The Key

My first few years in Spain I didn’t have a car. I never would have thought that I could live without one, much less be happy. But in fact, I didn’t miss it. Living in a city, I could take public transportation to all the places I couldn’t walk to, and on a rare occasion it was easy to get a taxi. However, when you live out in the middle of nowhere you need a car to get somewhere, and so we bought one, a Seat Ibiza.


The Seat served us well. It was a cheap small car that ran on diesel (most vehicles here do) and was economical to run and to maintain. Seat is a Spanish company and the Ibiza, bottom of their line, is probably the most popular car here. Its styling doesn’t noticeably change from year to year (like the old Volvo 122S) and its only drawback is that unlike the Volvo, you don’t get the feeling that it offers much protection on the road.

In January 2009 we bought our present car, an 11-year-old Citroen Xsara that replaced the 11-year-old Seat that Manuel killed one rainy day when he plowed through a deep puddle. The Citroen is a larger car that also runs on diesel. Unfortunately, the Xsara does not have the charm or character of my favorite 2CV, and ours is a bit of a heap. It’s a heap because it burns oil although our mechanic tells me that it doesn’t. Thing is, as many times as I’ve asked him, I still don’t understand his explanation of what is happening to the oil.

The car blows black smoke out the back when I accelerate and it constantly sends burning fumes into the passenger compartment. I have it parked in front of my house a lot of the time (Manuel and I share the car, so it is also parked in front of his house a lot of the time), but it leaves no oil spots on the concrete. And yet, we use up about two liters of oil every four weeks. If it isn’t burning oil and it isn’t leaking, where does the oil go? The mechanic says it loses oil because I don’t drive fast enough.

The other problem with the car is that we only have one key for it. When we first bought it, a year and a half ago, we asked Jeroni, our mechanic, to get us a duplicate. He said he would order one from Citroen, but during the first year of our car ownership he didn’t. Eventually we nagged enough for him to take the car serial number and get us a key – a blank that had to be taken to a Citroen dealer in order to be made to work. It wasn’t simply a matter of having it cut, something electronic was also involved. He told us there was a dealer in L’Amposta, but L’Amposta is about half an hour away and not on any of our usual routes.

Then, two months ago, Manuel lost our one and only key. He had been pulling a few weeds in his garden, throwing them over the wall onto the abandoned lot next door, and in one of his throws, he let go of the key that for some unfathomable reason he had in his weed-pulling hand. Because I have the useful aptitude for finding things, he called me. Usually it is just a matter of applying logic: when and where was the last time you saw or used it? Where would you be likely to have put it? Other times it is simply my ability to see what is sitting right in front of me.

Manuel knew where he was when he made the fateful throw, so there was only a relatively small area where the key could have landed. But that area was full of tall bushes, huge weeds, and little mountains of building debris piled onto debris. We looked and looked, but it was hopeless. Even I, the great lost objects sleuth, couldn’t find it, and I walked back home with the unhappy feeling that, because our key was not so straightforward to copy, we were in for a big problem.

Manuel said he would ask his neighbors, who have two teenage children, to help him look the next morning. Maybe all that boundless energy and youthful eyesight would yield better results. Next morning I was waiting for him to call when he suddenly showed up…. smiling. Success! And he did it all on his own. He applied logic and calculation, narrowed down the area, and took a good look in the spot where it had to be, and there it was!

This was the incident that convinced me that procrastination was no longer an acceptable policy, and that Monday we went in with our blank to ask Jeroni where the Citroen dealer was that we had to go to. But now he told us that if we waited until the next time we had the car serviced and left the key with him for the day, he would get it done. So a couple of weeks later that is what we did. Only it turned out that he couldn’t get it done, and we had to go to the dealer after all. Did we still have the code on the little piece of paper that he had given us when he gave us the blank? What the heck. Manuel said he was never given any little piece of paper, only the key. Jeroni insisted that yes, and we persisted that no, and finally we went to the Citroen dealer, the one in Tortosa, a place we are familiar with, taking along our blank with no little piece of coded paper.

At the Citroen service department we were attended by the service manager and then taken to the waiting lounge. After about twenty minutes, they came to get us. They couldn’t use the blank we had; it was the wrong one for that car. But our mechanic got it for us from Citroen. He had given them the car’s serial number. That could be, but he probably bought it from a parts supplier and not from the company and in any case, while it was the right key for the physical lock, it was the wrong key for the electronic control. “See this little blue spot? It should be black.” Surely they jest.

The service manager told us they would order the correct blank (one with a little black spot) and we could return the key we had to our mechanic and ask for our money back. They would have the new blank in two days and we should call before coming back for an appointment.

I called last Tuesday and went in on Wednesday. I didn’t even get the chance to sit down in that nice, clean waiting lounge. Their mechanic took the blank that they had ordered for us and my original key, gave them a good look, and declared that they could not make a copy with that blank. It might be the right key for the electronics, but it was the wrong shape for the mechanical and couldn’t be copied from my original, I think because the stem is too short. Did I have that other blank that didn’t work? They could copy the mechanical from that.

You have to be kidding. The service manager told us that we could send the other key back. In fact we hadn’t done anything with it (that’s not surprising, is it), but I hadn’t brought it with me either, seeing that it was useless. The manager was there, looking a bit sheepish. The whole thing seemed so ridiculous to me that I didn’t even get angry. How absurd. I’ve never had a car before that was so complicated. I’ve only ever had keys that open mechanical locks and then turned on the engine. They told me that this newfangled system was designed in order to protect me. Well hey, protect me from progress. Sometimes newer isn’t better. Basically, when you drive an old heap, you don’t spend much time worrying about your car being stolen. And what if we hadn’t found our key? Would we have had to buy a whole new engine?

I will go back next week, taking the useless blank with me, and maybe, after a year and a half, I will drive out with a spare key that works.

Peas!

On Tuesday 27 April, I put on shorts for the first time this year, intending to go out, enjoy the sun, and start on my summer tan. Giving myself a look over in the full length mirror, I noticed a good-size lump on the back of my right leg, at the back of my knee joint. When I turned a little to get a better look, I saw an even bigger one on the back of my left knee. I felt them and they were hard -- hard and ugly. You might ask, how could something grow that big without my knowing about it. All I can say is, God only knows. I never noticed the lumps all winter, maybe because I only look in the mirror after I’m dressed. The lumps don’t hurt, and the slight stiffness that I feel in my left knee I figured was just part of aging. It’s not nearly as stiff as what I feel in my lower back most mornings.


But lumps don’t count as part of aging, so I called for a doctor’s appointment and got one for the Friday of that same week. My doctor told me they were not bone cancer (my original worry), only cysts. I have had small cysts on my head several times in the last twenty years – the one I have now is the fourth. The first three I had removed; but for this fourth one, the dermatologist here prescribed two creams to apply each day and after a while it became smaller and has stayed the same now for over two years, so I just leave it alone. When it comes to my body, if it ain’t truly broke, I don’t mess with it.

However, the doctor said the ones on my knees would probably just continue to grow indefinitely so she authorized for me to go see a specialist – a surgeon – in Tortosa. I was given an appointment for the following Tuesday.

I am a great chicken when it comes to illness, pain, and almost any kind of medical procedure, with surgery being at the top of the list for what to avoid at all costs. But I did a good job of not worrying too much. Since Doctor Nadal had assured me that they weren’t bone cancer, I figured this wouldn’t be much worse than the surgeries I’ve had on the small cysts. Grow up Dvora; it isn’t enough to lose sleep over

In my village the health service has a small building where the regular GPs and pediatricians work, where you can go in case of an emergency 24 hours a day, and where the ambulance is stationed. But specialists are housed in larger clinics and the nearest one to us is in Tortosa.

Tortosa is our closest city and the capital of the comarca (like a county) of the Baix Ebre (lower Ebre). It is a small city of about 31,000 people, and sits on the Ebre River. Originally Roman, it was conquered by the Muslims in the 8th century and remained under Muslim rule for over 400 years. The castle overlooking the city (now a government-run Parador) was built by the Muslims in the 10th century on the site of an old Roman acropolis. Tortosa was later conquered by Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, in 1148 as part of the Second Crusade.

The cathedral was started in 1347 and took 250 years to build. They say it was completed in 1597, but in fact, I have never seen it without scaffolding and construction netting. The church of Sant Domènec, built in the 16th century, has sculptures on the facade that were all beheaded by gunshot during the Spanish Civil War. One of the most colorful buildings is the old Escorxador (slaughter house), designed in 1905 in the modernist style. It is made of brickwork and ceramics and is reminiscent of the Mudejar architectural style. The biggest battle of the Civil War – the Battle of the Ebro – took place in this area and Tortosa still shows many scars from that time. Although a comarcal capital, Tortosa has many ruins and derelict buildings in its old town, gives the overall impression of being shabby, and seems to be a somewhat forgotten and abandoned part of Catalunya.

But this wasn’t a sightseeing trip. The Tortosa surgeon said that I had Baker’s cysts, but because there were two of them – twins -- he thought I should be seen by a traumatòleg (an injury surgeon) who would probably do an eco- or sonogram, to check on any underlying problem with the joint. This was not good news as far as I was concerned, and I went down to the window to get the appointment with the traumatòleg. They gave me one for the following Monday.

Now I did start to worry about having surgery, not just on one knee, but on both and not just because of a little fat-filled cyst but something more complicated. Would they do both at the same time? How would I get around? My bathroom is on a half landing, how would I get to it? My bedroom is upstairs. Would I be able to bend over to feed the cats and clean kitty poop from their boxes? Would I be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life? I really should not be turned loose with my own thoughts when an illness or health issue looms.

That Monday, the wait for the traumatòleg was over an hour. These doctors are public health service employees and don’t have a say in how many people get scheduled in. Some people went in and out quickly and others took longer. Frankly, I was happy that she (as it turned out) was giving everyone who came the time and attention they needed. Keep in mind that none of these doctor and specialist appointments were costing me a penny. When my turn came, I explained my problem briefly (in Catalan – all my conversations with medical personnel are in Catalan), she had my record already on her computer screen, and she proceeded to examine me.

The traumatòleg confirmed that these were Baker’s cysts, and that they were probably the result of sitting a lot. She would authorize an ecogram to take a better look but she didn’t think surgery would be necessary. I was so relieved I kissed her. No surgery, no drugs, no creams. I could treat them myself. But I couldn’t quite understand what she was telling me to do twice a day for twenty minutes. Put something against the cysts? Had I heard right? I didn’t even need to go to a pharmacy. I just needed to go to a grocery store and buy two bags of frozen peas!

Goats

In the village of Rasquera, between here and Miravet, on the first weekend of May every year they hold their annual Fira Ramadera, which is a livestock fair. Marking the time when the flocks head for the Cardó and Tivissa mountains, and locally known as the goat fair, it captured my attention because where there is goat, they may also be goat cheese.


Ramat means livestock, and although Catalunya has dairy and beef industries, they are located in the north (Girona), and west (Lleida). Here, in the more arid south, you find pigs, goats, and sheep. In Catalunya (and maybe all of Spain) most of the livestock industry is relatively small scale and family run. I recently read in Temple Grandin’s book Animals Make Us Human that Europe does much better in providing decent living and slaughter conditions for its commercial animals (with the exception of chickens) than the U.S. does. And in fact, that fits with my own general impression. Although they may exist, in all the nine years that I’ve lived here I have never seen huge stockyards here like the ones in Coalinga in central California, and when there is a news story having to do with livestock, you always see a relatively small, family-run business.

Herding goats or sheep is not a big money-maker and even though there are many people who are not driven to get rich, as time goes by, fewer people are doing it, especially fewer young people. To give the vocation a boost, the Generalitat has recently instituted programs to train young people so that those herders who do not have children to take over, might find a stranger to do it when the time comes and thus the landscape will remain dotted with sheep and goats and the food supply will continue to be locally produced.

One of the more charming things about Catalunya is that there are shepherds and goatherds with small flocks, sometimes going this way and that along the roads. You might see them when you drive outside the cities, and I could even see them out the window from our apartment in Tarragona, being situated as we were near the edge of town. There are also a few small herds on the outer fringe of Barcelona, sometimes taken by their shepherds to graze in the large open space park of Collserola that borders the back of the city, as Tilden Park does in Berkeley. Pigs are a different story. They are always located outside of town, but I have felt the odor in town when the wind was blowing the wrong way.

The oldest signs of human life at Rasquera are the 6,500 – 10,000-year-old cave paintings. It was an Iberian settlement before the Romans came, and its first civic document dates from 1153 when Ramon Berenguer IV gave Rasquera to the Templars, whose castle was in Miravet. Increasing from its first recorded population of 14 souls in 1497, it rose to its height of 1542 people in 1910 and has eased back down to 955 at the latest count. It’s primary economic activity is agriculture: vineyards, olive trees, some fruit trees (it is typical of the houses in the village to have open attics for the drying of figs), and breeding and raising of goats and sheep, most notably the Cabra Blanca (white goat), a breed native to Rasquera.

In Rasquera, before leaving for their summer pasture, the animals are herded into pens at the edge of the village, and people come from all around to admire them. In addition to the gathering of the flocks and display of a few prime examples in individual pens, there was also a section at the fair for artisan products, both food and handcrafts. Of course I was mostly interested in the stands with artisan-made goat cheeses. Spain has a lot of wonderful food, but it does not produce nor offer a wide selection of cheeses. Spanish varieties are few -- usually hard cheeses -- and they import almost none. So, while I love spotting the sheep and goats when I’m out and about in Catalunya, and I love the feeling they give me of an earlier time and a more simple life, I do miss the countless wonderful cheeses from the Cheeseboard in Berkeley.

80 Years Young

It’s not every day one turns 80 and not everyone has the luck to do so in good health. But Manel did both last week.


Besides having good health, Manel also has the good fortune to have kind and generous friends who had offered to put on a party for his birthday. But the party would follow on the weekend, and I will talk about that in a minute. The first question was what to do on the actual day. I decided to invite him for a day trip to Horta de Sant Joan, one of our favorite villages in the Terra Alta, land of good strong wine and wonderful landscapes with strange rock formations, where Picasso visited and worked for some time and where they say he found inspiration for his venture into cubism.

All of that notwithstanding, what I wanted to do in Horta was to go and see Lo Parot, the 2000-year-old olive tree. If Manel thought that at 80 he was old, this tree could help him put age into perspective.

In July 2009 at the outskirts of Horta, there was a huge forest fire fueled by high winds where 1200 hectares were burned and five firefighters died when the wind changed and they became trapped. This was very big and very grave news within Catalunya, a relatively small community, and everyone grieved, including me. They had originally announced that the fire had been started inadvertently by a lightning strike, but later it was discovered that it had been intentionally set, leading to the recent arrest of two young men who had worked in fire prevention, making the whole tragedy even more grievous.

So as lovely as it is, Horta now also holds some sad associations. Nevertheless we drove up, passing some of the charred land along the way. Once an Iberic settlement, Horta fell to the Moslem invaders in the 8th century, later being taken by conquering Christians in the 12th. In 1174 it came under the jurisdiction of the Templars. I find Horta a pretty little village, relatively speaking. When you travel around Spain, you have to take into account that Spain was a very poor country for most of the 20th century, having suffered its own Civil War after which there was no rebuilding money from other countries, and having suffered over 30 years under Franco’s not very progressive thumb. Especially in small towns and villages, you are likely to see buldings in ruins or various states of disrepair, with many of the ones from the 1960s and 70scheaply built. Unfortunately, adding to the poor physical condition, you also find a lot of garbage on the ground and very few flower pots on balconies. But Horta rises above the average. So many of the old stone buildings are in good condition that you don’t notice the others, many people tend flowers on their balconies, and when you add the views that are had from many vantage points, you end up with a picturesque village.

We had two items on the agenda: the Centre Picasso D’Orta and Lo Parot. We’ve been to Horta many times but never to the Picasso center because they have no original Picasso paintings, so why go? However, recently it dawned on me that it might be a good learning experience any way, you don’t need originals for that, and you’re never too old to learn.

Picasso spent two periods in Horta: the first as a young man when he stayed with his friend Manuel Pallarès from summer 1898 to February 1899, and the second when he came with his lover Fernande Olivier and stayed from May to August of 1909. Although Horta has no original paintings, they have many facsimiles and together with text, they explain a lot about what Picasso did and what he saw in Horta. I personally enjoyed the paintings from his first stay, when his style was natural and flowing and the pictures beautiful, before he started in with geometry. All around they plaster the quote: “Tot el que sé ho he après a Horta” (All I know I have learned in Horta). But I’m suspicious. In what context did he say that? Surely it is an exaggeration, unless it refers to his learning Catalan. Nevertheless, the center was well worth the two-euro price of admission.

From Horta we drove 500 meters out of town and turned right at the sign pointing to Lo Parot, parking near a shed with a small enclosure containing a lone dog, then walking along a path, through an olive grove, until we came to the fenced off 2000-year-old tree. It is a little the worse for wear; I think Manel is in much better shape for his age. Still, it was impressive to see such an old survivor. And it isn’t the only one, there are several 2000-year-old olive trees in southern Catalunya. The California redwoods are much bigger (just about everything in California is bigger), but few are as old, and in any case, they were never cultivated, as these trees were 2000 years ago, and they don’t produce olives, do they.

Lunch was in a nearby restored masia, a rural farmhouse now turned into lodging and restaurant that was a little disappointing both for the food and the fact that out in the countryside, we had no view. But the ride back was unforgettable. We took a different road back and drove for about half an hour in second gear on the narrowest winding road I have ever driven. Luckily we only met one car and that was on a straight stretch, otherwise I have no idea how we could have passed by each other. Many of the sharp curves had mirrors up so you could see if someone was coming, although God only knows what you were supposed to do if there was.

The high point of the ride was when we were leaving the mountains. We passed a wildlife warning road sign illustrated with a deer, and Manel wondered if there really were any deer in the area. We have never seen one in Spain. And while he was saying it, I interrupted him shouting, “There’s one! Look! Look there,” pointing to the left. Just a few feet up the hill and quite close to the road was a grazing deer. Then, two minutes later, I spotted, also to the left, what looked like a wild dog coming down the hill towards the road. Manel saw it too and thought it might be a fox. But it was too big, and when I looked it up later on the internet, I found that it was clearly a jackal. What a day for wildlife. Having seen none (other than birds and rabbits and lots of abandoned dogs and cats) in the nine years that I’ve been here, I saw two wild creatures in one day.

The pièce de résistance of Manel’s 80th birthday was undoubtedly the birthday party that Carol and Lino put on for him. They had told Manel he could invite whoever he liked, and he chose to invite his family – those who live locally, which are his two sisters and their families from Barcelona. Three couldn’t come, but his two older sisters Carmen and Pepita came, Carmen’s daughter Marta came as did Pepita’s son Jose Luis, his wife Susanna, and their two children, bringing the family total to eleven. With our two hosts and two other friends, we were thirteen, but don’t tell anyone. Carol had the table set for fourteen so as to fool the forces that be. To me it felt like a Pesach seder with the extra place set for Eliahu.

Carol and Lino live in the hills (they are called mountains here) outside of El Perelló in a casa rustica (sometimes a euphemism for a ruin) overlooking the sea. They did indeed buy the ruin of a former 375-square-meter farmhouse sitting on 6 ½ hectares of land, but after two years of work, they turned it into the dream casa rustica of style and living magazines… literally. It is an exceptionally beautiful eco-friendly house that uses solar panels and wind generator, they recycle their water whose source is the rain (and a nearby Roman well when rain isn’t enough), and they use no fertilizers or pesticides on their olive or fruit trees.

Besides being imaginative, industrious, talented, and extremely generous, Carol is also a brilliant cook while Lino can also hold his own wielding the cooking knife and spoon, thus lunch was fabulous. And let me make it clear, this wasn’t a birthday party with some fingerfood, birthday cake, and cava, which also would have been great (and is what I did when I turned 60). It was a full sit-down, three course meal, served by a hired helper, preceded by appetizers and followed by the most incredible chocolate trifle I (or anyone else there) have ever seen.

We sipped our cava while nibbling on olives (of course), pickled garlic (which at least one of the Catalans was afraid to try, having never seen such a thing before), and canapés of little toasts with blended melted cheeses plus another that I didn’t try because I became instantly hooked on the cheeses and only stopped munching those when we were called to the table. We sat down to yummy steamed mussels with spicy tomatoes prepared by Lino, followed by pasta with fresh pesto, green beans, and potatoes. It wasn’t MY birthday, but pesto is my favorite and it’s been a while since I’ve had such a good one. The main dish was a lovely lamb stew, the perfect dish for what should have been a beautiful spring day, but served just as well for the cold winter one it turned out to be. The Terra Alta red wine helped keep us warm. For the grand finale, cava accompanied a magnificent chocolate trifle with cherries, brandy, and whipped cream topped off with an “80” and lit with candles, lest anyone should forget why we were all there together enjoying that incredible feast and each other’s company.

Carol and Lino plan to move to Italy where Lino is from and where they will set out on a new adventure, this one possibly involving vineyards and the making of wine. Although the market is slow at the moment, their wonderful house is up for sale, and sooner or later they will sell. When they do, we will sorely miss them. And that is one of the problems inherent in being an expat. You don’t have your old friends nearby, and then the new ones you make up and leave! Unlike olive trees, expats don’t put down roots.

Sant Jordi

Last Friday was Sant Jordi, my favorite Catalan holiday. Sant Jordi is the Day of the Book and the Rose, the two things not being related, but curiously connected on this day. Saint George, who slew the dragon and saved the princess, is one of the favorite saints worldwide and the patron saint of many places and groups including Russia, Portugal, Ethiopia, Hungary, Georgia, Greece, Beirut, Naples, the Scouting Movement, England and Catalunya, with the cross of Saint George (a red cross on a white background) incorporated into some of their flags. Pere I (1196-1213) declared Sant Jordi to be the patron saint of Catalunya and he founded the order of the Knights of Sant Jordi d’Alfama in 1201. They were based less than a kilometer from where I live, in a defensive castle overlooking the sea. I sometimes pass the remains of the 13th century castle and adjacent tower when I go for a walk.

The feast day of Saint George is celebrated in different ways around the world. Here in Catalunya, La Diada de Sant Jordi has been celebrated as an official Catalan holiday since 1456 and is much like Valentine’s Day except that a man gives his sweetheart or friend a rose, while the woman gives the man a book. In this modern age of equality, women also receive books instead of or (better yet) in addition to a rose. When Sant Jordi killed the dragon, a rose grew from the spot where the dragon’s blood spilled, thus the most common rose given on this day is the long-stemmed blood red rose. However, some people flaunt tradition (and myth) and give a white, yellow, pink, or multi-colored (artificially dyed) rose. Whatever the color, the rose is always accompanied by a stalk of wheat and wrapped in a ribbon representing the senyera, the Catalan national flag.

Traditionally only flowers were given, but in 1923, a Barcelona bookseller began a campaign to celebrate 23 April as the Day of the Book because the death of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes happen to coincide on 23 April 1616. Since then, books have been added to the holiday and it has become the Day of the Book and the Rose. In 1995, UNESCO adopted 23 April as World Book Day. In Catalunya, more than half of the books sold during the year are sold on this one day.

Although it is generally accepted that this dragon slaying occurred in Silene, Libya, there are several other places that claim it happened within their precincts, Montblanc, in Catalunya, being one of those. To enjoy a truly wonderful Sant Jordi experience, one must go either to Montblanc, where there is a whole week of medieval festivities that go on within that city’s medieval walls, or to Barcelona, where the tables of books and roses are profuse and the crowds multitudinous. But I did neither. At least not this year. I’ve been to Montblanc and would have gone again this year except for the dubious weather forecast, and I’ve walked all of the Ramblas many times during the last few years, enjoying the very lively and overcrowded ambience of the holiday there. But this year Manel and I went to Reus, a nearby town that promised to have more on offer than our own village which was not likely to have more than two tables of books and one of roses.

Reus was teeming with people, all browsing through piles and piles of books, set up around their main square. Catalan flags decorated the tables, the roses, and the plaça. There was even a dragon lurking back, behind the church.  I got Manel the book of his choice, a discussion of the current financial crisis, written by a flamboyant Catalan economist who is part of the directive staff of the Futbol Club Barcelona and often appears on television panel discussions wearing black shirts and bright yellow or magenta sport coats with flaming contrasting ties. Manel wanted to get me a book, but I didn’t see any book that I wanted to read. There was one volume, a history of the Jews in Tarragona, but it seemed all facts and figures, very dry, and promised to be a very difficult and slow struggle in Catalan. I am quite used to buying myself books and am not lacking in reading material, having several waiting in a to-be-read pile. But I don’t buy myself flowers, so I opted for a beautiful red rose with the mandatory wheat stalk and Catalan flag ribbon which I then had to place in my kitchen, this being the location least likely to have a cat jump up to investigate and possibly knock it over. I wasn’t worried so much about the rose, which would undoubtedly survive a cat attack, but the vase, which is precious to me -- a hand-blown glass vase given to me years ago as a gift in Berkeley, would be more vulnerable. For several days my kitchen was prettier than usual.

Fingerprints

Earlier this week I went into Barcelona to have my fingerprints taken by the Mossos d’Esquadra, the police of the Generalitat of Catalunya. I decided some time ago to apply for Spanish citizenship (I live here permanently, so why not?), but it has taken me a while to start the process, and one of the numerous documents required is proof that you have no criminal record in your home country. These fingerprints have been many months in the making, and as so many things in life, the process hasn’t been straightforward.


To get my fingerprints taken in California for my original move to Spain, all I had to do was go to the local police (or maybe county sheriff) and ask for it to be done. But here no police would do it for me. I went first to the Guardia Civil (a national force, something like a cross between the FBI and the army) but they wouldn’t do it. Then I went to the Policia National, who take your application for residency and probably take prints if you need them for a statement of your Spanish criminal record, but they wouldn’t do it either. When I went to the Policia Local, the local police of my village, the office was inexplicably closed in the middle of the morning. Never mind, I could easily imagine how they would shrug their shoulders and look at me as if I were a little weird, and tell me no as the others had.

When I called the American Consulate for help, I found out that although many foreigners need their fingerprints taken, there is no such service offered by any of the several police corps that exist. However, the Consulate has made arrangements with the Mossos where they write a letter for any American that needs it and the Mossos will take the prints. I was happy that the Consulate had made these arrangements for its citizens, but surprised that while the letter took all of a minute for the Consulate to prepare and sign, they charged me 24 euros for doing it, while the Mossos took ten or fifteen minutes to take my prints, walk me to the ladies room through a maze of hallways, wait while I washed my hands, walk me back to the room where I waited while they made photocopies of everything and signed and stamped the prints form. For all this they didn’t charge anything.

Although having to get up at 6 am to take a two-hour train ride to Barcelona to take care of this was somewhat of a nuisance, it turned out to be a much nicer day than the one I had last week when I was too shy to enter the restaurant because I knew some of the other diners and ended up having a lousy lunch somewhere else.

The day started in the dark at 6 am and lightened up when, at the train station, I met up by chance with Julian, our acquaintance who recommended that wonderful restaurant for the calçots, those unique Catalan onions. We walked together from the ticket office to our platform where he found another acquaintance of his, so the three of us (two Catalans and one American) rode together talking about the Football Club Barcelona, how and why Spanish people throw trash on the ground and on the roads and ignore all manner of polite behavior, not to mention actual laws, especially when they drive. Julian related one story about someone who lives out in the campo. This man has been accosted several times on his own property by his neighbor’s dogs that run free and do not have a friendly demeanor. The man complained to the dogs’ owner – a local policeman – who refused to restrain his dogs, even thought it isn’t legal to let your dogs run loose. He remarked to us that if the police set such an example, what do you expect from the public? I didn’t mention the local police that had ignored and driven through the stop sign last week. Could it be the same local policeman who lets his dogs run free, drives through stop signs, and closes the Police office during working hours? And shouldn’t that office be open 24 hours? Julian, who is Catalan, says that Spain is a third world country within Europe.

After a lively train ride, (which did not end at the beautiful 1920s Estacio de Franca pictured above, but rather at Passeig de Gracia, an underground station of no aesthetic value) I went by metro to the Consulate, located in the upscale neighborhood of Sarrià, for my letter. I had an appointment and was taken care of immediately. Because I didn’t know where the police headquarters was, nor did I have a map with me, I decided to take a taxi for the next leg of my errand in order to ensure that I didn’t arrive at the beginning of someone’s two-hour lunch break. But before that, I had enough time to go to the nearby city market to have a morning snack of fresh-squeezed orange juice and a buttery croissant at a small bar that offered the choice of the usual oily croissants covered with a sugary glaze, and the real thing, syrup free and made with butter.

My business with the police – my main business of the day – was carried out quickly and pleasantly and left me with the decision of what to do next. Although I hadn’t known how to get there, there are actually few parts of Barcelona that I am not familiar with, so once delivered by taxi, I knew exactly where I was. I could take the metro to the old part of town – the part I am most familiar with and where I know several restaurants to go to, or walk along the Diagonal, window shop, and find somewhere new (and challenging!) to eat. I chose to walk the Diagonal, a very wide boulevard of corporate headquarters and upscale shops – a little like Wilshire Boulevard at the Miracle Mile -- and had a fine time on a sunny, warm spring day admiring shop windows full of things I don’t need, don’t want, or can’t afford. So I was walking down this rather grand boulevard, surrounded by well-dressed people, and came to wait to cross a street at a red light when a bicyclist came up from behind and stopped, slightly ahead of me at my left. I couldn’t see the man’s face but had a clear view of his naked body and nude behind. He didn’t have on a stitch.

Lunch was in an Italian restaurant where I had a very satisfactory pizza named (as the one was last week) after the restaurant, but this time with a full explanation of what ingredients it would have. I enjoyed the Tagliatella pizza that had caramelized onion, spinach, red pepper, mushrooms, goat cheese, and bacon, and, thankfully, no tomato sauce. AND, I was not the only woman eating there alone; there was another lone woman of a certain age, much like me.

Thursday’s news was dominated by Joan Antoni Samaranch who died on Wednesday. If you follow sports, especially the Olympics, you might recognize him as being the former President of the International Olympic Committee who held that position for 21 years. His civil memorial service, held at the Palau de la Generalitat (Catalan government palace) followed by the religious service at the Barcelona Cathedral and presided over by the bishop was attended by the Catalan government, members of the Spanish government, many sports and business people, royalty from Greece and other European countries, and the Spanish royal family. The Cathedral was full.

Catalans take pride in their soccer team and in other Catalans who have made a name for themselves in the world. And yet Samaranch, as a Catalan, seems to have been an anomaly. He joined the Falange during the Spanish Civil War and later worked in the Franco government as Ambassador to the Soviet Union, among other things. Franco, the Spanish right wing, and especially the Falange, were and are zealously anti-Catalan. Yet years ago, working as a sports journalist, he was dismissed by his newspaper after criticizing Real Madrid supporters in 1943 when Madrid won against Barcelona 11-1 in a game many thought was fixed. I wonder what he said! Many years later, he was instrumental in bringing the 1992 Olympics to Barcelona, no small thing and one that no one here will ever forget, for the Olympics can do much to boost a city and Barcelona, with a rundown infrastructure after more than thirty years of Franco era oppression, benefited enormously.

Catalan national identity is an important issue here and the Catalan language underlies that identity. All Catalans speak both Catalan (which is the language of instruction in public schools) and Castilian (what we call Spanish, but in Spain there are four official languages so you can’t really call one of them Spanish). They say here that if you speak Catalan, you are Catalan. So it was striking that the Prince of Asturias (Prince Felipe, son of Juan Carlos I, King of Spain) gave his address in Catalan, a most remarkable thing for a person in his position to do, what with all the antagonism between Catalunya and the rest of Spain, particularly Madrid, and the waging of the language wars that go on here. But then the Spanish royal family does many things I think are positive. And yet when Samaranch’s son and daughter spoke, they both spoke in Castilian.

I doubt that Samaranch was a beloved figure here in Catalunya but he seems to have been a respected one, being one of the most internationally famous and influential figures in the world of sports, involved not just in one sport, but in all sport. In any case, the Catalans tend to be very proud of their great achievers, sports figures such as Rafael Nadal, Aranxa Sanchez, and Pau Gasol, singers and musicians such as Josep Carreras, Montserrat Caballé, and Pau Casals, painters such as Joan Mirò and Salvador Dalí, and the great architect Antoni Gaudí. If you speak Catalan, you are Catalan and yet I still seem to be a foreigner.

Dining Alone

Although I’ve been married three times, I have lived alone most of my adult life. While living alone gives one a degree of freedom: you can play whatever music you like without annoying anyone; and certainty: you can leave the toilet seat down and expect, with considerable assurance, that you will find it down the next time you go to pee; it also has its drawbacks, and finding yourself alone at meals can be one of them.


Whether eating in or out, doing it alone can be a challenge. Many people don’t want to think much about it and simply eat the same thing day after day, usually something fairly simple to prepare – like scrambled eggs on toast or baked beans out of the can. I like to vary things so usually, whatever I make, I make enough of it to last several days, because I like to eat more than I like to cook. But when that batch is finished, I make something else. My standard repertoire includes some form of chicken fricassee, lentils, spinach lasagna, a potato, sausage, and spinach casserole and the most recent addition, mashed potatoes with sautéed onion and garlic, tuna, and anchovies. When you cook for only yourself, you have only yourself to please and that can sometimes lead to the satisfying of strange tastes or unusual cravings.

Many people who eat alone don’t want to be bothered to cook for themselves. It seems like too much work and for what? Cooking for yourself doesn’t seem worth it. But if you are on your own for more than just a weekend or a week, and can’t afford to eat out everyday, if you don’t make enjoyable meals for yourself, your daily life is going to be missing one of life’s pleasures.

I have worked out a system where I cook about every five days. If I make lasagna, it lasts for four; if I make lentils, it can last for six and so can my potato, spinach, and sausage casserole, or chicken. I never freeze anything. I make it and then eat it until it is gone, then make something else. The fact that I can be bothered to cook for myself is not a result of any self esteem but rather the fact that for me, eating should be a pleasure. And actually I think cooking is fun, as long as you don’t have to do too much of it or do it too often.

*****
Lentils (serves 4)
This is usually made with chorizo sausage, but I prefer a plainer sausage called botifarra. You can use any good quality fresh sausage (I used to like the Bruce Aidell sausages when I lived in California). For the typical Spanish flavor, you would use a mix of sweet and smoked paprika instead of the cumin and curry, even if you used regular rather than chorizo sausage.  All measurements are approximate as I don't measure.  And the curry you find here is not hot, so I use lots.

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, put through a press or chopped
fresh sausage, about the amount of three hot dogs, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 potato, cubed
2 carrots, cut into bite-sized pieces
¾ cup lentils
1-1/2 cups boiling water (or more)
1-2 tsp cumin (approx.)
1 tbsp curry (approx.)
Salt and pepper

Saute onion on low heat and after about 10 minutes (or more), when it gets soft add the garlic, then the spices. Cook until blended. Add the sausage and cook until the sausage is no longer raw, about 5-10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook about 5 minutes. Add the potato and carrots and mix. Add the lentils, then the boiling water to cover and a little extra because the lentils will expand. Cook about 40 minutes or until the carrots and potatoes and the lentils are done. Add more water if needed.  Season to taste.

*****
Yet one cannot always eat at home. Although I enjoy what I make, my repertoire has its limits and sometimes I want something beyond. At some point I like to go out and have something different – something I don’t make and that doesn’t taste like my own cooking.

For many people, dining alone is a contradiction, dining is something you do with at least one other; alone, you are merely eating. But I want the freedom to enjoy both, dining (not just eating) out too, especially when I travel to France. The problem of cooking for yourself can easily be solved when you go into the kitchen and make something. But the problem of eating out when you live or travel alone is more complicated. In order to go out to eat, you must have either someone to go out with, or be brave enough to do it on your own.

The other day I went out to eat but couldn’t get myself to enter the restaurant. Just a little earlier, I had gone to the Ajuntament (city hall), looking for help with what seemed like an insolvable problem. When I arrived at the Ajuntament, by mistake I knocked on the door of the mayor, who told me he didn’t have a moment to speak with me and that I should address myself to his assistant who happened to be at a meeting but would be finished in a few minutes. Forty-five minutes later, after having watched several people going in and out of the assistant’s office (ignoring me standing there in the hallway) and having stopped one who I knew from the library, asking if Rafel would ever be free and eventually being told that no, no time soon , I finally left in disgust.

All that waiting had made me late to start cooking my lunch (lentils!) so I decided to go out to eat. There is a modest restaurant nearby where I had eaten once, that is unusual for its lovely view of the sea, so I decided to go there. When I pulled up into their parking lot, I saw a large group entering, among them the mayor and his assistant, the very busy Rafel. And seeing them, for some reason, made me too shy to park and enter too. It would have been one thing to go alone where I wasn’t likely to know anyone and a whole other thing to go where I had some acquaintance with many members of a group. Why? I could kick myself. It was where I wanted to eat, but I couldn’t get up the courage to go in.

So I ended up driving further, up to Miami Platja, and eating at a place called Rally Pizza that I had heard of from people I know who all seemed to like it, located right on the highway strip through town. The place was decorated nicer than most with pretty embroidered gauze curtains bordered by damask drapes in lovely warm pastel colors of beige, muted pink, green, and yellow. It was a good first impression albeit the view, filtered by the gauze, was of the cars and trucks passing by on the highway instead of the Mediterranean Sea. And although it didn’t have a no smoking sign on the door, there were no ashtrays on the tables and no one inside was smoking, so that was promising as well. The food turned out to be another story.

For my first course I chose fish cannelloni what came bubbling hot to the table. But cutting into them, it was only the surrounding béchamel that was hot. The fish stuffing was cold (and tasteless). For my main there was the possibility of pizza. When I asked what kind of pizza, because on the menu it only said pizza, the waitress told me in a rather scornful way that it was Rally pizza, as if all the world would know what went into it. So I prompted her with, and what is on a Rally pizza? Ham, mushrooms, artichokes. I’ll take it. While eating it I eventually discovered that the puddles of what looked like water sitting on tomatoes were the ham. For dessert I chose profiteroles, always a safe bet. But I hadn’t figured on Rally’s ingenuity. They managed to drown the three custard-filled puffs with so much chocolate syrup that it was actually disgusting.

Going out to eat, much less to dine alone is something I began challenging myself to do many years ago, when I was living in California. I didn’t want to be victimized by not always having a partner or company to go out with. I wanted the freedom of going out when it suited me, whether with company or alone. So I pushed myself. Of course the first time was the hardest, and eventually it became more comfortable, but it never really became easy. I found it much more comfortable to go back to places I had been rather than venture into someplace new, taking a book to read (and hide behind) helped but I don’t like to read while I eat, and I wanted not to feel the need to hide. But whatever I did, it was always somehow a little embarrassing to ask for a table for one and then to sit there, uncomfortable with what people around me might be thinking. Why should I care what they think?

Here in Spain I have only seen a woman eating out alone once (that I can remember), although I must give her credit for going the whole nine yards. It was in a restaurant in Girona. She had no book, she ate three courses, then had coffee followed by a brandy. She was a well dressed woman of a certain age and I still think of her from time to time as one of the great exceptions here in a culture where you do things in groups and where they sometimes make paella for 500.

Hopefully, having drummed up enough courage to go eat out – on occasion even dine out – alone, in the future, I will be able to manage to go to the restaurant of my choice and not be frightened off by the idea of what kind of impression I might make on people I don’t know. I will think of the lady in Girona.

If the topic of eating and dining alone interests you, I recommend reading Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant: Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone, edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler. Contributors include Laurie Colwin, Nora Ephron, MFK Fisher, Marcella Hazan, Haruki Murakami, Ann Patchett, and Paula Wolfert among others.