Just What I've Always Wanted

BEING SPANISH - PART TWO

"It's not very Spanish." "We were wanting something a bit more Spanish." "It was more Spanish than elsewhere; just what we wanted."

Three not untypical statements, all part of the same peseta as it were, as to use euro in a metaphorical sense would hardly equate to an expression of something "Spanish". There again, perhaps the arrival of the euro has created a uniformity not just in currency but also in appearance and even atmosphere.

What is Spanish? I started the discussion on Thursday, and here is the second part.

Let us put ourselves in the trainers, sandals or Crocs of the tourist checking-in at Luton or East Midlands. What are they expecting to find? Insofar as any of them have a perception of or expectation of "being Spanish", what might it be? Colin, in responding to the piece of 6 November, suggests that this equates predominantly to "the Costas and the Balearics", and this, in turn, leads to a specific notion - that of the typical tourism image of sun, sea, sand and sangria. Only one of these - sangria - can be classified as being in any way identifiably Spanish. The rest of that perception is probably that of bar, pool, beer, meat, chips and a hotel room.

A while back I asked a local British bar-owner, Jamie at Foxes, what he thought was Spanish. There were some more s-words: sombreros and straw donkeys. It was an hilarious and far from inaccurate summation. Add the bullfight and matadors, and you arrive at a sort-of common denominator Spanishness, that of certain imagery and, in some cases, parody, something that extends to the language. For those unfamiliar with Spanish, their few words might well have been culled from Westerns or they will be the "qué" of Manuel or the Spanglish "scorchio" of Paul Whitehouse.

Yet not everyone has the same impression. There will be those who hold to an image moulded by architecture and art, streets and squares, landscapes, music, food and eating-out, nature, language, history, traditions and people. It is really in all of these that one has to search for being Spanish; all these and then a certain abstractness of difference, one founded on a Spanish or Mallorcan character and culture - a way of doings things if you like.

The other day I painted a picture of one place - Can Picafort - in which it is difficult to discern an identifiable Spanishness. Yet there is a mitigating factor, and it is one of modernity. Can Picafort is new town resort. Even down to its grid road system, it is a Milton Keynes of Mediterranean homogeneity; its location in Mallorca is a mere geographical convenience. But it is far from the only part of the island that is non-specific. Travel the few kilometres along the main road to Alcúdia, and one comes across The Mile. It is precisely the holiday ghettoes of The Mile and Can Picafort that form the holiday experience for most. These are the chosen resorts; the ones chosen by the planners and the tour operators, the ones cloned and internationalised from a template named mass tourism and the package holiday. Despite the person who found Can Picafort to be "Spanish", the chances of stumbling across Spanishness are remote, whatever that intangible pre-conceived notion might be.

However, perhaps one is going down the wrong line in excluding these resorts from a being-Spanish taxonomy. They are the product of the import of culture and the standardisation of hotel edifice, and through their permanence and prevalence they become Spanish. Being there begets being Spanish. One can witness the globalisation of architecture and commerce not just in Mallorca but in almost anywhere one chooses. That the hotel companies of Can Picafort and The Mile may be Mallorcan and Spanish is neither here nor there. They, together with the non-Spanish tour operators, have moulded a being Spanish for today, a one size fits all tourism with the odd local token. And the tourist, for the most part, has bought into this as well, the most extreme expression of this being the all-inclusive - a concentration camp of geographical indeterminacy. It could be anywhere and so could the tourist for all that he or she is aware of the outside world.

It is with this in mind perhaps that the tourist authorities place an increasing emphasis on a Mallorcan culture, heritage and landscape. Is there an admission of guilt in now wishing to promote this? These same tourist authorities have permitted the uniform internationalisation of being Spanish and being Mallorcan. Now they want a lost and being lost Spain and Mallorca to be rediscovered. They are not wrong in wanting to do so. Even if one categorises tourism as some form of take it or leave it indifference for a lumpenproletariat, people still crave an authenticity, a being Spanish of greater romantic presence. There are those who find a being Spanish that is what they always wanted. And it is that which I shall try and locate in subsequent pieces.

For the meantime, any more feedback as to your notions of being Spanish will be most welcome and will always receive a personal response. Thanks to those who have done so.


As a sort of aside, the other day in the local Eroski supermarket, I became aware of the music being played. Spanish? No. It was The Manic Street Preachers. How does that all work do you suppose? Why would you have the Manics accompanying you on a trip around a Spanish supermarket? Anyone any clues? Or are there some extreme examples of strange Spanish supermarket music? Mark E. Smith and The Fall perhaps? Captain Beefheart at his Trout Mask most oddball maybe?


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The fabs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaNQjhXhfVs). Today's title - beehive, some fifteen years before Amy made it fab gear.

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