El camarero (The waiter)

The lesser-spotted camarero madrileño. Habitat: behind the bar, back infallibly turned. Temperament: naturally reticent but easily provoked.

Love him or hate him, the average Spanish waiter will probably never leave you indifferent. I’ve come across all sorts so far in my first week, from the classic bow-tie-wearing scowlers to the over-chatty types, eager to talk about the football, the weather, declining standards in dress sense, the colour of the pavement. The smarter bars with a younger clientele often have younger waiters to match. This is not to say these will be any friendlier than their older counterparts, but in general they tend to be more attentive.

The stereotypical madrileño bar or café has older waiters squeezed into white jackets and bow ties, drifting between the tables and practising the remarkable art of seeing everything and nothing at once. I went to one of these last weekend – El Café Comercial – mainly because the Lonely Planet guide told me it was worth a look.

It’s a grand old place stuffed full of brown leather benches, marble columns and smartly-dressed folk. My experience was what we might typically call ‘authentic’, and should ring a few bells for many of my fellow twentysomething year-abroaders - a typical example of the daily confrontation with awkwardness that is ‘life on the year abroad’.

Arrive. Push wrong door (it was a ‘pull’, not a ‘push’). Succeed with other door, fumble to remove sunglasses in the marble obscurity that lies within. Wait awkwardly for several moments before deciding to take up a table yourself.

Wait awkwardly for waiter to come over. Wait a LONG time. Discover should have waited to be seated. More awkwardness. Order coffee and ask about wifi. Wish you’d asked about food, too.

Waiter brings coffee and wifi code. Log-in to wifi. Discover it’s slow. Look at bill, casually tucked under coffee cup. Discover you’re being charged for the aforementioned slow wifi. Cheeky.

Wifi runs out in two hours... this means ordering overpriced food to make it worth it. Requires further awkward conversation with waiter. Fail to attract waiter’s attention. Sit waiting for google to load.

Coffee drunk... google still loading. Waiter nowhere in sight.

American theatre producer George S. Kaufman perhaps put it best. “Epitaph for a waiter: God finally caught his eye.”

Spanish of the Day

morirse de hambre - to starve to death

ponerse como una vaca - to put on weight (literally: to make yourself look like a cow)

El paro y el rey (The King and the dole queue)

The paro is Spain’s unemployment benefit. It enjoys a near-iconic status in Spanish society, and the more I was told about it today, the smaller the gap between my jaw and the floor. I’ve yet to see a better example of the peculiarly Spanish open-mindedness carried (perhaps) to the point of excess.

“I’ll work on the coast for summer, then I’ll go back on the paro for 8 months... then after that I’ll use the money for travelling maybe...”

Such a life plan is not uncommon; the stigma of the classic British dole queue is nowhere to be seen. So while the London’s newscasters keep barking on about the record levels of unemployment (double the EU average, by the way), many of Spain’s 20-30-year-olds seem content (for now) to bounce back and forth between temporary jobs and unemployment benefit.

Roughly speaking, the on the paro you begin by earning 70% of your previous salary. 180 days later, this drops to 60%, then after another 180 days it falls again... and so on. To say that the monthly bill that lands on Government desks is rather sizeable would be an understatement. But particularly amongst the swathe of students and young left-wingers, the paro continues to be cherished as a symbol of the Spain’s acute sense of fairness and collective spirit.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have the Spanish royal family. They could not be further away from the life of a typical thirtysomething madrileño, and that ‘open’ mindset I keep harping on about. (I’m still searching for a better word than ‘mindset’. Suggestions welcome)

There’s Queen Sofía, a permanent London resident (the Spanish press seem in denial about this) who only returns to Madrid for official occasions. Then there’s Prince Felipe, whose many supposed 'mistresses' make for an easy press target. Finally, there’s the bumbling Bourbon himself, Juan-Carlos, recently seen hunting endangered animals in Botswana at the expense of unnamed Arab sheiks.

Juan-Carlos may have been responsible for the transition to democracy, but it was Franco who nominated him in person as his successor. This connection to Spain's turbulent past could be seen as a symbol of an enduring elitism, and is often overlooked – perhaps by wishful thinking. In any case, the contrast with the chilled-out attitude of Spain's youth is an interesting one. 


On the one hand, continuing signs of the past's divisions. On the other, a relaxed society championing the ‘collective spirit’ approach to life. Always more under the surface.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come.

Spanish of the Day

para más INRI... - 'as if that weren't enough...' A peculiar turn of phrase bearing the hallmarks of many a Catholic upbringing - INRI being the initials above the cross that you spend most of your time in Mass staring at.

pijo - adjective denoting (usually with bitterness) the yellow-trouser-wearing set of Madrid's bourgeois neighbourhoods

Whirlwind first 48 hours...

Well let’s see if I can keep this up, because everyone always says how hard it is to keep a blog.

Last Sunday I moved to Madrid for the summer. Here I’m going to put up scribbles and anything that strikes me about my time here, about the city, about the people.

So Madrid is probably not the first to come to mind on the list of great European capitals. But while it lacks the self-conscious chic of Paris or the urban swagger of London, it’s sheer vibrancy more than makes up for it. I’ve been here one week, and already I’m intrigued.

It’s a city that defies classification. Sure, it has grand old buildings, tourist-ridden pavements and all the cosmopolitan little cafés you’d expect from a capital city. But it’s also distinctly lacking in the ‘world class landmark’ department. And for me, after having lived in Paris all year, I have to say I find the ‘concrete grid’ effect rather uninspiring too. I also can’t work out if I think it’s filthy or not.

But my whirlwind first 48 hours made for an appropriate introduction to what really matters here – the madrileño way of life. There was the kamikaze taxi driver, weaving through lanes of motorway traffic at 150km/h like an Alonso wannabee. There was the obligatory awkward first meeting with suitably exotic flatmates (in this case, Brazilian) – only to be partying like an idiot with them a matter of hours later. And then there was the 250,000 people pouring out of every bar and club onto the Gran Vía, dancing in the street ‘til the sun came up, because Spain had won the Euro 2012 football championship.

A well-timed first night in the city, then. But look around you and you realise something: the economically crippled, woe-ridden Madrid of the international press couldn’t be further from the truth. A chat with a local revealed one insider’s view: Spain has never had a great economy. But it does have a lot of welfare – it’s a country that tries hard to be fair, after having spent half of the last century being distinctly unfair. That this “system” – to our eyes impractical and over-inflated – stays intact is more important than yet another ominous headline in the FT. “So there’s a crisis... that doesn’t mean we can’t be happy.”

She was right: there’s no woeful staring at the floor from the people I see in the street. Okay, so my neighbourhood is anything but what you could call ‘difficult’ – but the sheer numbers last Sunday evening spoke volumes of Spain’s insatiable quest to party. Some will no doubt say this characteristically relaxed attitude is in part responsible for the current situation. But that’s a socio-economic debate for another (more qualified) blog – and to be honest I don’t want to add another voice to the ranks of online doomsdayers.

What struck me most about last weekend is how much Spain needed that victory – it needed an excuse to celebrate and defy the media negativity. For me there’s something admirable in it all: we British would do well to chill out a bit.

Less rambling and more scribbling to come.

Spanish of the Day
un gato - a 'cat', but this is the term also used to denote pure madrileños - that is to say, people who've lived here for generations, which in a city of immigrants (domestic and international) is rarer than you'd think.

guiri - madrileño slang for 'foreigners'. Like me.