Ten things to know about Spain

Storks and kissing

Dear Global Jigsaw,

I have now spent almost five years in my sasural - as the land of a woman’s in-laws is called in Hindi. The decision to move to Spain was not an easy one for me. For decades, my Spanish husband and I had flitted across foreign postings in Asia- China, Japan, Indonesia- places where we shared outsider status. Together, we made silly mistakes while bumbling about learning the syntax of unfamiliar streets. Together, we experienced the humility that comes from not having the right words; watching instead, with other synapses firing, from the linguistic margins we were relegated to.

Spain, I believed, would change this equilibrium. I would be the interloper in my husband’s home. I feared feeling excluded and stupid, rather than intrepid and curious, as had been our combined wont until then. But there came a moment (in the early months of the pandemic) when moving to Madrid became inevitable, despite my misgivings.

As it transpired, these years have been a masterclass in learning to live well. It is nigh impossible to be sad in this country. Even in the tough months I was undergoing chemo for breast cancer two years ago, I only had to step out onto the street to be buoyed by the social energy that crackles from the curb-side cafes punctuating the streets like chattering exclamation marks. Inevitably, there were groups of silver haired ladies enjoying gin and tonics seated next to young families with toddlers who ran about just on the right side of not-badly-behaved. People smiled and kissed and sometimes shrieked in happiness at bumping unexpectedly into a friend.

Last month, on April 28, most of the Iberian Peninsula suffered a severe electricity outage - trains were stranded, traffic lights malfunctioned, phone and internet coverage faltered, and ATMs stopped working. But the cafes continued to be thronged with de-screened locals making the analogue, human, best of it. Pedestrians waved cars on, even as cars tried to give pedestrians the right of way. No one blew their horns. There were no incidents of looting or rioting. I sat on one of Madrid’s main drags without phone connectivity, watching a gaggle of young people practice the Macarena, and felt a deep upswell of love for this city, which has somehow retained a sense of decency in an increasingly indecent world.

My family will be moving back to China this August. Ergo, I’ve been in introspection mode. The upshot: my list of “Ten things to know about Spain.”

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Here goes:

Lunch in Spain is a Brave New World

Lunch in España is what prayer is in Indonesia, haggling in India, and the weather in the UK. The dominant backdrop to life. Ironically, the actual word for lunch in Spanish, “almuerzo,” is among the less useful in the lexicon, because it is invariably replaced by “comida,” which is simply, food. If you say, “let’s meet to eat food,” it is understood that it is lunch that is being talked about.

The Spanish lunch is late, lavish and lingering. On special occasions, like Friday- because-the-weekend-starts-tomorrow, it is epic and epicurean. It can begin at 3:00pm and last until dinner. The meal often features a three-course menú del dia (menu of the day), wine, and sobremesa. Literally, “on the table,” sobremesa refers to the long hours spent sitting around the table after the food has been eaten, shooting the breeze, quaffing coffees that might lead to gin and tonics, because by this time it is often 6:00pm and so, why not?

Storks on Steeples

The most emblematic motifs associated with Spain include flamenco, tapas and beaches. But for me it is a stork atop a church steeple, framed by a wide-open sky.

Across the broad belly of the country – Toledo, Extremadura, Castilla-la Mancha - the skies are dramatic. The blue is deep, the clouds cotton-candy fluffy and the horizon endless. But every so often a steeple – a church spire, a miraculously intact Roman column, an industrial chimney, an electric pole – comes into view. And perched upon these are gloriously balletic storks, standing like St Simeon, one legged, upon huge nests of grass and sticks. The birds fly in with muscular grace from Northern Africa every summer to nest. And in their migratory nature, I sense a kindred spirit, one that wishes to soar above borders and make its home in different places that are all equally its own. There is something about the sight of a stork swooping down to rest atop the bell tower of a baroque cathedral that calls out to the soul of every nomad.

Photo Credit: Depositphotos

Coffee at the perfect temperature

Having suffered sugar masquerading as coffee in Indonesia, milk as coffee in India, fancy-pantsy Japanese concoctions and flavoured water in the U.S., the U2 track “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” had been the aural backdrop to much of my caffeine-seeking life. Then came the day I sat down in a café in Madrid’s Plaza Mayor and ordered a cup. Here, finally, the concept of the milk-coffee-temperature ratio being crucial (and subjective) appeared to have been grasped, for I was served a robust espresso-based starter with the choice of hot (caliente) or lukewarm (templada) milk in the precise ratio I desired.

And while these days, there is serious man-bun energy in the hipster parts of Madrid – think, charcoal-activated cold brews - there are still enough old-fashioned cafes to be found across Spain, where a café-con-leche can be had the perfect temperature, with a generous pour from the leche caliente jug, tempered with a splash of milk from its templada sibling. Bliss.

Dos apellidos is the norm: Everyone gets to have both parent’s surnames

In Spain children take the apellidos (surnames) of their fathers and mothers. The maternal name only lasts a generation. So, for example my husband’s surname is Arias-Camison Altieri, the ‘Altieri” being his mother’s family name (or to be precise her father’s surname), but our children have the family name Arias-Camison Aiyar. It isn’t a perfect solution to gender balance in naming, but better than other patrilineal surname norms.

It does mean Spaniards generally need more space to fill out their appellations on official forms. But it could be worse. They could be south Indian.

The Gypsies are Indian (or so they say)

Gitanos or gypsies may be the most iconic demographic of Spain, but it is India that they identify strongly with. I first realized this two decades ago, upon finding myself in a cinch with a gitano flamenco singer in a smoky tavern in Madrid, on a winter night in 2004. I’d been only one amongst the musician’s many adoring fans until he learned that I was Indian. “I am from India too,” he’d said, tapping his chest with an open palm before gathering me up for a hug.

Gitanos, of which there are upwards of 750,000 in Spain, do not have a well-documented history. But they are believed to have entered the region during the 15th century. Linguistic analysis of Romani (gypsy) dialects shows that they originated in northwestern India and migrated westwards in waves, between 300 BC and AD 600.

At an international Roma summit held in New Delhi in 2016, then Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj called the Roma community “children of India.” "You are the children of India who migrated and lived in challenging circumstances in foreign lands for centuries. Yet you maintained your Indian identity,” she said.

The Tarde: What is it?

Philosophers through the ages have pondered philosophical puzzles like “What is the soul?” But Spain’s enduring metaphysical mystery is “the tarde.” The English translation for the word “afternoon” does little to clarify its ontological status. I have had people wish me “buenas tarde” at 9:00pm, a time that does not match the description of “afternoon” anywhere else.

When someone says they will see you in the “afternoon,” they most definitely do not meet post-noon as in 12:30pm. So, what is the tarde? I posed the question to myriad Spaniards, only to receive myriad responses. A sampling:

It starts at 2:00pm and ends at umm…not sure.

It starts at 4:00pm and ends when the sun sets (which in the summer is after 10:00pm).

It starts after lunch (which begs the question about lunch time, another quotidian epoch with insanely fungible boundaries in España).

It starts after “siesta” which follows lunch (see above).

Suffice to say, eventually the tarde becomes something instinctive. Something you know, when you know. To wield the term with insouciance is to have found your inner Spaniard.

A Catholic country that invokes Allah daily

Given that parts of Spain were under Islamic rule for almost 800 years (from 711 to the fall of Granada in 1492), it is surprising how little overt evidence of this long influence remains. But traces of this history continue to lurk subterraneously in the language. Ojala, which means “hopefully,” has its root in insh’allah. So that every time a Spaniard says anyething akin to, “Hopefully we’ll meet soon,” they are etymologically invoking the grace of God (Allah).

Modern Spanish has thousands of words with Arab roots, linking it in a string of lexical pearls to Hindi/Hindustani, given the latter’s debt to Persian-mediated Arabic. Consider the words for sugar: azúcar in Spanish derives from the Mozarabic (Arabic influenced Spanish that developed between the 7th and 15th centuries) assúkar, in turn from the classical Arabic sukkar. In Hindustani it is shakkar. Or the words for chess: Ajedrez in Spanish comes from the Mozarabic aššaṭran, which has its root in the classical Arabic, šiṭranǧ. In Hindustani it is shatranj.

Breakfast like Hobbits

In Spain, second breakfast is not something that exists in the pages of a Tolkienist idle, but daily practice. The day begins with a quick first desayuno of coffee and maybe a cookie or toast. Enough fuel for about two hours of work, before second breakfast- which is the really fun one.

El segundo involves heading to the bar or café down the street (there is zero possibility of a city street without said establishment) with co-workers and scarfing down tostadas, croissants or churros, all washed down with coffee (with milk at your preferred temperature). Second breakfast is an 11:00am affair. Its necessity becomes evident when one realizes that lunch is a temporally amorphous event that may occur deep into the mysterious tarde.

Popping into the chino

If Japan has the konbini (convenience store), and the UK, the corner shop, Spain’s equivalent is the “chino.” This nickname for alimentaciónes - daily life’s answer to everything from stationery to snacks and toilet paper – derives from the fact that the vast majority of these shops are run by Chinese immigrants. I’ve even heard a corner shop referred to as a “chino español” because it was operated by a Spaniard.

“Chinos”speak of two aspects of Spanish culture that are noteworthy.

First, the deep cultural linkages that the Chinese immigrant community has formed here in the space of two decades. Between 1998 and 2019, the Chinese population of Spain increased 16-fold.

Second, Spain may be grouped geographically and economically in the “West,” but it remains a stranger to the political correctness that is the contemporary hallmark of most countries thus designated.

Kiss-Kiss

To live in Spain is to kiss and be kissed (twice, on each cheek): by new acquaintances and old friends, aunties and children, and some very random people. Among the more unlikely kissers I know, is my dentist, who always kisses me goodbye moments after she has been staring into the netherworld of my mouth.

Spain takes you in and makes you part of the family. It’s not just in the kisses but also in the affectionate way people address each other, as cariño (dear) and guapa (beautiful). I even got called reina (queen) by an Amazon delivery guy once!

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