Once in a Lifetime: Johnny Cash in Denmark and Spain

Man in Black: DVD cover from Amazon.com

Nothing connects Johnny Cash in Denmark in 1971 with Sundays in Spain in late summer of 2012 other than the curious twists and turns of a life. Nevertheless I made that connection this week when Danish television, which we pay 300€ annually to view here in Spain (and then it blacks out live Olympic coverage because they say they don't have rights to show it outside Denmark) broadcast a short and surprising program.

"When Johnny Cash Hit Søborg" was the name of the program, and not being an especially strong Johnny Cash fan I was ready to give it a miss, as our English friends here say. But it was only fifteen or twenty minutes in length and came during the time slot between the after-the-news evening issue program on Danish TV and before Charlie Rose on Bloomberg TV, and I was sitting with a glass of wine and had already cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, so why not?

Søborg happens to be the earlier home of the TV department of Danmarks Radio (DR), the public, non-commercial television system. Denmark has commercial competitors to its public TV now, of course, but back in 1971 (a year before I lived there), DR was the only game in town and country. It covered everything of importance, so when Johnny Cash came from America to record a concert in Denmark, an editorial meeting was held in Søborg to determine who should go to the airport in the suburb of Kastrup and interview him. For some reason that I didn't quite catch, it wasn't a music reporter or even a cultural reporter who was chosen. Mr. Cash's prison reputation had apparently preceded him, and therefore it was a young crime reporter, Erling Bundgaard, who was sent out to Kastrup!

During the on-the-spot airport interview--probably one of the smallest media gatherings by which Cash ever was received--he responded to the inevitable question of how much time he had served in prison by saying that he had never been in prison at all other than to give a concert--thus rendering the crime reporter's story a non-story. Cash did not offer the news that he had been in jail overnight a few times, but at one point he asked what station this interview would be on. "The only station," was the response. "Just one station?" he asked in quiet incredulity (and it is true, there was just one station in 1971 and also in 1972--and it didn't even broadcast the entire day, and it broadcast in black and white). "So what program?" Cash went on to ask. "The evening news," came the answer, and Cash seemed astonished that he would be featured on the news of the day on the only TV station in the country.

We next see him in the TV studio in Søborg, where I now realize he recorded a short concert. The funny thing is, he didn't realize he was recording the concert while he was recording it, either. Toward the end of the program I saw this week, he asked when they would start recording. He was quite surprised to be told that they had finished! Presumably he thought that what they had done for the past hour was a dress rehearsal.

That unrehearsed concert is available from Amazon on a DVD that was released in 2006, and judging from the customer reviews there it is pretty good. At least one reviewer remarks that Cash and company seemed particularly at ease, as well they might, considering they were only rehearsing. And one comment verifies that at least part of an exchange that I found astonishing and charming made it to the concert tape: that was Johnny Cash speaking--in Danish, tentatively and slowly, but understandably and from memory--thanking for the welcome, and saying he found the city of Copenhagen and the country delightful. (One wonders how much he had experienced of the city and country before saying this, but no matter--he bothered to say it, in Danish.)

So that is my once-in-a-lifetime experience for the week. I am probably one of the few Americans in the world who has ever heard Johnny Cash speak Danish. And definitely one of even fewer who understood what he was saying. And in all likelihood, the only American in Spain to have heard him and understood what he was saying.

Blacked Out

I guess I'll have to buy the DVD, because when I went to the Danish TV website to find out when the program I watched would be re-run (most everything is re-run during the week following original broadcast) I found that what I had seen was the re-run--the original program had been broadcast a week ago. But there was a notice saying that the program could be viewed in its entirety online until August 31, and I rejoiced, because I would have like to see it again to check some facts for this post.

But when I clicked, I got the message: "Because of copyright law," they don't have rights to make it accessible outside of Denmark.

Exploring San Miguel

Today is not Sunday in Spain, but it is a holiday--the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. This is one of those rare occasions when we knew ahead of time that there was going to be a holiday and that the stores would be closed on Wednesday. There had been articles in the free newspapers to warn us, and I had read the articles in time. We were a little discombobulated, however, when we saw a sign in the Consum grocery store last Saturday stating that not only would it be open all day on Wednesday, the 15th, it would be open until 10:00 PM, which is 45 minutes later than its normal closing time of 9:15. I think perhaps that means that there will be festivities in the evening and that we should be prepared for loud music and fireworks starting shortly after 10:00.

Anyway we drove out at about 11:00 this morning, following Johannes' piano class, because, well, just because it is good to get out of the house and do something during the day. We did not need groceries, so we headed away from our usual route and drove inland, between orange groves, to San Miguel de Salinas, a town that we had driven through several times, but in which we had rarely stopped. It seemed like a nice day to explore the main street and old town on foot.

Indeed it was, and made even easier because, due to the holiday, we were able to find a parking place right on the main street. We got out and walked slowly up the street, past several cafes. My half-serious goal was to locate an establishment called Bargain Books, where a couple of the women in my book group had purchased English language editions of three of the titles we have read. We did get there--it was right where they said it was, close by the plaza, across from the church. And conveniently, across from two cafe bars where lots of people were sitting out and enjoying coffee or cold drinks and a talk.

We found an empty table and sat and enjoyed our usual: cafe con leche and a media tostada con atun y tomate. And it was then that I realized that I was in witness of a rare sight in Spain. We were seated in between two tables of groups of women enjoying leisure time out. Women only--there were no men. That doesn't happen too often, as women in Spain have a rigid schedule, even if they don't work outside the home. But it can happen on a holiday, and it was lovely to watch ten middle-aged women enjoying each others' company, the good weather, and freedom from the daily schedule.

One group disappeared, though, as the town clock struck 12:00, probably to make their way home to prepare the afternoon dinner. The other stayed around awhile longer, and just before we began to make our way back toward the car, I noticed a funny thing about the cafe. The proprietor had begun setting out more tables, presumably for the dinner or afternoon crowd, whereas there had been only five for the early morning coffee customers. Each of those five tables was shaded from the sun by a large umbrella. Four of the umbrellas had bright red backgrounds with small Coca-Cola bottles in white splashed across them. The one odd umbrella had a white background. But when I looked closely I saw that it had a single Coca-Cola bottle marking it. That was a bottle of Coca-Cola Light.

Summer Doldrums, Looking Up

It is August and I am in the doldrums of summer. Energy is at a minimum. The weather is particularly hot and still along the Costa Blanca. No evening breeze drifts in now when we open the windows, so we don't open them. I turn the bedroom air conditioner on for a few minutes before I retire for the night, then zap it off and rely on the always-on overhead fan to move the air just enough so that it doesn't settle heavily over my outstretched body. At some point in the night I usually wake up, fumble for the remote and turn the a/c on again for a few minutes, and then off, and that lasts until I regain consciousness--often stimulated by the aroma of coffee--again at 6:00 or so in the morning.

I stagger downstairs and fetch a cup of coffee and then retreat upstairs to lie abed with a book, an iPad, or a paper-based sudoku for an hour. Then back downstairs to make my breakfast, which I usually eat upstairs again, while in bed or at the computer for another hour. It is only after checking email and the state of the world that I think about taking a shower and dressing. Getting up is a long affair--we don't usually leave the house for morning errands until at least 10:00, and now this summer it has more often been 11:00.

Errands--shopping, medical appointments, coffee out, and more shopping--are the height of the day's activity now. Most of the people with whom we share a face-to-face social life are away, back in the UK or Denmark or even the U.S. I received a dictum from the doctor that I should avoid the sun ("zero sol") pending a few weeks' treatment to clear up a potential trouble spot on my skin, so I skipped the weekly petanca game this past Tuesday and avoided the outdoor market this Sunday morning. Neither of my Spanish classes is meeting: the town-sponsored class won't start again until October, and even my private class teacher has decided to take August off.

If I didn't have the work and writing that I can do at the computer during the afternoons, in the quiet and comfort of my silent office air conditioning with overhead fan, and the frequent emails dropping into my inbox from numerous family members and friends far away, I would feel very despondent indeed. Work and people--responding to them, thinking about them, reaching out to them--provide the interest and internal activity that keep me active. Not focused, because the hodgepodge that draws my attention on any given day is anything but focused, but mentally active and outward-looking, making me suddenly wonder whether I am more extrovert than I had ever thought myself.

But this is not a permanent condition, I know. It is the summer doldrums and will be dispelled when normal life resumes. That was always after Labor Day when I was growing up, but it is somewhat later now. In the meantime, this mid-August Sunday morning in Spain, I decided to try to find out how to say "summer doldrums" in Spanish.

I went first to the Diccionario Cambridge Klett Compact that I keep on my main computer in my office and which is the CD-ROM version (yes, it's that old) of the paper companion that resides in the bedroom bookshelves and which is falling apart. These are my basic Spanish-English dictionaries, the ones I use as look-ups for all my Spanish homework and any word or phrase I find in a newspaper or other publication that I just have to look up. The CD-ROM version, of course, has more flexible searchability than the paper. It failed me this time, however. "Doldrums" does not appear as an entry or within any other entry.

Then I went to Merriam-Webster online and found an entry. I ignored the first meaning (zona, feminine, de las calmas ecuatoriales), which sounded like a real wild goose chase.  "To be in the doldrums," it said further on, was estar abatido (when talking about a person), or estar estancado (a business).  But then I looked up the verb abatir back in my Cambridge Klett to see what that said. It turns out to be one of those reflexive verbs (abatirse), which was given as a synonym for desanimarse. Yes, un-animated sounds right, but it was translated as "to become dejected," which sounds a little strong for the "disanimation" I am feeling.

That was nothing, though, in comparison to the first translation I got when I typed "I am in the summer doldrums" into Google Translate and clicked Spanish. I found out I was in the "crisis of summer"! I really didn't feel like this was a crisis! With Google Translate, of course, you can now click on a word and get shown alternative meanings, and then substitute one of those. I did that, and I found a milder word. I think it was a form of abatir, but I paged away from that translation before recording it. 

I went off to pursue Collins Spanish Idioms, a new phrase book of mine, and got lost for an hour in looking for and at various English (UK-style) and Spanish idioms. I could write more about that escapade, but I am running out of time before needing to go downstairs to make lunch. (Regular events for which you are responsible are important when you are in the middle of summer doldrums). 

While finishing up this description, however, I went back to Google Translate once more. Google claims that its Translate tool "learns" with input, and it appears that it had learned from its (or my) morning lesson. This time when I entered "I am in the summer doldrums" into the translate box, I got Yo estoy en la inactividad del verano in translation. The inactivity of summer. Yes, that is it.

Not Working

On Friday evening this week I heard that 1.6 million families in Spain had no one in the family working. That sounds bad, but I didn't know how many families there are in Spain. The population is about 47 million, and I know that families are larger in Spain than they are in the U.S., what with it being not at all uncommon for grandparents to live with their middle-aged children and for children who are young adults to remain at home.

Wikipedia has a list of countries of the world by number of households that shows that Spain has 16.7 million households. So if we assume that we can equate "family" and "household" for this purpose, 1.6 million families without someone working would be 9.5 percent of households without someone working. That is an awful lot of families affected by the economic crisis.

A very depressing article in The New York Times this morning gives a similar number. "Spain's Jobless Rely on Family, a Frail Crutch" says that government reports earlier this year acknowledged that about one in ten families have no working adult. It told too many stories of adult children who are dependent on their elderly parents' pension payments for their own livelihood, and older adults who do without vacations, dental work, insurance, personal services, and much more so they can house and feed their children and grandchildren. The stories from the NYT are about families in the large metropolitan areas north of us. We don't know anyone who is living under the extreme conditions detailed in the article, but I have no doubt that they exist. We do know families where there appears to be only one working adult--and that may well be part-time work.

Many of the out-of-work adults are those who used to be employed in the booming housing construction industry. We also read this week of astonishingly high fines levied on the banks that financed that unbelievable and unsustainable housing bubble, which started to burst in 2008. The banks, however, have received a bailout and have some money to pay the fines. The construction workers have not.

The Beat Goes On...

Did I say last Sunday that, even though we have all-night fiestas with loud music that goes on until 6:30 in the morning, that at least the music only comes on the weekends and never during the week? Yes, I did, and I was wrong.

I found out I was wrong on Wednesday morning. When I woke at a little after 6:00 AM I heard the music again. I had not heard it start and I was not awakened by the music, but it was clearly there after I awoke. Where was it coming from? This time I got dressed, unlocked the front door system, and went out to explore.

I walked along the east side of our development, up toward Monty's Bar. It was closed up tight. When I turned toward the west and passed slightly up the hill toward Bistro Alex, also closed, the music got dimmer. So it wasn't coming from the motorcycle hangout way past the Zoco market in this direction, I figured. I turned north and came down the hill toward our house and by then I could hear faint strains again. But soon after this, the music stopped.

Later on that morning we stopped for a cafe con leche and tostada at La Cata in Benijófar. I asked casually whether anyone there lived in town and had heard the music. "¡Si!" said the bartender; and it turned out he lived in the street right next to the source of the music, which he assured me was in the park next to the colegio [elementary school] in Benijófar. He said the music that morning had continued until 8:00, which was probably about the time that he had to get up to go to work. But he had not been out celebrating, and he told us that the festivities would still be going on for a couple days, and he was moving to his girlfriend's for the duration.

Wednesday, according to my Spanish-Norwegian calendar supplied by the Norwegian newspaper Spaniaposten, was the festival of Santiago Apóstol, the Apostle St. James, who happens to be the patron saint of Benijófar. That had been the reason for the festivities on the night of Tuesday going to Wednesday. As we left La Cata and drove through the plaza toward our home, we heard the church bells ring and saw that the church door was open, a rare occurrence. Apparently by noontime the celebration had shifted toward the more solemn spectrum. We should have stopped to see the inside of the church, which has never been open when we were near it on foot. Alas, we were no longer on foot, and there is no parking place near by, so once more we missed seeing the inside of the church. But we did learn that Benijófar is protected by its patron saint, St. James.

Fiesta Season

It's fiesta season. We don't have loud music and partying every night of the week--only on weekends. Last week the Virgen del Carmen fiesta kept me awake Saturday night. This weekend, the party started Friday night. I didn't really notice it until I woke up at 3:30 Saturday morning. Even with windows shut, I could hear the throb, throb, throbbing of the drums through the loudspeaker of the fiesta that was going on across the highway in Benijofar. I knew it was Benijofar, because we had been there Friday afternoon for a nice luncheon at La Cata, a new restaurant run by the proprietors of Magica Gourmet, and verified that this town's local fiesta began this weekend. We thought it started with a parade Saturday evening, but obviously we were wrong.

By yesterday morning at 3:30 I had already slept several hours, so it was really hard for me to get back to sleep with all that racket going on. At one point I seriously thought about getting up and joining the party, only ten minutes away. However, I just read, and after an hour and a half I felt myself drifting off again at 5:00. The next time I woke up was at 7:00 and all was quiet. Not so this Sunday morning, when I came to consciousness at 6:00. The sound was faint, but I could hear the throb, throb, throbbing of that drum again. I had left the windows open Saturday night in order to catch some cool breezes. There had been no noise when I went to bed, but who knows when it started? The miracle, I guess, was that I had not awakened earlier. At any rate, the sound of the fiesta was much dampened Sunday morning. Had someone pulled the plug on the loudspeaker, or just cut the decibel level in half, or a quarter? Or was this only an echo from the previous night? Or was I just reliving the Friday night party in a dream?

No, the sound was definitely there, though quieter. And it stopped shortly after 6:00 AM, which must be curfew time for all-night fiestas. No wonder Sunday mornings are always ethereally quiet where we live. People have just then gone home and toppled into bed.

There are some who wonder how a country that is in such economic crisis can afford municipally sponsored all-night festivities in every village and hamlet throughout the summer season. And there are those who answer that it is precisely because the country is in economic crisis that the townspeople need to hang on to their traditions by throwing a grand fiesta to honor the local patron saint one weekend each year.

Austerity Measures

Agreement between Spain and the European Union, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund--are those all the players?--has now been reached, and Spain's president of the government, Mariano Rajoy, announced a new series of austerity measures this week. Here's the list, as I interpret it, from an article in El Pais the day after the announcement. Since there was an awful lot I did not realize or understand about the Spanish economic system before the crisis and the announcement of improvement efforts, it can certainly be that I don't fully understand some of the measures announced. 

• Changes to IVA, the value added tax on almost everything, will certainly affect the most people--literally everyone. Spain having had "one of the lowest VAT rates in Europe," the current base rate of 18% will go up to 21%. I have previously written about the ins and outs of the IVA tax and I am sorry to see that now it is changing and becoming even more complicated. But I am glad to see that there will continue to be a reduced IVA for most food items, sanitary products, transportation, hotels, and admissions to cultural events--even though that category will go up from 8% to 10%-- and that the super-reduced IVA of 4% for basic necessities of bread and vegetables will remain the same. A subsequent story later in the week, however, alludes to several categories of the "reduced IVA" products being moved to the regular 21% category--primarily entertainment products like TV and entrance fees (Internet services?)--but not food.

• Government workers--including elected members of parliament--will lose their annual Christmas bonuses for, at least, 2012, 2013, and 2014. A long tradition in Spain, the Christmas bonus typically was equivalent to one month's salary, so in essence these people are taking a 7 1/2 percent pay cut for three years. 

•  Unemployment benefits will be reduced, starting in September, for new recipients. Nearly 25% of Spaniards are unemployed.

• "Green" taxes will be increased, including at least a 3-5 cent per liter hike in fuel taxes.

• The pension system will be reformed to make it more sustainable. It looks as though early retirement will be targeted.

• The number of municipal workers will be reduced by 30%. Mayors and city councilors will be required to make their salaries public. Provincial government will play a greater role in order to maintain public services evenly throughout regions.

• A popular tax deduction on the purchase of new properties will be eliminated.

• Taxes on energy will be changed. Details to follow.

• The government will continue reducing and even eliminating state-owned companies at the local level that "duplicate or even triplicate services."

• Subsidies to political parties, labor unions, and business organizations will be reduced by 20% --they have already been reduced 20% this current year.

Lest anyone think that Spain has not already taken some stringent fiscal steps, let me tell you some of the ways that the country is already cutting back spending.

First of all, the regional governments are paying some bills very slowly. This has been going on for months, but it is coming closer to home now. Local pharmacies were closed for at least two days in the past month in protest because they had not been paid by the Valencian autonomous comunidad for medications they had issued to customers.

Co-payments are being instituted for drugs and medications. Whereas you used to be able to have prescriptions filled for free, as long as you had the script from your local public doctor and a valid health car, consumers are now going to have to pay for part of the cost. How much? Some reports have said 10%; others imply more. A list of at least 400 drugs has been targeted, some for them for "routine but chronic ailments" such as diabetes, blood pressure, and heart disease.

Spain has cut down on those who qualify for free medical care. Undocumented residents, or those who have not successfully completed the process of acquiring accepted documentation (and I was in that category once) will no longer receive health services. Exceptions are made for certain groups: infants and children under the age of 18; pensioners, age 65 and older; pregnant and nursing women.

Life here is definitely becoming more expensive. Some will feel it more than others, but I think we will all feel it somewhat from now on.