious the process is.
It is a bit the same with eating. People here do not eat out as a special treat. They meet at the local restaurant, pay a minimal amount, and eat whatever the restauranteur chooses to serve that day; they are there as much for the social interaction as for the food. In many villages there is a large shed with a deep concrete pool which serves as a laundry for the village as a whole; and a fountain for everyone to collect water from. Life itself is simply far more of a communal experience.
It is a phenomenon which has been increasingly obvious ever since we arrived in France, and it is becoming more and more prevalent the further South we go. And I love it.
It has taken being in Europe this long, and gradually moving through it’s different areas, to begin to really understand what an important role community plays in life here. Regardless of the individual country, the emphasis which is placed upon the community as averse to the individual is remarkable and unmistakable. Seeing the openness and willingness to work together that characterises many of the small towns we have walked through has been a humbling and educational experience. And, at the risk of sounding heinously like a really corny political advertisement, I have come to realise that I agree with what Christina Lamb writes – many countries have lost a lot of values that are important. And although I can laugh and take the mickey out of all the Brits hanging around the Algarve in search of sun, pints, and fish and chips, a part of me wonders if in fact they are here as much for the wonderful warmth of the communal experience as anything else. Europeans everywhere seem to be constantly agonising over the loss of their particular cultural identity. But I think as long as this wonderful tradition of collective responsibility and interaction continues, these European countries retain a core strength that many other Western countries have lost.
But luckily leaving Portugal won’t mean leaving any of that behind. I am guessing life is only going to become more communal as we carry on. Although I don’t know how many more times I am going to get to sit an contemplate it all contentedly over English papers and copious amounts of red.
Which, given that I have just subjected you to one thousand words of egotistical navel gazing, is something I am sure you are all very grateful for.