I was once asked to make a
list of ‘things I didn’t like about Spain’. It would be easy enough to make one
about the things I do like, and it would run to many pages, but the things I
don’t? Hum. Well, there the bureaucracy which drives us all, Spaniards and
foreigners alike, up the wall. Las cosas
de palacio, van despacio, say the Spanish sententiously, as if by giving
the creaking bureaucratic system an excuse, wrapped up in a popular saying, it
all makes sense. In the past two years, for example, no one has managed to get
Spanish nationality because the twenty-five thousand people whose job it is to
sort out the paperwork have instead taken a disturbingly long lunch-break.
People sometimes have to live
rather poorly – a house with no water or electric for example – for a number of
years because of some elusive bit of paper trapped in the bottom of a drawer
belonging to a public official who has been off work with a runny nose for
thirty-six months, but absolutely should be back any day now.
I try and live with the
system, since I love it here. My Spanish wife knows nothing of HP Sauce and shepherd’s
pie, and she has never had a Yorkshire pudding or even a mushy pea. I am
nevertheless proud of her as she sips her English tea with milk and one sugar
(my only remaining British weakness).
But, we were talking about
Spanish wrongs – like corruption. How they get away with it defeats me. The
country is positively leaping with crooked bankers, politicians and
manufacturers of ladies hosiery. They stash millions in off-shore financial
paradises, pay no tax, and – most remarkable of all – are highly esteemed by
large swathes of the population. OK, in my personal experience, I’ve had more
trouble from thieving Brits that crooked Spaniards (lawyers maybe – there’s
always hungry lawyers here), but over the years, I’ve found that owning nothing
helps keep them away, along with plenty of garlic.
So, the list. We’ve done
bureaucracy and corruption, there’s also littering.
How can a proud nation like
the Spanish merrily toss as much garbage into the countryside as is humanly
possible? The beaches, the roadside, the streets and the public buildings are
caked in debris. Everywhere is thick with plastic, flattened beer cans,
bottles, graffiti, cardboard and rubble. I take my trash home with me, or leave
it on the back seat of the car for a few years, but our friends and neighbours?
They scatter it everywhere across this great country with gleeful abandon.
There, was that enough? No?
Well, those paper napkins in the bars are pointless. They don’t soak up grease,
they just smear it around. I have been here fifty years and they still use
those paper servietas. Extraordinary!
Noise, I suppose. This
country is deafening. Happily, with the passage of the years, I have become
quite deaf, so am immune to the cacophony of the world’s second loudest country
(after Japan who, for Heaven’s sake, have paper walls).
Lastly (and believe me, I’ve
been thinking about this list for years), I would say, parking. There’s never
enough, as though the designers feel they can squeeze more money out of shops
and buildings if there are as few parking spots as possible. Then the few spaces
that are there will as likely as not have a caravan of dustbins clogging them
up.
As if there was a serious
litter problem here!
So, many people (at least in
my local village) will park two abreast – en
paralelo – with their warning lights on. ‘I’m sorry, I really am, but I
just needed to stop the car for a moment as I zip into the bank, buy a lottery
ticket and have a very quick coffee with my lawyer’. You can always get past. Yesterday,
I had to drive at least fifty metres along the pavement, because the road was
completely blocked by two double-parked cars. Luckily for us all, they both had
their warning lights on.
But what are a few minor
niggles, when compared to the endless wonders of this great country we have
chosen to call home?
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