Subway poker face

On the way home today I faced the old New York dilemma...

When you hear people speaking Dutch on the metro do you correct their tranquil certainty that no one can understand them?

 The answer is no.  No, I do not.  On my way home this evening on a crowded train I found myself listening to two Dutch businessmen who got off at Callao.  (I was guessing they would get off at Gran Vía, and I was only one stop off, though then I thought maybe Opera.)  I think they had lived in Madrid for a while, as one of them mentioned his (presumably Spanish?) girlfriend taking Dutch classes just off the Gran Vía.  They were talking mostly about work I think (saying that someone was not very zelf-standige (self-motivated, or independent) and needed a lot of supervision but that it wasn't a situation that was going to go on for years and years so it was fine), and then reminiscing about getting drunk in Malasaña when they were young when we passed Chueca.  (The Chueca metro stop is painted in rainbows to celebrate gay pride, because it's a historically gay neighborhood.  They thought this was cute and probably nice for young gay people who arrived there and knew where to get off the train.)

The Chueca stop.  With rainbows.

Normally at home I feel it's a bit rude to not let people know when I can understand them (even if their conversation isn't deeply private and personal), and I probably would have made eye contact and smiled and given them some hint, but I had just had the metro stairs blocked (and therefore almost missed the train) by a trio of women speaking English to whom I took an instant dislike (because FFS, when it's nearly dinner time and people are trying to get home do NOT walk three abreast on a subway stair, and then turn to look behind you, notice someone is there and too polite to push past, and then resume your conversation and your stair blocking amble). One was a Spaniard, one an American, and one didn't speak. Given my instant antipathy, I had my local monolingual poker face firmly in place so I wouldn't be claimed as a compatriot by the obnoxious one, and it seemed a shame to waste it, especially since most Dutch speakers take me for Spanish anyway (though I think my sneakers are a dead giveaway here).

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.

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."

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.)

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.