English First? English Only?

I was saddened this Sunday in Spain upon reading the New York Times story about Eric Crafton's efforts to prohibit Nashville city government workers from using any language other than English.

I am lucky to be living in a country that welcomes its many foreign visitors and residents and makes some effort to communicate with them in languages other than Spanish only. It is not unusual for me, as a foreigner, to be replied to in English in the supermarket, the bank, restaurants, and hotels. Younger people especially tell me the cost of my groceries in Spanish and then automatically convert the sum to English to speed up the transaction. Not everyone knows English, in fact, it is not even wide-spread. English was prohibited under the Franco regime, so few people middle-aged or older understand or dare speak it.

Of course I've been studying Spanish since I first came to Spain in 2003. Within a week I was hunting for the free evening Spanish-for-foreigners course sponsored by the local government in Roquetas, where we had settled. I didn't take that one, but I started a series of private classes and have since studied with other foreigners in three different schools, usually taking two classes a week. I'm motivated to learn, and I've put a lot of time and money into it. I'm not perfect in Spanish, and I never will be. But I can make myself understood, as long as anyone cares to try to understand me, and as long as I don't get too stressed about it.

But it's pretty easy to get stressed when you are trying to do complicated or bureaucratic things in an environment that is not native to you. Right now I'm working on getting a driver's license, and though I think I'll eventually be able to pass the theoretical test in Spanish, I'm more than a little worried about what will happen if I don't understand the tester's directions or accent when I'm in the middle of the practical test. So even though I don't plan to take advantage of it, I appreciate the fact that a neighboring province offers driver's tests in English as well as Spanish.

My husband, who grew up speaking Spanish in South America, frequently accompanies English and Danish people who have chosen to make their winter or full-year home in Spain, when they need to go for medical appointments or to government offices. Even if you are working hard to learn the native language, the idiom spoken when you need to purchase a house, pay a water bill, inquire about taxes, register a car or a pet, request a no-parking notice, report a theft, ask about a local charity, or purchase a cemetery plot can easily go beyond what you as a new Spanish speaker are sure you understand.

We have now lived in two different towns, in two different provinces, in Spain. Both Roquetas (Almería) and Torrevieja (Alicante) use municipal funds to offer Spanish courses. A year ago Roquetas issued a handbook of the law in six foreign languages for its immigrant populations. In Torrevieja recently, when we stopped to assist an English couple who had been in a minor traffic accident, the police who responded were able to use a few words of English to clarify the facts and send the couple on their way for a medical check-up. Being met in this fashion in English--as tentative and infrequent as it is--is not expected by most of the foreign population in Spain, but it is appreciated.

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!

El Gordo

El Gordo is, literally, "the fat one." Specifically, it is the Spanish Christmas lottery, one of the oldest and largest in the world. Sponsored by ONCE, the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (Spanish National Organization for the Blind), El Gordo began in 1812. This year it will pay out over 3 billion euros to over 1,202,490 winners in Spain and 140 other countries around the world.

It costs about 200€ to buy a whole ticket in El Gordo, but each ticket is printed ten times and sold in tenths, so you can buy a tenth of a ticket, a decimo, for 20€. The other nine-tenths of your ticket are sold to others, so if your number is drawn, you will share the prize with others. Often, colleagues from the same workplace or club, or a family, will join together to buy a whole ticket. Imagine the joy in a company or family if their ticket is one of the big winners!

One in every three tickets wins a prize, and 70% of all monies invested in El Gordo are returned to players in cash prizes. That still leaves a hefty sum for ONCE's philanthropic work of supporting the blind.

The big drawing for El Gordo takes place every year on December 22. They'll start pulling numbers soon, and it will take three hours before they are done. This is the real start of the Christmas holidays in Spain. Especially if you win.

The Sunday Before Christmas in Spain

The Sunday immediately before Christmas is different from other Sundays in Spain. Someone has written, and I don't disagree, that Sundays in Spain are typically for family, eating, and laundry. Stores are not open, and this alters the lifestyle considerably. But in December, stores are permitted to be open on Sunday, and there is a flurry of commercial activity as families flock to the hipermercado to buy gifts and food instead of taking their usual stroll along the sea or in a park.

I got to the hipermercado early this morning (mine is Carrefour). I wasn't looking for gifts, though we did take a detour to look for a webcam, got frustrated with the choices, and put that off to another day. It was one of those days when it was necessary to go up and down every aisle of the food sections, looking for Danish delicacies for a special smørrebrød Christmas Day, as well as staples of fruit, salad, and breakfast things for the next few days. We dragged a heavier-than-usual basket through the checkout counter, forgoing the new self-check units at the far end, for which there has never yet been a line, because we saw a staffed lane right in front of us that had just opened.

We packed the goods into the trunk, where we figured they would stay cool enough for a couple hours even though the outside temperature was a pleasing 60 degrees F. Then we stopped at the huge outdoor Sunday market just to see how everyone else was preparing for yule. We shared a beer while sitting in the sun and watched the world go by. The bar was Norwegian, we sat with Danes, and listened to German and English and Spanish.

At home I had to take in the laundry that I had hung on the clothesline three hours earlier before we could drive onto the terrace to park the car. It was mostly dry, but the replacement load that I hung out is going to have to stay there all night and wait for sun early tomorrow morning. Nothing shows the change in seasons like the drying of clothes on the line. During the summer I was able to get three loads dry in a day--by the time the second load was finished washing, the first was dry. Now for several weeks, I've been lucky to get one load dried, and the second load waits until Monday for hanging, or at least for final drying.

But today is the solstice, and now a bit more sunlight will creep into each day, though it will take several weeks before my laundry gauge will register it. And more sun, at this time of year, is welcome even on the Costa Blanca in Spain.

Don't Steal This Book!

Photo: Johannes Bjørner

"Excommunication, by the will of His Holiness, the Pope, is promised to any person who removes, steals, or causes the displacement of any book, parchment, or paper from this library, without any possibility of absolution, until such a time as the item has been completely restored to its place."

A sign on the wall of the library at the monastery in Valldemossa, Mallorca, Spain.

We were nevertheless allowed to browse freely through this room, unsupervised, with the ancient books in their cases, unprotected--and to photograph them. But we were, of course, warned.