On missing the cultural nuance that goes with language...a funny

Still working away at my thesis chapter...but here's a quick twitter joke in the meantime

Greetings on this unusually gray day, which looks more like what I think of winter as looking like, even if it still doesn't feel it.  (Last night I fell asleep to the unusual but comforting patter of rain on the roof.  I hope the reservoirs are filling up, though snow would be better than rain, maybe.)

I'm on deadline with my thesis chapter, but I have a couple of good long blog entries meditated, which I promise I will post as soon as possible.  In the meantime, here's a quick funny that I saw in El País this morning, which no doubt published it maliciously, and made sure to run the story in both Spanish and English, because everyone needs a good laugh after Christmas.

Dreidels "por encargo"

Oh dreidels, dreidels, dreidels, you are quite tough to find...

Some thoughts on shopping trips, and a new neighborhood.

I

My menorah and candles

My quest to find a menorah in Madrid ended up being only a ten minute walk from my apartment, and as you can see above, the Aladdin's lamp is working nicely.  (It's on tin foil to prevent hot wax drips and sparks on the nice wooden furniture.)  As I now have the menorah in place, and one of the friendly medievalists I have met here has invited me for "nochevieja" I of course reciprocated by inviting her and her family for this weekend so they get to have a "traditional" (within the very loose sense of the word) Hanukkah.  As she has volunteered to bring her children so they can light candles, and as when it comes to tradition I draw the line at looking up prayers in Hebrew that I don't know and don't normally recite, I thought I should have dreidels for the kids to play with.  (If I have any European readers who don't know what I'm talking about, this is a dreidel.)  This turned out to be difficult, and may yet be impossible.

Storks and the City of Light

 

An interesting phrase I learned today

My Spanish is pretty good, but one of the nice things about being here is that I keep learning new idiomatic phrases, some of them somewhat dated, but which provide fascinating insights into the culture.  I may have mentioned the somber "hambre que sabe la hartura no es hambre" (literally "hunger which knows what it is to be full isn't hunger") which means that it's different being hungry when you know where your next meal is coming from and are looking forward to it and when you don't know when you'll eat again.  Obviously, this came up in the context of discussing the post-war period.

Today in class I learned a much lighter phrase, when discussing the gender theory of Judith Butler, a subject where sense of humor is generally severely lacking.  My Complutense mentor, in an explanation of how gender is a learned performance, told the story of overhearing a small child of three or four years old at a polideportivo being picked up from his swimming lesson and telling his father that "hoy aprendimos a nadar como señoras" ("today we learned to swim like ladies").  My mentor, emphasizing that the child was linking an inherently neutral action (a type of stroke) with being a "señora" added that this was clearly a child who was too small to have an adult conception of human sexuality and that he still "piensa que los niños vienen de París."

Festivals of Lights

Happy Hanukkah, everybody.  More to come soon....

Due to a small disaster involving my phone switching off accidentally while I was copying pictures from internal memory to an SD card (ironically in order to back them up and also create more space on my phone) I lost a bunch of pictures due to damaged sectors on the JPEGs.  Aside from providing some interesting internet reading about JPEG repair programs, I didn't get much from this experience, but I have been able to recover some of the few not backed up photos, which were mostly taken over the last week, as Madrid becomes more and more twinkly with holiday lights.  As tonight is technically the first night of Hanukkah (and I still forgot to buy matches, and therefore with gas heat am condemned to sit and look at my pretty new menorah with two unlit candles tonight), I thought it made sense to show what I can of the winter lights in this pretty city.  For those of you reading this on big screens, sorry the image are small and low-res.  I'll try to get more and better ones over the next month and replace them as much as possible.

Happy Constitution Day

 

A flurry of puentes ushers in the holiday season

My plan for staying quietly at home during today's "puente" (although being a Wednesday it can't really be a "bridge" to any particular weekend) was dynamited today by a call from New York friends who have been in Barcelona and are flying home from Barajas tomorrow morning, who suggested that I go out to dinner with them.  So I did end up going into the city center this evening, on El día de la constitución, which is celebrating its 39th birthday today.  As I had arranged to meet my friends in the Plaza Mayor, I managed to make my way through the Christmas market there, which was filled with more crowds than usual, many of them holding sparklers of the kind I fondly remember from my childhood on the Fourth of July, that are now mostly illegal at home.  My friends were stunned by the crowds and noise and sparklers, and remarked that they had had no idea it was Constitution Day (though they had seen the news about the rally in Barcelona).

A further note on Spanish custom and gender norms....

 

Having just watched "El Intermedio" I have a quick further thought

 

 In light of the current (and recurring) hysteria about sexual harassment by politicians and so on in the Anglosphere, I watched the final (absolutely funny and charming) segment of "El Intermedio" this evening with something like shock.  I think it's superb that the Spanish manage to be concerned about sexism while still managing a considerable sense of humor about what my Complutense mentor refers to as the "national characteristic of invading people's personal space."

On Ads and Aspirations....

Some speculative and unscientific hypotheses I have developed watching the "publicidad" on Spanish TV

 

Faithful readers who are practicing their Spanish may appreciate the clips below, as they are narrated nice and slowly and clearly.  Be warned, however, that while repeated viewings will lead to full comprehension, they may also lead to a strange desire to buy beverages and cleaning products.

I'm just back from a fun but exhausting weekend in Belgium, and feeling very happy to be back in my cozy city once more, where I can see the sun.  I've been given another good archive lead, which I will follow up shortly, as tomorrow and Friday are both puentes which I plan to use for rest, recuperation, and possibly some writing time.  In the meantime, here are a few thoughts about Spanish TV which have been kicking around my head for a while (I watch way too much TV here), and which being away for a few days brought into focus.

A Russian friend of mine this weekend, in the attempt to persuade me that the world was not falling apart, said that she traced social progress through Hollywood movies because they are mass, popular culture, so once an idea is there it is never radical or elitist, but by default mainstream, and said that she traced the rise of tolerance to the ways movies were made now as opposed to fifty years ago.  I see her point, but what I didn't say at the time is that even Hollywood movies are frequently aspirational: they don't so much reflect an actual social consensus as the social consensus that the people in Hollywood wish existed.  In that respect they may be more progressive than the US as a whole.  (My friend doesn't know the US at all except from the movies, so she has no way of realizing that.)  I assume that the same is true for Spanish TV advertisements, and perhaps even more so since the point of a TV ad is even more explicitly to get people to buy stuff, so obviously the ads present an aspirational lifestyle --- a world which doesn't exist but which could if you are willing to buy X product (or a dystopia which doesn't exist but which might if you don't buy X product).  Still, to the extent that ads reflect both the preoccupations and the dreams of their target demographics, I have made a few tentative hypotheses about Spain the present day.  These are unscientific and unsupported by any hard demographic data, but I bet they could be confirmed (because I bet the highly paid people who made the ads confirmed them).  Read on for my thoughts, and for some funny youtube clips.

Introducing Thanksgiving (II)

A slightly delayed Thanksgiving dinner for friends has an unexpected complication...and an unexpectedly lovely gift.

As the "Semana de Black Friday" does not involve any actual non-work days, and as my (generally free) Friday was slightly occupied with the Colegio Estados Unidos de America this week, I invited my oldest Madrid friends (the grandparents of the second-grader I know at the Colegio EEUU) to come and have modified traditional Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday.  All in all, and in spite of one unexpected bump in the road (I think now smoothed out), it was a huge success, and a great joy.

Introducing Thanksgiving (I)

In which I make a brief attempt to be a "cultural ambassador" and learn about the "Colegio Estados Unidos de América."
 

Friday morning I headed to a new neighborhood in Madrid (I keep discovering new ones), tucked away "between the river and the M-30" as the friend who invited me put it, to visit the impressively named (and adorable) Colegio Estados Unidos de América, the public school where my friend's son is in second grade, on a mission to show the students a genuine denizen of the mysterious place for which their school is named, and to explain the origins of the Semana de Black Friday.  (Not something the children - or for that matter Spanish adults - were terribly interested in, but which I felt obligated to do.)

Where to buy a menorah in Madrid (Part II)

Mission accomplished!  Menorah in situ and ready to go!

I realized I promised to let people know about my trip to Los Olivos Librería y Distribuidora Solidaria, so while this is a few days old, I should let people know that I have successfully purchased a (somewhat whimsical) menorah (see above) which I feel is a nice nod to the oil in the story without the full of dealing with oil and wicks and so on.  (It also believe it or not was one of the less expensive ones in the store.)  Here it is, with candles, all ready to go, except for the tiny problem (which occurred to me forcibly when doing yoga last week, probably because there are lit candles in the studio) that I don't have any matches.  At home I rely on the gas flame of my stove to light candles in an emergency, but as I have an electric stovetop here that's not an option.  So I have to remember to buy matches sometime over the next couple of weeks.  (I was thinking about this while doing yoga and was upside down in a shoulder stand thinking "tengo que comprar...mechas?  No, una mecha is a wick...cerillas!  Tengo que comprar cerillas."  It's amazing what comes up when your mind is relaxed at yoga.)

On (not) celebrating Thanksgiving and parallel neighborhoods

I was expecting to make a big thing of Thanksgiving, but I find that I'm ok finding analogies, rather than exact equivalents.

[UPDATED 11/26/17 with pictures]
 
First off, apologies for not blogging for several days.  I've had my usual interesting and happy routine, and while various things are going on, none of them seemed blog-worthy, though now looking at the posts I see that I have to do a few follow up entries since I left my faithful readers hanging about a couple of details.  I promise those are forthcoming, but this is a special (not quite) Thanksgiving blog.

All this week has been "Semana de Black Friday" and according to the TV ads it will remain "Semana de Black Friday" until November 27.  This reminds me of nothing so much as a line in El Intermedio when in response to a headline "Corruption trials dog the leadership of the PP" the host El Gran Wyoming remarked, "¿En serio?  Esto será Día de la Marmota.  O más bien de la Gaviota."  (There's an untranslatable rhyme there, since the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day is "Día de la Marmota" in Spanish, and the logo of the PP is a stylized blue seagull -- una gaviota.)  Black Friday ten days in a row does seem a bit groundhog day.  It also rather annoys me because Thanksgiving is one of the few holidays I actually celebrate with family, and I've always found the idea that somehow the focus is not supposed to be on being grateful for having enough to eat and wanting to share good fortune with others but really shopping slightly offensive.  Taking away Thanksgiving and leaving only the offensive part seems like a real shame.

Adventures in reprografía

"Oh, my gosh, how are you going to read that?"

exclaimed the Complutense lecturer whose class I guest taught on Monday when I ran into him by the coffee machines on my way out of the BNE today, and showed him the fruits of my labors, namely the paper pictured below:

Page from Rafael Alberti's notebooks. Go ahead, enlarge it and try to read it. I dare you.

Yes, this is the page I found yesterday at the end of my day, that gave rise to yesterday's long entry, and yes, I have succeeded in printing relatively decent copies from the microfilm (with the help of the nice white-coated microfilm attendant who kindly shook the toner and switched me from one machine to the other so I could make copies that did not have streaks).

As to the answer to "how am I going to read it?" the answer is "with difficulty."

I have yet to go to the "servicio de bibliografía y búsqueda" where you can consult a librarian, but that is on the schedule.  I may take the copy and throw myself on the librarian's mercy and ask to look at the original instead of the microfilm.  (The staff in the Sala Cervantes greet me by name now when I show up, so perhaps they'll put in a good word.)

In the meantime, I have made a little progress today, in that I think I at least know what I'm looking at besides sketches of giant heads that Rafael Alberti should have used a clean page for.  (I bet in elementary school he got very bad marks for penmanship.  I did not properly appreciate Dorothy Peterson and Langston Hughes, never mind real copper-plate writers like Bunny Rucker properly until trying to decipher him.)

I'm sitting on the dock of the bay, wasting ti -- A NIBBLE! A NIBBLE!

It's probably nothing, and may slip off the line, but today's fishing expedition had a sudden tug at the fly....

Aside from fishing metaphors, I have to say that it is difficult to convey the feel of the detective work of doing research.  I can think of two works of fiction that have done it, the German film The Nasty Girl (Das schreckliche Madchen) and Javier Cercas' novel Soldados de Salamina.  (The film version of the latter fails signally at this.)  The moment when the main character in the film finally sees an opportunity to see papers in "the poison cabinet" is more exciting than all the firebombing and emotional turmoil that comes before and after.  And the moment when the main character in the novel says grimly "in alphabetical order" when he decides to call information about every nursing home in Lyons in among the laughter and groans there's a little quickened heartbeat.  But mostly it's hard to capture what it's like to look for something for a long time, and what it's like when you (maybe) find something which (maybe) is (close to) what you're looking for.

I have to say that most of the time when I'm going through archives I'm happily interested in all kinds of stuff that I know is completely irrelevant, and simply tell myself that it's all "background information" or that I'm "getting to know" the character of the person I'm researching.  But I've been getting a little bored and discouraged (my happy teaching day yesterday was also not a day at the BNE), and today I'll be honest and admit I was bored.  I decided to walk part of the way between the university and the BNE this afternoon after lunch, and ended up miscalculating the distance of the walk and walking for longer than I planned, so I arrived at the BNE late (around 5:00 in the evening, and I wanted to get to yoga by 7:30, or 7:45 at the latest).  I was tired, and not feeling particularly inspired, but determined to get back into the routine of research, because routine is what keeps you going through tough spots.  I was a little cheered by being greeted with smiles and nods of recognition by the security people and the librarians at the BNE, who all know me by now, since I come regularly (again, routine helps).  I requested the roll of microfilm I had been working my way through, threaded it into the machine like the expert I have become, and scrolled along to the place I had left off according to my notes.

If I could turn back time...

I had a long and productive day today which was a strange mirror image of a past life.

I woke up fairly early this morning (for me) and headed merrily off on a Monday to an informational session at the Complutense for students in the "estudios ingleses" program about their study abroad options.  I had been invited by my Complutense mentor to speak about opportunities to study in the US in general, and the Fulbright program in particular, because the students who study English mostly focus on the UK and "no se dan cuenta de que el Brexit va en serio."  The beginning of the session was marked by the sad uncertainty that has hung over many things swamped by the politics of stupidity lately, as the professors urged the students to apply now for an Erasmus year in the UK, and if doing less than a full academic year to do the first semester or trimester abroad next year, before March 29, 2019 at 11:00 PM ("hora de Londres, naturalmente" as my mentor put it) when in the words of Yes, Minister "the curtains come down, the lights go out, and the balloon goes up."

Where to buy a menorah in Madrid (Part I)

 

A tale of syncretism, cultural generosity, and general weirdness

As I may have mentioned, friends of mine here in Madrid have invited me for 24 December ("nochebuena" in local parlance) so that I'm not lonely over the holiday.  I said that of course I would be glad to come if I was around, and mentioned that I normally spend the Christmas break in Puerto Rico with my parents, and the tradition of the midnight swim on December 31.  (I don't know if now with no beach the midnight swim will happen again, but let's hope that it does soon, and that the water isn't too polluted for the "underwater fireworks" of phosphorescence.)  "So do you not celebrate Christmas because you're Jewish?" asked the kind friend who had just extended the invitation.  When I confirmed that this was the case she said, "Oh, that's why you talked about New Year's instead."

To be clear, my friend knows that I am Jewish, she just wasn't sure if that was why I didn't celebrate Christmas.  I didn't have the heart to tell her that if I was a practicing Jew the "New Year" would be in September.  Spaniards really mean it when they naively claim that lots of Christian celebrations are cultural and not religious, mostly because they can't quite imagine life without them.  (Nor did I explain that most Americans over the age of ten wouldn't be particularly bothered about Christmas Eve since the celebration even for American Christians is on Christmas Day.  No point in making things too complicated.)  Since I felt I ought to reciprocate for the kind Christmas invite, I said that my friends should come and bring their kids for one night of Hanukkah, which is a nice kid-friendly celebration, and which they would enjoy as exposure to a new culture.  They were quite pleased with the idea and agreed to come if possible ("porque las tradiciones así son bonitas" as my friend explained, when adding that although they were not religious they put a "Belén" or creche scene for their kids at Christmas).  I am most happy to invite them, and will even try for traditional food, although latkes without a food processor may be a challenge.  (Perhaps I can borrow a food processor from someone?  Or buy pre-shredded potatoes?)  I have also decided (in the interests of cultural ambassadorship, and being a good host to people who have been super-nice to me) that I will try to get ahold of a dreidel and look up the half-remembered rules to the game so they can enjoy playing it.  (Chocolate coins for gambling are at least no problem.  Along with its acres of Christmas turrones in all possible flavors and several that are probably impossible my local Mercadona has started selling little baggies of chocolate euros in appropriate gold and silver foil.  As with "El Halloween," candy makers don't miss a trick, or a holiday.)  But this leaves the important problem of buying a menorah.

Heat vs. Hot Water

Why you should turn (or leave) the thermostat down (or off) before taking a shower.

This is an entry for my house-owning and home-repair minded readers.

Madrid's temperature differentials continue to confuse me.  According to the internet, the lows in Madrid and New York are about the same this week (around 2-4 C, or mid-thirties F), but the highs are vastly different.  New York today has a low of 3 and a high of 9 (Celsius) and Madrid has a low of 4 and a high of 18.  (Or between about 37 F and about 48 F vs. between about 39 F and about 65 F.)  Aside from the fact that this makes it difficult to dress properly (except "like an onion" as one Spaniard picturesquely put it), it also makes turning on the heat an interesting conundrum.  At night, I'm snuggled under lots of quilts, and quite warm even with the thermostat turned down to about 10 C.  In the late afternoon, I hardly need the heat on at all.  Unfortunately, the coldest part of the day is the morning, generally between 7:00 and 10:00 AM which makes getting up at a reasonable hour even harder than normal for me.  I thought I had worked out a system, but in a new apartment with a new heating system you learn something new every day.

Mastodons in the Metro

As the late Terry Pratchett wisely said of his city, "mostly what Ankh-Morpork was built on was Ankh-Morpork."  But sometimes you find -- as it were -- the Fifth Elephant.

(Yes, that was a joke for my fellow Pratchett friki fans.)

There are "museums" all over the Madrid metro of things found while digging it.  Opera has the "Caños del Peral," the remains of the sixteenth century water system.  Chamberí has the "ghost station," a fully restored image of what the metro looked like one hundred years ago, when it first opened.  But I am out in what was countryside until the 20th C, and was a separate village as late as the 1940s.  So when the metro got here there was no urban archeology.  On the other hand, there were mammoths.  Seriously, mastodons.  Also a bunch of other creatures who seem to have liked the Carabanchel area when it was a grassy savannah in the Miocene Period about fifteen million years ago.

So naturally, Carpetana has a mammoth museum.

Entrance to the Carpetana Metro station.  See picture of mammoths at left, by ticket machines.

What's in your wallet?

With all due respect to Capital One, not too many American credit cards anymore.

I've been comfortably settled in for a while now, but yesterday (Friday) I finally completed the long process of getting a tarjeta de identidad de extranjero (or TIE), and am now the official possessor of a Spanish identity card, complete with color photo on the front and (smudgy) fingerprint on the back.  This makes me a completely legal and registered and fichada resident of Spain, at least until the end of June, and also means that my número de identidad de extranjera has now been recorded in so many places that it will follow me for the rest of my life if I ever decide to live here for the long term.  So that's a relief.

It also means that my wallet is filled with little plastic id cards that identify me as a madrileña.  I now have my TIE (which I have placed in the clear plastic folder where I keep my driver's license, in front of said driver's license), and also my Banco Sabadell cards (registered to my local branch), my red multi-tarjeta for the metro and bus (and bike share), by white and blue polideportivo membership card, and my blue and white Biblioteca Nacional "investigadora" card.  In honor of all these forms of photo id (and deference to my wallet not straining too much), I have ceremonially removed my NYC library card and my NYC ID, which I was carrying for sentimental reasons.  While I do still have my driver's license and insurance and student id cards (things which in an emergency it would be good to have), my wallet is starting to look more local.  This just goes to show (something that a lot of flag-wavers here have been trying to hide) that when people talk about patria and homeland, and also about "integration" and "assimilation" of immigrants, really what they're talking about is what's in your wallet (of which cash, which comes out of ATM machines generally, is usually the least important thing).  Respect to Capital One's advertising firm, for coming up with a slogan which captures the essence of modern identity.

Surprise! Not the holiday you're expecting!

La fiesta de la Almudena is an object lesson in fitting in by being yourself.

As fans of Luis Berlanga's Bienvenidos, Mr. Marshall will know, Spaniards were slightly aggrieved by being left out of the Marshall plan just because they technically were neutral during the Second World War.  The gleaming Cuatro Torres north of Chamartin and even the much humbler buildings around me are a testament to Spain's eventual ability to at least somewhat recover without outside help (though average inherited wealth here remains less than in other parts of Europe, because more people were starting with less).  Spain also managed to be neutral during World War I. At the time, that was actually clever, since I understand Vitoria/Gasteiz had the benefit of selling arms without worrying about using them, and Spain started the 1920s less devastated than its neighbors to the north.  However, this now means that everyone else in Europe gets a holiday on November 11.  Even the US gets a holiday on November 11.  And Spain has no day off.  This is a patent injustice, especially since I'm told by Belgian friends that November 1 is a holiday elsewhere in Europe too, so it's not as if last week's random day off is a fair substitute.

The rest of Spain just has to suffer the injustice.  But not Madrid.

Funny/Not Funny

 

The news by newspaper and the news by mail only occasionally converge...

I got a piece of mail from Banco Sabadell today.  For a moment I wondered whether it might be something retro like a paper account statement in spite of their spiffy smartphone app, and then I worried that it might be some kind of bill.  But when I got upstairs and opened it I discovered a form letter (in English, since my account was set up in that language - they do have good software) addressed to "Dear Sir/Madam" and informing me "personally" that the bank's Board of Directors has decided as of October 5 to relocate their registered offices to Alicante in order to "fulfill [the bank's] commitment to take the necessary measures to ensure at all times the proper legal security and protection of the interests of its customers."  No particular reason.  They just want me to know that I definitely should not panic and withdraw money, and that they've always thought Alicante was lovely at this time of year (which I'm sure it is).

Book hands vs. document hands

Paleography training comes in useful with the microfilms at the BNE

After sitting in on an exceptionally fun morning class about Ayala's story "El Inquisidor" (which I maintain is not really about the Inquisition at all, but rather about various unfortunate mid-twentieth century events that involved conversion and true believers), and hurrying to do a quick but happy yoga practice (I'm practicing going into headstands with one leg at a time straight instead of squeezing my knees into my chest first), I stopped for a quick salad for lunch, and then hit the BNE in the afternoon.  I was most shocked to find that there was an actual line to check in (only about four people, but still), and further startled to see that the statues of Isabel II and the statue on the right (who I can't remember but might Zorrilla or someone similarly modern) are under scaffolding at the moment.  Humph.

Although the BNE is usually pretty empty in the afternoons I was startled to find that the two "modern" microfilm machines were being used when my microfilm arrived (and not by the red bearded gentleman who had been using the other one all last week), so I was forced to use the "old" machines that don't print.  Not a problem.  What was a problem was that after fifteen minutes of plugging in machines and switching out parts the nice white-coated librarian (like a lab technician in her white coat) apologized and said none of the old machines were fully working, and I could either advanced the roll by hand, or go over to "revistas" and see if they had a free machine.  I elected to advance the machine by hand, and was rewarded after about two minutes by one of the new (e.g. working) machines becoming free.  I planted myself in front of it, and tried to not envy the guy next to me who was transcribing onto a laptop what looked to me like a ridiculously clear and easy to read text that looked like a drama of some sort.

A new season

Now that "El Halloween" is over, it's one long commercial slide until Three Kings Day, without Thanksgiving to break the Fall

Update (7 November): I have discovered that the heat in my apartment works perfectly...if you turn on the thermostat.  Good Things to Know.

Due to a misunderstanding with my US bank (eventually cleared up as a software error after half an hour of my free cell phone minutes on the phone with tech support), I had occasion to remember that today is actually the two month anniversary of my arrival in Spain.  In a way it feels like I arrived yesterday, and in a way New York seems vague and unreal.  (I know it's election day there tomorrow, and I even have opinions about the propositions on the ballot, but it all seems far away.)  The here and now is all about taking care of beginning-of-the-month stuff here in Madrid: paying bills, renewing memberships at yoga and the pool, trying to remember when I have to buy another monthly unlimited "multi-tarjeta" for the metro and bus.

Merluza and the Life of Brian - the BNE cafeteria

Research continues.  No breakthroughs.  But amusements.

I spent the better part of three hours transcribing María Teresa León's speech on the "Escuela Hispano-Americana" today, from its very light pencil in her very hurried handwriting.  (She wrote nicely for short stories she was planning to type.  These were more notes for a lecture, and were pretty scribbly.)  I did google it to make sure it wasn't completely wasted effort, and I think at least I've preserved the gist, although my paleography training came in handy in a few places, where I just left ... to signify words or letters I couldn't make out.

Unfortunately, it makes no direct reference to my authors, but it's interesting as a European's view of the Americas (or more specifically as a Spaniard's view of Argentina) in 1940.  It's an odd (but not at all unfamiliar to me) mix of arrogance and pleading.  The school, as far as I can tell from the speech, was designed to have European (Spanish exile) instructors for local children, and although the outline she scribbled for herself at the beginning is supposed to include an "elogio a America" it's mostly about how much the teachers have to offer, since they can explain not only books but also the lived experience of anti-fascist struggle.  What the children (and their families) have to offer is of course a living to the teachers.  All in all it's an odd sample of someone begging and hating to beg.  I also don't think I'm imagining it that the writing gets clearer in the sections where she's talking about the ways Europe has let her down and fallen apart than in the rather vague generalities about the promise of America.  When she writes "Cuando les dijimos del éxodo de Milagros y del martirio de Guernica nos apartaron con su desden enfadadas. Los franceses no quisieran oirnos." the words are nice and clear.  But most of the other sentences have words I can't make out.  It could be my faulty knowledge of Spanish or of her handwriting, but I like to imagine that she was pressing the pencil very hard when she got angry, and so her anger made her words last longer.

Surprise! Holiday!

Forget "El Halloween."  November 1 is a big holiday here.

As I've written, my Madrid friends complain that they're being "contaminated" by "El HAlloween" and that this is what comes of slavishly imitating everything Anglo-Saxon.  I admit I was amused last night by the number of people of all ages in costume, though I note that none of the children in costume were carrying plastic pumpkins for their loot.  Since every supermarket has been selling plastic pumpkins filled with candy for a month I can only assume that Spaniards haven't gotten the hang of trick-or-treating yet, and just give children large amounts of candy at parties.  (That was what seemed to be happening in a little square in the pueblo when I rode home last night, and several children in costume were gathered around one of the picnic tables reaching into a bag an adult was holding for them, while they had the traditional Spanish children's party, which involves children running around a plaza or playground while adults sit and hang out.)

Parking, pencil, and "fondos reservados." More Adventures at the BNE

Sometimes the lack of progress is discouraging, but the process of rummaging in archives is always fun.

Yesterday I experimented with using the bike for transportation all day instead of the metro.  On balance (when I don't get lost), it's faster point to point on the downhills, about the same on flat ground, and slower on uphills.  So, overall, about the same speed.  And the uphills are pretty brutal.  I may be forced to return to the metro on days when I move around a lot.  (Unfortunately, yoga sits on very high ground, so getting there is a challenge.)

In any case, yesterday I headed from the university over the BNE by bike (essentially a west to east trajectory).  I arrived, and searched for parking where I could have sworn I had seen bike racks.  No bike racks.  I circled the large gracious sweep in front of the big library steps.  No bike racks.  Finally, desperate and not completely happy about the option, I prepared to lock my bike to a metal U that marked the spot of a garbage can in front of a car parking space.  I was just maneuvering the lock into position when an older lady, somewhat formally dressed, hailed me and said "¿Te han dicho que puedes aparcar allí?"  I was prepared to be huffy and annoyed, but I started out by being humble, and said that there was no other available place.  ("Es que no hay otro sitio.")  "Sí, que lo hay," she said, to my utter surprise.  "Está allí a la izquierda, un poco escondida."  At first I thought she was just trying to be rid of me, but then we walked around the one side of the building I had not explored because I hadn't thought it was worthwhile, and there indeed was a long, low, completely empty bicycle rack.  I thanked her profusely, and she smiled and said she was glad to help, and that locking my bike unofficially in the front was bad because it was "más a la vista" (more visible, presumably to thieves), and also of course vulnerable to being bumped by cars.  Lesson learned: never pre-judge formally dressed older ladies who you think are going to be disapproving.

Microfilm is an invention of the Devil

Will some clever inventor please figure out a way to print 3D reproductions of all the things that were put on microfilm in the 1970s and are now totally unsearchable?  Pretty please?

It's late, so this will be a short entry.

Things that went wrong today:

1. I forgot to set my alarm, and slept somewhat later than I planned (ok, about two hours later).
2. I forgot my goggles when I went to the pool in the morning, and had to swim without them.

3. The notebooks of Rafael Alberti that I requested at the BNE today in the "Sala Cervantes" (where all the cool rare manuscripts are) are "fondo reservado" and therefore unavailable, except they let you consult the microfilm.  Just like Schomburg's papers.  Oh joy.  So my poor chlorined eyes had to read microfilms of someone's private scribblings in a small notebook, and the machines are the old fashioned kind not like the computers at the Schomburg Center, so it's white on black instead of black on white unless you print stuff (which of course you have to pay for by the page).

La Dama Duende

Live theater is cool.

Last night I went with some Madrid friends to see the Teatro de la Comedia's production of Calderón de la Barca's comedy, La dama duende.  (Generally translated as "The Phantom Lady.") 

Gathering outside the newly renovated Teatro de la Comedia before the performance

The Teatro de la Comedia in on the Calle Príncipe, near Sol, and it's a beautiful old 19th C theater, with a proscenium arch, and boxes with red plush seats (we had a box) and it's also newly renovated, so all the gilt friezes and the fresco on the ceiling are all bright and shiny and the chandeliers are glittery, and most excellently it has super-titles (in Spanish) like the old City Opera above the stage for the hearing impaired, or those of us who have trouble listening to 17th century Spanish verse recited quickly by people who are trying to make it sound like natural speech and therefore slur their words.

News in the World - Part II

Where there are little inaccuracies, there will be big inaccuracies.

A sad tribute to Antonio Muñoz Molina's essay "In Francoland."

De Morgen remains weird in its coverage of Spain.  Yesterday I thought it was perhaps a misunderstanding that they reported that Carles Puigdemont had sent his wife and children out of the country for safety after being fired as President of the Generalitat when there were Reuters photos of Puigdemont and his wife walking together in Girona.  Today they have another article, fairly obviously a plant from their "secretary for asylum and immigration" the right-wing Theo van Francken, who says in the headline that it is "not unrealistic for Puigdemont to claim asylum in Belgium":  "Puigdemont die asiel aanvraagt in Belgie?  Niet onrealistisch."  The article explains that as a potential "political prisoner" Belgium could grant Puigdemont asylum if it were impossible for him to obtain a fair trial in Madrid.  The story is from 20:57 on October 28.

Meanwhile, on the same day, Spain's (more or less left-wing) news channel La Sexta reported that a spokesman for the Madrid government had officially confirmed that Puigdemont was welcome to stand for elections on December 21, as were other ministers who had been removed from their posts:  "Méndez de Vigo: Sería bueno que el Señor Puigdemont se presentara a las elecciones."

Once again we have an inconsistency, this time more serious than the location of a politician's wife.

News in the world

A minor but clearly verifiable fact difference upset me today.

(For my Belgian buddies especially, please read.  I know it's long, but honestly, it matters.  Alsjeblieft, ok?)

One of my ways of seeking balance, if not impartiality in my news is to take a look at the way stories are reported across several languages as well as several regions.  Unfortunately El Punt Avui only allows five free stories per month, and having looked at a couple I decided that it wasn't worth a paywall, but I have been checking La Vanguardia as a Barcelona based paper, albeit a Castilian language one.  More to the point, in addition to the (I am assured very biased) El País in Madrid, I've been looking at the online UK edition of the Guardian, at the New York Times, and the Flemish paper De Morgen with some regularity, to see how they're following the same stories.  If it's something I'm really curious about, I will also check Le Monde.  That was how I ran across a piece of reporting which, while trivial in itself, struck me as really egregious.

Of all the papers I've looked at, De Morgen is the only one that has been enthusiastically cheering on Catalan independence.  (The Guardian are torn between a romantic Orwell image and the horrific reality of Brexit, and have actually been divided in their coverage.  The others have all pretty much done variants on "this is nuts.")  A Belgian friend of mine gleefully emailed me a few weeks ago to say that the Belgian prime minister had "taken a stand" in favor of the Catalans, and that he considered Puigdemont to be "a statesman."  I was not diplomatic in my reply, but I must say that after today I understand why a Flemish person might be misled into thinking that.

Biblioteca Nacional Española - The Grand Ballroom of the dance of the archives

Ingredients of a classic library: custom, ceremony...and the greed of a kid in a candy store.

The gates of the BNE, surmounted by the royal shield of Spain: graceful, imposing...and with bike parking right inside.

On Wednesday I picked up my letter of introduction for the Biblioteca Nacional Española, hereafter the BNE, as it is universally known among researchers, to distinguish it from the BNF (Bibliotheque National Francaise) and probably other libraries.  (I imagine there's a BNB - Bibliotheque/Bibliotheek National/Nationaal de Belgique/Belgie - too.)  Thursday I went and brought my letter and my passport and my rental contract as proof of residence, and was directed up the imposing stairs (see photo after the jump) to an information desk, and from there into an echoing high-ceilinged room full of dark carved wood paneling and modern computers and printers, where a nice, friendly woman scanned my documents, filled out the computer application, and took my picture with the computer, before printing out my little plastic photo ID which I am now supposed to show to gain entry to the library.  I am an "investigadora" (researcher), not a mere lectora (reader), so I have access to collections from before 1958.  I feel special.

Internationalism vs. Globalization

The lines are often fuzzy, but on the whole there are worse things....

My Madrid friends say that they are being "contaminated" by "El Halloween" (pronounced "el CHA-lo-ween" with the "cha" of Chanukah) and that the local festivities of the Día de los Santos and Día de los difuntos are dying out (no pun intended).  I suggested to them that perhaps the Día de los difuntos at least could be rescued by Mexican immigrants, for whom the tradition is very much alive, but they were pessimistic.  I have nothing but fond feelings for Halloween, but I must admit that it's a little weird to see how commercialized it's become here.  The following were displays in the local Hipercor in Vista Alegre:

It's hard to not think that this looks like a US mall, and that is kind of depressing.

Cosas del palacio, siempre despacio

I am slowly being absorbed by the department of "Filología Inglesa II" at the Complutense.

Who knew the mysterious "El Barto" made it all the way to university?

Today was one of those days when on the one hand I accomplished little, and on the other, various absolutely necessary things happened.  Basically, I went to the Complutense, and met with the head of the "Filología Inglesa II" department, and (even more importantly) with the department secretary who wrote a letter saying that I was a "profesora visitante" and kindly walked down with me to the personnel department where I filled out a "ficha" (having fortunately brought along my passport for photocopying) and the ladies there said they would "tramitar" everything after being reassured that this wasn't an actual appointment letter, which would involve paying me anything.  ("Será para el futuro," one of them assured me kindly.)  This is important (even though I'm not getting paid) because it will enable me to have a university ID, which will enable me to have a university email, but more importantly will enable me to connect to the university WiFi, and also to use said email and WiFi ID to connect to EduRoam networks anywhere in Spain, including presumably the Biblioteca Nacional.  (I tried connecting with my Columbia ID to the EduRoam network at the Complutense.  No dice.  The department secretary explained that this was because you have to download and install a specific program before you can connect to EduRoam.  Which you can't do unless you're connected as a regular user.)  In theory, I should have my email address by now, but I've received no mails, so I'm assuming that it will come tomorrow.  Or Monday.  Cosas de palacio, siempre despacio.

Trying a new angle

 

Rain and cool weather more typical of October blew me to the Complutense and into the Residencia de Estudiantes today

After heading to the Complutense in the morning for a really fascinating talk by the early modernist Luce López Baralt about the literatura aljamiada of the sixteenth century, I went to the Residencia de Estudiantes to follow up on the Gustavo Durán Martínez character I discovered earlier.

Briefly, so that the topic of Luce López Baralt's talk makes sense, because it was super interesting, aljamiada is the name given to work written by Spanish Muslims in a Romance language -- usually Castilian but also sometimes Portuguese or Valencià -- using Arabic characters.  It comes from an Arabic word meaning "foreign" or "not-Arabic."  There was quite a bit of this written in sixteenth century Spain, and it persisted up until the final expulsion of the moriscos in 1609.  Most of it was lost then, when people walled it up behind false partitions or buried it or similar because (don't I know it!) books are heavy and hard to carry when you're relocating, and there was the hope that you could come back for them soon.  Every so often another cache is found when an old wall falls down.  (I remember seeing an exhibit of books found in walls nearby at the Biblioteca Nacional, I think at the four hundredth anniversary of the expulsion.  Time flies.)  Professor López Baralt explained that the aljamiado texts have been relatively little studied because the first people to look at it recognized the writing as Arabic, and took it to Arabic speakers who read it phonetically and said "this is gibberish."  (Or rather, given a couple of funny 19th C quotes she used, "this must be some kind of North African dialect.  Or maybe Turkish.  Or maybe even from Iran, though it's hard to see how it got all the way to Spain.")  Spanish speakers can read sixteenth century Spanish pretty easily (more easily than English speakers read Shakespeare, even), so they would have recognized it, except that it wasn't transliterated, so they didn't know.  It wasn't until there were Spaniards who studied Arabic and looked at the manuscript that the nickel dropped.

(Rain)Fall

The weather finally changes (a little bit)

The weather report today predicted thunderstorms, so I dutifully brought my raincoat to the university.  And I was rewarded!

My neighbors across the way checked the weather this morning.  They did not approve.

Suburban weekend

A trip across the city to Tres Cantos.  Two hours and a different world.

A friend of mine sent me word recently that she had opened a bookstore in her home in Tres Cantos since the last time we saw each other.  She told me that it was generally quiet on Saturday mornings before the noon story hour for children, so I promised to drop by and visit.  Since Tres Cantos is quite a ways, and I was up late last night, I ended up getting there after instead of before, but as it was a long holiday weekend the store was quiet, and we had a lovely chat and mugs of tea and I got to see the very cool little neighborhood bookstore Serendipias.  (Check out their website for pretty pictures of the store interior, and also upcoming events there.)

National Holiday

What started as a quiet working at home day turned into much more...

I knew that October 12 was the Día de la Hispanidad in Spain (formerly, in the Franco years, the Día de la Raza) and it became clear over the course of this week that it was a rather larger holiday than I had imagined, or than its equivalent Columbus Day in the US.  One of my fellow Fulbrighters told me that a professor she was working with had told her that the disgusting display of air power that I assumed was the central government flexing its muscles the week before last was not courtesy of Catalunya but rather a practice for the parade today, and my Madrid friends said that they thought it was unusual tact on the part of the central government to not include tanks in the parade this year.  (Seriously, tanks?  In a holiday parade?  WTF, Spain?  I suppose it's better than giving them to their local police departments the way the US does, but it still strikes me as weird.)  The afternoon TV news over the last couple of days has covered "operación salida" for what is for many people a four day weekend here (schools are off Friday as well), complete with notices about the extra holiday trains, planes, and buses starting Wednesday evening, and interviews with extremely happy members of the hotel industry, who are practically salivating since the prolonged summer temperatures that are probably a herald of global doom also mean that the hotels on the beach in Cádiz and Alicante are at near 100% occupancy this year, while everyone takes advantage of the equivalent of Labor Day six weeks later, for a last long beach weekend.  There were also shocked and disapproving notices about how businesses and (even more scandalously) ayuntamientos in Catalunya were showing defiance by refusing to close today.  Since I find closed businesses annoying, and since everyone here is super aware of the way this holiday is tied to the dictatorship anyway (the war planes and tanks are kind of an obvious clue), my sympathies are with the Catalans on this one.  (Mind you "closed" here is a relative concept.  Schools and government buildings are.  To my surprise my local and much beloved Mercadona was tightly shuttered, but the Dia Maxi supermarket by my friends in Aluche was open.  Small family owned businesses run by Spaniards were shut, but run by immigrants were open.  Restaurants were open as a matter of course.  So it's complicated.)

In any case, archives were definitely closed, so I planned to spend the day writing, and possibly cleaning up a little.  That plan changed fairly early in the day, when my Aluche friends called and invited me to have lunch, and then go to a flamenco concert with them in the evening "if we can get tickets."

Things unseen

When you learn that a city is a little embarrassed by you.

This is the Avenida de los Poblados.  It has no street sign on it.  To the left is the Comisaría.  It has no sign on it saying that it is the Comisaría, and no address number. And no flags visible from the street. They would prefer you to consider it invisible.

I know that I am guilty of sometimes having an overactive imagination.  But I don't think I'm imagining that Madrid is trying to hide the place where foreigners go to receive tarjetas de identidad de extranjero (TIEs) and for that matter where ordinary madrileños go to get passports and similar.  It is technically the Comisaría of the Policía Nacional, but there are no signs saying so, even when you get to the end of the long wall in the picture, and turn left onto the side street, and go past the wall to a more cheerfully whimsical architecture of a guard house with blue glass bricks surmounted by a little cone shaped tower with swirls of red and blue and yellow that look like a child's playground castle, and that lead into a courtyard.  Inside the children's castle architecture there is a metal detector and a pair of bored policía nacionales directing people through it, and paper signs saying which line is for personnel and which for "visitors."  But it doesn't actually say anywhere why anyone might be visiting the place.  They might have just felt there weren't enough metal detectors in their life, and dropped in to buy a soda and make a photocopy at one of the vending machines (and coin operated copiers) in the courtyard.  But I am getting ahead of myself in the story.

Analyses in the Shower

Listening to totally nude strangers analyze today's Catalan excitement while shampooing makes as much sense as the speech they were analyzing.

I went swimming late today (partly because of my empadronamiento appointment), so when I left the pool it was nearly 9:30, and the only people in the showers were adults.  The absence of teenagers meant that everyone had cheerfully removed their bathingsuits, and had brought along shampoo, conditioner and in a couple of cases bath sponges.  Naturally everyone was very excited to hear about Carles Puigdemont's much-heralded speech in the Catalan Parlament, which a number of women had not heard about because of spending a fair amount of time in the pool.  (The speech was supposed to be at 6:00 and then was pushed to 7:00 and I imagine that he didn't get around to actually saying anything until nearly 7:30, so if you were working and then hurrying to swim you might have missed it.)  When I arrived in the showers one woman was explaining that she had heard on Twitter that Puigdemont had "declared independence but suspended it for several weeks."  The general reaction was shock, and uproarious amusement.  "No!"  Someone exclaimed.  "Declararla para suspenderla?  No puede ser!"  There were several comments about how "los suyos" must be very disappointed in Puigdemont, and a few sympathetic agreements that he was certainly a sinverguenza.  The general feeling I got was that while few people were in favor of Catalan independence, they all thought that at least up until this point Puigdemont had been a worthy opponent, and that he had now made himself ridiculous.  When told of the central government's reaction one woman simply laughed and said that she was going to "secede from this country, just like the Catalans, I want my own."

I'm legal! (Nearly)

I have received my justificante de empadronamiento, that says that I've duly recorded my legal address with the Madrid ayuntamiento

 

The empadronamiento process has always struck me as a bit bizarre and redundant as a legal requirement, and in fact I know of other Fulbrighters who have been less conscientious about getting the earliest possible appointment for it because (unlike the bendito tarjeta de identidad) it has no practical daily use, especially for foreigners who neither vote nor pay taxes in Spain.  I presume that as proof of legal residence it is used to determine both voter and tax rolls for citizens.  I suppose that it might have some sense if it also functions as an automatic voter registration for citizens, but since (according to the form) it is technically a requirement for all legal residents of Spain, including those "under three months old" it's hard to see it as anything other than a relic of dictatorship.  (My understanding is that you have three months to register yourself at a new address, whether you move from another country or around the block.  If you arrive via someone's uterus your parents have until you are three months old to register you, hence the procedure for under three month olds.  Again, very difficult to see how an infant requires proof of residence in addition to a birth certificate, not mention a baptismal certificate which a friend of mine assured me "resuelva líos" here, but as one of the Fulbright mentors said at orientation "Spaniards love photocopies.")

Dialogue beneath my window

Hyperbole and hysteria aside, most Spaniards are pretty reasonable.

Fortunately, my main course for dinner tonight was salad.  This was fortunate because it meant that all I had to do was boil an egg, which meant that instead of standing over the stove (possibly with the hood on) I was chopping vegetables at the counter by the (open) window, so I was able to hear the dialogue below it, indistinctly at first, and then more clearly when I realized it was interesting, and opened the window wider and moved the cutting board closer to it.  (Hey, it's a pueblo.  If you have interesting conversations in the street people are allowed to listen.)

Sing me a song, you're the piano man...

There's always a moment of quiet satisfaction when you figure something out.  That magical instant when you get confirmation that two people did indeed meet and you think bingo.

Today was a quiet day, devoted to reading, laundry, a little shopping, and a walk in the sunshine.  In fact, the only interesting thing I did was go and visit the British Cemetery and take pictures, in anticipation of a blog entry about the same.  It definitely deserves said entry, but perhaps I'll do that closer to Halloween.

I started playing around with research after getting home around sunset from a walk, simply because it was too early to have dinner.  (I try to keep on Spanish hours when I'm here, and although it's still abnormally warm weather, the sun sets around 8:00 now, and it's pretty dark by 8:30.)  A few people had recommended the Residencia de Estudiantes archive to me, as the natural complement to the Residencia de Señoritas, and even though I spent a couple of days there a couple of years ago, and know that sadly their online finding aid has little about Langston Hughes, I thought it couldn't hurt to add in Dorothy Peterson's name, and perhaps simply type in Fuente Ovejuna/Fuenteovejuna since that's the translation I'm pursuing info about at the moment for my Peterson chapter.

As I expected there were no hits (although I was amused to see that when I searched for "Dorothy" alone I found a translation of a work about Montessori Education by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, who I am fond of as a children's novelist, in addition to Dorothy Parker, who I know was in Spain during the war, albeit briefly).  Then I decided, despairing, to go back to looking for Rafael Alberti, since I know he knew Hughes well, and I know that any search in the Edad de Plata archives of the generation of '27 is sure to feature him, even though his work is rather dispersed.  I was able to filter the search to "documentos" instead of published books, and noted a series of letters between him and one Gustavo Durán Martínez, spanning the time period I was interested in.

Time to open another tab in the browser.

The Polideportivo Gallur

Little red, white, and blue penguins. (Or, Spaniards are very athletic.)

The main entrance of the Centro Muncipal Deportivo Gallur on a sunny weekday evening

I've been planning an entry about the Polideportivo Gallur for ages.  I haven't actually used their sala de musculación, since I've never been very good about weight rooms in gyms (I never know what to do with the machines and they scare me, and stationery bikes and stair machines always seem like pale imitations of the real thing), but I've been going regularly to the pool in the evenings, and it's a lovely communal experience.

Settling In - Mysore House and the Polideportivo Gallur

 

In one way it's hard to believe I've been in Madrid less than a month.  But hopefully time will stop flying and settle into a normal rhythm soon.

I have my appointments for my empadronamiento (legal certificate of residence) and picking up my Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero (the foreigner's equivalent of Spain's DNI) next week.  I also got an email today that the faculty meeting of the Complutense where I should get officially approved and get my Complutense affiliation (which will allow me to use the university library, and indirectly should provide me with a letter to get a card for the Biblioteca Nacional) is next week.  So hopefully within the next ten days I should be plentifully provided with various shiny new ID cards which will turn my wallet into less that of a tourist and more that of a local.

"Véte a la milonga, muchacha..."

Yes, for my tango peeps, I have finally gone out dancing for the first time.

This afternoon I checked out a milonga which the organizers sweetly described as "por la mañana" even though it runs from noon to 15:00 (I do love this culture).  I had found it on the internet, and recognized the location as being right along my side of the river, in the Plaza San Pol.  That meant it was all downhill or flat going, and mostly flat with only one serious hill coming back, and also that it was pretty far from the nearest metro, so it was an obvious bike milonga.

Twenty minutes picking my way through the Parque San Isidro and down past the Tanatorio to the river, and another twenty rolling of necessity slowly along the banks of the Manzanares among the hordes of people strolling, biking, skate-boarding, scooting, etc. through the warm summery sunshine brought me to the "Sala Cha3" a ballroom located in the basement of a theater that seems dedicated to putting on fairy tales for children.  (The side of the building is painted with larger than life Disney characters, and the flyers above the box office advertise A Christmas Carol, The Wizard of Oz, and similar.)  I locked my bike by the trash containers, and headed in the side door and down a red carpeted staircase to the "Sala Cha3."  (I was there one evening to dance years ago, but I don't think I've ever heard it pronounced, so I don't know if it's pronounced "Cha Tres" or "Cha al Cubo" (Cha cubed) or "Cha Cha Cha."  I'm assuming the logo Cha3 is to suggest the latter.)

Terrible as a city with banners

My poor, beloved, Madrid.  The beautiful city is still clear as the moon and fair as the sun...but it's being overrun by flags.

Some years ago, I believe at the first edition of the Celsius 232, a friendly Spaniard commented that she had liked traveling in the US, because she thought it was cute that rural and suburban houses all boasted their own flags, and even flagpoles, and this seemed charming.  "Aquí, si pones una bandera española, cuando no sea la copa mundial, te tildan de facha," she explained.  I remember telling her with some amusement that I rather agreed that flying the flag from a private home (except during the World Cup, of course) was rather "facha" and that I hated how much the US had been drowning in flags since the destruction of the World Trade Center.  (It was a long time ago, and now it's hard to remember how angry and scared I was by the way they sprouted everywhere in what seemed like an atmosphere that couldn't possibly get more toxic.  More innocent times.)

One of the (many) things I love about Madrid is that the only flags you normally see flying from balconies here are the historic tricolor of the Second Republic, with its purple for promise of the future (mostly in Lavapies) and maybe sometimes the rainbow gay pride flag if it's pride week (or if you're in Chueca).  This has always been a city that takes its patriotism lightly.  Which is why I was so upset by the wall of flags in the Barrio Salamanca that I mentioned a couple of days ago.  I ended up taking pictures, because I want evidence that this is not normal.

Calle Almagro 25 - The former Centro de Estudios Historicos that shows up in the archives, and current home of Ediciones Siruela.  With flags.

Research is like a tango...

...It's important to listen to your partner, and to have good floorcraft.

(To my tango peeps who I know are reading this page, I love of all of you, and I will work with this metaphor, but be warned this is a really nerdy research entry.  I promise a real tango one soon.) 

I know almost everything in life can be compared to a milonga (which after all is why there's a song "La vida es un tango") but it occurs to me that this is really true of doing archival research.  The first important thing to look out for is your partner - the librarian or archivist who's helping you.  Obviously it goes without saying that you should be polite and follow the etiquette of the archive (and accept a break if someone kindly offers you freshly made coffee and chocolates).  But you should also listen carefully to anything the archivist has to say and offer enough information about your project and what you're looking for to let them be helpful.  So basically, be a good listener and clear in your communications -- the heart of being a good tango partner, whether follower or leader.

I thought of this comparison yesterday after spending another very pleasant morning at the erstwhile Residencia de Señoritas, and an hour in the afternoon talking to the current (very knowledgeable) director of the International Institute who spent about 20% of our talk apologizing for not being helpful, and another 70% being incredibly helpful about both potential archives and also published sources that are wonderful background info.  (The other ten percent was me talking, and some socializing.)

Archive Adagio: the memos of yesteryear

Regimes rise and fall, but departmental admins are forever.

Special shout-out in this blog to my Columbia peeps.  Keep reading past the jump for a few Columbia-specific jokes.

I don't want my reaction to the stupid planes to overshadow what was really the coolest part of my day today, namely my visit to the Residencia de Señoritas, where I was very kindly received, in spite of the archive and library being officially closed for restoration.  (Sadly, the gardens of the Residencia are also closed, which my host today informed me was a shame because especially in the spring they are "una preciosidad" and I can well believe it.)  The Residencia de Señoritas is right down the street from the Museo Sorolla, and shares some of that buildings consciously gracious charm, though in a more modernist (if equally aristocratic) way.  The staircases reminded me tremendously of the sets for the Hercule Poirot series.

Staircase in the BBC Poirot series

Staircase in the Residencia de Señoritas (currently the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón)

You see what I mean?  Allowing for different light and angle, it's that same smooth, creamy white spiral that's trying to be super-modern and also nodding gracefully toward the classic.

"Song of Spain"

"Come now, all you who are singers,

and sing me the song of Spain...

...a bombing plane's

the song of Spain."

-- Langston Hughes, 1937

 

What.The.Actual. F..."estamos en horario infantil" as they say on Al Rojo Vivo, so I won't complete that phrase, but seriously, the Spanish government needs to chill out, and stop buzzing the embassies of friendly countries (not to mention many pleasant and innocent archives and the researchers therein) in a dubious show of military force.

I know intellectually that Spaniards do desfiles militares rather the way Americans have flags and play the anthem everywhere.  It's basically meaningless, and no one takes it that seriously, or considers it anything other than one of those regrettable relics of the 1950s, that people salute out of habit without particular critical thought or conviction.  But at the point when you send not one or two but a whole flotilla of military planes (a fleet of planes?  a flock of planes?  What's the collective noun here?  Squadron?) plus helicopters, zooming up the length of the Castellana, and flying so low that the nice librarians at the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón have to close the windows against the booming noise, I would say there's a problem.  

When school gets out

This should be an entry with photos, but isn't

I spent the morning doing work emails and setting up appointments with archives, and went out briefly at around 1:00 today to go to the bank (where I got to use my brand new ATM card), and do some minor food shopping.  I happened to head out just as the multiple elementary schools around me were being dismissed for lunch, which inevitably suggested a modified version of the "Teddy Bears' Picnic" along the lines of "at one o'clock, their mommies and daddies will take them home to eat, because they're hungry little teddy bears."  There was the public school down the block, and the two little Catholic schools nearby, the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de los Dolores and the Colegio de Nuestra Señora de la Merced.  The former has a stylish green D (I presume for Dolores) logo on their polo shirts and sweatpants that looks rather like the Ryanair lyre.  The latter does not have as distinctive uniforms, but I happened to walk past them on the way to the bank, so I know who they are.  (The public school doesn't have any uniforms at all.)

Bike-walking

Commuter biking is a work in progress in Madrid.

My bike, by the Biblioteca Nacional.  It was harder to get there than you would think.

I believe that "la bici es transporte" as the t-shirts say.  But so far I must admit that the handy unlimited monthly bono de transportes seems more practical than my new-old bike, even though the metro is not right at my doorstep (which was one of the things that inspired the bike purchase - that and the "Madrid Celeste" ad campaign I wrote about earlier - I am way to sensitive to propaganda).

I'm used to comparing cycling in New York with cycling in the Netherlands and Flanders, the great bicycle paradises of the world, which make New York seem very shabby and difficult in comparison.  But now I realize how much easier cycling in New York has become over the last twenty years.  Aside from the fact that Madrid is cursed with both steep hills and a climate where the temperature regularly climbs to 30 C (85 F) for four months a year, the "bike lanes" here are rather more theoretical than in New York.  And when I finally arrived at the International Institute (sweaty and terrified) on Friday by bike, I looked around the Calle Miguel Angel and the surrounding side streets for bicycle racks with vain bemusement, and finally remembered, "oh, right, you can lock your bike to the pole of a parking sign."  Locking bikes to street signs was standard when I started riding to work in NY, ten years ago, but first there was a bike rack in front of my school, and then they started popping up along the avenues, and then the side-streets....and now I wonder where Madrid keeps its aparcamiento para bicis, as my little seven year old friend here puts it.  (He has been properly raised to ride a bici and was accustomed to being taken to pre-school on the back of his mother's, so hopefully in another generation Madrid will be the bike-friendly city it aspires to be.)

The Archive Two-Step (Part 2)

You send an email here, you send an email there,

you do the hokey-pokey and you email everywhere...

 

My advisor at the Complutense tipped me off that while the archive of the Residencia de Estudiantes was lost during the Civil War, its companion the Residencia de Señoritas succeeded in maintaining its records (perhaps because the señoritas looked less like combatants than their male counterparts -- a common mistake made by people who haven't worked with adolescent boys and girls respectively).  He also helpfully told me what fundación currently has the archive.  However, as I mentioned in an earlier entry, the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Gregorio Marañón's archives and library are cerrado por obras until January 2019.

I sent them a begging email yesterday, and received a kind response within an hour, saying that they had no record of Dorothy Peterson in their collection (a fellow Fulbrighter who is more experienced in research mentioned at the Madrid Fulbright picnic this afternoon that she never gives specific search terms to archives but instead only asks generalities, so they have no chance to say they have no material -- a good tip for the future), but that they had a computer available in a small section of the library that was rehabilitada where I could consult the digital catalogue of the archives if I wished, and to please let them know. 

Flamenco in Carabanchel

As natural as salsa in New York

Compases beneath my window call to mind a flamenco lament for the tropics.

Popular culture is such a monetized and controlled thing now (and perhaps always, just in different ways).  We're used to thinking of things like music as being the result of careful advertising, or as propaganda, clichés designed to appeal to tourists, to some mythical "national" identity, or to some kind of brand loyalty.  (Vodafone has an ad playing non-stop across all TV channels here which smoothly slides from a background track of Peggy Lee's song "You Give Me Fever" to handsome young men at their computers humming along to them singing enthusiastically, "Ya tengo fibra...FIBRA!" and dancing in their enthusiasm at having "fibra" aka FiOS internet access.  It's a shame that the nickname for Fiber-optic in Spanish sounds like an abbreviation of fibromyalgia.)

So it's always a bit of a surprise to discover confirmations of things that you normally dismiss as mere tropes.  (Rather like Bart Simpson staring at his dog and saying "you ate my homework?  I didn't know you guys actually did that!")  I had a bit of that surreal experience yesterday afternoon when I woke somewhat groggily from a siesta, and heard what I gradually realized was someone singing cante jondo underneath my open window.  After a few wails of "Por cuuulpaaa de una mujjjjjeeeer" interspersed not with tacones or guitar solos but rather with what sounded like a slightly noisy high school hallway, involving a bunch of boys giving each other relationship advice (at the top of their lungs, because most boys yell as much as they talk) I bothered to get up and look out the window, where I saw a handful of what looked to be late teenagers, wearing sagging jeans, and respectively shirtless or in sleeveless tank tops, with the odd backwards baseball cap.  (The shirtless one was also wearing a crucifix.)  In between warbling like cats searching for mates and carrying on a discussion, they were attempting (not very successfully) to do some acrobatics involving balancing in a split on the bricks of the portico of the apartment across the street.  They weren't able to do it, either because they lacked the strength and skill, or because their high-top sneakers were too slippery, so after a while they drifted away, still chatting and occasionally singing.

Strike up the band for the archive two-step...

One step forward, two steps back.

So, aside from doing some shopping and cleaning and going for a bike ride today, I actually started doing my research project.  (Pause for shouts of tally-ho, and snufflings of blood-hounds.)

Following a tip from my sponsor at the Complutense, I looked up the Fundación Ortega y Gasset (and discovered that it is now the Fundación Ortega y Gasset-Marañón), which currently occupies the building that was the Residencia de Señoritas, which accompanied the Residencia de Estudiantes, and was deeply involved in higher education for women in Spain in the early twentieth century.

Success!  The Fundación does hold the archives of the Residencia de Señoritas.  Even better, it includes extensive letters to and from alumnae, and the "expedientes" (or files) of its students.  Even more excitingly, these resources have not been extensively catalogued yet.  I know Dorothy Peterson was in Spain when the Residencia de Señoritas was active, and I know she mentions staying at the "Residencia de Estudiantes," which at the time would not have been co-ed.  So this looks like an excellent lead!

I was deeply excited for about fifteen minutes, while I tried to figure out the protocol for using the archive, and whether I would need my CSIC card, or another letter of introduction from the Complutense, or whether I should just show up.  The web page was not forthcoming.

So I did another Google search and -- despair!  The library and archive of the foundation are (according to another part of the fundación's web page) closed for renovations until January of 2019.

Aaargh.

They do have an email address that research inquiries can be directed to.  I am considering asking the nice people I know at the Complutense if they know anyone at the Fundación on whose mercy I can throw myself.  It's such a perfect re-play of what Arthur Schomburg writes about in "In Quest of Juan de Pareja," when he describes searching the Prado for a painting by Juan de Pareja and being told that it was on the third floor which was "cerrado por obras."  Lucky Schomburg managed to throw himself on the mercy of the director and beg that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity that he had crossed the Atlantic for and could he please, please, please see the painting.  Unfortunately, jet travel has destroyed the "once in a lifetime opportunity" plausible excuse for trans-Atlantic travelers in Europe (though nowadays with the massive pilot strikes that are on the news here who knows?) but still, I only have one Fulbright year, and limited funds and time, and it would be so cool to find more traces of Dorothy Peterson, or even better more of her letters (she was a wonderful letter writer).  Or a draft (or drafts) of the article she published about Spain.  But alas...no guarantees.

So that was today's elation and disappointment in research news.  Fingers crossed that other leads work out.  In the meantime, I've been thinking about how to structure the Peterson chapter, and what to look for about her while I'm here (aside from every single scrap of writing I can lay my hands on).

The archive two-step can be exhausting, but it's exhilarating when you bound forward, and this is just barely the beginning of the first set.  I'm going to get all the way around the dance floor yet.