spain -the people

There are 2 spanish people who have influenced my impressions of my new environment so far. First is Esperanza – my flamenco teacher, I say ¨my¨ because she has apparantly applied her entire being to ensuring that I learn the steps of the Sevillana, in spite of there being 3 other pupils. Esperanza – whose name ironically means hope, is a formidable lady of uncertain age. She is tall , slim and graceful. Her black eyes flash fire at times, her arms snake about her body or catch the frills of her skirt, as she stamps and twirls effortlessly. ¨No Anna you must kiss one foot with the other, small steps, No Anna too big steps!What is your problem? Thankfully the erratic CD player stops at this point, and I appeal wordlessly to the others to resue me.

 Just ignore me I mutter, as near paralysis sets in. “But no Anna you are important¨clutching me and hugging me to her. Ägaïn! Basics, you ave forgot to kiss the foot. You are long time without kissing Anna?”

She is obviously after total humiliation. Still I have 2 new friends, Isabel and Toni, who invite me to sit with them at the ball, and join them on their next walk. The flamenco is only for fun after all.

The second person is my next door neighbour whom I´ll call La Senora. She is in her 70´s a voluble and lively widow who appeared at my door with a large plateful of ripe figs, and invited me in for a coffee.

 In contrast to the simplicity of my apartment, hers was like a palace. Fitted kitche, with washing machine! marble worktops, tiled floors and walls, new ceilings, archways, and a stsue, also heavy mahogany furniture in the salon, which was obviously never used. She relayed figures in large amounts of pesetas, she could not work in Euros, remember half crowns  40 milloin pesetas she would ask for this flat. Unlike my flat , all the rooms looked out accross the street. The kitchen had a second cutrain pinnedd accross it. ¨so that I can wander without clothes uou understand? To make a coffee. I could only be grateful that the senora was free to wander naked in her flat , away from the lascivious gaze of her neighbours.and wonder if it was only the climate that made spanish women in their 70.s fundamentally different from any english women of a similar age, that I know…….

We had coffee and biscuits, and we were joined by a neighbour. Both were curious to know what I would be doing at Christmas. The Senora has 3 children, to unmarried sons, who don.t eat properly if she doesn´´t go and cook for them,So the idea of me spending xmas possibly on my own was a bit odd to say the least.

The senora was in the enviable position of living in an apartment, which her sons and various carpenters and plumbers, had made perfect, but able to go for severaldays at a time tothe countryside, where her sons live, and resist their entraties to come and live with them. While continuing to cook and garden for them. Who is to say that family ties are stronger in general in Spain? There are residential homes here too. not all elderly mothers have unmarried sons, but I sense an acceptance of old age and of children, which feels to me to be different and inclusive, who knows!

Her coffee is very good and her animated chatter is improving my spanish by the minute