Catalonia Today review of No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia

At the age of fifty-two, I took my cat and flew off from the San Francisco Bay Area to a new life in Barcelona. I had gone salsa dancing, met and married a Catalan, and we were going to live in his hometown.

The adventures began before we even left, with the purchase, sight unseen, of an apartment in the Barri Gotic, and subsequent horrible discovery in a guidebook of what went on in that street. Then there was the shock of the deed arriving in the mail with a different price – a much lower price – than what we had paid.

Once there, things didn’t work out as planned and that set off an even greater adventure than I had bargained for. Things that should be normal weren’t: buying bedding, keeping drunks from peeing under our balcony, buying Chanukah candles in a country where there have been essentially no Jews since 1492.

"Autobiography is a notoriously difficult genre, whose authors often slide into rampant egocentrism or report details that may have mattered very much to them but are of no interest whatsoever to anyone else. Happily, Dvora Treisman has avoided such pitfalls and has produced an entertaining if sometimes melancholy memoir about her life in Catalonia, full of episodes which might appear trivial at first but in fact deftly push the narrative forward so that the reader is, more often then not, left wanting to find out what happens next."  From the review by Matthew Tree, in the June issue of Catalonia Today. You can find the review here.

You can purchase the book on all the Amazon sites, Barnes & Noble, Casa del Llibre, Come In Bookshop in Barcelona, and most brick and mortar bookshops in the U.S. and Britain.

Chaos: Spanish Building Permits

There is a small natural preserve called Les Muntanyans on the Costa Daurada.  It's in the municipality of Torredembarra, a seaside resort near Tarragona, between here and Barcelona.  Les Muntanyans sits at the edge of Torredembarra and consists of a salt water marsh that has been fought over for some years now.  A developer wanted to get his hands on it to build 500 apartments.  But some local citizens formed a group and protested. 

This area is a lovely natural preserve, one of few like it on the coast.  It is also a flood zone.  So there were two very good reasons not to build apartment blocks.  Quite frankly, it amazes me how many modern buildings in Spain sit at the bottom of a ravine or on a flood plain that floods repeatedly, year after year.  Every time there is a storm, you see on the news the same places being flooded.

In this case, although the city hall had given permission to build, the citizen group fought in court and just this week it was announced that they won.  Chaos averted.  For now.

But I know of another place much closer to home where chaos was not averted.  It is here, at the apartment I’m staying in for the summer while I rent out my own house in order to earn money to pay the mortgage.  My life is complicated.

My friends who own this apartment are also finding things complicated.  In Spain there is a document called the Cèdula d’Habitabilitat without which one cannot sell nor legally rent a dwelling.  The Cèdula certifies, among other things, that the building is habitable and, in the case of apartment buildings, that it is handicap accessible.  Whereas an older building would be exempt from accessibility requirements, this small apartment building is fairly new and very habitable, but parts of it, including this apartment, are not handicap accessible and thus the problem.

It is hard to understand, much less explain what the designer of this building was thinking when he worked out the plans.  It seems that the average person with no architectural background and some building experience could have done better and have satisfied the regulations.  After all, the apartments are just little boxes.  But instead, the rather strange, convoluted design makes it impossible for anyone in a wheelchair to enter this apartment.  You exit the elevator and are faced with five stairs you must descend, then one more leading into the very narrow entry to the door of the apartment where I am staying.  The descent is too steep for a ramp, and the entry to the apartment is too narrow for a wheelchair.  Why is strange design?

Between Manel and me, we have bought two apartments and two houses and have sold two apartments in Spain.  For none of these transactions was a Cèdula d’Habitabilitat required, even though, I am told, it existed back then.  In those days, it was simply ignored.  Now you can’t sell without one, nor rent out, nor have utilities turned on.  So what does an owner who cannot get a Cèdula do?  For the last year or two, there has been no recourse.  Country properties have been the hardest hit because most of them were built or enlarged without permit.  Virtually none of the country properties in this area have sold in over a year.  Meanwhile the government laments the lack of activity in the economy.   

I thought my friends should try to get the city hall to support a request for an exemption.  After all, they approved the building plans, so surely they have some responsibility for the outcome.  But it seems that one of the other owners in the building has built something onto their apartment illegally, without a permit, so that the city hall says it will take no responsibility for the entire building.  Does this make sense?  Well, never mind.  I guess my friends are preparing to make a claim against the architect; they can’t sue the builder because he declared bankruptcy a while back.  But that won’t solve their problem of making the apartment accessible so they can sell it.

Me, on the other hand, I have a Cèdula for my villa.  No problem.  All I need is a buyer who wants a cute little house with a pretty, green garden, just a hop, skip, and jump from the Mediterranean Sea, and certified habitable!

Setmana Santa

Writing an expat blog from Spain behooves one to say something about Holy Week, even though in Catalunya, things are not quite as holy as elsewhere in Spain. In fact, in the Catalan version of Wikipedia (Viquipèdia) you are referred to the Philippines and Andalusia if you want to know how a real Holy Week is celebrated.


Mostly I’ve been surrounded by people who came to spend Setmana Santa at their vacation homes having barbecues, tidying up their gardens, and catching a little bit of sun. This year Passover coincided with Holy Week, and I found it odd that the definition for pasqua in my Catalan dictionary means first of all Jewish Passover, and secondly Easter. Yet I didn’t celebrate either. No Passover, having no context for a seder, and of course my celebrating Easter was out of the question. But even the idea of going as a tourist to attend a procession of what to American eyes looks like a parade of the robed and hooded Ku Klux Klan, did not really appeal.

I did watch a couple of processions in the past. The first, about nine years ago, was a very small one made up of only one confraria (brotherhood) that went up La Rambla in Barcelona. Actually, I think when I saw them they were only rehearsing. The second was more of a major production, five years ago in Tarragona. I mentioned in an earlier post that Tarragona feels more Spanish to me than Catalan. One reason for this is the huge petro-chemical industry that borders the city and the thousands of Spaniards from poorer parts of Spain who have moved to Tarragona for the employment opportunities that these businesses such as Dow, Basf, BP, DuPont, and Repsol afford. Even after a generation, these Spanish immigrants maintain their southern Spanish traditions (including one of only two remaining bull rings in Catalunya), language (choosing not to speak Catalan), and even the very strong accent that their children, born here, continue to speak with.

In Tarragona there were many confraries, some in hoods, some carrying statues of Jesus or Mary heavily decorated with flowers. On T.V. I’ve seen people in Seville shedding tears at these processions, so moved are they by the image of Jesus in his earthly torment or the grief of his mother Maria. Jesus may be the main character, but Maria also plays an important role and around her there can be fierce competitions and vehement arguments. One problem is that there are many Marias. Who are they? Where did so many come from? How could there be more than one Maria, mother of God? For years I have found the answers to these questions shrouded in mystery.

But this year I finally undertook to become enlightened. First you have various titles that Mary enjoys such as Blessed Mother, Virgin, Madonna, Our Lady, Notre Dame, Queen of Peace, to name a few. Then, there are Marys who are named for various apparitions that are said to have occurred at various times around the world, such as Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe. Or the name might refer to an attribute: Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Hope. Geography might come into it, as in "La Macarena", the title given to "Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza" (Our Lady of Hope) in the Macarena neighborhood of Seville. Catalunya holds the Virgin of Montserrat very dear and many girls are named after her (including the most famous, Montserrat Caballé). Is it any wonder I was confused? But what is even more interesting than all these names is the fact that at some of the processions people compete and argue over whose Virgin is the best. I wonder what the Queen of Peace would think of that.

What I loved at the Tarragona procession were the trumpets and drums, but especially the drums. You can feel them in your body as the drummers slowly march by. There is something very primal, vital, powerful, and intense in those drums and if I go again it would be to feel that sensation once more.

Setmana Santa is comprised of several commemorative days with one of the early ones being El dia de Rams (Palm Sunday). Ram, in Catalan, means a broken off branch or a bouquet of flowers. This is the day that Jesus entered Jerusalem. Children here are given palm fronds or laurel branches by their godparents which they carry to church, that is, those that go. Eventually the palms end up decorating the balcony balustrade.

Holy Monday is when the processions, for those towns that are heavily into it, begin. Then comes Holy Thursday, the day of the last supper. This marks the end of Lent. Divendres Sant (Good Friday) is when Jesus was executed. This is a legal holiday everywhere in Spain and is the day of the most important processions. And of course Pasqua (Easter) the day Christ was resurrected.

Whereas processions don’t, the culinary elements of Easter do tempt me. Bunyols, much like donut holes but with a hint of anise, are made during quaresma, or Lent, and I always make it a habit to have some. As unhealthy as they may be, they are good for my soul. The mona (a special sweet pastry made for Easter) is given by the godparent to the godchild. Mones may be a ring pastry decorated with eggs, iced cakes also decorated with eggs and little chicks, or far more elaborate constructions, usually of chocolate, depicting cartoon characters, soccer stars, great architecture, anything really. Having no godparents, I had no mona this year (I’ve bought them for myself in previous years, but have gotten tired of the whole thing). Mona, by the way, besides being a special sweet made for Easter, also means monkey.

For many, both Easter and Passover are holidays that mark the beginning of spring. The Haggadah includes a beautiful mention of it from the Song of Songs:

For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
the flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
the fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

With spring in mind, I went out to lunch on Easter Sunday with Manel and my friend Eve. Nothing religious about it, we simply went out to enjoy a sunny (albeit cold) spring day after having endured a markedly miserable winter. We ate at a restaurant called Carpe Diem in nearby Miami Platja, one of the prettiest restaurants in the area. It is owned and run by a foreign couple (foreign to some -- he is American and she is British from Singapore). Our lunch wasn’t pagan or religious; it was sophisticated, enjoyable, and not too expensive. We ate avocado and mushroom melt, Greek salad, brie melted on toast with roasted peppers, cod wrapped in bacon, homemade Cumberland sausage with white beans, chocolate cake, and puff pastry with whipped cream and berries, accompanied by an inexpensive and pleasant red wine. Being one of the nicest restaurants for miles around, we were surprised (as we have been on earlier visits) how few patrons they had dining. This is yet another mystery to be solved.

Pont del Diable

I think Tarragona’s Roman aqueduct might be the most beautiful structure I have ever seen. Known as El Pont del Diable or Devil’s Bridge, it is a surviving fragment of a longer aqueduct that once carried water, mostly at ground level, for over ten kilometers to the city. This section, about two miles outside the city, is a bridge crossing a small ravine and is made up of two rows of graceful arches, all made of golden stone, stacked one upon the other in the first century A.D. There are eleven arches on the bottom and twenty-five on top. It is 90 feet high, over 650 feet long, there are no fences or entry gates, no admission charge, no graffiti, no restraints, and visitors are free to walk across the top in the channel where water once flowed.
Even having seen photos beforehand, I didn’t have the real sense of size and context until I saw it in person. I don't understand why anyone would go to Disneyland when there are so many real fairy tales to see. The aqueduct is a piece of engineering as lovely as any work of art, and after two thousand years, it is just as beautiful as ever. There is something pleasingly perfect about it
Legend goes that the master builder was desperate to finish the elevated channel, having been hindered by high winds of the mistral Exasperated, he said that only the devil could build a bridge that would withstand a thousand years, and the devil responded with an offer of help. But he didn’t want to be paid in gold: he wanted the soul of whoever would be first to drink the water brought by the channel. The bridge was finished and the master builder sent across a thirsty donkey from the work crew in payment to the devil.