Spanish Homework

I was just looking back at my early character précis of our Spanish teacher Victor...hmmm. After many conversation classes at his flat in Urguell, he has become progressively more militant in a pretty dogmatic socialist political ideology. He is on the verge of selling all the furniture and other items in his already spartan flat, and taking off on travels around the world. I think it is likely that he will end up living on an Ashram in India, and probably won't return to Barcelona.

Our weekly Spanish conversations tend to follow a predictable trajectory which begins with a world problem and then comes to rest with the evils of capitalism.We have had discussions about bull-fighting (Victor is not a fan of the unneccessary torture and slaughter of bulls in a pseudo Gladiatorial spectacle, nor am I). Social inequalities in London has been a topic, specifically Brixton. I ended up somewhat over-egging the gun and knife crime problem which unfairly ended up making Brixton sound like London's version of Mexican border-town, Juárez. 

Luckily, Victor ended up visiting Brixton, a few weeks later, and concluded instead that it was 'cheeky' which is an adjective that I have never heard applied to Brixton, but think is brilliant. Our conversations have become increasingly polarised into the banks v. the people and left-wing v. right-wing through conversations about the economic crisis in Spain, big business and the unemployed. So when Victor asked what we thought of Margaret Thatcher, it was already apparent what his opinion on her would be, and it wasn't that her quashing of trade-union powers, was on balance; a good thing.

As my husband and I commenced our verbal sparring match in crudely constructed Spanish sentences, I was reminded of the  lyrics to the Wombats' song 'Is this Christmas?'. They go a little something like this: 'And then it's right-wing versus left until the crowns fall off our heads.'

And the conclusion to this overly simplified political fall-out? My Spanish homework is to write an essay highlighting the bad points of Margaret Thatcher's 11 year stint as Prime Minister. John will, as ever, be enjoying the position of devil's advocate, and writing as an ambassador of Thatcherism and bullet pointing the plus points of the Iron Lady's dominion over the UK.

Street Life

Street life in Barcelona is everywhere and it's one of the best things about the city, and Spain in general. The photos show just a couple of the huge number of festivals that have happened since we've been here. Dia de San Jordi, where the city is full of yellow and red striped book stalls and rose stands is one of the biggest ones. We haven't even got to Castells, where people create human towers with four to five levels of people standing on each others' shoulders in the town square.

We stumbled across the girls doing Catalan dancing whilst walking up Carrer Gran de Gracia. The street was closed for traffic (there were a few militant drivers attempting to circumvent the people, but one driver was shouted at by an old man with a stick and the right of people to celebrate in the streets was restored.) The giant people who have swallowed the wrong potion, like Alice in Wonderland outcasts, are a lurking presence in Barcelona. There is a museum for them in the Gothic quarter, and they made an appearance at this market festival on San Pere Bai de Baix. They are called 'gigantes y cabezudos', 'giants and big-heads' in Catalan.Their heads are papier-mache and they parade through town under the control of a puppet master with a harness on their shoulder to make the giant gyrate. The figures are normally archetypes of traditional figures, the odd couple above look like peasants rather than nobility. 

To get back to the theme of festivals and street celebrations, they feel like an important part of life here. Every barrio has it's own festival. The Barceloneta festival featured parades with samba drumming and dancing with people wearing strange ship themed carnival hats made out of what looked like wooden oar parts. The festival with the giants was a barrio getting together and deciding to move the shops outside for a few days, and felt like an excuse to chat on the street and make time pass more slowly. I'm thinking about death at the moment, and feeling really sad because my lovely uncle Shaun has died. It's nice to live in a city where people are very noisily (a little too noisily sometimes for my refined English sensibilities!) making the most of the business of life by maximising the communal activities in the street, and injecting life with loud, argumentative conversation, music and colour. I hope this is a memory from Barcelona that stays with me forever.

The Barrio Gotico is a mixture of cool, shaded stone streets, a sense of historical grandeur muddled up with little signifiers of urban squalor, piss in the streets and vomit splashes. When you look up there are balconies with window boxes, plants spilling out, and miniature rainbow-coloured windmills whizzing their tits off. Shop shutters are graffitied canvases with stylised, bright characters, such as the electric blue skinned boy who reminds you to 'Remember who you are'. Cavernous shops sell eye-wateringly expensive designer clothes and artist's t-shirts and trinkets.

Tiny canines are the pets of choice in Barcelona: chihuahuas and bull dogs are the most popular. Dogs that mince or stomp. During January and February, most of the tinier dogs sported coats: water-proof or padded, style is important. I saw one dog expressing his support for Barcelona FC, the maroon and blue strip fitted around his tiny torso, legs poking through sleeves. The strangest choice of pet décolletage is worn by a cat who is a regular fixture near Catedral de Santa Marta. This feline sports a wreath of pink roses around its' head, and is attached to its' owner by way of a piece of string. The owner, a lady in her 80's, sits next to it and knits concentratedly whilst tourists and locals stream past.

Fincas and fluency

Dearest Reader, (there is currently only one I believe, bless you Lou!)

I have been woefully lax with this blog, and I hereby vow to increase the quantity if not the quality from now on, so...
Had a nice, lazy day. It rained for the second day in a row. John and I went running by the beach and the sea was choppy and reassuringly grey, there was a cloudy sky and you could taste the sea salt. I spent the morning entertaining dreams about setting up an outdoor learning centre or a 'forest school' for children, and was really excited to see such a thing existed in a place called Coin, in Andalucia. I then ended up looking up fincas (Spanish farmhouse) online, one of which had a huge plot of land, orange and lemon trees, olive groves and a reliable supply of acorns for the Iberian pigs that we could be looking after. John was less enamoured with pig farming as our fall back option if all else failed. 'This could be an outdoor learning centre for city kids' I was thinking, the Jacks and Jordans from Year 6 at Kender Primary, New Cross, that, when given a forest to mess about in, were inspired to build shelters and partake in other boy scouty activities, of their own volition.

It is a lovely dream that will lurk in the back of my head for years to come, and I'll probably periodically mention it to John: the sweet, sun bleached finca fantasy (I also love the word finca) - the lemons and oranges, the olives, the acorn bloated pigs, and finally, John and I tilling the land; contented, deeply tanned and somehow imbued with a new-found wisdom. If terms of our abilities as farmers and land-tillers, our pot plants would complain of neglect if they could, so we might need to employ the children as farm-hands!

This evening we had an assignation with a private Spanish tutor, also an actor, called Victor, at his flat near Urguell. This is after a hiatus in our Spanish learning, having been back to England and having had John's mum stay for a week. I was intrigued to know what Victor was going to be like, his website had an amusing photo of him posing side-on, wearing a black polo neck (hmm, I have serious issues with this sartorial number on men) and pulling a facial expression reminiscent of Roger Moore in one of his hammier Bond moments. Victor was actually really nice, he was definitely on the intense side, but in a good way. He's Catalan, from near Girona and also works as a life coach. He didn't spout any jargon, just talked a bit about overcoming the fear when learning a language and just having a go, which sounds blindingly obvious, but it does need reiterating when you often feel like a scatting goldfish when the anxiety kicks in that you're getting the words wrong. Our conversational attempts must have been painful but he managed to maintain an expression of engagedness – he is an actor after all...

LA BOQUERIA

This is the fabulous Boqueria Mercado off La Rambla. The strings of dried chillies are a highlight, dangling down like old Christmas decorations. More horrifying to the English eye, is the butcher's window which contains tiny dead piglets, and sheep's heads, stripped of the skin, but with glassy eyes staring impassively out at you. Overheard a young American guy telling his companions that the best time to go to the 'Boquereeea' (extremely exaggerated prounciation to display marvellous command of Spanish, combined with flamboyant hand waving, he was one small step away from inhaling deeply) was in the early morning as this is when the chefs go to pick up the freshest produce. This induced a deep inward shudder. It is the best market that we've been to so far.