One day in Spain…

One day in Spain…

A post without photos for once – or maybe with just a few.  Mainly this post is for my own thoughts, and because I have come across something I find really fascinating.

I’ve spent a lot of this walk wondering what on earth I was going to write about in another book.  After all, the Sahara it isn’t, and much of the camino has been a solitary ramble with my head buried in Roman ruins.  Much as that fascinates me and I’m sure will be great for the fiction I am hoping to write, I couldn’t imagine it being so fascinating for others to read.

The reality is that when I walk, I think.  A lot.  Small encounters mean everything, and can set me thinking for days.  The way a portly man pats his belly and rumbles with laughter when he expresses astonishment that anyone would want to walk to Santiago de Compostela.  Little old women with bow legs in flowery aprons, leaning on a broom and watching me from the corner of their eye until I call a greeting, at which point they burst into sunny beams, and call back a response.   An old farmer chewing on a toothpick and bemoaning the lack of rain, totally unconcerned with where I have come from or what I am doing, so long as I am happy to pass the time for a moment.

Today I had lunch with a group of French pilgrims.  It’s the first time I’ve spoken French properly in years.  I knew it would be hard after focussing exclusively on Spanish for the past few months, and so it was.  Even though I could understand the conversation perfectly, when I began to speak it was a dreadful mix of verbs and accents.  Being French, they were wonderfully patient.  But I was in France for long enough to wince at my ineptitude, and be sensitive to their tolerance.

It wasn’t only the language issue that posed food for thought.  What really got me thinking was how different the experience was, for me, to be amongst French society again.  There are so many small things that differentiate one culture from another, that give one a sense of being a stranger again, until you remember the rhythm of the language and ways.

In this case the lunch opened with a wry prediction of what the menu of the day would be.  Now I, just as any pilgrim I imagine, am well accustomed to the oft-recited choices, and can usually predict what first and second plates will be.  (Everybody can predict dessert – crème caramel, anyone?)  But I felt strangely protective of Spanish customs in the face of French sophistication.  The meals are so cheap – far cheaper than anywhere else in Europe – and whilst not necessarily haute cuisine, they are inevitably wholesome, filling, and served with copious amounts of wine and bread.  Frankly, I dare you to find somewhere else in Western speaking countries where you can enjoy a three course meal plus bread, wine, coffee and dessert for ten euros or less.  So whilst I thoroughly understand the slightly contemptuous amusement of French people at being served the same menu on a regular basis, since – let’s face it – France is the home of the most glorious gastronomy on the planet, I also feel rather indignant on behalf of Spanish food.

Then came the wine appreciation, sniffing and tasting.  It would be unimaginable for a French person NOT to do this – again, I understand.  It is part of the cult of food worship that dominates the country.  The wine, which came in an earthen ware jug, was pronounced too cold.  Which it was, I suppose.  But it is also free.  And bloody drinkable.  And it keeps coming.

Ordering was taken very seriously, with much discussion over the merits of one dish versus another, and what may be the regional speciality.  I began to really enjoy this, having forgotten just how seriously French people take the matter of food.  But I was still pretty tense, especially since it was a terrible shock to realise just how bad my mastery of the language has become – not to mention my accent.  After years of speaking French in Arabic countries (North Africans think I speak French perfectly, since it is liberally interspersed with Arabic), it was bad enough.  But now I sound like a Spaniard speaking French WITH Arabic in between.  Quelle horreur.

The conversation turned to political matters, and I became absorbed, and began to ‘hear’ the words more clearly.  In some ways though, it felt like an old record being replayed, and I stopped for a moment to consider why.

I thought of the conversations I’ve had recently with Spanish people.  Often in albergues we’ve sat around late into the night over wine, talking about anything and everything.  One of the things that has struck me – which, to be fair, was the same when I was initially in France – is the pride and knowledge common amongst the average person in relation to national history.  I’ve had Spaniards literally talking over each other in their eagerness to tell me about a certain site I must visit, or explaining the finer points of the origins of a particular tradition.  But where the two cultures differ, I would say, is in the discussion of ‘issues’.

Spaniards will wax lyrical into the small hours about history, traditions, architecture, or food.  But raise politics, and they tend to change the subject fairly quickly – or just laugh and shake their heads in despair.  Apart from always enquiring whether or not Australia has an economic crisis – something that dominates every new bulletin here – they are supremely indifferent to the wider political landscape.  I realise this is a sweeping generalisation, but in one lunchtime, I couldn’t help but notice how the conversation with my French companions turned immediately to a fairly sophisticated discussion of international politics, immigration issues, questions about the dominant cultural and political factors in Australia, and so on.  Spaniards would have tired of it long ago and gone back to having a good laugh, or singing.

Part of this political indifference no doubt has its roots in the oppressive years of Franco’s regime.  But it is also indicative of a deeper variation in culture, a keystone if you like of what makes a country turn.

If France’s fulcrum is its political history, the fight for intellectual freedom – amongst other things – then Spain’s is it’s quiet pride in knowing that without ever really having to try, it has been the canvas on which much of Western civilisation’s history has been painted.  If I was intrigued by the extraordinary experiences of France over the past five hundred years when I travelled through the country, in Spain history stretches back to antiquity and beyond in a clear kaleidoscope of events and evidence.  History is not stories or battles in Spain.  It lies in every rock and hillside, in cave paintings and fragments of ceramic lying in a ditch.  It lies in the tools farmers use every day.

Our lunch wound up being a wonderful time – luckily, given that the group is likely to accompany me every day until Santiago – and a great opportunity to grasp back some of my lost language.   I was reminded of the innate courtesy of French people, in the way they communicate with each other, and delight in new knowledge and good food.  Many of the comments they made, though, reminded me of the shock I felt when I first reached Spain after walking through France.  They remarked with tolerant horror about how loud everyone is.  How the television is always on, and how there is no order to anything.  I recalled immediately how shocked I was the day I crossed the Pyrenees, how it felt like the volume had suddenly been turned up ten notches, and the interior decorator had left the building.

I thought afterwards about the differences between the two cultures, and I came up with a few things.  One of the qualities that characterises Spain for me is the total lack of cynicism.  Spaniards couldn’t care less if the tables and chairs don’t match – as long as everyone has a seat.  They speak without inhibition or reserve because they are exuberant and enthusiastic about everything.  As long as you are smiling, they are smiling back; and nothing is a problem for any more than a minute.

After so long in Arabic countries, I am far more at home in a country that has absorbed the Moorish qualities of acceptance, hospitality, and open hearted delight in the world at large, than I am in one which wants to discuss the finer points of religion over dinner.  I am not critical of French culture, don’t get me wrong – I think, like many, I will always be rather in awe of it.  It is simply a question of feeling at home somewhere.  And in Spain, where beauty really is something people see on the inside, is where I feel most comfortable.

One of my favourite Spanish words is ‘guapa’ – or ‘guapo’ in the masculine.  It is more often used for the feminine.  When I first arrived, I thought it referenced specifically a pretty girl, and I was rather flattered when it was applied to me.  Over time though, I came to see it applies to anyone of an open heart, with an open smile.  An old woman who grins toothlessly at the world and grips your hand in friendship can be as ‘guapa’ as a young girl with a pretty face.  The word is said with delight and affection, a term of familiar endearment that I find incredibly touching.  Old men who lean across their fences and scrutinise my face as I talk, then pronounce me ‘guapa’ as they take my hand in their weathered old one, touch my heart with their almost childlike delight at the discovery.

This possibly sounds like a long and rather disjointed rant, for which I apologise.  But I have been doing a lot of thinking, lately, about what I have discovered on this walk, and during my time in Spain.  Sometimes it takes seeing the culture through someone else’s eyes to realise how acclimatised to it you have become.

I am writing this in the local bar.  The barman was deeply concerned that I get the best internet reception, so he set up a table especially for me in the place where he said the wireless worked most effectively.  I asked for a glass of wine and he added a small plate of superb quality jamon iberico – not a typical tapas at all, given it retails for about sixty euros a kilo, but because he and his friend were having some together, and it would be rude not to share.  A bad Spanish soap opera is on the telly at warp fifty volume, but nobody takes any notice.  Three old men in their Sunday best drink liquer and debate whether it will rain or not.  A group of teenagers sit at a table with soft drinks, exchanging quips with the old men.  Occasionally a family group will arrive to take a glass of wine, and everyone will crow over the baby in the pram, or swing the toddler up to the counter to take a special treat from the barman.  They all call ‘good afternoon’ to me when they walk in, and when i smile and answer, they beam back at me and ask how the camino has been.  Sometimes they say nothing, but wish me ‘buen camino’ when they leave.

It is siesta time, but when I say I should be lying down, they laugh, and one of them asks where I started walking.  When I say ‘Granada’, they all laugh again, and one remarks : “In Andalucia, siesta is a sport”.  I crack up – it is so true.  Here in the north things may be closed, but it doesn’t have the dead still of Andalucia in the afternoon.  I realise that the rhythms of the country are my own now, and I love the feeling.

I have only 17 days of walking left until Santiago.  I am going to continue out to Finisterre, the Western Cape that I never reached last time – because I was in such a hurry.  I’m tired of being in a hurry.  I need more time to reflect on the things I do know, and notice the ones I don’t.  I’ve no intention of hurrying one more day than I need to.  And I can feel the book in there – until today, I didn’t know how much I have thought along these stretches.  And I was terribly worried that nobody would be interested in what I thought, anyway.

After Sahara came out there were a lot of online comments that spoke of how ‘self absorbed’ my writing is.  It affected me a lot more than I let on, touching the nerve that tells me my choices have been selfish, or my journeys introverted.  Even now when I read something that cites the most boring parts of my books those where I talk about myself, I cringe in self conscious shame, and vow that my next book will be full of history and external observations, and totally without self reflection.

One of the other conversations I had recently was about exactly this topic – talking about what people like in a travel book.  The participants were a wide range of pilgrims, males and females of different ages.  In the end the conclusion was both enlightening and, in some ways, unsurprising.  The men – most over fifty – said they don’t like reading about relationships, or internal processing.  They want to know about the place, and what happened.

The women said they wanted to know how the author felt, and what his or her reaction was to the people and situations they encountered.  Two very different perspectives.

I realised that I write the way I write because it is simply the way I see the world I travel through.  I can’t just describe a place without explaining the personalities that make it what it is, and in turn, how those personalities make me reconsider my own.  I am not so interested in conquering the world through an expedition as I am taking tea with the people I meet on the way.

Sometimes I have felt really guilty about taking days off in the cities I pass.  I should carry on, I think.  Do the miles.  Tick the next albergue register.  Get to Santiago.

But I have already done all of that.  I spent three years racing to make a deadline that circumstances forbade me from completing despite my desperate desire to do so.  And now I want to enjoy every step, and take the time to think whatever thoughts I want to.

I don’t know what kind of book will come out of this walk, although I have ideas bursting out of my head.  But perhaps the last few days have taught me that whatever does come, it will be mine, told my way, and full of the things that I find important.

And, yes, I guess that makes me self absorbed, indulgent, selfish and all the other sobriquets I earn online.  But ultimately, it’s my book.  It’s my camino.  And I need to do both the way that makes the most sense to me.

Thanks to all those who responded to my question about travel writing on facebook…you also gave me a lot of food for thought.

Oh …. a lovely postscript to this.  The men in the bar insisted on buying me a drink and taking a photo on their