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.