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.

Domingo de Ramos

This Sunday in Spain is Domingo de Ramos, Palm Sunday, and it dawned bright and early. Earlier than normal, because this year it is also the day for cambio de hora, when we spring our clocks forward one hour to march from Winter time to Summer time. Actually we turned the clocks ahead last night (Saturday) before going to bed, even though the time change occurs at 2:00 AM on Sunday, as it also does in the U.S. It just occurs on a different date than in the U.S. For the past few weeks, there have been only five hours difference in time between Spain and the east coast U.S. Normally there are six hours difference, and now, thank goodness, it is again six hours. It's amazing how that one hour of difference can upset my orientation so much.

So I was feeling good this morning to get back to my regular mental time framework, and then there was the added bonus that the weather was great. I won two games of pétanque, and then we drove into the country to enjoy the day. During pétanque I had let my lower legs see the light of day for the first time in several months, and before driving out I also changed to a sleeveless blouse, exposing my upper arms to the sun for the first time in ages.

We stopped at a do-it-yourself car wash and vacuum station and gave the Ford a long-awaited spring cleaning. Then we just followed the interesting roads and before we knew it, we were in the small village of Torremendo, on the western side of a large lake. The lake turned out to be a reservoir, or a pantano, as we learned when we paused for a café con leche and media tostada while wandering on foot through the village. A man stopped to explain how great the fishing was now at the pantano--among other things, you could catch trucha americana, American trout, whatever that is. However, most establishments sported signs saying ¡Vertedero No! (No to the garbage dump) and I slowly realized that perhaps the man had been trying to tell us that the fishing would be threatened if a regional garbage dump comes to town.

There were lots of people out on the street in this tiny town on Palm Sunday morning. We heard the church clock strike three times on the quarter hour while we were there, and a few families were making their way from church carrying palm and olive branches as a traditional recuerdo of the day. We walked around a little more after our snack and then drove even further inland, to the Region of Murcia, before taking back roads again into the Valencia Region, where we stopped for a lunch of grilled lamb chops. The pharmacy temperature gauge showed 24 degrees (75 C.) as we came through Algorfa on the way home at mid-afternoon, but now at 6:30 I have a long-sleeved sweater on again as the sun is going down. It's spring, but the nights are still cool.

Health Care in Spain

This Sunday in Spain I am going to be watching the health care vote in the United States. Whether it passes--and whatever it may be that eventually squeaks through--it will still be years, or decades, before the U.S. has overall health care as good as that in Spain.

The key word, of course, is "overall." The U.S. has excellent health care for those who can pay. It's just that fewer and fewer individuals and companies can afford to pay exorbitant rates for health insurance and procedures. In Spain, if you are a legal resident, you can get pretty good health care for free, and if you want to pay, you can get health care equal to the best in the world. Spain has a public healthcare system that is administered through its 26 autonomous regions. That's why, when we moved from Roquetas de Mar in Andalucía to Alicante in the Valencia region, we had to get new health cards. Spain also has a thriving industry of private healthcare providers. I have used both public and private services during the years I have been in Spain.

This week I was approved in the public system for a cataract operation. Yes, I have to wait. There are three boxes on my authorization form: my condition is not Urgent, nor is it Preferred. It's just Ordinary. Within three months, the ophthalmologist at my regional Centro de Especialidades told me, I will get a phone call from the Vega Baja hospital. Then I will go in to talk with the specialists there, and it may take up to a month after that before the operation can take place. Well, I don't mind waiting, since with my particular eye history and my complicated schedule, I'm not quite ready to look this laser in the eye just yet. But it is amazing to me, as an American who has experienced several private insurance plans over the years, been in a few HMOs, and paid a lot for private individual insurance, to think that I might have this surgical procedure without producing money or processing paperwork. All I have to do is show my card.

All my previous eye care in Spain has been through private providers, because it occurred before I became a legal resident and obtained my health card. It was excellent, with the most up-to-date equipment and knowledgeable personnel. Because I had experienced the same procedures in the U.S., I can say that the Spanish care was equal to that in the U.S. The costs, though considerable, were significantly less--about half.

I have also used private care for a couple minor walk-in problems--a bad back spasm, a mysterious skin rash--and paid prices that I believe are comparable to what I would pay in the U.S. as a non-insured patient. When I severely twisted my ankle on a Saturday night just before getting ready to leave for Argentina on Monday, however, I went to the public clinic, because it was open on Sunday, and they sent me on to the public hospital for X-rays, binding up, and prescriptions for crutches, a painkiller, and injections to avoid complications during air travel. Since I did not at that time have my health card, I got a bill for that service a few weeks later, payable to the teller at the corner bank--a total of something like 117 euros and some cents, obviously the amount that some accountant has figured that particular event costs the system.

I do have some complaints about health care in Spain. Over-the-counter medications are expensive, so my suitcase on returning from the U.S. is always packed with the Meijer or Target equivalent of aspirin, vitamin and mineral supplements, and Ocuvite (which I can get here, but at more than twice the price). Medications prescribed by a private practice are also expensive, but the same compound prescribed through the public system is free. Dental care is not a part of the public system, so there is lots of competition among lots of dental practices.

Spaniards can buy medical insurance if they want to use the services of private practices, and judging from the number of Spaniards I have seen in the waiting rooms of the private clinics I have been in, they do. Private practices are also heavily used by foreigners who do not have access to the health card or who prefer medical staff who speak their own language, or at least English.

Public and private health care seems to work quite well in Spain, providing several options for the diverse population. I expect to continue to be a consumer of both. I wish the options were as good for people in the United States.

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).

Speaking of Spanish

Speaking of Spanish, as I was immediately prior to this post, there was an interesting article in yesterday's Babelia section of El País titled something like "The Economic Strength of a Rounded Language." The "rounded language" is Spanish; the allusion is credited to former Colombian president Belisario Betancur, who said that when the Spanish discovered America and proved that the earth was round, Spanish began to become a rounded language.

Spanish is spoken by 440 million people in the world. It is the official language of 21 countries and is accepted as a strong second language in the United States and in Brazil.

An ingenious graphic accompanying the article in print, but alas, not in the online version, shows circles representing countries in which Spanish is spoken, sized proportionally to the number of Spanish speakers. The largest circle is for Mexico, but curiously the number of Spanish speakers is missing from this one country. The next largest circle is for Colombia (41,129,000), which is larger than Argentina (36,060,000) and Spain (40,026,000). The United States shows 36,305,000, which is far closer to the number of those in Spain than I ever would have guessed.

The article is part of a special section in the cultural magazine celebrating the 5th international congress of the Spanish language (V Congreso Internacional de la Lengua Española) that was scheduled to take place in Valparaiso, Chile from March 2-5, 2010. Chile, before the earthquake, was listed at 15,015,000 Spanish speakers. Babelia is "moving the cancelled congress to the Internet" with a special publishing program during the coming week under the title "Lost Papers."

¡Vive en España!

"¡Vive en España!" That's what the Spanish man in the waiting room at the local health clinic said incredulously to the woman with whom he was chatting across the aisle, as an English man disappeared through the door into the doctor's office. And he sighed. And the meaning was clear: "This man lives in Spain. Why can't he speak Spanish?"

The English man had asked us, as he rose to take his turn when Johannes and I came out of the doctor's office, "How do you say "It's getting better" in Spanish?" And Johannes, ever helpful and a near-native speaker of Spanish, volunteered to go into the office with him and help him say to the doctor that it--whatever it was--was getting better, and perhaps to facilitate the conversation a little more. After all, we had just come out of that same doctor's office, and we knew he spoke no English, that he spoke Spanish very quickly and not clearly, and that he was difficult to understand even if you were a near-native speaker.

I sighed when I heard "¡Vive en España!" because it was said in exactly the same tone and with the same disapproval that I have heard too many Americans express when talking about Hispanics and other immigrants in the U.S. "But they live in the U.S....!" and presumably should be able to speak English on demand.

I sighed because I always suspected, and because I now know from experience, that it is one thing to be able to speak Spanish, or any foreign language, and another thing entirely to be able to speak it well enough to feel competent when the subject matter is technical or the situation is stressful.

I sighed because I know that I, despite many years of studying and practicing Spanish in the past, and many more scheduled for the future, know in my bones that there will most likely be times ahead when I will not feel comfortable or competent--in the medical emergencies, legal proceedings, and other dependent situations that must be faced as we get older.

And I sighed because I wanted to be able to explain to the Spanish man and his conversation partner that most of us foreigners know that we should try harder in Spanish, and some of us do try harder than others, but that proficiency and fluidity in a foreign language do not necessarily come with a certain degree of effort or after a certain number of years--and definitely not when one moves to a new country at the age of 60 or more--and that speaking to a doctor can be one of those emotional circumstances that just seem to make you forget whatever it is that you have learned....and that all of this is no excuse.

But this matter of hearing, for the first time, two local Spanish residents give vent to some impatience and frustration with the large number of European immigrants that Spain by and large has welcomed to its Mediterranean coast for decades, made me a little surprised and emotional. And I did not trust myself to be able to embark on a complicated conversation about language in a language in which I am not fluent. So I did not take upon my shoulders the burden of defending immigrants with insufficient language skills. I buried my head in my book and continued reading in Spanish until the man and his translator emerged from the doctor's office.

Microsoft Research Center in Torrevieja

For two weeks, the free foreign newspapers in the southern part of Valencia Community have been buzzing with the news that Microsoft was considering establishing a health research center in Torrevieja. Details in most of these papers are usually sorely lacking, and this time has been no exception. Since most of these newspapers are weeklies, it's been hard getting a straight and up-to-date story. Not only was Torrevieja in the running for the Microsoft center, but also the larger cities of Alicante itself (the provincial capital) and Valencia (the Community capital). But the latest round of the free press seems to be saying that the new and very modern Torrevieja hospital has won out over the the capital cities.

Now the national paper, El País, is lending credence to Torrevieja's win. Yesterday's newspaper carried a story saying that Bill Gates had received Community president Francisco Camps at Microsoft headquarters "in the American state of Washington" (which was more likely than some of the reports that said the meeting had occurred in Washington, DC). But El País still reports that Camps had gone to lobby for the Valencian Community--specifically one of the capital cities. Apparently it is Microsoft that prefers Torrevieja, based on a successful installation of Microsoft's "Florence" medical system software that has helped reduce the average waiting time for emergency intakes by 50%--from an hour to a half hour--over the past year.

It's not clear to me that the Microsoft research center is going to do anything more than research even further improvements in software development. The 300 square meter facility is supposed to employ ten people and cost the Community, Telefónica, and CAM bank 800,000 euros over two years. But the story is getting a lot of play locally, as just the latest in the accolades accorded to the very modern and efficient Torrevieja hospital since its establishment in 2006. So far I've only driven past the huge campus less than half an hour from my home, but I suspect that at some point in the future I'll have need of its services. So it's nice to know that the computer systems will be up to date.

新年快乐 The Year of the Tiger

 Tired and very hungry after putting the finishing touches on Johannes' upcoming art exhibition at Procomobel, and then shopping for glasses and paper goods for the opening reception, we just had to have some lunch at 2:00 yesterday afternoon. So we fell into the Chinese restaurant next to our closest shopping center for a quick meal. It was only the second time that we have eaten Chinese in Spain. The first time was about a year ago, when our rental house suddenly lost power late one winter afternoon, and it was freezing and dark both inside and out. We walked across the street to the only restaurant that had lights, where we were surprised to be able to order Peking duck, a dish that normally requires 24 hours notice in the U.S. It was excellent, and we took enough home with us for a second--or was it a third--meal later on in the week.

Yesterday we found that the specialty was a buffet, but we didn't want to gorge ourselves, so we ordered from the menu. No Peking duck this time. Chinese-Spanish food is different from Chinese-American. We had a choice of spring rolls (five small ones) and sweet-sour soup for starters, and then a choice of curried chicken or spicy chicken with white rice, fried rice, or French fries. Yes, French fries are a standard accompaniment to a main dish in Spain, or, as chips, for the numerous English living here. Beverage was included in the price of the meal. No tea. Again we had the typical Spanish option: a glass of red wine or bottled water, in our case, one of each. My chicken was delightfully spicy, but the rice was simply white rice pilaf--no frying evident. In fact, there was a marked  absence of soy sauce--nothing noticeable in the sauces of either dish, and nothing on the table. Dessert was another typically Spanish choice: ice cream or flan. When my tiny portion of ice cream came, it was in a little individual plastic container just as I might have bought it at a seaside refreshment stand or in quantity at the supermarket. When it was time to pay the 11 euros for our two lunches, we did not get any tidbits of pineapple or fortune cookies, as one often gets in Chinese-American restaurants. Instead we were urged to try the complimentary fruit liqueur, a non-alcoholic variety that is often offered after a filling meal in Spain. The peach was lovely and the apple was also.

It seemed like a fitting way to celebrate Chinese New Year's, and our English and Chinese speaking server obligingly told us how to say Happy New Year in Chinese before we left: xīn nián kuài lè. And I did remember how to say it until I got home. But I had to look up how to spell it.

Settling In

I was home again to our house in Montebello by Tuesday noon this week. The clear and sunny sky that greeted me at the Alicante airport disappeared soon, and we had two gloomy and cold days, and I missed the central heat of houses in the U.S. But on Friday morning the sun came out and warmed the rooftop terrace to above 70 degrees, so I did some laundry and hung it out to dry. When I came home from our pétanque game and a wine-tasting preview that evening, I started another load of clothes in the washer so I could be the first person within view of my rooftop to hang clothes out on Saturday morning. It proved worthwhile--Saturday was as beautiful and warm as Friday had been, and I did two more loads of laundry.

This Sunday morning I opened the bathroom window to enjoy the view and listen to the birds as I prepared for the day. We walked by the orange grove--oranges still on the trees, and brighter orange than a month ago--to our own pétanque playing field in Montebello, and I won two games out of two. Then we went to the outdoor Sunday market (Zoco), which was very crowded today with people out enjoying the sunny weather. Strawberries are coming into season and every produce stall had them, but I'll wait for a week or two until the price comes down and they look a little more ripe, and in the meantime be content with the sweet and juicy mandarins that smell like spring as soon as I thumb one open for our fruit salad at lunchtime. I was comfortable in sandals without socks and just a thin undershirt and linen open-necked blouse--maybe I can put away the turtlenecks and heavy socks I brought back from Ohio with me.

We sat in our sunroom for soup, fruit salad, and two big rundstykker rolls from the Danish baker at the market. Goldie rolled around on the tile floor catching sun rays, and we enjoyed the view of our trumpet plant that is once again blooming, now for the third time since last May. And tried to fathom that people are digging out from 28 inches of snow or more on the mid-Atlantic coast.

"And sorry I could not travel both..."

This Sunday, and indeed most of the Sundays in January, I am not in Spain. Instead, today I am traveling west from Cincinnati to Chicago, where I will overnight in a hotel near O'Hare and slowly accustom myself to a long flight back to Madrid and then to Alicante.

The sun shone brightly, but it was cold as we gathered at the MegaBus stop in downtown Cincinnati Sunday morning. and even though I hate to end what has been a comfortable and happy visit with my family, I began to look forward to the 65 degree weather that my husband assures me is waiting in Spain. The bus was not full and though only a single piece of luggage is permitted, the attendant kindly accommodated the second suitcase that I had carefully packed with valuables retrieved from the depths of boxes in one sister's walk-in closet, which help me to integrate my past lives with my current life in Spain.

I gazed out the window as we headed west on Interstate 74 toward Indianapolis, where I had lived for a short time, and enjoyed the view. The sun continued shining onto idle brown farmland, and hundreds of tall, straight deciduous trees spidered feathered branches over the clear blue sky. I shot fleeting glances at the Middle Eastern-looking man seated in front of me, who had jumped on board five minutes late, after the luggage door was sealed, and even after the front door was closed, carrying only a white plastic shopping bag, jolting me into realizing that there had been no security check at all in purchasing my ticket and boarding the bus. He had immediately taken out his cell phone upon seating and spoken so softly and briefly into it that I could not tell what language was spoken. Inter-city train rides that I have taken in Spain require a baggage and person check now, and I am sorry that regardless of where in the world I live, the wariness that I felt is normal now.

As we neared Indianapolis I saw street names and places that I remember from the six or seven years ago that I was there, but we came through a different route to central downtown than I, then living on the west side, knew. I understood where I was and where I was going, but I didn't really recognize the journey. Beyond the Indianapolis pick-up we turned north onto Interstate 65 to continue our diagonal trip across this narrow state, and I sent silent mental messages to friends I remembered  in Eagle Creek, Zionsville, and later, Lafayette, and even later, Munster, Indiana.

I-65 beyond Lafayette has got to be one of the most boring interstates in the U.S. Not ugly, but the road stretches on forever through long stretches of flat farmland that now have only tiny groves of trees near a farm house or to delineate borders of fields. A large windmill farm appeared near a town called Fowler, the individual mills spaced much farther apart from each other here than those I have seen in Spain and Denmark (we have so much space in the U.S.) and all today turning slowly. What keeps you awake on this boring road, though, are the hundreds of 18-wheeler trucks zipping by on their way to and from the central states distribution hub of Chicago.

Finally, after five hours,  one time zone change, and slightly ahead of schedule, we arrived near Union Station, Chicago, where I retrieved my two suitcases and found a taxi to take me out to my O'Hare hotel. This is proving to be an excellent place to harbor myself as I slowly take leave of the U.S. and move myself, my things, and my mind back to my home now in Spain.

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.

Spain's Big Chill

The BBC reported yesterday that a big chill was bringing cold and misery to millions of Europeans. I didn't need the BBC to tell me. It's been cold and miserable for about two weeks on the Costa Blanca and in other parts of Spain, too. Even though we didn't experience anywhere near the problems that many others faced in central and northern Europe, we had uncharacteristically cold weather, and lots of inconvenience.

Outdoor temperatures have been in the single digits Celsius. That's in the 30s, Fahrenheit. I finally got out all my winter clothes, and I wore as many of them at one time as I could get over each other--four layers being about as many as I could fit. It may not have been as bad as it seemed, except for the fact that we had had the warmest November in 140 years. Then again, I think it was as bad as it could get, though not the outdoor part.

In a land where central heat and thermalpane windows are virtually unknown, long-term cold seeps into the houses, and it stays there, right on top of the beautiful ceramic tile flooring and marble stairways. We got out all the area rugs we could find--even the ugly ones--and we bought a large new carpet that almost covers the living room floor. We wheeled in a small portable electric radiator and turned on the electric wall air conditioner/heater in the adjoining dining room so we could sit, huddled in blankets, while watching reports from the global warming energy summit in Copenhagen. My upstairs office has the only other portable electric heater in the house, though we occasionally moved it to the bathroom during shower time. I went to bed early and read under the warm down comforter, my feet encased in down slipper boots, and moaned when I had to take one hand out from under the comforter to turn pages. I refused to get up in the morning until the wall heater had been on for a half hour. My neighbor told me that she was going to bed and not getting up until March!

In desperation, we went to the Ambifuego store and made a purchase that we had been hoping to put off until we had been in the house for a year. We ordered a propane-fueled fireplace insert that "burns" fake charcoal. In this season of miracles, they told us that they could install it in just a week--on December 24. As I write, the installation man is fitting the wires to the propane bottles, and I expect soon to be called downstairs for lessons in how to work this heater.

Of course, the weather finally broke, and yesterday was in the balmy 60s F. We take full credit. If we hadn't made this major purchase now, I am convinced, the weather would have stayed cold for months. It just goes to show, you do have to throw some money at the problem to get a better indoor climate. I'm glad to have an alternative to using so much electricity, but I'm even more glad just to get warm again.

A New Panhispanic Spanish Grammar

The Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española, was published on December 10 by the Real Academia Española, the Royal Academy of Spain, which is the official body that determines "correct" Spanish. It is noteworthy because:

• it's the first academic update since 1931,
• it was eleven years in the making, and
• it was a panhispanic cooperative effort of 20 Academies of the Spanish Language and is the first time that such a work reflects "all the varieties of Spanish."

Objectives are to describe general Spanish usage as well as to reflect variants, to offer recommendations regarding usage, and to act as a reference in the understanding and teaching of Spanish. For the first time, it pays special attention to American usage, and it takes into account usage from a variety of types of sources: literary, educational, scientific, journalistic, and oral.

The complete work comes in two volumes of 4032 pages (for 120 euros), but smaller versions are also available: a 750-page manual, and a 250-page basic grammar text.

More information is available in Spanish from the Real Academia Española website and in English in an Associated Press story.

The Spanish Constitution

Last Sunday (December 6) was Constitution Day in Spain, but I didn't read the newspaper until Monday. So I didn't know until later that a whopping 84% of Spaniards believe that their constitution needs reform.

And it's only 31 years old!

To be fair, not everyone thinks the constitution needs a total overhaul. According to the poll, 65% believe that some fine-tuning would be sufficient to improve the law, while 26% want a complete reformation. But even though 69% say that the Constitution represents the ideas of all (and not any given political party or ideology), only 12% think it is good as it stands.

So what needs fine-tuning?

70% would like to regulate the use of co-official languages in the autonomous regions.
61% would like to give legal immigrants the right to vote in all elections.
51% would like to eliminate references giving special attention to the Catholic Church.
51% would like to eliminate the distinction between nationalities and regions.

Some of this is difficult for a foreigner to understand, but it is related to the fact that a recent controversial statute has used the term "nation" in regards to the autonomous region of Cataluña. A related question in the survey asked, "Do you believe that Cataluña is really a nation?" and 79% of all Spanish respondents opined that it is not. Of Catalans, 54% believe that their region is a nation, while 42% do not. And regarding the question of whether public organizations and businesses in Cataluña should use Catalan and Spanish equally, the majority say yes. But there is a marked difference in the numbers: 82% of Catalans believe that Spanish and Catalan should be used equally in public affairs, while only 58% of those living in other parts of Spain believe so.

It seems to me that most Spaniards are more than willing to share their country and its governance with the mass of foreigners now living here legally, and that they want to legitimize linguistic diversity throughout the country, while retaining a common language.

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.

Oranges Turning Orange

Back in August I noted that the oranges trees that border our Montebello neighborhood had produced oranges, but that the oranges were still green. They stayed green for a very long time. Some time in October--I think it was just after the gota fría--we happened to see the farmer doing some work in the grove early one morning and asked him when the oranges would be ripe for harvest. "Mayo" (May), he said. That seemed improbable to me. After all, the oranges were already really large. But they were also still emerald green.

Now the first Sunday in December, the oranges have turned orange. It's been happening over the past couple weeks, and that prompted me to wonder how, and why, oranges turn orange. Is it similar to the way the leaves on the trees of New Hampshire turn yellow and orange and red in the fall? Do oranges also need warm, sunny days, but cool nights, to turn orange?

I've spent the better part of the afternoon searching on the Internet for information about why and how oranges turn orange, and it hasn't been as easy as I thought. Searching both in English and Spanish, I didn't find much about why they turn from green to orange. I did find a lot about how they can be made orange from green in a post-harvest process called "de-greening," or el desverdizado, so as to make the mature fruit more appealing to the consumer. It seems to be generally accepted both in Spain and in the U.S. to "de-green" oranges after they leave the tree.

But what was even more startling to learn was that oranges, if left on the tree, may actually revert to green after they have become orange. That would happen when the weather turns too warm, because it is cool temperatures that kill the green chlorophyll pigments and allow the yellow carotenoids beneath to show through. It starts getting warmer in May in Spain, so I'm thinking that perhaps the orange grove owner meant that by May his harvest of oranges would be done, because otherwise they would start turning green again. And though green oranges are mature, they are not appetizing to many consumers.

Today I feel doubly lucky. First, I'm lucky to live by an orange grove, and second, to see fruit that is actually orange, still on the tree, and not yet harvested. Now I'm watching to see when these fruits are actually harvested, and whether any turn green again before next May.

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.

Multilingual Spain

Suddenly I found myself missing a piece of a tooth this past week, so I stopped in at the nearest dentist's office on Thursday morning. This dentist had been recommended by some Danish friends, who said she was Swedish. So we spoke Scandinavian as we made an apppointment for the following afternoon. Most Danes and Swedes can understand each other if they speak their own language and listen carefully. Since I'm not a native speaker of Danish, I listened very carefully, and we slid over to English to discuss payment and estimated price, as there was a sign (only in Spanish) saying that credit cards were not accepted.

Friday afternoon I arrived in the office five minutes early and was greeted by a Spanish-speaking hygienist/receptionist, who promptly asked me, in English, to fill out a form. I sat with one other woman for fifteen minutes, reading a British edition of Good Housekeeping. It turned out that the other woman was waiting for her husband, who eventually appeared with my dentist, and the three chatted rapidly in French about dogs and cats. When that patient was dismissed, I was asked, in Spanish, to come up to a treatment room. My dentist kept up a running conversation with the hygienist in Spanish throughout the entire filling replacement, only breaking into English to chide me about not flossing enough, and into Rumanian to talk with her daughter on the phone--it turns out that the Swedish dentist had emigrated from Rumania to Sweden at a young age.

The hygienist/receptionist showed me down to the office and accepted payment, and we made an appointment for X-rays in a couple weeks--in a mixture of Spanish and English. I still had a half hour before I would be picked up by my Danish escort, so I walked over to the notions store to look for some cava glasses, and listened to the two shopkeepers chattering in Chinese to a background of English Costa radio, and then to Lidl for a few items for supper, and overheard several Germans doing their weekend shopping.

The Palms of Elche

In 2000, the city of Elche became a UNESCO World Heritage site for its palm groves. There are about 200,000 of them, according to our guide, and that is about equal to the human population, too. It's the largest palm plantation in Europe and one of the largest in the world. We had walked through some of the palm gardens before, but this time we went to the Huerto de Cura, the Priest's Garden.

It is a beautiful garden, indeed, and we saw lots of palm trees and other botanical marvels during our one-hour visit. One of the notable sites is the Imperial Palm,  which was named for the Empress Consort of the Austrian Emperor Franz Josef, who visited the palmera in 1894. It has multiple stems in the shape of candelabra, or perhaps a crown, and it's held upright by metal bands and wires.

 

The Lady of Elche

When I headed off to the city of Elche on a day bus trip with the Danish Friends Club last Thursday, I thought I was going to see some of the 200,000 palm trees in that UNESCO World Heritage city. But three kilometers before getting to Elche proper we stopped at an archeological site in L'Alcúdia to see the Dama de Elche (Lady of Elche), or at least, a reproduction. According to our two guides, the Lady of Elche was discovered by a sixteen-year-old boy in 1897 who was working on the private farm where the museum and archeological site now are situated. He thought he had encountered a very large stone while digging in a field, but carefully unearthed a polychrome stone statue of the head of a woman. Shortly after the discovery, the bust was whisked off to the Louvre in Paris, but returned to Spain in the 1940s. The statue is noted by experts as a well-preserved piece of Iberian art dating from the 5th century BC and is key in claims of Spaniards that there was an Iberian culture here before the Romans, Moors, and Christians.

The original now is displayed in Madrid in the national archeological museum, so we saw a reproduction. In fact, we saw many reproductions, because part of the hundred-year anniversary celebration in 1997 was the creation and placement on the grounds of several imaginative larger-than-lifesize artistic interpretations. I've since read about art historian John Moffitt's claim that the Lady is a forgery--a controversy that neither of our guides mentioned--but the family on whose farm it was found preserved the location and privately financed archeological excavations through the next three generations, before getting public authorities to take over the project. There are lots of artifacts in a small museum today; archeological work is continuing with the University of Alicante. A pre-Roman temple has been unearthed and we were cautioned not to take anything from the grounds, as it could be a relic.

It was an unexpectedly delightful morning adventure, even though it did delay our arrival at the palmera. The grounds are extensive and it was a beautifully crisp fall day. We walked a lot, and you can even rent bikes to get around. Perhaps next spring we'll take a picnic and go visit the Dama de Elche again and see what else has been found.

Sagrada Familia

Probably the most famous attraction in Barcelona is the Sagrada Familia, the unfinished modern cathedral designed by Antoni Gaudí, the architect whose name is practically synonymous with Barcelona. Even though I had read about the site, and seen pictures, I was not prepared for the experience of walking through this building.

For me, the fact that it is still under construction is one of its most interesting aspects. Sagrada Familia was begun in 1882 and has a projected finish date of 2030. Gaudí became associated with the site in 1883 and continued work on it until his death in 1926.
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We spent an entire morning at Sagrada Familia. We walked through the construction site, which covers most of the interior of the cathedral. Since it was a weekday, we observed some of the 300 workmen who are engaged in the construction going about their business. I have seen many old cathedrals in Europe--all of them "finished" or in various stages of reconstruction-- and nothing made me appreciate how large they are until I saw this one with huge building apparatus site in its interior.





We also toured a small but informative exhibit showing how plans and designs of Gaudí were influenced by nature. Finally we road an elevator up about 500 feet to the towers, heard the clock strike 11:00, and then walked down and around and down some more, observing glorious views of the building and the surrounding city area.



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Credit for these and most of the photographs in Sundays in Spain goes to my constant companion, Johannes Bjørner.

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.

How to Avoid the Pickpockets in Barcelona

Photo: © 2009 Johannes Bjørner

Whenever we told people that we were going to Barcelona, the second--if not the first--thing they said was, "Be careful of the pickpockets." We even read a newspaper article (source now lost) that said that Barcelona had more pickpockets than any other place in the world. (How does one measure that?)

Sunday morning, tired of being extra careful of where we carried money, cards and papers, we found the perfect solution not far from our hotel in the plaza in front of the old cathedral. We were there at the right time, for a brass orchestra had assembled and lots of people were milling about on this sunny and warm first day of November. At some signal that I missed, the music began and several women standing in front of us suddenly dropped their bags in one pile on the pavement, formed a circle with joined raised hands, and started dancing. They were dancing the sardana, a traditional folk dance of Catalonia, more properly called Catalunya.

The dancing went on for a long time--whenever it seemed as though it was coming to a close, the music would take another turn, and dancing would recommence. The sardana is a slow dance, with deceptively simple toe steps. We watched an older woman who could barely move, feeling out the steps as she stood with her daughter, perhaps, on the outer rim of the circle. Her daughter and several other women and men joined the circle, simply by ducking under the upheld hands, depositing their bags in the center, and then clasping the upheld hand of each of their two neighbors in the circle.

Eventually a woman came with a collections tin; she explained that this was the sardana dance, we dropped a few coins in the can, and she gave us a sticker so we would not be disturbed again. But we continued watching for a long time, then went on to visit the cathedral. And when we returned an hour or so later, they were still dancing, and the old woman who had been moving hesitantly had joined the dancing. Bags were still safely piled in the center of the circle.

Other people have captured short clips of the sounds and sights of the sardana on YouTube, though it's not quite as magical as being there and seeing it begin spontaneously.