It's the little things

Often, it’s the details that give our life here in Spain its charm.

The other day, the woman on the till at our local supermarket asked me the standard question, “do you need a bag?”. I gave my standard answer, “no, thanks, I have my own”. But then I realised that I was wrong. My basket was entirely free of any trace of the fine bag I thought I’d put in it, a lined one for refrigerated goods which we’d brought from England, wittily printed with the cheery words “Keep cool and carry”. 

My first thought was that someone had stolen it. Of course. Who likes to think that they’ve stupidly mislaid something they need?

Still, at least I had the decency not to voice that thought. Instead, I simply exclaimed “I seem to have lost my bag”.

At which point, to my amazement, a woman who’d joined the queue behind me, spoke up.

“A blue bag?” 

I nodded.

“You put it in my basket,” she went on, “along with a bag of vegetables you’d weighed. I left them by the weighing machine.”

I dashed back and there, indeed, they were. I don’t know whether a bag can wear an expression, but somehow this one managed to look reproachful. It seemed to be saying “What on earth are you up to, abandoning me here on my own? Honestly. If they hadn’t screwed it on, you’d be leaving your head lying around somewhere one of these days.”

Mislaid and recovered
The blue bag restored to me by a stranger in Spain

At any rate, I was simply pleased to have my bag back. As I was delighted that when I carelessly put my bag down in the wrong place, the one I chose was the basket of a person as helpful as the one who’d carefully set it to one side for me. Not to mention the fortuitous accident of being right in front of that same woman in the queue for the same till. 

Of course, you may feel that was a matter less of chance more of fate or providence. If such is your bent, who am I to question your choice of belief?

The other detail of Spanish life that has me smiling, if perhaps a little wryly, is the strange habit the authorities have of closing roads, usually without the slightest warning. I first became aware of this in Madrid, in the days when I had a job and was therefore important, so could travel around by taxi. Again and again, I’d find myself with a driver cursing the police as he found himself facing a barrier across the road, guarded by burly and well-armed officers you wouldn’t want to tangle with. What was most frustrating was that there’d be no kind of sign beforehand that the road was closed ahead, or any kind of diversion signposting us to an alternative route.

It’s almost as though the people who close the roads are saying “our job is to close it, and we’ve closed it, so stop complaining. We’ve done what we were required to do. You don’t like it? You should have stayed at home or gone somewhere else entirely and you wouldn’t have had this inconvenience.”

The other day, Danielle and I visited the castle in Alicante. You don’t know it? A fine, impressive place. Quite a climb, though, to get to the top. Draining enough to leave us with no desire to do any further climbing later.

Indeed, for the return down the hill, we chose the route that runs along a spur of castle wall down to the city. A pleasant slope, by which I mean one that’s not too steep, and above all, one that runs downhill. Until we came around a corner and found a barrier with a sign saying, “path closed”.

No explanation of why. No warning near the beginning of the path. No helpful suggestion as to alternative routes down which didn’t first involve climbing back to the top again. Out of energy as we were, the idea of heading back up filled us with deep gloom.

Fortunately, we’ve been in Spain long enough not to get too upset about that kind of thing. Someone had kindly moved the barrier back a little way, so stepping around it would represent no inconvenient exertion of any kind. After a brief hesitation, we did just that, and carried on down the path.

Here are the various things we didn’t meet:

• Any sign of work being done on the path

• Any suggestion that any part of it was unsafe in any way

• Anything else that might have justified closing the path in the first place.

Down we went, to the barrier that had been thoughtfully erected at the bottom to stop people starting up it. Again, someone had kindly pushed it aside a little, making it a comfortable and easy to step around.

That’s something I enjoy about Spain. The country can do immensely irritating things, like closing roads or paths. But there is a fund of good sense in the people that says, “if there’s no logic to a restriction and we can get away with ignoring it, why, we ignore it”.

Fill up my glass of Ribera del Duero. I’ll drink to that.