Home Again in Spain

Given the fact that I had just returned from a trip home to the U.S., it doesn't make sense that I have now spent the past week in Denmark. But this trip was planned some time ago as just a quick visit to Danish-American friends of long standing. We left on Monday and returned on Friday very shortly before midnight, which was fortunate because, we were told, the new airport in Alicante closes at midnight and if your plane hasn't landed by that time, it will be diverted to Valencia and you get a free bus ride lasting a couple hours back to the outside, presumably, of the Alicante airport. Even though the Ryanair flight was late in leaving Billund, we made it in to Alicante under the wire, and I have never had checked baggage delivered as quickly as I did Friday night.

Denmark was lovely with Christmas decorations and leisurely shopping--not the rat race of Black Friday sales, as there are few sales in Denmark and no Thanksgiving to mark the beginning of the shopping frenzy. We did not have bad weather. This is the most positive statement that one can hope to make about weather when one travels to Denmark from Spain in the month of November. Gray days, but mostly dry, and cold enough for two layers on your legs and three up above when you are out and about. What Denmark lacks in sun at this time of year it makes up for with that lovely notion of central heat, and the luxury of underfloor heating in the bathroom. I am still wondering whether I will succumb to the temptation of having the tiles I love in our bathroom dug up to install heating fixtures below.

It didn't rain until Friday, and then it was indeed cold and dark and damp. Even though we had left Spain on Monday after an unusual rainy weekend--but we seldom complain because we always need the rain here--we looked forward to arriving back to warmer temperatures and sunnier skies. There are many good reasons for visiting Denmark, but one of them is that it will probably make you appreciate the weather in Spain more.

Warmer temperatures and sunnier skies did appear on Saturday morning when I finally woke up at almost 10:00. I've been unpacking, and doing laundry and grocery shopping ever since, and just generally getting back to normal after my two trips. Since I have had the privilege of enjoying Christmas decorations in the stores of two countries in the last month, I am inspired to get started with my Christmas preparations now. I'll be able to pull out the decorations from storage pretty soon--but first I need to pack away the cotton summer clothes that were perfectly appropriate when I left a month ago, and which I could still wear most days now in the sunny afternoons.

Fiesta Nacional de España

Yesterday, October 12, was a national holiday, one of only two per year in Spain--the other numerous holidays are either religious-based or local/regional holidays. Looking back, I see that I first wrote about this holiday two years ago and at that time cited the Wikipedia page from Spain in explanation. This year I have discovered the page in English, which speaks briefly of the history of this day in Spain and the many roles it plays.

The day began as most holidays do, with firecrackers the night before, but also with the annoyance of cancellations of two appointments--hair and house-cleaning--because heavy fines are threatened if workers go to work on a holiday. For people in the leisure and hospitality industry it's a different story, however. The bars and restaurants are open all day, and, I discovered on another holiday recently, the fitness center I go to is allowed to be open "in the morning." That means from opening time (7:00 AM on weekdays) until 2:00 PM.

I got on my warm-up bicycle just before 10:00 and plugged my earbuds into the TV sound outlet. We have a choice of English and Spanish, and the fitness center has become my primary place for watching Spanish TV and a free Spanish lesson. I caught the morning news program, where I noticed among other events that Spain plans to bring home four of the military planes it had deployed in Libya on Saturday. The regular newspaper round-up, where news headlines from various newspapers are presented and then discussed by a panel of commentators whom I partially understand, was cancelled this hour in lieu of the festivities that were to be brought live from Madrid celebrating the day.

I had to unplug from my individual TV screen and the sound as I passed through most other parts of my routine, but I could see the beginning of a parade on one of the larger screens at one end of the gym (the screen at the other end was showing, for the umpteenth day, "highlights" of the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor). I had been told that there would be long military parades, but this one had no tanks or vehicles or even soldiers marching with guns. Instead there were men with large plumed hats from an earlier era, riding horses. As minutes passed they arrived at, or the camera shifted to, the Plaza de Neptuno in Madrid and then I recognized King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia moving down a very long reception line of dignitaries. The king was dressed in a military uniform but Queen Sofia was in a regular street dress and handbag--I wonder why queens always carry handbags with short handles and never are allowed to have a shoulder bag. Women in the line curtsied before the royalty but also shook hands. Men shook hands with the queen and king and in addition gave a military salute to the king if they were in uniform, but no other sign of deference comparable to a curtsy--even the quick little dip that it was--did I see.

By the time I was on the treadmill and could plug in again, the official program was starting. First off was a salute to the fallen, heroes who had not returned from any number of wars or military actions for an unspecified number of years. People sang a very moving song of remembrance--"La Muerte no es el final" (Death is not the end). Lyrics were printed on the screen, and I have found this and other versions at YouTube. Then there was an impressive flyover of jet planes. I was trying to pay attention to the commentary about guardia real and guardia civil, but I don't have much recollection this morning of the rest of the spoken ceremonies. As I left the treadmill a larger desfile was commencing; presumably this was where the military aspects were paraded.

That was the end of the holiday for me. I stopped and bought cereal and cat food at one of the small grocery stores allowed to be open until 2:00 and went home to laundry, lunch, and computer work--but all in a quiet house newly released from the labor of contractors making adjustments to the kitchen and a new water heater closet. Quiet, that is, until bedtime, when the fireworks started again in celebration of the Fiesta Nacional de España.

Another Spanish Holiday

Today is a national holiday in Spain. It is the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, celebrating Mary's bodily ascension into heaven upon her death.

It's hard to keep track of all the Spanish holidays, especially those of religious origin. Often they arrive before I am aware of them, and I am left at the door of a supermarket that is closed due to the holiday. Last month I noticed a sign on a store door saying the store had been closed due to the holiday (the day before) and I still don't know what the holiday was.

But this time I knew five days in advance there was going to be a holiday--there was a sign at the health club that it would be open only in the morning of August 15, "due to the bank holiday." No one at the club was able to tell me what the holiday was, but they did explain that, since they were in "the leisure business," they were permitted to be open--though only until 2:00 PM.  I knew the post office and the banks would be closed, of course, and factories, and probably the large commercial establishments. Even our gardeners had told us once that they couldn't come on their normal day because it was a holiday and they would be fined severely if they worked that day. My big question is always whether the food stores will be open.

So as we drove out this morning to my Spanish class (a private class, in my teacher's home, and therefore not regulated) we kept our eyes peeled for signs of life on the streets and byways. There was a lot of traffic, and sure enough, there were cars in the parking lot at Lidl, and at Consum, and then we saw them even at Mercadona, notorious for always being closed on holidays. After my class we made it to the fitness center for a workout session before their closing time at 2:00. Back home for lunch and then I was content to lock myself in my air-conditioned office for several hours of work--no day off for me.

So I never saw many signs of a holiday. Sure, there had been the usual fireworks on Saturday and Sunday evenings, but that's a common occurrence, especially in the summer, and not limited to weekends. And I remember now that Sunday and Monday were the two performance days for the city of Elche's annual Mystery plays, dating back to medieval times, which I hope I will see some year. If I had driven out after 2:00 I probably would have noticed that commercial life had closed up shop, though I suspect that many more people passed the remaining hours of the holiday at the beach than at church.

So it seems quite fitting to have spent some time today reading an article from the newspaper, in preparation for my next Spanish lesson, about the upcoming visit of the Pope to Madrid this week. Given the volume of demonstrations in the world, I hope it goes without too much open controversy. The gauntlet has already been thrown, however. On a previous visit to Spain last November, the Pope chastised Spain for its "anti-clericalism and a strong and aggressive secularism like that which was seen in the 1930s" [in the years immediately prior to the Spanish Civil War and the Franco era]. Indeed, the only question seems to be whether the Pope will continue his condemnations in his six scheduled open speeches or in smaller groups with journalists, as he carried it out in November.

We will know in a couple more days, but in the meantime, we can only speculate, and read of how the papal visit will deprive hundreds of workers their traditional August vacation, cost many euros, create traffic havoc, and has already seen the erection of more than a hundred portable confessionals.

Happy Father's Day

Today (Saturday) is Father´s Day in Spain. I was prepared. I saw ads in the grocery circulars and also in the promotions from the traditional father-like commercial stores...electronics, gardening supplies, DIY. I even noticed a sign last Thursday, St. Patrick's Day, in my favorite grocery store that said it would be closed on the 19th of March.

Father's Day has always snuck up on me in Spain. First, I'm conditioned to not really expect it until June, after Mother's Day has made its appearance. I also expect it on a Sunday, but it has not come on a Sunday in Spain within recent memory. It wasn't until last year that I began to understand why Father's Day always seemed to come on a different day.

In Spain, Father's Day is celebrated on the saint day for St. Joseph. St. Joseph's Day has been observed in many countries on March 19 since the Middle Ages. The day changes, but the date does not. It's always March 19.

Why is Father's Day observed on the day of St. Joseph? That's the real question. St. Joseph, of course, was the husband of the Virgin Mary. I think that the Spanish coincidence of Father's Day with St. Joseph brings a certain nuance to the idea of fatherhood.

On this day, I'm remembering my own father, Robert James Nicklet, and sending thanks to another good father I have known (Ron) and best wishes to a father-soon-to-be (Tim).

Decorating for Christmas

It's hard to decorate for Christmas when you have two masons with all their equipment building an arch in the main downstairs area of your house. Before the arch came there was an incongruous plywood board at the top of the wall in the ten-inch deep passageway between the dining room and living room. Painted a brownish orange color, the board extended about a foot in each direction beyond the five-foot wide passage and was about ten inches in height. The same construction appeared on the "other" side of the passage; that is, you could see it from both the living room and the dining room. It was boxed in at the bottom. Maybe it was meant to look like a rough natural timber in a timbered ceiling. It didn't. Nor did it serve any functional purpose, we were convinced, as it sounded hollow when we knocked on wood.

We investigated other houses in our neighborhood and they all had such a structure. The aesthetics didn't seem to bother anyone we talked with. Some houses had a wallpaper border at the top of the wall, just below the ceiling, leading to and from this construction, and that made it look less out of place. Probably our living and dining rooms had had the same trim when first constructed, but any remnants of a border were long gone, and our walls were a clean, cream-colored "drop" paint finish from floor to ceiling.

In late fall our holiday-only neighbors had some construction work done on their basement, and they asked us to observe the process and report by email, as the builder could only do the work while the owners were scheduled to be at home in England. That was how we found our master builder, an immigrant from Bulgaria. It turns out that he has worked on an awful lot of the houses in our neighborhood in the ten years since they were first built and since he has been in Spain.

Christo assured us that the passageway box was empty, not load-bearing, and he liked the design that Johannes had planned for replacement: a curved archway built of and supported by brick. He could do the work any time, but we had house guests in November and early December. So that is how it came to be that only ten days before Christmas, instead of arranging Christmas decorations, we were draping plastic over the chairs and television in the living room, removing bookcases, tables, and lamps, and generally making a mess. The displaced furniture had to go somewhere, and the men had to have space in which to work, so that pretty much rendered the dining room useless. They came at 9:00 Thursday morning, removed the old structure, and placed the brickwork on either side of the doorway. Friday they built the temporary white support for the top arch, and put in the arch itself. The whole thing needs to dry over the weekend, and Friday evening we carefully uncovered two chairs and two small tables so we can sit in the living room and enjoy some weekend television, a glass of wine, and the gas fire, which we need for warmth.

Tomorrow they are supposed to show up to do the final mortar work between the bricks, "drop" paint the wall area above the archway, remove the three steel rods and white plywood that currently are holding up the top bricks, and clean up. I think it's more than a one-day job. I figure that by Wednesday, the 22d, I'll be able to get my Christmas decorations in order in those two rooms. I'm scouting around for an archangel.

Fiesta de las Naciones

It's the first Sunday in May, and stores are open in Spain. That's because yesterday, May 1, was a secular holiday (Labor Day) and stores were closed on a Saturday. Apparently no one wanted to shut down commercial activity for two weekend days running. Now on Sunday I had a big choice of activities for the day. In addition to going shopping, I could have gone to one of the two regular Sunday outdoor markets, or I could have gone to the neighboring town, Rojales, to its first Fiesta de las Naciones, starting at 10:00 this morning. According to the Euro Weekly News, Rojales is the second municipality in Spain with the greatest number of foreign residents. Presumably Madrid, or perhaps Barcelona, is the only municipality with more.

Associations, clubs, companies, and other organizations combined to provide plates of food and drinks typical of their home country, which all visitors had the opportunity to sample, with the financial gains benefiting the Caritas charity of Rojales. In addition to food and drink, exhibitions and children's games were scheduled. The councilor for tourism stated in advance that "this important celebration of coexistence...aims to integrate [foreign residents] regardless of nationality, encouraging them to share, learn from and enjoy the diverse traditions, cultures and customs."

But I missed the Fiesta de las Naciones because I was already committed to a mini festival of nations. I played for the Danes in a mixed doubled pétanque tournament this Sunday morning. This is the first year that a Danish team has participated in what is otherwise an all-British league. It was my first time playing in competition, too, and though we didn't do as well as I had hoped, we didn't disgrace ourselves, either. Won one and lost two, with close scores on the two. Our two other Danish mixed doubles had mixed results, as well, though the team with a Spaniard who has lived in Denmark for many years won two and lost only one. But I had another success. I got a compliment for the excellent English I speak...

The tournament festivities included a grilled chicken luncheon, and then, since we didn't need to stay for the afternoon playoffs, my Dane and I adjourned to the hipermercado Carrefour, to do our bit to support the stores-open-on-Sunday movement. I couldn't eat a thing now, but perhaps after siesta I'll get hungry enough to run over to the Rojales Fiesta de las Naciones to see whether they have anything enticing left in their foodstalls. Regardless, any Spanish fiesta includes a fireworks display, so I surely expect to see fireworks from my window tonight.

El hombre propone...

Life was not as expected this week, even in Spain, which is relatively removed from the effects of the ash released by the volcano in Iceland. Our airports were not closed; domestic flights continued as normal. External flights, of course, were a different matter. The first time I realized there was a  problem was on Sunday morning, when we heard reports that John Cleese, needing to make it from Oslo to Belgium, had chartered a taxi to drive him! Three drivers were required to comply with EU travel regulations, and it cost $5000.

Here's a little list of travel disruptions and the rippling consequences they have had on people closer to me than Mr. Cleese:

• The Sunday market, even though rain threatened and did eventually fulfill its promise, was far busier than usual, with many people on an extended holiday and still enjoying it at this early stage. But we shared a table at the hotdog stand with a lone woman who was supposed to be here with family from Norway--they had been unable to get out before the planes stopped flying.
• On Monday I heard the chatter of young English children on our street, who had been here the week before, as usual, on Easter holiday. They were obviously still here, past the time when they should have been home and in school, and I mentally pictured schoolrooms across northern Europe graphically revealing which families had done some foreign travel during spring break, and which had stayed home. By midweek the chatter stopped. Perhaps they were part of the coach convoys that were formed to drive holiday-makers to the north of Spain and then be transported by ferry over to Britain?
• Weekend visitors from Almería, who had been planning to proceed farther up the coast to see a sister on Tuesday, got a text message saying not to come--the sister was in England and unable to get to Spain.
• An older woman living alone in our neighborhood experienced a break-in and was assisted in her police report by our resident translator. Although her daughter wanted to come for a visit and to help out in this stressful situation, the lady remained alone because of the travel ban.
• Danish cousins, vacationing in Turkey over the Easter holiday, were stranded abroad, eventually returning by air to Stockholm and then by rail to Copenhagen--a long (an undoubtedly expensive) overnight train trip.
• I wondered about my Spanish class, canceled last week because my teacher had house guests from the north. Did she still have house guests several days after they had been due to leave? Yes, but nevertheless we met for the lesson--perhaps she appreciated a short hour of normalcy in what had become a longer visit than planned.
• Johannes canceled his scheduled trip to Berlin on Thursday and further to Copenhagen for his engineering school reunion--travel connections and air quality in the north still too uncertain. This means that I will surely get less work done this coming week than I had planned.
• And I am writing this Friday morning, missing the scheduled pétanque tournament that started two weeks ago, because this week's match has been postponed--the opposing team has four members stranded in the UK.
• I am also hoping, this Friday morning, that one regular reader of this blog is having an uneventful return to the U.S. from an otherwise eventful trip to Greece.

As the week wore on, newspaper and TV news reports began to concentrate less on the inconvenience and more on the costs of the fallout. Spain alone is said to have lost €450 million due to the volcano. And how does this unscheduled time away from work get charted, anyway? Does it go to vacation time, sick time, or act of God?

The Spanish have a saying: El hombre propone y Dios dispone. Man proposes, and God decides.

Or, as John Cleese said:

"How do you get God to laugh?"

"Tell him your plans."

Los Montesinos de Tapas

We have had three glorious days of spring weather, and three fun days of sitting in the sun, having a drink, and eating tapas. Tapas, of course, are the small appetizers accompanying a drink, for which Spain is famous. Some tapas may be eaten by hand, they may come on a toothpick or a mini-skewer, or they may require a fork, and they can range from a single bite of something delectable to a substantial plate or dish that could almost be considered a small entree.

At first I thought it rather odd to have a tapas festival starting on Good Friday, but maybe not. It's a Spanish national holiday, and there were Spanish voices all around as we visited three bar/cafes with friends Friday afternoon, exploring the tapas in the small nearby town of Los Montesinos.

Our first tapa was at the hotel on the edge of town. They brought us a small piquillo pepper stuffed with cod, and a slice of baguette to wipe up the delicate sauce that the pepper rested on. Then on to the center of town, where numerous bars and cafes surround the plaza. Our second tapa was a large toasted slice of baguette with smoked salmon and a sauteed quail egg, sunny side up, arranged attractively on top. The third stop Friday, at el Rincón, gave us a little square tart, filled with cheese and fresh from the oven. By the time we were finished with that the afternoon was drawing to a close, and it was time to play pétanque with the Danish club.

Saturday I read the scorecard and program that we had been given the day before. There were 28 establishments listed altogether--bars, cafés and restaurants, with a map of where they were located in town. Each offered a different tapa each day, so you could choose what you wanted to eat and go in that direction. But now I noticed that there were certain hours that each establishment was serving, and that many were not offering tapas between 4:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon. By the time we were ready to head out, of course, it was 4:00 PM. I scoured the listing and coordinated on the map, and we were still able to find a couple to try. One of the tastiest was a small Mexican tortilla-wrapped warm roasted beef sandwich, offered by a tiny restaurant, Azul Blue, that otherwise appeared to only serve pizza and kebabs. I can't even remember now what our second tapa was on Saturday--the English restaurant, Margarita, had run out of its planned offering and the chef had invented something else, with fish. It was good enough, though, that we stayed here for a light supper and vowed that we would return some time. On the way home we stopped off at a very old Spanish restaurant where we had enjoyed a lovely luncheon a few weeks previously. The atmosphere was mellow as we sat in an interior courtyard, and the tapa was elegant, though the least substantial of all we tried: a walnut-sized ball of pate on a single melba round.

Sunday we spent the afternoon finishing our tax return and only went out for tapas as a reward for finishing that task. We found two places open for tapas that late afternoon. I deposited my scorecard, which I had dutifully had stamped at each establishment, and voted for the last tapa, a very traditional beef in tomato sauce, with bread, as my favorite. Perhaps it wasn't really my favorite, or my only favorite, but it was my favorite at the time.

We were told that this was the first tapas festival that the town Los Montesinos had sponsored, and that it was a cooperative venture in which the eating establishments had done the planning and promotion--there was even a bus to take people around from place to place in case they had too many wines or beers while sampling the tapas. By all accounts it was a big success. They announced the winning tapa Friday morning at the town hall, if all went according to plan, but I wasn't able to attend the ceremony, so I will probbly read about it in one of the weekly newspapers. And no one has called me to tell me that my ballot won the drawing for a free dinner for two at one of the sponsoring restaurants. But we explored on foot many side streets in a town that we had only driven through before, and now we have several ideas of cafes and restaurants to go back to at some time in the future. And we sat out in the sun three days in a row.

Cuaresma

We are deep into Cuaresma, Lent. You can tell by the rows upon rows of cod in the grocery stores: frozen, fresh, dried, all cut (or not) in several different shapes. You would also know it because the headlines in both the Spanish and foreign press are filled with plans for the Semana Santa (Holy Week) parades, and the advertisements are all about travel and hotel packages for four days or more during the week-long vacation period.

A few years ago I bought a small paperback cookbook at the cathedral in Seville with meatless recipes for Cuaresma. It was one of those old cookbooks that was basically a written recording of oral tradition. Directions were general and did not include measurements or detail--it served better for reading than for cooking. I don't think I ever made anything from it, and last year I managed to throw it away when it got stuck between several newspapers that went to the recycling bin.

This year I found an article with traditional recipes in Activa Orihuela, a monthly free paper I picked up at the ayuntamiento (town hall) in Algorfa, and decided to do a Spanish Cuaresma recipe for two other couples who were coming to dinner on Wednesday. I hadn't met one of the couples before, so I wasn't sure about making fish as a main course, but the other popular Lenten ingredient is garbanzo beans. There was a recipe for potaje de garbanzos that sounded good as a first course. This recipe said that it served four and yet called for a half kilo (one pound) of garbanzos (chickpeas). And it meant dried garbanzos, because it said to put them to soak overnight. I thought that was an awful lot of garbanzos for four people, but since I'm rather compulsive about following recipes carefully the first time I use them and even more compulsive about making sure I have more than enough to serve guests, and because I love garbanzos and wanted some leftovers for another evening meal or a couple lunches later in the week, I doubled the recipe.

It's now Sunday and we are still eating potaje de garbanzos. It served six people nicely on Wednesday, though I had to transfer it to a larger pot than I had originally intended  to use for the soup. It was good again on Thursday for lunch. Friday evening supper was two big bowls of potaje, accompanied by paté sandwiches. We took Saturday off, but for a quick and late lunch today after our bicycle ride, I added some chunks of lomo de cerdo ahumado (smoked pork loin) to the potaje and heated it in the microwave. Talk about recycling Cuaresma recipes! There is one more main meal, or two lunches, of the potaje de garbanzos still to go, which I am sure that one person in the household is not thrilled to learn.

But I do like garbanzos.

Potaje de Garbanzos (Chickpea Soup)
1 pound chickpeas, dried
10 oz. package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed
2 large carrots
2 onions
3 garlic cloves (or more if you like)
1 tomato, chopped
Olive oil
1 bay leaf
Parsley
Salt
Pepper

Put the chickpeas in a large soup pot, cover with water, add salt, and let them soak overnight. The next day bring the chickpeas to a boil and then add a dash of olive oil, the carrots in large chunks, one onion, a bay leaf, 2 cloves of garlic (minced), and a little parsley. Cook until the chickpeas are soft (1-3 hours). Remove the carrot and onion from the pot, together with about a cup of chickpeas and a cup of broth, puré the mixture in a blender, and return to the pot. Add the spinach and simmer until hot. In a frying pan, sauté the second onion, chopped finely, one clove of garlic, minced, and the tomato in olive oil. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve the potaje in individual soup bowls with a spoonful of the onion/garlic/tomato garnish on top. Serves 6-8 as an appetizer. (This is the original recipe, translated, not the doubled version).

The Days of the Week

Even though I have not yet been to the U.S. to pick up American calendars for 2010, I have accumulated several, by gift, newspaper freebies, and purchase. In addition to normal variations in calendar styles (one-page vs. monthly vs. daily agendas; pictures vs. plain text; space for writing vs. just-the-date reminder, etc.) there are a couple stylistic variations between the calendars I am used to from the U.S. and those I find in Spain.

The biggest difference is that the week in Spain, and in most of Europe, starts on Monday. So the weekly and monthly view of a calendar shows days as Monday, then Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and finally--at the far right--Sunday. I always have to look twice and check myself when verifying which day a date falls on, to make sure I am not automatically assuming a Su-M-T-W-Th-F-Sa orientation. Of course, I should look at the top grid letters, and remember that when it starts L (for lunes, Monday) and proceeds through M-X-J-V-S and concludes with D for domingo (Sunday), I'm on the Spanish calendar. Fortunately, most Spanish calendars use red ink to indicate Sunday and holidays, so all that red ink on the right side of the calendar page is another clue.

My primary calendar is a plain-looking, black book calendar, which I use as a daily agenda of what I am supposed to do, and a journal of what I actually did. I've bought one of these for only two or three euros every year that I have been in Spain. If I remember, I can look ahead to see when the holidays are coming, as each day shows the saint associated with it. Last year's had month names in five languages, including English, but this year's only has the four official Spanish languages. I had a hard time finding a Spanish version of this agenda this year--I ran into a lot of English-only editions, but if I were to buy a British version, how would I be able to find out about the Spanish holidays?

My primary picture wall calendar this year is the H.C. Andersen kalendar 2010 from Denmark, each month showing a colored reproduction of a painting by Svend Otto S. from various of Andersen's fairly tales. The Danish week also begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, and this particular calendar has another special feature that I had to look closely to observe. Each Monday there is a number showing which week of the year it is. This is very useful, as it is quite common for Danes to tell you they will be on holiday in week 19, for example, or that their summer house is available for rental from week 24 to week 25.

I have an assortment of one-page, full-year calendars--essentially advertising pieces for local newspapers or companies--that I have placed throughout the house for checking dates. My keyboard calendar is from a multilingual company that produces signage "made to measure." Its weeks begin on Monday but the days are labeled in Spanish (LMMJVSD), although the month names are only in English. The first half of the year is on one side, with a centimeter rule, and the second half is on the other side, with an inch rule.

The Costa Blanca News gave us a calendar that is a mash-up between Spanish and English. Each month is a vertical row of days, and though days and months from this British newspaper are in English only, Spanish  and British flag icons indicate holidays important to people of both countries, and holiday names are in the language of the holiday. Now I am wondering why England has three Boxing Days in 2010...maybe because Christmas falls on a Saturday?

An alliance of Scandinavian businesses in Alicante gave us a handy calendar in Spanish (the calendar is way too small to get all the Scandinavian languages on it) and this wall calendar also has numbered weeks. I find it disturbing, however. According to this calendar, we are now (on January 6) in week 2, whereas my Danish calendar shows this date in week 1. Of course, it all depends on whether the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of January started out as the first week of 2010 or finished up as the last week of 2009.

Back to my Spanish agenda, where I notice that there are very small and light letters indicating the week number. According to this one, week 1 of 2010 started on Monday, January 4. January 1, 2, and 3 comprised the last week of 2009--week 53.

There is an amusing, if little-known, short story by Hans Christian Andersen, about the Days of the Week. You can read an English translation here.

A Week of Holidays

It's been a very active week of holiday-making here at our house. Last Sunday was one of two national secular holidays in Spain, Constitution Day. Since it fell on a Sunday this year, I didn't notice much of a holiday atmosphere, although the outdoor market on Lemon Tree Road seemed busier than usual. But that was probably because people were stocking up their larders for the big religious holiday just two days later. Tuesday was La Inmaculada, the day of the Immaculate Conception. That is an important family day, demanding a big dinner and firecrackers, not necessarily in that order--the firecrackers start in the morning and can be heard sporadically throughout the day and evening.

Wednesday in our household was the birthday of the photographer of this blog, and since this was a "round birthday," i.e., one ending in zero, we had more festivities to mark the occasion than usual, and went out for a delicious Argentine dinner at the Patagonia Steak House close to us. Thursday I was a bit under the weather, but by Friday I was well enough to go into the nearby city of Torrevieja to attend the intercultural "Carols in the Square" Christmas sing-along, sponsored for the sixth year by the ayuntamiento of Torrevieja and the CoastRider, one of the English-language  newspapers serving the Costa Blanca. A small orchestra, at least five choral groups, and various dignitaries from the town welcomed hundreds--maybe thousands--of people to the town square, the Plaza de la Constitución, just in front of the church. We all sang several English-language carols and a few well-known Spanish villancicos. Afterwards we moved through the lines to view the various scenes from Torrevieja's large and impressive Belén nativity scene.

And so, the Christmas season has begun. Saturday the mercado de abastos (indoor food market) in the nearby town of Rojales was turned into a mini Christmas market, with handicrafts, decorations, gifts, and refreshments (mulled wine) made by various of the town's immigrants--German, Swedish, and English were easily identifiable. It was a relatively warm and sunny day, and many Spanish families had come to view the stalls and the many drawings that school children had done that were on display, and to sit with a glass and watch their children draw and play in the outdoor activity area. This morning, the Sunday Zoco market had more specialty food stalls than usual. The English butcher was taking orders for Christmas turkeys, the Danish baker for kransekage, and a Spanish food specialist had samples of various sausages and ham serrano, olives and olive oils, and many other good things. The English cheese shop was giving out small samples of very aged Cheddar, as usual, and today I permitted myself to buy a pound to savor later.

The Height of Autumn

Suddenly the third day after Thanksgiving, it has turned very cold (60 degrees F. outside) and we even got a little rain this Sunday in Spain, causing my laundry to remain in the washing machine overnight until the sun presumably shines again tomorrow. But this plant, whose name I do not know, outside our living room window, is in its second blooming period since we moved in last May. The bougainvillea also continue to flower--and drop their blossoms--profusely and are starting to climb up the metal arch  over the driveway gate. This past week we bought geraniums for the upstairs terrace window boxes, and the hibiscus I planted ten days ago at the front door has produced a single blossom once more since its disruption. With the fall's cooler temperatures it becomes possible to have some herbs again--we have lavender beside the front steps, and chives and thyme (tomillo, in honor of our street name ... Avenida del Tomillo) and a sprawling mint plant (hierbabuena) is still waiting to be repotted opposite this bell or trumpet plant. On the back stoop is my real find of the season, a celery plant, from which I harvested two stalks for the Thanksgiving wild rice stuffing.

We had a lovely Thanksgiving dinner, celebrating this year on Wednesday because our neighborhood association was holding its annual meeting on Thursday. It's hard to get a turkey before Christmas in this area, but I found a willing butcher at the Sunday market a few weeks ago. He delivered a much larger than necessary bird last week--7.5 kilos--but it was delicious on Thanksgiving, and the evening after, and for turkey soup for tonight's supper, and I'm sure the three meals I have in the freezer will be equally good. And someday soon I will clean up my oven from the basting broth that spilled onto its floor because the turkey really was too large for the roasting pan.

Since the season has just started to change, it doesn't seem time yet for Christmas, but we have already missed the big Christmas fair at the Norwegian church, and this week's crop of English newspapers brings word of Santa's arrival in the neighboring town of Benihofar on the 15th of December, and Christmas caroling in downtown Torrevieja on the 11th. But Christmas lasts long in Spain, not finishing until January 6, when the Three Kings bring gifts to the children. So I am going to postpone its arrival a few more days, until the December puente holiday of the Immaculate Conception, on December 8. I need a little more time to enjoy my fall plants and my Thanksgiving tablecloth before I put away brown and change to December colors, and go out to buy one of the gorgeous poinsettias I've seen in the garden shops.

All Saints Day in Barcelona

It seems as though every day is associated with a saint in Spain, but November 1 is All Saints Day, Todos los Santos. Indeed, Halloween, increasingly celebrated here on October 31 with costumes and trick-or-treating for children, started as the hallowed evening before the day of all saints. As in the U.S. for most people, now there is a disconnect between Halloween and any religious observance.

But El Día de Todos los Santos is an important holiday. One of the first signs is in the sales promotions on memorial flower arrangements in the week leading up to the festival. People do remember those in their family who have passed on. Another sign is the number of red prayer candles lit in church alcoves in honor of the dead.

I do not normally go to church on All Saints Day, but that just happened to be the day that I was able to see the Cathedral in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter. The Cathedral, officially known as Cathedral de la Santa Creu i Santa Eulalia (after the patron saint of Barcelona) and also known as La Seu, dates from 1298. Like many churches in Spain, it replaced an earlier Roman temple and a mosque, which had both been built on the same site. Many people were streaming in to visit during the early Sunday afternoon, and so many were coming out from a mass that we didn't even venture into the cathedral proper--we just wandered through the large cloister area between the street and the cathedral.

Immediately to my right upon entering the cloister was an alcove for St.Rita; of all the alcoves with their lighted prayer candles, this one had the most. The saints' stations surrounded a large tropical courtyard entirely within the cloister, and in the middle of the courtyard was a large pond with geese swimming nonchalantly, seemingly unaware of the significance of the day. But I've done some homework since returning home, and now I've learned that there probably were thirteen geese in the cloister, each representing one year in the life of Santa Eulalia, a young martyr to Christianity during Roman times.

Discovery Day

Today is a national holiday in Spain and in almost all of the Spanish-speaking world. October 12 is remembered by many U.S. citizens of my generation as the day Columbus discovered America. "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," with funding from Spain's Queen Isabella, even though he himself was Italian. Of course, we know now that Columbus was not the first European to discover the Americas: Leif Ericson had built a small colony in Newfoundland 500 years earlier, though it was short-lived. And it wasn't even really on October 12 that Christopher Columbus--or actually Rodrigo de Triana, one of his crew members--first sited land in what we now call the Bahamas. In the 15th century the Julian calendar governed; the world has since switched to the Gregorian calendar, and we should be observing the siting on October 21 instead of October 12.

In Spain, according to the Spanish-language Wikipedia, October 12 is observed as a day commemorating the beginning of contact between Europe and America, which culminated in "a meeting of two worlds" that changed visions of the world both for Europeans and for Americans. Its observance is not without controversy here any more than in the Americas--the Wikipedia entry has been edited six times since I first checked it this morning. But I continue to hold fast to the idea that encounters between the peoples of the two continents can enhance visions both in Europe and America, and at this writing, those words have not been excised from the article.

Since 1987 this day, formerly known as El Día de la Hispanidad and El Día de la Raza, has been officially called La Fiesta Nacional de España and is one of two national secular holidays (the other is Constitution Day). The day began like most fiesta days in Spain--with fireworks. Our regular 9:00 pétanque game was punctuated by sounds of firecrackers from surrounding towns and villages; rarely a minute passed without some observance of the day. Stores and businesses are closed throughout the country--our gardeners called last night to postpone their usual tidying up of our yard, saying they would be liable to heavy fines if they worked on the national holiday. And even I have given myself a day off from work to write this short post, to contemplate and celebrate connections between Spain and the Americas, and to be on the look-out for new visions.

Burying the Sardine

The first street parade I saw in Spain appeared without warning just below our living room balcony on a Sunday afternoon in spring five years ago. We sprang from the dinner table to watch colorful floats, marching bands, and young people in vibrant costumes parade down the main street of town. At the time we didn't have the slightest idea of why the procession included a large papier-mâché fish borne on the shoulders of four young men, but we came to believe it was a custom unique to Roquetas, which until 25 or 30 years ago was a small fishing village.

Since then, we have learned that this particular parade, Entierro de la Sardina, happens annually, on Sunday or Ash Wednesday, as the culmination of Carnaval, just before the beginning of Lent. There are parades like this in towns and cities all over Spain, and the fish is not unique to Roquetas. In fact, they carry a large fish--a sardine--in all the Entierro de la Sardina parades. This year I have done some research and discovered that they do, in fact, burn and bury the sardine each year at the conclusion of the parade. That would explain why it always looks a little different each year.

The funeral procession for the sardine has a spiritual significance. The sardine itself seems to represent sins and vices, the sense of abandon expressed in the festival--and it is true that the noise, dance, and some costumes rival those I have seen in Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans. The cremation of the fish represents cleansing and liberation. The interment of the sardine, then, is a symbol of the burial of the past and subsequent rebirth of spirit--renewed, transformed and more forceful and powerful.

Los Belenes - Ancient Worlds in Miniature

It's the eleventh day of Christmas. Since last Sunday in Spain we've managed a few other festivals. The Day of the Innocents is a sort of Spanish April Fool's Day. Las Moragas in Roquetas de Mar is a giant beach-front afternoon and evening picnic, where groups light bonfires and cook fish in honor of the town's past life as a fishing village. Of course, we've also observed New Year's Eve and Day. Also during the week we went downtown in Torrevieja to view the annual municipal Belén, literally, Bethlehem.

The Belenes, which appear in every town during the Christmas season, are in the tradition of nativity scenes, but much more. A Belén shows not only Jesus, Mary, and Joseph in the stable, not only the shepherds watching their flocks by night, not only the Wise Men coming from distant lands to Bethlehem. Belenes are small-scale reproductions of entire towns in ancient times. So you will see common houses with cooking facilities and laundry hanging on a clothes line, a bakery, the outdoor market, perhaps a school, carts and animals, and always something unique to the town in which the particular Belen has been constructed.

The Torrevieja Belén filled more than a third of the area of a city block in the plaza in front of the church and town hall. The landscapes and buildings, with bonsai-sized vegetation and miniature human figures, were mounted on waist-high tables in a long rectangle. Some observers proceeded in an orderly fashion through the entire story around the rectangular block. Others milled in and out to view specific scenes, which were not necessarily in historical sequence. The Torrevieja Belén showed more religious history than I have seen before in a Belen, or perhaps I recognized more because scenes were labeled: the tax decree, Mary visiting her sister Isobel, the couple asking for lodging at the inn, the announcement to the shepherds, the three kings on their travels, Jesus at the temple, the flight to Egypt.

Each town has its own Belén, and part of the tradition is to celebrate the daily life of the specific municipality itself in ancient times. Torrevieja got its industrial and commercial start from its two salt lakes--the industry continues and people tell me that Torrevieja still supplies salt for the removal of snow from New York City streets. So the Belén showed laborers hacking out salt and loading it up for transportation. Especially in the eastern areas of Spain, I learned this year, at least one scene is created to connect the spiritual with the mundane. The Torrevieja Belén showed the consternation of a driver of a horse-drawn cart, fully laden, that had just lost one of its wheels, and in another scene, someone had slipped on steps and was tumbling head over heels. A nearby town, I understand, offered a young man relieving himself behind a tree.

You can find Belenes in many places during the holiday season: department stores, hotels, restaurants, offices, senior citizen dwellings. The largest and most elaborate Belén in each community is sponsored by the local government--not the church. No concern about mixing church and state in this regard! Since the death of Franco (1975), sentiment has grown against Catholicism and the Church, which was complicit in his dictatorship. Spain has officially guaranteed its citizens religious freedom since the 1978 Constitution. But no one demonstrates against the Belenes. In fact, there are competitions and museums to highlight the best. The Belenes show history, and Spaniards acknowledge, respect, and hold in affection the common history of mankind as they see it in the Belén.

Twelve Grapes for Good Luck in the New Year

I had observed last year that the price of fresh grapes, always high in my area of Spain, seemed even higher the last week of the year. Especially seedless grapes. But the price of fresh grapes was nothing in comparison to the price of the small cans of seedless, peeled grapes that appear in mountainous displays in the grocery stores in the days leading up to New Year's Eve (Noche Vieja).

The Spanish custom of eating twelve grapes at midnight on December 31st began almost a hundred years ago. By most accounts, 1909 unexpectedly produced a bumper crop of grapes in Alicante, so the grape growers came up with the superstition that if you swallow a grape at each stroke of the clock as the old year passes into the new, you will have good luck for each of the twelve months in the new year.

I bought my supply of green, seedless grapes several days ago, because I saw them for 1,50€ for a half kilo and I thought that was a bargain. Sure enough, later in the week I saw them elsewhere for 1,75€ or even 2,25€. My first New Year in Spain I had bought a package of three small cans--three individual servings--for €3 or 5€, thinking there must be something special about them. Individual servings of 12 grapes are also now packaged, conveniently enough, in tall fluted plastic glasses that can be filled with cava, the very acceptable Spanish answer to champagne, immediately after the grapes are gone. At Eroski, a local hypermarket, the individual cava glasses with grapes were selling for 1€ each two days ago. New Year's Eve afternoon, when I stopped by at 5:30 to pick up a fresh baguette, they were already marked down to 30 euro cents apiece.

The standard timekeeper for the turn of the year in Spain is the tower clock on the Correos (post office) building in the Puerta del Sol plaza in Madrid. I'm not sure whether the twelve strokes of midnight actually toll at the rate of one every second, but I am sure that they are not spaced long enough apart for me to down twelve grapes in a row and be finished by the start of the new year--I haven't made it yet. I have learned that seedless grapes are required, and next year I am going to further prepare them by peeling the skin away.

Even though I didn't make it through my twelve grapes by the end of 2008, my glass did get filled with cava, which tastes remarkably good with green grapes. That's an auspicious start to a new year, and marking the end of the old one by listening to the clock strike twelve certainly seems more appropriate that watching a ball drop.

Happy New Year! ¡Buen año nuevo!

Twelve Days of Christmas

In Spain, the real Christmas holiday begins on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve) and doesn't end until the Epiphany on January 6th, also known as Three Kings Day, and the morning on which children may open the gifts brought to them the previous night by the three wise men. That's why, when I stopped by Carrefour yesterday, the place was still bustling, and not with returns. There were big signs indicating 20% descuentos on toy purchases, and kids were there in force, trying out video games, Wii, and other amusements that I don't need to know about.

Adults were around, too, still buying heavily in the gustatory entertainment sections, whether for gifts for others or for themselves. There were plenty of magnums of whisky and other liquors available, as well as huge Iberian hams, often sold together with their hanging apparatus. The line--well, it wasn't a line, but a large crowd--at the fresh fish counter was noisy and cheerful, despite considerable waits.

I rather like the distribution of the holidays over several days. For years all the planning and preparation for the season was a weight: Buying gifts, wrapping and mailing them, writing the holiday letter, sending it, feeling guilty that it arrived late. Planning food, shopping, baking, cooking, hoping that everything turns out OK. Calling far-flung family members on the holiday itself. I felt that I always missed Christmas in some ways, being so busy getting things done that it was here and gone by the time I got the spirit. Now my Christmas spirit generally makes an appearance at several points during the twelve days of Christmas.

Our Christmas began this year on Christmas Eve, as it usually does, but this time we had dinner at the local Danish restaurant, where Anita prepared the traditional roast pork and duck, with red cabbage, white and caramelized potatoes, and delicious gravy. Shrimp cocktail Danish style for the starter, rice pudding for dessert. We had music, Secret Santa gifts, good conversation, and even a magic show--I came away with both arms intact even after one was "sawed off."

Christmas Day itself (first Christmas day) brought very warm and sunny weather again, and we sat outside with no coat or jacket for drinks and snacks with new friends before another traditional Danish Christmas dinner. Time just flew and before we knew it, it was too late to take that walk around the neighborhood.

Second Christmas day we played pétanque and enjoyed more perfect weather. The third day of Christmas was still dry (I'm speaking of the weather) but slightly less sunny. It was time to catch up on sending Christmas greetings by email to friends at a distance, and to telephone some family. I've also been enjoying the fruits of my limited Christmas cooking this year--my family's favorite chocolate cookies and Johannes' favorite American casserole, both of which become luxury foods due to their reliance on specific American ingredients.

Today is a little cloudy, but still a healthy 60 degrees F. outside. My goal today is to get downtown to see the traditional Spanish Belén scene at the plaza in Torrevieja. Or if not today, maybe tomorrow. By my count, we still have eight days.

Happy fourth day of Christmas!

The Holiday Season

Official holidays in Spain are of two types: National holidays and local holidays. Here in Torrevieja we are in the midst of both.

The first week in December is a big holiday season all over the country; it's the puente of December. Literally "bridges," puentes are not unlike "long weekends" in the U.S. If a holiday falls on a Friday or a Monday, it's generally a three-day holiday, and that's long enough for the travel industry to start advertising short puente holidays to other regions of Spain, especially the Balearic or Canary Islands, or to European capital cities. Of course, if a holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday, it's much better--a longer holiday, perhaps a longer trip. And if it falls on Wednesday, you've hit the jackpot: Your bridge to the weekend is even longer.

There are lots of puentes; if there isn't one this month, there will be one next month. The December puente is special because it is anchored by two national holidays, one political, one religious. Constitution Day is December 6 and the Day of the Immaculate Conception is December 8). That means two days, separated by a single one, in which stores and businesses are closed, airports and highways are busy, and people are generally unavailable. Of course, many people take both days plus the bridge day between as their holiday. This year is unusual and perhaps somewhat disappointing; the puente between these two holidays consists only of Sunday. But think of the possibilities when either of the holidays falls next to the weekend, or, better yet, when they fall on Tuesday and Thursday! You may be able to stretch your puente to the entire week and two weekends.

Both Constitution Day and Immaculate Conception are national holidays, and because I've been in Spain for a few years, I was aware of them in advance. But since we've been in the Torrevieja area for less than a year, I didn't know a thing about the local holiday that has caused banks to close at noon every day this week. Judging by the people gathered outside the banks between noon and 2:00 (the usual closing time), a lot of locals didn't know, either. I found out about Torrevieja's local festivities honoring the city's patron saint the way I get most of my local news--from one of the free English-language weekly newspapers, after the fact. That's the difference between national and local holidays: national holidays are noted on standard calendars all over the country; local holidays are noted in passing, and I write them in my diary and try to remember to look in advance next year, so I know they are coming.

In our family, we have another holiday on December 9, a birthday. So this year our puente is taking us to the island of Mallorca, not far off the Alicante coast in the Mediterranean. More on that next Sunday in Spain.

And you probably thought I was going to write about Christmas!