Travels of an American Traveler

I recently visited Spain for the first time. (Okay, it was back in mid-March, but I’m just now getting round to posting this.) Many things were as I expected them to be while others were not. For example, I fully expected to find myself besieged by second-hand smoke wherever I went. And so I was. Bars, restaurants, cafés, doctor’s offices, bookstores, subways, nurseries ... the list was endless. The official estimate is that one in three Spaniards smokes. A sad truth, to be sure, but hardly surprising as all Spaniards - boys and girls alike - are given a pack of Camels and a lighter on their first birthday. On their second they are taught how to roll their own.

Now, something that I did not expect was to hear anyone complaining about the smoke. To be accurate, I only heard three people complain the entire time I was there, and in a country with a population of just over 40 million, it seems that those who would rather live without smoke are in an extremely small vocal minority.

Anyone who has heard that Madrid is a place to party all night has definitely got his facts straight. Since most madrileños do not even contemplate heading out for pre-dinner drinks and tapas (lovely little appetizers that go quite well with a red Rioja or a sparkling Cava) until well after 8:00 p.m., it is not surprising that someone could easily find himself rocking up to his flat at 5:00 in the morning to grab a quick shower and a change of clothes before heading back out for a strong cup of coffee and some churros on the way to work.

My friend Kathleen (my partner in crime while in Spain - pictured at the right) and I became two such people one ill-fated evening in Madrid as we agreed to meet her friend Lorenz (a fun German bloke who now resides in Madrid) for some drinks at a small corner pub around the corner from our hotel (the unremarkable Hotel Liabeny) in the city centre. Several smooth glasses of red wine later (from the region of Navarre, in the north) and we headed out the door, on our way to meet Chris (a bloke whom Kathleen and Lorenz knew from work in Manchester, England) and his lovely wife Barbara.

Now, the Madrid tradition is to hop from pub to pub, sampling the wine and tapas, gabbing about local politics and other savoury issues of importance, and soaking up the ambient cigarette smoke into your lungs and your clothing. (I still have a black jacket that reeks of smoke from that night.)

We ended up at a lovely bar that only a place like Spain could produce. You had your choice of a front room or a back room, both dimly lit and featuring a man strumming his gypsy heart out to the sounds of flamenco. The front room was only sparsely populated, but the back room was full from wall to wall, with people assembled to hear the flamenco stylings of anyone who wished to regale his fellow pub-goers. The guitarist was paid by the pub, but the singers were not professionals. They were - in the strict sense of word - amateurs: lovers' of their art. They contorted faces and pain-racked voices lent testimony to the melancholic content of the cante jondo, the songs that they sang. One such singer was a local diva (a local diva who had obviously recently been ridden hard and put away wet). We drank, we clapped in tempo, we drank some more, we applauded the talent of other patrons. One beautiful young woman was so moved she stood and danced oh so quietly in place, her hands and arms skillfully twisted over her head.