Housing

I am not sure whether it’s a general British idea or just mine but, I always had an idea of what houses in Spain were like. To be honest it wasn’t anything hugely specific, possibly a courtyard, usually a pool, obviously a terrace, but always houses of one type or another.

It seems however that I was mistaken; here they all live in flats. What’s more, they’re small flats. Many do have pools and communal gardens. Most are new and have lifts, underground parking and aircon. Very few in Madrid have terraces.

On first moving here I just took it for granted, I had somewhere nice to live and there was so much to adapt to that I didn’t have room in my head to consider the things that might be harder to adapt to in the long term.

I have always lived in a house, not a big house, but a house with two storeys and a small bit of garden. It’s not flash but it’s what I’m used to.

One thing I can definitely say is that I have not adapted to this flat-living thing, and I am not likely too. It’s not the size of the flat that I have a problem with, it’s more than big enough for me to deal with. No, what I hate is the sensation of us all being stacked up on top of one-another, like a house of cards; one puff and we all fall down.

On a practical (and probably slightly less fanciful) note, living in a flat is annoying simply because your happiness and comfort can depend so much on the thoughtfulness (or lack thereof) of your neighbours. For example, our current neighbours are pretty good but everyone has their moments: this morning we were woken up when the couple upstairs started having a blazing row and apparently organising a cavalry charge (feet stomping etc) – we know exactly why they were fighting, we could hear every word of it.

I also don’t like the idea that my home depends on my neighbour’s state of mind at any given moment; what if they accidentally leave the water running or the iron on? Will their moment of forgetfulness result in me losing a lifetime of memories; irreplaceable knick-knacks that seem like crap to everyone else but are priceless to me?

There is no private outdoor space: Nowhere to grow anything, nowhere to create a private world with a little bit of air and a patch of earth.

The communal pool is gorgeous, it’s enticing, and it’s costs us a fortune every month (even though it’s only open in the summer).

I have also never used it.

Think of all of those American high school dramas / series / films that you have ever seen, picture the, so-called “popular” set – well that is the way the communal poolside is ordered in our “Community of Neighbours”. The pool is mainly the preserve of the “President of the Community”, his wife, their children, the deputy President and assorted hangers-on. Everyone stare avidly at everyone else, and they all gossip.

So this is my main issue with flat-living: There are no secrets in a block of flats; no private rows with partners or children, no raising or lowering of shutters, staying out all night or even trip to the bathroom that goes unnoticed by someone in The Cell Block,

The most problematic thing about this situation is that there are no real alternatives.

In Madrid the cost of an actual house, rather than a flat, is usually somewhere near the 1€ million, that is a detached house with a garden. If you want a tiny (smaller than my flat) terraced house with a 2m squared patio then you can get that for about 400,000€. The latter option doesn’t solve the problem of being constantly overlooked. In other words, it’s seriously out of my price-range to stay in Madrid and get away from the curtain-twitchers and gossips.

So, move out of the city? I used to commute to London, a journey of at least an hour, and had no problem with it, but, I am not sure that I want to extend my commute here too much given that the roads in the city are generally in a state akin to a car-park and, when you are moving, there is always someone around who seems quite intent on killing you.

Public transport? I really would actually prefer this option to driving any day but, the Metro here (which I love as it is air-conditioned, cheap, safe and clean) is not as extensive or as fast as the Underground. Madrid has been growing so fast that the network barely reaches the outskirts of the city (where I already live) let alone beyond where there might be an affordable house. And guess what? The towns that have a train station with a direct connection to Atocha or Chamartin have houses that share their price-tags with Madrid’s.

In short, for me, housing here is a real problem.

Beyond The Cup

It is strange how a World Cup can have repercussions that are felt far beyond football or sport. For evidence of this, I need look no further than what happened in Spain during the 2010 tournament.

As you already know, unless you live somewhere that couldn’t give a toss about football, Spain won. The place went wild and the party has, so far, lasted days rather than hours. The team did an open-top-bus parade around Madrid; it was supposed to last 2 hours, in the end it lasted 4. Over 1 million people flocked to the city centre to welcome the boys home; all were waving flags or painted with flags; dressed in red and gold, or with the colours striped through their hair. Even now there are still Spanish flags everywhere.

To me, this outpouring of national pride seemed pretty normal. As a Brit I am used to seeing the national colours come out and the flags wave at the slightest provocation. To be honest, at home the national paraphernalia can be seen everywhere before the tournaments even start.

I didn’t realise until the day of The Final that, in Spain, this is not normal.

A work colleague said to me, “I am off home, my daughter wants me to paint her face again; I did it for the first time ever for the semi finals. And I just bought her her first Spanish football team shirt; she insisted I buy one for myself. I never even considered buying one before.”

I was a bit bemused by this, never even considered wearing a Spanish team shirt? But, Spain won the European Championship a mere two years ago; didn’t he do all this then too?

Apparently not. And here’s a potted version of why:

Until very recently (1975) Spain lived under a fascist dictatorship headed by Francisco Franco. When they came out of it the majority of the people, understandably, wanted nothing whatsoever to do with fascism, an important facet of which is nationalism, flag waving. Hence, throughout the post dictator era and continuing to this day, showing national pride in the form of waving a Spanish flag or wearing the national team’s strip was a big social taboo. If you did it, everyone considered you a fascist. A supporter of the oppressive ex-regime.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Spain is a country divided. In many of the autonomous regions it has, relatively recently, become taboo to consider yourself Spanish rather than, say, Catalan (this revival of non-Spanish nationalism also has its roots in the oppression of the Franco era). To show any support for Spain is often considered a betrayal, and can be dangerous.

But this World Cup has gone a long way towards lessening these taboos. For the first time in many people’s lives it was OK to hang a Spanish flag from your window or put one in your car; no need to fear reprisals. You could walk the streets painted in red and gold and everyone would shout and hoot and applaud. There were images from plazas around Spain, including in Catalunya and the Basque Country, which showed people plastered in Spanish flags, cheering on the Spanish team.














This change may be permanent, or it may merely be transient, but, for that one brief moment, the country was united; everyone was proud, everyone was Spanish and no-one was afraid to show it.

Semi-Final

Granted this should have been posted yesterday to be relevant but, it wasn’t. I wanted to post something a little bit longer about Wednesday and what it is like to be somewhere like Spain when their national team is making history.

2010 is the first time that the Spanish team has moved beyond the quarters in the World Cup so it Wednesday was going to be a historic moment win or lose.

A friend and I decided we wanted to soak up the atmosphere and so headed to the Bernabeu where Hyundai have set up some massive screens and a Fan Park area for open-air viewing of the games. We arrived an hour before kick off and the place was heaving, lots of tourists, lots of kids and vendors hocking stuff. I bought myself a flag, which has been thoughtfully donated to hubby, who is, after all, the Spaniard in the relationship.

The downside; it was about 35ºC in direct sunlight and there were a good 20,000 people there (an estimated 50,000 by the time the match finished). We were there for about 30 minutes before we started to feel seriously ropey and decided to head for home, where there were cold mojitos and a sofa-view of the match.

Managed to snap a few pics of the atmosphere down there before we scarpered so here you go:

The Metro was a *little* bit busy

Walking up to The Bernabeu, an hour before the game

In case you didn't know, Spain beat Germany 1-0.The Spanish Queen went to the changing room after the game to say hi to the team, Puyol was in the shower at the time so had to shake her hand wearing nothing but a towel.

People are very excited about the game, they really can't believe that they are in the final.

Everyone here is loco crazy mental about football. I was living here when they won the Euro Championship and the place just went mad. In my opinion, not many nations know how to party like the Spanish, that is to say, they party hard, usually until the sun comes up, but they don’t seem to get particularly violent. Here in Madrid I don’t have that sense of danger that I often had at home, or in Barcelona.

I can’t imagine what the party will be like if Spain manages to pull this one off but I REALLY hope I get to see it.

¡Vamos España!

Life is made up of….

As you’ve probably seen before on my blog, I have found moving overseas to be full of challenges, I don’t think that the cultural differences have been so hard to grasp, more the issue of picking up a new language. Funny how the simple things that we all do every day become fraught with pitfalls; when just working out how to say “hello” in whichever situation can cause a few minutes of frantic memory searching and word repetition.

I have also found my capacity to work around these problems and to adapt to my (now not-so) new country and language remarkable. (I am sure this is true of everyone in my situation but I can only actually speak for myself).

Yesterday I had an epiphany moment which showed me just how far I have come in the 1 year and 9 months that I have called Madrid home.

The realisation, as with all the best moments of enlightenment, came to me in a bar. This bar to be precise:

I had a meeting in the city centre yesterday morning and so jumped in the car, zipped into town (some hairy driving on the way of course, couldn’t possibly post without mentioning driving now could I?), headed straight for the car park nearest my meeting, dumped the car and then trotted happily off in the sunshine. I arrived early and decided that I should get a coffee and kill some time. On the way I had seen a guy dive into a likely looking place and had made a mental note. I retraced my steps and headed into the bar.

Really great little bar by the way, very Spanish, or rather Madrileño; go in and head down a couple of steps; standing only area at the actual bar with a small restauranty bit off to one side. As I walked in I was greeted with a sturdy “buenos días” by the barman. Appropriate response made, coffee ordered, milk selected to my taste and there I was. Coffee in hand pondering how marvellous life can be and how simple things can make you smile and then The Epiphany came upon me.

6 months ago just navigating into the centre would have been a major issue, forget finding the car park and I wouldn’t have even thought about going to order a coffee at a little local bar like that on my own, without a Spaniard to back me up. This one of those places where the waiters chat to you after all. I would have not been able to deal with the idea of thinking of and then making the appropriate responses, I would probably have broken out in a sweat at just the thought of it but yesterday I did it without thinking. And I was happy doing it. I enjoyed the bar, the waiters, the coffee and standing there on my own in the heart of the Spanish capital, not a Starbucks in sight.

Cue proud face because it hasn’t always been easy.

Incidentally, I really recommend going to a place like this if you are ever in Madrid, they’re not posh or swanky but they are really Spanish.

Today I had another cheers-cheers moment: I called a doctor’s surgery and made an appointment. As far as I can tell I made it correctly, with the right doctor and I have noted the time and date down right. You will be the first to know if I have screwed it up.

Life is made up of…small victories and tiny things that can really make you smile.

One of my perennial (petty and stupid) rants

You may have noticed that I rant, quite a lot, on my blog about driving in Spain. Here's a perfect illustration of the attitude to driving over here that provokes the aforementioned rants. I don’t want to be too sweeping but, many people here approach driving & road use with the kind of selfishness that would normally be preserved for something more tangibly own-able, like chocolate, or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. It’s an “I-own-the-road-and-have-the-right-to-do-precisely-as-I-please-without-regard-for-other-road-users” attitude.

The picture was taken of the road outside my house. As you can see, it’s a smallish two way side street in Madrid. I watched the guy park, actually let’s call it what it is; I watched the guy dump his car. It wasn’t that the space was tight; he simply could not be bothered to park properly, nor was he nipping in and back out; the Mercedes stayed parked like that for 3 days.

Ok, next post will not be driving related. Promise.

Driving force – The Sequel

Back in November last year I had a little mardy fit about Spanish driving. After more than a year of driving here I have a) something else non-ranty to add to it now and b) miraculously survived.

So. Traffic lights.

We all know what they are, they are the life-saving devices that allow us to work out whether we should stop or go at intersections (when our common sense and patience cannot be trusted to do this for us). In the UK we have three pretty colours of lights, each with their own specific meaning:

 Red: STOP

 Amber: PREPARE YOURSELF TO EITHER GO OR STOP (in London this is also seen as a dark green i.e. go anyway)

 Green: GO GO GO

Now, in Spain the system is rather simpler, they have red and green. Easy peasy we shout, stop and go!

You are wrong.

In Spain ALL colours of traffic lights are entirely negotiable.

Here are some handy tips for dealing with the lights in Spain:

1. Light has just turned from green to red: rather than stopping you must now put your foot down and speed through the red light. Ignore honking and pedestrians. NOTE; if the light has been red for longer than 5 seconds you MUST screech to a halt.

2. Light has just turned from red to green (without the handy amber warning period): stop faffing with the radio / doing your hair or makeup / shouting at the kids / reading the paper / cleaning your glasses. Floor it.

ALTERNATIVE

Carry on with what you were doing until someone honks. Floor it.

3. Waiting at a red light and all appears tranquil i.e. no cars to be seen: jump the light. There’s no-one coming (we hope).

Please remember that there is also the added complication of the flashing amber light. This makes its appearance at times of the day that are considered to be less busy traffic-wise. It basically means, “feel free to go if there is nothing coming, but do please slow down and think about it first”.

I have to admit that the rule-adherent pedant that lurks within the darkest recesses of me gets all cross, nostril-flarey and tutty when it sees this sort of rule-breaking. It also grudgingly admits that somehow it seems to work.

Of course, you get the occasional tosspot who throws caution to the wind and dices with death (their own and that of others) but generally it’s ok. Drivers (again, generally) look, assess and THINK and then make a decision on whether it is safe to go or not.

In my musing it has become apparent that this could be seen as a sort of (rubbish) metaphor for the Spanish attitude to many things. (My metaphors are not world renowned, just in case you were wondering).

In Spain you are expected to use your common sense and to try break as many rules as you possibly can. How refreshing.

Breathing space

I shall start this by stating an obvious fact that anyone would know. Spain is geographically larger than the UK. Very roughly put, it is about twice as large. Which, to the average Brit, is bloody humungus.

Spain also has a much smaller official population that the UK. Below I include figures and stats for those of you who care but, Spain’s population is roughly 1.3 times smaller than the UK’s.

Basically this should tell you that, in the UK, we live really close together and don’t have a lot of space to spread out. (Jeremy Clarkson talked about this very thing in his column in this week. He plans to invade France apparently).

I have to say that I noticed this long before I moved to Spain. When I was on my gap year I noticed that you could drive for hours without passing a house or a village, try doing that in the UK.

The Spanish are (obviously) used to the scale of their country. This is reflected in their language. To me, if you say something is ‘next’ to something else it means that it is, at most, a 5 minute walk. Here if they say that it means it’s roughly a half hour drive.

Every summer (mainly August) Madrid literally empties of everyone who is not a tourist as it is considered too hot for sensible people. I make no judgements on the tourists but the Madrileños are correct, it’s bloody hot. Anyway, the roads fill with people heading out of the city for the coast or the Sierra nearby (that’s the Spanish definition of ‘nearby’ btw, so roughly an hour or so). Off they drive on their hols, to the various coasts and they think nothing of a 3 hour plus drive, in fact, that’s considered to be pretty close really, all things considered.

I know people who drive 6 hours every other week to go and visit their families back in their pueblo. At least they have the decency to admit that 6 hours is a bit of a step.

I wonder what they (meaning anyone from a larger country than the UK) make of the UK. This is a place in which the farthest you can ever be from the sea is 80 miles. They must have constant vertigo. I mean, they have barely started driving and there it is, looming in front of them, The Edge. It must be very disconcerting.

I on the other hand consider any drive over an hour and a half to be really rather long and tedious. An hour or, at a push two, seems a perfectly reasonable time in which to reach the edge of the country and have a look over, just to see how the sea is and things.

I often had the sensation in the UK that I couldn’t get away from people. That wherever you go, you are surrounded or never far from people and things and noise. I may have been exaggerating slightly. I definitely didn't have that feeling in NZ or SA so I know what it is like to have a bit of space for your thoughts, a bit of peace. The sky also seemed bigger outside the UK, somehow limitless. You could really breathe it all in.

It is interesting to note that Brits are a pretty antisocial lot in spite of our proximity, or maybe because of it?

I could go on to comment on the sociability of the Spanish but that will make a post on its own so I’ll leave it until I can be arsed to write it.

Here’s a pic taken a 40 minute drive from the very centre of Madrid to give you an idea of how quickly you can get away and be largely alone here.

The stats

Spain’s population (as of Jan 08 which was the latest census) is 46,157,822. The UK’s 60,944,000 (projected population based on 2001 Census growth figures). Spain’s size: 195,884 square miles. The UK’s: 94,600 square miles (inc NI).