Thelma

It’s habitual for my friends to ask how Thelma is. It’s habitual for me to cradle her in my arms as I drink my first cup of tea in the morning. It’s habitual for me to hasten home at the end of the day so that I can kneel before Thelma and bury my face in her soft warm fur. It’s habitual for me to snuggle down under the quilt every evening with Thelma and open my book to the sound of her accelerated purring. It’s habitual for me to lose my gaze in hers seeking the wisdom in her eyes. It’s habitual for me nuzzle Thelma’s left ear gently and delight in her creamy chocolate aroma. It’s habitual for me to compare the way she drapes herself over my arm to liquid velvet. It’s habitual for me to wince with pain when I note that her arthritic limp has become more acute. It’s habitual for my stomach to lurch when I see Thelma stumble into a table leg because her sight has failed her. It’s habitual for me to bite my lip when I see her strain to use bowels that have seized up with age. These are the habits of 19 years and six months.

Thelma’s life on this earth ended on the morning of Thursday 23^rd February at 9.10. Those habits that have become second nature to me will not die with her. Time, months, maybe years may have to pass before I stop listening for the click of her nails as she crosses the floor or stop seeking cream-coloured cat hairs to pluck from my jumper. Now I dread not finding evidence of her presence in my life. No cat food, no cat litter, no insistent meowing, no arrangements to be made for cat sitters when I go on holiday. No responsibilities and no unconditional love. No other relationship in my life has lasted this long. Now I feel bereft without it. Without her.

Numerous are the lessons she taught me. Insights I gained into myself through the love that grew up between us were not always pleasing but they were the most valuable. Yet Thelma’s most precious gift to me was her death. I was privileged to be with her during the final hours of her life. All through the night I cradled her with me in bed as her suffering became more intense. BY 5.00 am I could no longer cling to any hope that she might pull through. That was when Thelma gathered what strength she had left and buried her head deep in my neck. It was a final embrace.

I never had the opportunity to embrace my mother and tell her how much I loved her before she died. Thelma gave me that chance. With the strongest possible love and the deepest sorrow I said goodbye to her. I said the words but I can’t let go of nineteen years with words. Only grief in the days and weeks to come will teach me what they mean, what the loss of Thelma means.

This is my final blog posting. I leave Tarragona and return home to Belfast in a few days time. I’d been wondering how to say farewell to my life in this city. Thelma has done it for me. The tragedy of her death is so final, so definitive that I feel I must go. It’s not just the end of Tarragona; it’s the end of an era in my life. What will happen next or how long “next” will last, I am not sure. What I am sure of is that I can no longer reach out and touch unconditional love when I need it. That is going to be the hardest part.

THE MOTHER OF ALL PICNICS

Before the end of March, Catalans – and their guests - will have consumed an astonishing 15.7 million calçots and the season only lasts three months. Calçots, you say. What are they? There is no translation for the word into English. However, if you’d been paying close attention to my last blog you would know that they look -  and taste - like a cross between a slim leek and a fat spring onion. Roasted on an open-air fire and eaten with the fingers, calçots are a feast you will never forget.

Last Sunday Paco and Sol invited me to a calçot banquet, a calçótada, at their house on the outskirts of Tarragona. The afternoon was bright and sunny – it nearly always is here – although there was a sharp wind blowing. When I arrived with my friends Marta and Jaume there were about twenty people gathered around an open fire in the extensive garden at the back of the property. Gusts of wind were lifting the smoke tornado style before carrying it off in the direction of the Prades mountains to the south west. Rows of calçots had been arranged across a metal grill and were enveloped by the flames. When they were deemed roasted, the blackened calçots were stretchered off into a corner of the garden, where volunteers wrapped them in sheets of newspaper to preserve the heat. Fresh rows of creamy calçots were arranged across the grill and the glowing embers were fed with more wood.

         Calçots and roast artichokes are the first course. For me they will be the only course because what comes next is an array of lamb chops together with a selection of llonganiza and black butifarra. Such thick and meaty utterances could be nothing else but Catalan sausage. Not at all tempting for a lifetime vegetarian. The porrón, a traditional glass wine pitcher, is being passed around and the guests, some more skillful than others, are drinking the rich dark Priorat wine directly from its long narrow spout. It requires some skill to align the spurt of wine with the mouth, a skill which I discover I don’t possess. My coat is quickly spattered with Priorat so I hasten off in the direction of the kitchen for a glass and some water. 

     A shout goes up to say that we can commence eating. Guests gather round and bibs are handed out. Small bowls of homemade Romesco sauce have been placed along the centre of the table. Three of the women are competing to see whose recipes are most popular. Ground almonds and hazelnuts, fresh tomatoes, red pepper, garlic and olive oil are mixed into a creamy sauce that is served with calçots. I unwrap my first bundle and am surprised to note that the newspaper has kept the calçots oven warm. They are almost too hot to handle but I dig in. I peel off the blackened outer skin to reveal a soft white fleshy interior and dip it into the sauce. Then I raise the calçot high above my mouth and lower it in.  An exquisite blend of Romesco and calçot explodes on to my taste buds transporting me into an epicurean paradise. I reach for Calçot Number 2 and Jaume snaps with my camera. “You’ve been compromised.” The phallic symbolism of the calçot and the porrón could not be more graphic, but it is all part of this feast of the senses..

         My hands are blackened and peach-coloured Romesco sauce is rolling ponderously down my chin but I’m not concerned. This is unbridled indulgence and I don’t give a damn about the mess and neither does anyone else. All twenty or so of us are on our feet, because that is how the ritual is conducted, utterly engrossed in an assault on our respective bundles of calçots. Except for birdsong and the occasional gusts of wind that waft the smoke in our direction, silence reigns.

Jaume is the first to break it.

         “Some foreigner won the calçot-eating competition in Valls the other day. He ate 288 and I think you must be very close behind him, Karen.”

I hear my name and look up momentarily.

         “But I heard but he used gloves. What a wimp!”

I stretch my blackened fingers to their full length, much as a cat extends its paws, and admire them. Then I move the Romesco sauce closer and reach for another calçot. 

     Jaume has progressed on to the butifarra sausage with a knife and fork, so he can talk now. Others are still engaged in the calçot feeding frenzy but I’m fading. Another half dozen or so and I’ll have to withdraw. Someone else can beat that foreigner in Valls. It won’t be me, not today anyway.

         This is the 33^rd calçotada that Paco and Sol have hosted in their garden. For thirty three years this group of friends has been gathering here during the calçot season, between January and March. There’s a plaque on the wall to commemorate the 25^thcalçotada. When they first met, many of the guests were student rebels against General Franco’s government during the latter years of his rule over Spain. Conversation touches briefly upon the recent VIP “send off” given to Manuel Fraga, a right-wing Popular Party politician and former minister to Franco, who died recently. There are grumbles about a Der Spiegel article which has just revealed that the King of Spain apparently held certain sympathies for an attempted coup d’ état back in 1981. This surprises none of those present. Corruption also crops up in the conversation. My fellow guests are outraged that Francisco Camps, Popular Party president of the Valencia government, has been acquitted of all the charges. There is deep despair about the future, particularly given the right-wing policies of the current Madrid government and the lack of coordinated opposition to the rule of the banks and financial markets.
     Unable to squeeze in even the slimmest of calçots I wander off to wash my hands. A lemon tree toward the back of the garden is laden with fruit; there are several types of palm tree, Mediterranean pine, olive and almond trees, a modest vegetable allotment and a large pond inhabited by goldfish. When I return I notice that the robin red breast I had spied half an hour previously is still hopping around the embers, ever closer to the heat.  The temperature is dropping as the afternoon progresses. The robin seems unafraid and flits on to the back of an empty chair from where it watches the butifarra being served. After a while it is joined by its mate and together they glide over to a nearby pile of logs where a cat lies outstretched. Feline eyes follow the pair, bemused by their temerity. Jaume informs me that “They are called a pit roig in Catalan.” Peat rotch, I roll the words around in my mouth, savouring the sound much as I had done with the Romesco sauce. Even the language is part of the feast this afternoon. 

Getting to grips with this Catalan Thing

From the moment of landing at Barcelona airport it is apparent to the traveller that they have not arrived in Spain, but in Catalonia. Sun seekers, in their haste to reach the beaches of the Costa Brava, may take a little time to register this fact, although one hopes that it does eventually sink in before they board the homeward-bound flight.

Airport signs are in Catalan, English and Spanish. Flags, if any are flying, will be multi-striped red and yellow Catalan, as opposed to the three horizontal stripes of Spain. Bar menus will confound those who have spent the winter taking Spanish conversation classes. Instead of café con leche, there is café amb llet and, rather than ensalada, amanida. Outside of tourist destinations, restaurant menus are increasingly published solely in Catalan. Then there is the accent. We are a long way away from the somewhat melodic Andalusian lisp; words are truncated and many locals sound like they have a mouth full of marbles when they speak their native language.

 These are just the trappings of a society that is fiercely proud of its identity and this is evident in many of the conversations I have held with friends and acquaintances in Tarragona. The Catalan question inevitably crops up in its various forms, either in a discussion of the language, the traditions, the food or, more commonly, in relation to Spain, in other words, defensively. Since I have lived in Catalonia before, this comes as no surprise to me. The difference is that years ago, in my determination to learn Spanish, so that I could move on to “my next big adventure”, South America, I saw “the Catalan thing” as an add on. A sort of extra or a bonus that came along with the experience of living here. Beyond a few token phrases I didn’t make any effort to speak the language – because I always had the easier option of communicating in Spanish, aka Castilian,

Now I regret my perception of “this Catalan thing” as an added extra. I didn’t register that the language is an open invitation, a doorway into this society. Not having walked through that door and learned to speak Catalan back then (although I came to understand it) has placed me in the position of “eavesdropper.” I listen to conversations just a couple of steps away from having my foot fully inside the door. When my Catalan friends and acquaintances kindly switch from their own language to Spanish for my benefit, a slight - but unintentional - distance opens up between me and them because this is not their language (or mine, for that matter). The gap doesn’t really close when – in response to my pleas – they address me in Catalan and I have to reply in Spanish because the words in my head just won’t be marshalled into sentences in Catalan.

A few English-speaking friends who, in their early days of language learning, made a conscious choice to give priority to Catalan and place Spanish on the back burner do not have this problem. Because they saw Catalan as something to be valued in its own right, as opposed to an extra, they now switch effortlessly from Catalan to Spanish and to English. Their Spanish seems to have been absorbed in a process of osmosis and through encounters with non Catalan speakers, so that along the way they have become fluent in the language. I’ve missed the boat. How I envy their trilingualism.

Fluency in Catalan would doubtlessly have given me a sharper perception of what it is to be Catalan. I ask my students if they are Catalan and uniformly they respond that they are. What does that mean, that you are Catalan, I inquire? The question evokes thoughtful expressions, furrowed brows.

“Well, we’re different.”

 “In what way?” I probe.

“We have imagination. Just look at Picasso, Gaudí and Dalí. Great Catalan art.”

“Er … Picasso was from the south…”

“Yes, but he lived here.”

I return to the question of difference. Marc, a banker, mentions efficiency as a Catalan attribute and links it to a word that others have spoken fondly of: seny, which they assure me has no direct translation. Seny, they argue is about the very essence of being Catalan and it means to be clear-headed, rational, cautious, without “the interference of passion.” Dolors laughs when I mention seny to her.

“Yes, a banker would be fond of that particular attribute because seny makes us into a nation of savers, estalviadores, and small business owners. We are also known for being tight fisted but maybe that’s the disagreeable side effect of seny …”

An exploration of the question of what it means to be Catalan generally relies on the introduction of difference to the discussion. Although most don’t say it, what they mean is different from the Spanish. Local cuisine is held up as a strong example. All the people I talk to, without exception, mention bread with tomato, pan amb tomaquet, as the crowning glory of Catalan cuisine. Marina admits that impoverished immigrants from Murcia in the south may have brought the recipe to Catalonia in the 19^th century. Now though, the ritual of a slice of farmhouse bread, rubbed with half a tomato, followed by a sprinkling of top quality olive oil and a little salt, is a daily occurrence in most Catalan households.

“Calçots, now they definitely are one hundred per cent Catalan,” she says with a smile.

Calçots (pronounced calsots) look like a cross between a slim leek and a fat spring onion. There is no translation of the word into English. Marina tells me that they used to be thrown on to the compost heap until, during lean times in the 19^th century, a farmer from the nearby town of Valls roasted them over an open fire. The resulting meal was so delicious that calçotadas (calçot banquets) have become a very popular tradition in Catalonia at this time of the year.

         Food is a topic that all Catalans delight in discussing at length but, before we get waylaid, I steer them back on to the path of what it means to be Catalan. Traditions and folklore are our next encounter. Marc inquires whether I am familiar with el caganer (the figure taking a crap in the corner of the Nativity scene*).

“Yes, and with the caga tiò too.* You seem to obsessed with defecation as a nation. Are you all stuck at the anal stage of development?”

“We might well be. But the point is that Catalans have a very earthy sense of humour; we are irreverent and we like to believe we’re not shy about those topics that others might regard as forbidden.”

Marc brings the Catalan national dance, the Sardana, into the discussion and asks if I have seen it performed. I nod.

“I doubt whether you hurried back to see it again.”

He’s right. Watching the Sardana brings to mind a ring of constipated dwarfs performing to a tune played on one of those annoying instruments that children blow repeatedly at parties. Ignoring my smirk, Marc suggests that the power of the Sardana, like the tradition of the human towers, rests in its symbolism.

“Look at how the participants hold hands to form a circle throughout the duration of the dance. They are united in their efforts, as are the teams who build human towers. They physically support each other in a collective endeavour. It’s all about cooperation and solidarity.”

“Without solidarity, Marina argues, we couldn’t have survived as a nation. Repression down the centuries has been part of our shared experience as Catalans. Together we have had to endure and to salvage what we could of our identity, which is, above all, the language.”

Cristina, who has a scientific background, sighs when I raise the issue.

“The rational side of my brain tells me that this is nonsense. To be Catalan … I can’t see it or touch it, But when you ask me about it I feel it and it won’t go away. Any encounter with our folklore, the Sardana and the human towers, evokes it. So does awareness that we have a very powerful neighbour that has spread its empire and its language – Spanish – to over 300 million people. We are a small and vulnerable nation in comparison.”

Discussion of identity often puts people on the defensive. Attempts to define what it means to be Catalan are overshadowed by very real political and historical issues of colonisation and Franco’s repression, as well as “a lack of understanding” on the part of the current conservative government in Madrid. This is the context within which Catalans’ sense of themselves as having a common identity has been forged - through the dynamics of repression and resistance. But, as Marc indicates, the common identity is not a cast iron shield; closer inspection reveals chinks which hint at a certain lack of integration.

“There are around seven million of us in Catalonia and many have come from other parts of the peninsula. Ask them where they’re from and they generally answer with the name of the town or village they or their parents, or perhaps their grandparents, were born in, even if they have lived in Catalonia for all or most of their lives.”

Guillermo is a sculptor and artist from a village in the south of Spain. He’s been living in Tarragona for over twenty years. He understands Catalan perfectly but doesn’t speak the language. Tarragona is his home now and there are no plans to move elsewhere. In his opinion the language, the traditions and the cuisine all make Catalans different.

“You can look high and low for evidence of their difference, and certainly you will find it. However, for me the crux is this, they are different because they want to be. And that’s good enough for me.”

* See my earlier Christmas blog.

Learning the Hard Way

“Fingers on the lips. Fingers on the lips. NOW!”

Thirteen little voices echo my words back at me and thirteen tiny forefingers obediently press into a line of pursed lips. My five-year-old class is silent … momentarily, so finally we can move. Off we march through the double doors leading away from the playground and up the stairs toward the classroom. On the second flight of stairs I hit a blind spot and the more canny members of the group take advantage of it to break ranks and charge screaming along the corridor and into the classroom. Our four-year-old neighbours, lined up and still waiting for orders to break ranks, glance up at their teacher seeking some explanation for the human hurricane that has just torn past them. I too glance at her and her regiment. She’s not impressed but I have no time to wallow in shame, hell has broken loose in my classroom and I wade in there feeling decidedly unhopeful about restoring calm.

The children like the “fingers on the lips” mantra and so I resort to it now. Once they are sitting quietly around the table and I have called the register we can begin the process of learning some English. But it’s me who has learnt most in the five months since I was nominated teacher of these tiny human beings. Until September of last year I had absolutely no contact with children … of any age, never mind five year olds. Adults, strictly adult education, was my domain. Outside of it I have learned that the rules are entirely different, or so it seems to me.

For a start I am of the impression that routine, organisation and clear boundaries are fundamental to establishing and maintaining control in the classroom. First we do this, then this, and then this, and finally this. And we do it the way I say, no other way. Any deviation or indecision generally causes havoc. To prevent it I need a game plan and I need to be organised down to the last detail. Turning my back on the class to shuffle undecidedly among my photocopies – even for a few seconds – risks chaos. I tell the children I have eyes in the back of my head,

“Yes, I can see them. Little red ones,” pipes up Laura.*

Others murmur their assent, but only the most docile. Eric and Roberto look sceptical and resume kicking each other under the table. Kicking is much less lethal than their usual sport, fencing with sharpened pencils, the objective being to poke an eye out. If their behaviour deteriorates, there is always the option of asking one or the other to leave the room. Inevitably, that happens but it no longer worries me, not even when they make faces through the frosted glass pane on the door.

I have come along way since the first class on my first day at the school, which left me “traumatised” and I don’t use the word lightly. On that day, unaware as I was of the need for sergeant major tactics, I blithely urged the children to follow me, “Vámonos. Let’s Go.” And indeed they did. They swarmed on ahead of me, up the stairs and charged into the classroom, barely pausing to open the door. When I strolled in Eric was trampolining on the tables, Roberto had become a whirling dervish, Miguel was repeatedly crash diving on the floor and two of the girls were screaming in the corner. The rest were pogoing in a sort of group frenzy, or so it seemed to me. The classroom resembled a war zone. That was the start, and it only got worse from then onward. I emerged at the end of fifty minutes having aged fifty years.

Since that first day sympathetic colleagues have enlightened me about the importance of a system of rewards and “punishment” via the happy and sad faces routine, aka bribery. Now, each child who behaves well receives a copy of a happy smiling face at the end of the class and two happy faces can be exchanged for a sticker. The “sticker awards” have become something of a high point in the class and a sea of eager faces often besieges me in the final minutes of each lesson chorusing,

“Dóna’m una enganxina” (Give me a sticker)

While I am doling out stickers, Eric and Roberto are whingeing miserably off stage over the injustice of the system. Each of them grasps a crumpled sad face in their tiny fists which their parents will have to sign. Cruelly, I hold up the newly purchased spider man stickers, which their classmate Arnau is deliberating over.

“Next time," I say, glancing over at the miscreants, “you too can have one of these … if you are good boys.”

Eric bursts into tears and buries his head among the coats on the rail behind him.

            For some reason the children have quickly grown fond of me. When I walk into the playground now to round them up, I get the celebrity treatment. The collective swarms over to me the second I arrive, joyously crying out my name. Both my legs are hugged, tiny hands slip into mine and little faces gaze up at me adoringly.  Elena, who habitually sticks to me limpet fashion, asks (again) if she is my favourite pupil. While I am still wondering what I have done to be worshipped in this way, my heart opens to the deluge and they’re in.

Whatever happens, no matter how much they wear me down, they have won me over and I suspect that long after the children have forgotten me, I will treasure the memories that these “tiny terrors” have given me. Those memories will not, however, slow my steps as I hasten back to my comfort zone of adult education. When my year in Tarragona is over that is where I will be. It’s where I belong and it is from there that I will salute the extraordinary professionals who have the skills and vocation required to be a nursery and primary school teacher. I am not one of them.

*The names of my pupils have been changed to protect me from the wrath of their parents!

Nuclear - Yes Please!

Just before Christmas our television screens were filled with images of revellers gathered in bars, cracking open champagne and celebrating. Just before New Year almost identical scenes were broadcast again. In both cases the celebrants were ordinary working-class people overjoyed at a piece of news they had just received. Apart from the fact that smiles were broadened in the first case with champagne and in the second with beer, there was another crucial difference between the two sets of celebrants.

News of a massive lottery windfall had led to the spontaneous pre Christmas rejoicing. Many of those beaming at the camera and spraying champagne over each other had just become millionaires. However, the post Christmas cheers resounding through the streets of the tiny Castile village, Villar de Cañas, were in response to a government announcement that a nuclear waste storage facility was to be located close by. On hearing the news, the mayor, José María Sáiz, and a number of villagers gathered in the only bar for miles around, cheered wildly and raised their beer bottles to toast to a brighter future for the 450 inhabitants of the locality. Grinning at the television camera, Sáiz declared,

 “We have won the lottery, not once, but for sixty consecutive years.” This was not an opinion shared by “Disgusted from Cuenca” who phoned the nearby council offices protesting that the jubilant villagers were “subnormal”.

My initial reaction to the Villar de Cañas celebrations was incredulity. Surely, I must have misheard, misunderstood or missed a vital element in the story. But no, I hadn’t. These people really were overjoyed that the facility was coming to their town, where it is to remain for at least sixty years as home to around 6,700 tons of radioactive waste. For them the waste represents employment opportunities. Estimates suggest that 450 jobs will be created directly in the installation and a further 700 will be generated indirectly through work setting up the 750 million euro investment.

This is the first installation of its kind in Spain. Currently, waste generated by Spanish nuclear power stations is sent for storage to neighbouring France. That will change when Villar de Cañas opens its doors for business. The village had, along with seven other locations on the peninsula, put in a bid to host the facility and it won. For the decision makers in the Spanish government the fact that there are no railways linking Villar with the rest of the peninsula, meaning the radioactive material will have to be transported by road, and that there is a lack of qualified personnel in the locality were not significant obstacles. It was chosen regardless.

To my relief, they bypassed hopeful candidates like the nearby town of Ascó, in Tarragona province, in favour of Villar.* Disgruntled members of Ascó local council condemned the decision as politically motivated and are planning to appeal it. They may be right about the political motivation. The Villar de Cañas mayor represents the conservative ruling party, the PP, which was only elected to government last November … one month before the announcement that his town had won its bid to host the storage facility.

It is perhaps more likely that opposition was a key factor influencing the choice of Villar over other locations. The Catalan parliament was against opening the facility on its territory, in Ascó, and this can’t have gone down too well in Madrid. Furthermore, if I follow those suspicious thoughts of mine through the dark and murky hinterland that lies behind political decisions, I quickly come upon what could be the real reason why those disgruntled Catalan councillors in Ascó may be right. Local opposition to the facility in Villar is weak. On the very afternoon of the announcement 150 people joined a protest … in Cuenca, 75 kilometres away. That was it.

Spain is sunk beneath the worst economic crisis of the democratic era, and possibly even prior to it. In Villar de Cañas and neighbouring towns people desperate for jobs are muting whatever fears they might have about the danger of the installation. Mayor José María Sáiz remarked,

“Ecologists shouldn’t be so uptight about this. It’s not so bad. Dam it. There is a risk in everything in life …”

Television images of Villar have captured the desolate and deserted streets of a mid-winter Castile village that looks entirely uninviting. Abandoned by more than half its population, - young people who have left in search of jobs over the past four decades - Villar has become a ghost town. One of the villagers was quoted as saying,

“They talk about bringing a nuclear cemetery here. The cemetery was already here because the cemetery is the only thing that works in this place. The number of dead goes up while only one baby is born every two years.”

Locals are confident now that the promise of work will expand the population and inject new life into the village.

Once I had overcome my incredulity on hearing the news, my second impulse was to sneer at the naïveté of the villagers and their political representatives from the ranks of the disgusted. I wanted to ridicule these bumpkins but I couldn’t. Seeing those hopeful faces and listening to their expressions of trust in the decision makers saddened me. Only despair could have driven them to welcome nuclear waste into their neighbourhood. Economic circumstances, the crisis of unemployment, mounting debt and general hopelessness – as well as manipulating politicians – have all eroded their critical faculties. The long-standing healthy mistrust of authority that has been a catalyst for change throughout Spanish history was nowhere to be seen.

I leave the last word with Mayor Sáiz, who brushed aside unease about the decision, which he emphasised, has been “unanimously approved by deputies in parliament. Would they want something that is harmful for the people of Spain?”

Maybe someone should send that man on a junket to Fukishima in Japan.

*No reason to be smug here though. There are already three nuclear power stations in Tarragona province.

Oranges, sunglasses and stick-wielding children - Happy Christmas Catalan style

Christmas Eve, and the sunglasses are still on in Tarragona. Throngs of shoppers sporting Gucci and D & G eyewear strut the main street, the Rambla Nova, on the hunt for festive paraphernalia. Eyeing them from the tables at nearby pavement cafés are the owners of designer label sheepskins and chic leather boots. The December sun bounces off the polished paving stones decorating the central walkway of the Rambla, temporarily blinding me. I tut at my forgetfulness and vow never again to go Christmas shopping without what is necessarily de rigueur winter gear in Tarragona. I glance up at the temperature being flashed from a sign outside a chemist’s to my right: 17º C. If this were Belfast, the locals would be out in shorts and tee-shirts.

            Plump juicy fruit hangs from the branches of trees lining the main street. Last time I looked the oranges were wan and uninviting. Since then the mid-winter sun has fattened and ripened them. But nobody, except me, seems interested in the fruit; they are all engaged in choosing… a log that shits presents. They are purchasing a caga tió, my latest acquaintance in my travels through Catalan culture. Dozens of these unconvincing props are on sale in the Christmas fair on the Rambla. I mill around one of the stalls peering at them from different angles. My friend Mercè looks slightly shamefaced when I ask her about their purpose. Suppressing a smile she answers,

Children beat them with a stick until they shit presents.

They beat them? You mean they literally beat the crap out of them?

Yes, this is how the song goes:

Caga tió –Shit tió
ametlles i torró –almonds and turrón*
si no vols cagar –if you don’t shit
et donaré un cop de bastó –I will beat you with a stick

Caga tió! – Shit tió

I glance down at the trusting little face painted on the log and empathise, wondering whether the smile will remain as fixed while the blows are raining down on it.          

Defecation also plays a crucial role in Catalan Nativity scenes. Scan the setting and you will find el caganer (literally the “shitter”) crouching behind a bush or in a quiet corner away from the crib holding the baby Jesus. The caganer is a popular rustic figure, usually a shepherd, caught with his trousers down and a satisfied grin on his face. Under his rear, in a neatly laid heap on the ground, is the reason for his satisfaction. More recently, makers of the caganer have branched out into the modern world. Now it is not uncommon to see the caganers metamorphosed into the features of well-known politicians and personalities such as Obama, Shakira and even Prince William and Kate Middleton … taking a crap in the background of the Nativity Scene.

The origins of this tradition date back to the 17^th or 18^th century and explanations are varied. Most indicate that he is a figure of fun and humour, particularly for children. I, however, would like to think that the caganer is representative of that tendency within Spain which has a healthy disregard for religious sobriety. El caganer, I suppose, is whatever you want him to be. 

           
 It’s an immense relief to discover that Christmas is quite a low-key affair in Catalonia compared to the full-on-in-your-face-assault in Belfast. I didn’t hear my first Christmas Carol until 6^th December, which is about the time Santa Claus began swaggering up and down in front of the Corte Inglés department store, sweating profusely in his red and white gear and heralding in another wave of consumerism. However, since the shops seem to be crowded anyway most of the time and queues are generally prevalent here, I have noticed only a subtle difference in crowd volume with the arrival of the festive season, not unlike the subtle difference in temperature between summer and winter in Ireland.

Still, there’s a catch. While the agony ends back home on 1^st January with a return to a renewed appreciation of what passes for normal life, the festivities here drag on until 6^th January. I blame the Three Kings. Following that star they turned up late with their presents. And, true to tradition, Catalans wait for the Kings to arrive on 6^th, the BIG pressie day. Those children who didn’t beat the caga tiò hard enough and were disappointed with whatever presents he shit will be eagerly awaiting the arrival of royalty from the east. Let’s hope that the gifts satisfy because, if not, the mini Catalans will have had plenty of time to become very adept at wielding those sticks in the 12-day interim between Christmas Day and the Epiphany.

              In the meantime we will have had almost two weeks to indulge ourselves with daily banquets of abundant fare. The festivities kicked off with dinner on Christmas Eve, which ended well after midnight. Christmas Day saw the table groan again under the weight of seafood, with a main course of prawns, elvers and cannelloni; turkey is not as popular here as it is back home. Dessert, if we could manage it, was Christmas Log. One that was eaten, not beaten. Afterwards the turrón* was served with champagne. Needless to say, few of us managed to leave an empty plate – we were still stuffed from our Christmas Eve midnight feast.

On New Year’s Eve we will gather around the table again at midnight, this time to participate in the ritual of the 12 grapes. With each stroke of the clock, signalling the death of the old year, all guests eat a grape. Tradition demands that in these twelve seconds we each chew and swallow twelve grapes and wash them down with a mouthful of champagne. This year I am fortunate to live in the vicinity of the cathedral and, unlike millions of others, won’t have to listen to the bells toll via television or radio. I only have to open the window to hear the real thing.

  

* Turrón is something of a cross between fudge and nougat.

A Cultural Desert

Yayne, Mr Rochester intones softly and pulls the lady in question, Ms Eyre, close to him.

I groan inwardly. I must be mad watching this. It’s not that this most recent cinema version* of Charlotte Brontë’s classic work is unworthy of my praise, because that’s not true, it’s just that yet another foreign language film at my local cinema has been dubbed. All my instincts scream sacrilege. Maybe Michael Fassbender, as the intriguing Mr. Rochester, fulfils all the requisites of the dark, tormented north country character that Brontë meant to him to be. But I just don’t know. Speaking a language entirely foreign to him, and in a voice that is not his own, undermines the power of the actor’s performance.

Last week I watched Jodie Foster and Kate Winslet become rage and hatred incarnate in Roman Polanski’s screen version of Yasmina Reza’s play, Carnage. Yet the words coming out of their mouths didn’t quite match the contortions of their faces. The actors’ performances, the emotions reflected, were not fully conveyed in the translation or in the somewhat detached intonation of the dubbed voices.  With this mismatch it seemed at times that the characters were engaging in histrionics. What were they so upset about? What am I so upset about? I suspect I feel cheated when Kate Winslet screeches in Spanish in a voice belonging to some faceless dubbing artist. I leave the cinema muttering blasphemy and determined to seek out the original version of Carnage. That won’t be easy in Tarragona. This far into my stay, three months, I have managed to see only one original version film: a Spanish language production.

This is how I spend my Saturday nights. I faithfully troop out to the cinema because it’s either a dubbed film or nothing at all, and nothing at all is not a choice; not for me anyway. I take the Number 97 from Tarragona city centre along the motorway and out into the back of beyond, to one of the most hideous examples of modernity, of consumerism, that I have ever seen: Les Gavarres.

Les Gavarres, a commercial zone, is surrounded by scrubland, complete with tumbleweeds and scorched earth. It is nothing other than a vast area dotted with gigantic Lego-style buildings that operate as shops, mega-size shops. Sports gear, furniture, cars, clothes, toys, Chinese imports, food, you name it, is sold here. Often, too often, the premises are so far apart that customers without a car cannot move easily from one venue to the next. Planning and perhaps even planning permission, if either exists that is, took no account of aesthetics or practicalities in Les Gavarres.

As my bus approaches, I peer out at the neon lights blinking through the darkness. My reflection is blotted by fast food joints, Burger King, Buffalo Grill, Foster’s Hollywood; their names emblazoned in in-your-face letters that compete for attention with the chains of recently hung Christmas lights. To the fore stands a brightly lit four-metre-high cone which operates as a Christmas tree. Anything natural, authentic, would look out of place in this scenario. And indeed, a few saplings planted along the pavement are wizened and sickly, the soul sucked out of them before their time.

Droves of young people descend from the bus with me. It’s eight o’clock and many are going shopping. They are joining thousands of others who, judging by the traffic jams leading into the car parks, are already indulging in Consumerism. There are queues everywhere, all year round. In the weeks prior to Christmas the lines are much longer and tempers much shorter. To kill time before the start of my film, I wander into MediaMarkt and immediately wish I hadn’t. The place is overwhelming in its vastness and I acknowledge that I haven’t the patience to seek out what I need among the labyrinth of aisles. No sales assistants are visible; the only uniformed personnel I spot are cashiers facing a wall of customers or walkie-talkied security guards eyeing loners like myself. Loudspeakers bombard me with price slashing offers at motion-sickness speed. I slink out.

Four lanes of human beings are jostling for position at the cinema. Tickets are dispatched from behind what seems to be bullet-proof glass. The cashier clarifies my request through a microphone with a volume that undulates, coming and going so that I only catch every fourth word. I am in row ? and seat number ? Exasperated and none the wiser, I smile, grasp my ticket and hurry off in the direction of the next set of queues.

The overriding feeling on my Saturday night trips to the cinema is one of alienation. I cannot relate to these surroundings but neither can any of my Catalan friends. “Vulgar” is the term one person uses to describe the complex. Another, a psychologist, refers to her “Les Gavarres experience” as dystonic, inconsistent with her character. “A necessary evil” is the kindest comment I have heard. Necessary, precisely because there are no other cinemas around, which is surprising given that Tarragona is a university city with a population of almost 150,000; significantly higher if you include residents of the nearby towns and villages.

My complaints about the lack of choice in cinema have fallen on sympathetic ears. A friend of a friend suggested I check out the Antiga Audiencia, where the city council offers world cinema sessions in original version with subtitles. I did and the security guard informed me – somewhat apologetically – that no further sessions are planned due to cutbacks. That’s the end of the line for me.

For the foreseeable future I am doomed to join the Saturday night throngs at Les Gavarres, to sit on the bus and listen to teenagers practice their English with each other and then follow them in through the crowds to watch dubbed films. I’ll continue to kid myself that I might justify the excursion as “a listening comprehension,” an opportunity to further my grasp of the language. How much tighter can my grasp get after thirteen years of living in Spanish-speaking countries? In the cinema at Les Gavarres I choke on it.

* By director Cary Fukunaga