A Few Deep Breaths

As I enter my final (uninterrupted) month in Madrid, a couple of thoughts...

I know I keep saying that I'll get back to blogging regularly, and I know I've been bad about it.  The good news is that I have completed a chapter draft for my thesis (now it's just two chapters to revise, and the introduction and conclusion to go!), and have emailed it off.  I've worked out that - not counting this blog and multiple emails to friends and family, but just looking at my thesis and the novel I was working on - I've written about 120K words since September.  And managed to keep my apartment reasonably clean.  Which proves that not having a real job makes you more productive.

Spelunking through the AGA

Research in the Archivo General de Administración is a collaborative effort

Many years ago (in 2006, if I remember correctly) I bicycled from Ghent to Amsterdam and back, on a route of more or less my own devising. One of the subtle differences in cycle culture that I noticed in Belgium and Holland (or more accurately in neighboring Flanders and Zeeland) had to do with signage. In the Netherlands, the bicycle paths were all (at least in theory) extremely well marked, and anyone with a map or a general sense of geography could barely get lost, which meant that those of us poor fools who stopped at crossroads had people whiz past us at speed on their bikes. In Flanders, the signs were considerably less comprehensive, but it was impossible to stop for more than thirty seconds at a crossing without another bike rolling to a stop beside you and saying (usually in English) “Are you lost? Can I help you find something?” The better signs meant less informal assistance between cyclists, and the more cryptic indications meant a friendlier camaraderie among those who were trying to puzzle them out.

I have found that the Archivo General de Administración is like Flanders to the nth degree. The finding aids are cryptic to the point of unintelligibility even when they are not frankly inaccurate. But the staff are lovely and helpful, and I have the advantage of working alongside a fellow researcher (and former Fulbrighter), who is doing something completely unrelated. Yesterday she came over and knelt by my desk, whispering, “I think I've found some associations that might be useful for you” and provided me with a bunch of box call numbers. In return, I have noted the boxes where her subject pops up, and have been carefully passing the information along to her. And meanwhile the friendly archivists look at the call numbers and say “¿estás interesada en prensa?” based purely on the boxes you are requesting, and their memories of previous call requests. (My former-Fulbright-friend said she was greeted on her arrival with another grant this year with the assurance that “the good news is that no one has looked at your boxes since you were here two years ago. The bad news is they're still not better catalogued.”) All of us are wandering in a labyrinthine collection of tens of thousands of boxes with probably millions of individual documents that would make Jorge Luis Borges himself dizzy, like his bibliotecarios de Babel we leave little flare guns and notes and helpful hints for each other, which makes research at once slower and less productive, but tremendously more fun and social.

Feliz día del libro!

My day of helicopters, blue fingers, and lilacs

I woke up this morning to the alarm and a WhatsApp from my Complutense mentor wishing me "feliz día del libro."  As April 20 was the "noche de libros" in Madrid, and I knew we were coming up on the anniversary of Cervantes' and Shakespeare's death, I wasn't totally surprised.  Today is also I believe Sant Jordi in Catalunya, when people burn furniture (don't ask), and also booksellers have major book fair events.  (You're not supposed to burn the books.  It's just a coincidence that the patron saint of Catalunya and the Day of the Book coincide.  Given that he's a patron saint in England as well, perhaps St. Jordi/Saint George watches over language use generally.)

Alcalá de Henares in sunshine and rain

One of the (many) posts I meant to do but didn't, and today's new research adventures

 

Alcalá de Henares in cold March rain

I traveled for the second time to Alcalá de Henares on Thursday (and the third time on Friday), to consult the mysteriously named Archivo General de Administración, which sounds like something from Yes, Minister, and actually appears to be something a bit more sinister and Orwellian.  My quest involved getting up early and taking the cercanías, and then spending three exhausting but fascinating hours in the archives (until they closed at 2:30), and then lunch in beautiful summery weather in an outdoor café, and a brief trip to the Casa-Museo Cervantes.  The sunshine and open museums and general holiday atmosphere outside the archives was a funny contrast to the first time I went to Alcalá, almost exactly one month ago, also for professional reasons, to give a lecture at the university.  I had a productive professional time and a very interesting tourist time there then too, but it was Monday (so many things were closed), and pouring rain, and quite cold.  My poor wet feet were very sad and chilly in March.  The only thing that happened in April was that I wanted to stop and buy a coke before the train home because I was mildly thirsty after walking around in the sun.  What a difference a month makes.

Getting back to work...

 

Time is slipping away...

It's been a while since I've blogged, although I've been thinking about doing it a lot lately.  Some of that is down to having a series of house guests in fairly close succession, which means getting to be a tourist and going around with people and showing them fun stuff (and also four wonderful days in Alicante, which are probably worth several entries that they probably won't get).  Some of it is exhaustion after writing a lot quickly to try to finish a piece of fiction so I can get back to my thesis.  And some of it is (surprise!) actual thesis work -- which I've realized I can't put off any longer, since tomorrow marks the two month count-down to my return to New York (though I'll probably be back in Madrid over the summer, especially toward the end of July to finish up dealing with apartment stuff, as well as just enjoying being here without work, as always).  So this is a transitional entry, mentioning briefly a bunch of stuff that has happened, and acknowledging that I won't get all of it down, and hoping to do better going forward, in the very small amount of time that is left.

A funny detail of the rain...

Apologies for letting the blog slide for a few weeks...

I've been trying to finish a piece of writing over the last month or so, and I'm afraid this blog has been neglected.  No, not my thesis (sorry, if any of my professors are reading this, I swear it will get done too).  Just some fiction inspired partly by my neighborhood - and in direct response to my Complutense mentor here who said "nothing ever happens in Carabanchel"  and partly (ironically) by the class of said mentor last semester, which I audited, and where I got to learn a bit more about a chapter of Spanish history that shows up in my story.  (And it is literally a chapter, or chapters.)  The story is about a young academic who comes to Madrid doing research on manuscripts and ends up in Carabanchel.  I wonder what could have ever given me that idea?  😁

In any case, I'm afraid that between working at finishing that story, plus following up on my visit to the embassy and doing some of the lectures to college students that they asked me to do, plus the odd glance at reading for my thesis, plus staying on top of emails home and welcoming a few visitors, there simply hasn't been much time to blog.  I promise many blog posts to catch up on what I'm doing in terms of interesting trips and lectures and so on, but this is just an assortment of random details that I thought were charming and/or curious.  Consider this entry an apology to my faithful readers.

It's raining, do I still have to save the world?

I was planning an amusing blog entry, but couldn't find the event that was supposed to happen.

First off, I should say for all those readers out there in the blogosphere that it's not snowing.  Somewhat north of here (in much of Castilla-León) it is snowing, and El País is reporting three deaths and multiple cut highways due to a winter storm.  The Guardian is also reporting that trains and roads are closed in Britain, which is getting a heavy dumping of snow (probably a lot heavier than northern Spain, to be honest), and I assume the same conditions prevail across much of the EU.  So, I'm lucky it's not snowing.

It's raining.  A lot.

After the super-dry autumn this is hopefully good for the reservoirs (though El País now is saying there are flood warnings for the Duero, so I don't know how much they'll be able to hold onto the water).  However, it also seems to have rained out an event I was planning to go to in order to spice up this relatively dull blog, as the last week or so since my return from Malaga has been quietly curled up reading articles, and doing a bit of outlining, and writing, which is not very interesting.  (That is, I think the content is interesting, but the process is not interesting to write about.)  I am giving a couple of guest lectures at the Complutense in a few weeks time, which I will report back on, but in the meantime yesterday on the way to the metro I passed a flyer pasted on a bus shelter calling for a "manifestación" to give Carabanchel its own Centro de Salud.  It was one of those wordy posters that explains the many years that the residents of Carabanchel have been forced to go out of their neighborhood to a different Centro de Salud for healthcare, with lots of statistics, some of which are repeated here.