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).

Bullfighting

I will get round to writing about bullfighting at some point, but right now, I cannot deal with the stream of abuse I would receive from the Legions of the Ignorant.

This columnist has a very valid point. My opinion is formed but I found this thought provoking, if rather preachy. The point about the British tendancy towards making statements that smack of Imperial Paternalism is embarrassingly true. We like to preach at people about things upon which we don't have a full grasp.

Hypocrisy is not pretty.

Sorry what?

I am currently suffering from a strange identity crisis that seems to be leaving me in a rather rebellious state of mind. I have lived overseas for a long period of time before (South Africa) but didn't feel enormously disconnected because I was in an essentially English speaking country. Moving to Spain, while geographically much closer, has proven to be an exponentially larger mental leap.

The first thing that happens when you arrive in a truly 'foreign' country (which for my purposes here constitutes a country in which English is not one of the main official languages) is that you realise that you can't actually communicate with anyone.

I wasn't one of these who arrives in a terra incognita expecting everyone to speak English. I arrived with a working knowledge of Spanish. I was by no mean fluent, but could make myself sort of understood using a clever combination of painstakingly constructed sentences using creaking present tense, laughably bad attempts at future and past tenses, along with expansive hand gesturing and meaningful looks.. I thought this was good. It worked well in bars, which, let's face it, are my natural habitat. It is only when I moved to actually live in Spain that I realised how total my linguistic impotence was, and what's more, how vulnerable and powerless that inability to communicate makes you feel. I am a communicator by trade and found (still find at times) the experience of being unable to express myself especially restrictive and frustrating.

All the colloquialisms people naturally use mean that what you learnt at school is completely bloody useless, overly formal and (to the Spanish) faintly amusing. Basically forget chatting amiably to people. Not only that, if someone veers off the 'script' in a shop or restaurant you are left blinking in confusion, startled and panicking like a rabbit-in-the-headlights. You can't make jokes or enjoy the true and deep connection that moments of real silliness bring. I miss those.

Another problem is that, well, how to put this...I am quite opinionated. I have things to say, points to make, valid and important things to share with the world *chortle* and with the language barrier it's a battle to sound even vaguely competent, let alone worthwhile. You sit there expressing yourself like a 10 year old child while quietly fuming. Fuming is bad for you. It adds wrinkles and gives me a headache.

The key here: you are taken back to a point in your life when you were learning everything for the first time. Your grasp of language and how to express larger concepts is pretty tenuous. You are effectively a child again and it is AWFUL! Something you have spent a lifetime perfecting is rendered totally useless.

A year on, I still get scuppered by simple things like calling a doctor's to make an appointment. And what about calling the police or an ambulance? Don't even get me started on trying to take out insurance or open a bank account. Things that you can do easily at home take real preparation and courage to do when you don't have a complete command of the language. It is not helped by the soul destroying amount of bureaucracy, paperwork and hoop-jumping there is to be done in Spain. There's also lots of queuing, but that's fine, you can queue in English, nobody minds, it's when you get to the desk the fun starts.

I am lucky; I work in a completely Spanish speaking environment and have Spanish friends and husband and live in a city where the grasp of English is not particularly strong. I have been forced to speak Spanish the majority of the time. This has meant that within a year I have been able to become passably fluent which alleviates some of the mardiness to which I am prone when thwarted in any way. I still have those moments of total impotence but they come with less humiliating frequency than before. I still struggle when talking about some of the deeper things in life but then I sometimes struggle to find words to express some of the things that I feel. Some things leave me speechless with rage regardless of language. Words are ultimately clumsy and often inadequate.

There is an enormous sense of achievement when someone looks at you and says 'wow, you have improved so much, you can hardly tell you're foreign sometimes'. They are probably being kind and encouraging but it is genuine enough.

So we come full circle to the 'identity crisis' I mentioned at the beginning. You find yourself wondering who exactly you are. You aren't who you normally are because you can't convey that person; there is no way to make her known to the world. You are just some (slightly mad) English girl in Spain with an amusing tendency to get caught dancing to her iPod in lifts, a stranger in a strange land. You can't be witty, or clever, or even express your frustration. Which is...well...frustrating!

As I mention, it has left me rebellious, wanting to kick out against the things that I see as holding me back, stopping me from being me, whoever that is. It has prompted me to re-examine myself, work out what is important to me, the kind of person I want to be, the things I am actually interested in and precisely what I want to get out of life. I have rediscovered my passion for some things; things that are really important to me. I am setting out on a metaphorical road to find out more, to learn, to actually feel and fight rather than stolidly accept. So actually, it isn't an identity crisis at all; it's more an identity redefinition or rediscovery. Ah. It's a good thing!

I still have moments of darkness and frustration when I cannot express myself as I would like to but I have just discovered a song with this line in it which I actually think makes a great point:

'Even as we speak we kill the mystique' – I'm Making Eyes at You, Black Kids.

Tele Talk - Part 5

I think I have vaguely lost the plot with this one but I will include it anyway, as, well, you know.  It’s my blog and I want to whinge and moan.  I just want to. 

5. And now, coming to you from across The Pond…

This is not a complaint about American tele - although I have seen some series that never made it to release in the UK, and could probably come up with numerous decent reasons as to why - it is a complaint about dubbing.

More specifically, bad dubbing.  Oh, and subtitling.  Again.  Bad. 

We often watch these programmes in their original forma and have the Spanish subtitles on.  As my knowledge of Spanish has increased, so has my realisation that the people who actually write the subtitles clearly have not got the faintest clue what the story is about or the humour.  I mean, a lot of what the write doesn’t bear even a passing resemblance to what is said.  I am talking about tone here, not the actual words.  Everyone knows that a language has it’s own way of communicating something.  But. It’s the tone that is wrong.  Sometimes though, it can even be basic facts born of incomprehension of pretty basic English.  Or, I suppose of not hearing what they have said properly.  Either way.  It isn’t the same programme when they get it wrong.  

The above can be said for dubbing.  

They dub a lot here.  Everything that is aired in that was originally in any other language is dubbed rather than subtitled.  It is normal here.  The people see nothing strange in it.  They are used to it.  Spain is one of the only Spanish-speaking countries to bother with dubbing at all.  Most Latin American countries just air the programmes with subtitles.  

Oh, and the voices?  Well, the voices don’t resemble to original voices in any way.  Karen from ‘Will & Grace’ is an example of a character whose voice belies, well, her character but also defines it.  Here she talks normally.  It takes away from the humour of the characterisation.  Homer doesn’t have the same voice, he doesn’t even say ‘d’oh’.  Homer without d’oh.  I’m sorry, what?  

It’s all well and good to say that something doesn’t translate well so they have changed it, but, in that case, don’t air it.  Or don’t dub it.  Just air it as is with subtitles.  Those who get it, get it.  Those who don’t don’t.  

Dubbing also has the added irritation of just being really counter-intuitive.  At least for me.  It’s the mouths moving but the words not matching thing.  There are also times when the mouths have stopped moving and we are looking at someone else but the original person is still talking.  It’s just weird.  

Thank feck for that, I have finished.  I promise, my next blogs will be a more reasonable length and may actually be interesting...although I make no promises about the interesting part!

Tele Talk - Part 4

Beware.  I have lost impetus BUT I have completed points 4 and 5 of my enormously long winded whinge.  Final part of large whining session that I have broken into separate long whiney chunks is about to continue.  Part 4 people.  Only one to go after this. 

We. Can. Make it! 

4. It’s all in the timing

Scheduling.  

I am well aware that here in Spain people keep different hours.  They eat later, stay up later and generally avoid the hot hot hot midday period.  People do however have jobs, most of which start at 8 or 9 and finish at 3 or 7.30 depending on lunch break time allowance and stuff like that.  So, people do actually have to wake up and go to work during the week.  Right, so, could someone explain the wisdom of airing a film that starts at 10pm and can run til 2am with ad breaks midweek?  Do people actually stay up to watch these things?  Clearly they do or they wouldn’t do it.  One show actually closes with a song which is meant for the kids (‘vete a dormir’ – go to bed).  The show closes at 10.15pm by which time most kids in the UK would be long in the arms of Morphius, with any luck anyway.

Actually, it is not so much the late timing of these things it is the fact that the published schedule bears no real resemblance to the times the programmes actually air.  

They always start late.  

Here I come back to point 3.  They start late because of the ad breaks overrunning.  They finish late because of the 20 minute long ad breaks that are inserted unceremoniously every 20 minutes. 

In short, everything starts and finishes later here, by accident or design.  

So, the pIanned schedule is generally later here.  You have to work tomorrow but don’t want to miss the film scheduled for late tonight so; you set your Canal+ (Spanish Sky+) to grab.  It grabs the timeslot as ordered and….you end up with 20 minutes of ads at the beginning and miss the final 20 minutes of the film, which is, let’s face it, when it becomes worth watching.   It would be absolutely certain to happen.

I would be annoyed.  Lucky for me there is nothing worth recording that I can’t watch via some other means.

Phew, that’s a relief.

Tele Talk - part 3

Hurrah, two posts two days in a row!  How do you like them apples??  

What the f*ck am I talking about?

3. Taking a break

Ad breaks.  We all know what they are for.  They are a quick break to allow us to do any of the following: 1) Make a cuppa 2) rush to the loo 3) channel surf.  You have nice little announcements at the beginning an end, giving you due warning that you have 20 seconds to get back infront of the box.  On some channels you get an extra few seconds as the sponsors put on some announcements.  

Not so here chaps.  

Ad breaks here begin completely unannounced and usually in the middle of the action.  I watched Bad Boys 2 a while ago (not a great film, but, you know, it was on) and, I kid you not, an ad for Activia began slap bang in the middle of an explosion.  Granted in this case the film is basically formed of one long sequence of explosions but this was a good sequence.  I seem to recall a car chase, a speed boat veering off a trailer and careering along a freeway…and something about Activia reducing bloating.  

That which begins unannounced ends unannounced.  Need I say more?  The film begins where it left off but without the slightest sign that this is about to happen.  It can be disconcerting.  ‘That forever-stay lipgloss looks good…oh, is that someone’s arm flying across the screen?  Does lipgloss do that?  Wait?  What?’

The confusion of the recommencement of programming is compounded by the fact that many ad breaks in the evening can last as long as 20-30 minutes.  This is absolutely true.  I only wish I was joking.  By the time the film (or whatever) restarts you have forgotten entirely what you were watching.

This said, some channels do restrict their ad breaks to 5 minutes and do announce them BUT, I have found that this happens mainly during the early evening programming and also ups the frequency of the breaks.  Basically, you should view the shows as an interruption to the advertising.

Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, the state-funded channels also have ads.  

Cue switch over to the beeb (no adverts – Hurrah!)

Tele Talk - part 2

You thought I would forget.  Well, I haven’t.  Yet.  

2. Balancing act

One thing that came as a surprise to me, naïve little libertarian that I am, was that the main TV channels (we are talking about the Spanish equivalent of the BBC here, not just some random channel that no one watches) are state funded.  As in, funded by the Government.  As you can imagine, this is not really all that conducive to balanced and unbiased broadcasting.  If there is a change of governing party (right to left or vice versa) the spin (I will use that term because, lets be honest, that is what it is) of a certain news topic can change direction so fast it’ll give you whiplash.  Someone who yesterday was persona non gracia suddenly becomes the flavour of the month. This also works the other way round.  Evil to good, good to evil.

As a result, I watch news coverage on TVE with a pinch of salt, change channels and compare it to other news coverage on other commercially funded channels.  Then, just for fun, I watch the British news coverage and compare.  I may have too much free time but it is interesting to see how the coverage can really diverge, even between Spanish channels.  

Not that I give more credence to the commercially funded channels either, it is just an interesting comparative exercise.  Neither am I saying that the UK news coverage is always the best or unbiased, no way.  For me, all news reporting should be viewed through the prism of scepticism; what is the story, who will benefit, why break it now, what other ‘smaller’ news stories are being obscured? Etc etc.  

Funnily enough, the tendency to bias I have noted here doesn’t just apply to state-funded TV, or to the news.  Coverage here generally has a bias of some sort or another, explicit or implicit.  Funding affects everything.  Commercial channels would NEVER be able to air (let alone produce) programmes like Top Gear or Watchdog, their commercial ad-space-buying funders just would not allow it.  If they did, you could bet that the car company that spent the most on advertising with the network would have produced the Car of the Year for whichever channel made the show.  

And do not get me started on the Grand Prix coverage.  I think that here the only person who actually races, is Alonso.  The main commentator happens to be rather a good buddy of Señor Alonso, which adds wonderfully to the balanced nature of the broadcasting.  At least an hour is spent on Alonso’s qualifying times, his car, any changes and possibly, what his haircut is like this week and how many times he sneezed on Monday.  Then there is the pesky interference of a couple of hours of racing, in which Alonso comes, well nowhere actually but his every move is scrutinized and breathtaking in its perfection.  After this there will be another 30 minutes of interviewing Alonso along with details of his finishing position and what he will have for dinner.  There is then a 30 second mention of the winner, unless it is Hamilton.  If that should occur, apparently, nobody won. Or nobody worth mentioning anyway. 

It could be worse though, it could be Italy. 

p.s. If you don’t know what I am talking about check out Berlusconi’s media holdings and you’ll work it out.

Tele talk

So, I am officially bad at blogging. It’s odd because I think, oh, I must write my next blog, stuff has happened and I want to blog about it, then, I sit down and can’t for the life of me remember what I wanted to write. Then of course I wander off, distracted by tea and the BBC.  

Yes. That’s right. The BBC. I may live in Spain but I can’t live without the beeb.  

The tele here is simply dreadful, and I mean DREADFUL. The Spaniards I have spoken to agree with me for the most part too. There are a few good programmes that are worth a look and are pretty informative, the highlights that I can think of are: Callajeros, Madrileños por el Mundo and El Hormiguero. For the most part however they are real tripe (not to say that many of the UK TV is not the same). I thought that I would do some bullet pointy ‘Top 5 Worst Things About Spanish TV’, you know, just for kicks.  

OK so, my Top 5 Worst Things About Spanish TV are:

1. Soaps, gossip, soaps, gossip…need I go on?

Ok, so the first gripe is that Spanish TV seems to be all about the soaps, or gossip programmes, which they try to sell as ‘current affairs’ but are basically an issue of Heat.  

I will start with the soaps. A lot of them are Latin American and bear more than a passing resemblance to the soaps aired by their North American neighbours. They are just so contrived. Comical even. The distressing thing is they are trying to be serious, whereas I think the American versions are rather more tongue in cheek. They honestly want us to have palpitations about the fact that (I am making this up now) Enrique, who is married to Conchita, is having an affair with Pilar who is incidentally Conchita’s closest friend and possibly her half sister though no-one yet knows that her father was a philanderer.….but I just DON’T care! They address no real issues, no real worries, give no advice and bring nothing out into the open for public debate. They always consist of beautiful, perfectly coiffed people who live in houses the size of Kent. Think Sunset Beach in Spanish, the dramatic music, the inability to act in any serious sense, the hair, the ridiculous cringeworthy plots (btw thanks for that experience Channel 5, it was enlightening!) It’s Footballer’s Wives but they take it seriously. Uh oh!  

There are other soaps that appear to have a budget roughly equivalent to 20p an episode. There is one that springs to mind that uses the same set for every single backdrop; they just change the props about a bit. It is so shoddily done everything shakes every time someone slams a door…which is quite often it seems. I can think of one which is called ‘Dame el Chocolate’ roughly, ‘Give me the Chocolate’. It’s set in a factory and they make, you guessed it, CHOCOLATE! Who came up with that one?  I include a YouTube link to this wonderous soap below if you fancy checking out a snippet. (couldn't embed because the functionality wasn't enabled on YT).

Dame el Chocolate

Now, the ‘current affairs’ programmes. Don’t be fooled, these are not current affairs at all, they are GOSSIP. If there is anything that the Spanish love it is gossip. They say that the national Spanish pastime is envy, of ones neighbours and friends and even family. The obsession with gossip ties in neatly with that. They absolutely thrive on it. We think the paps in the UK are bad but they could learn a thing or two from the guys out here. There are hours and hours of TV coverage dedicated daily to the antics of the latest ‘celeb’. The funny thing is that non-one here seems to object to being filmed, photographed and scrutinised, it goes with the territory as it were. The most normal person in the street will happily be filmed for hours on end about any old thing. People allow themselves to be filmed being taken away to hospital with an arm hanging off (not kidding). I personally find the spectacle of bereaved families weeping outside courtrooms stopping to give incoherent and inconsolable interviews to every TV station that asks for one particularly disturbing. The emotions and dirty laundry of everyone here seem to be open for airing and no-one minds. It is such a contrast. The Brits would (for the most part) rather shoot ourselves in the head than be filmed sobbing uncontrollably or screaming incoherently (literally) at some official we feel has wronged us, it is just not at all what we are about. Upon witnessing such spectacles in the ‘current affairs’ and even serious news programmes, I just mutter to myself in my very British manner. *mutter* never beaten *mutter* us in *mutter* battle *mutter* no bloody *mutter* wonder *mutter*. I am awful. I know.  

The knock on affect of the obsession with airing these soaps and gossip is that there are simply no decent Spanish drama series. At least not that I have seen but I could be speaking out of turn (see point 5 when I post it!). The standard of filming here, at least for TV, seems to be altogether lower. My (Spanish) hubby was quite simply astounded at the quality of programmes like ‘Rome’, ‘The Tudors’ and ‘Ashes to Ashes’. He honestly couldn’t get over it. The natural history programmes too, Sir David Attenborough in particular, he just cannot get over the filming standard and the style.  

He’s a bigger fan of the beeb than I am.  

On writing this list looks like it is going to be long so, I will write it all and then publish in instalments, maybe that way we will get something resembling regular posting happening!