In a couple of weeks I’ll be moving out of Salobreña. It’s been around 7 months since I moved here, and however short that might be, I know I wont forget this stay anytime soon. This town has a way etching itself into my memory with it’s Andalusian charm.
It all started last year when I by chance got a programming job in a quiet pueblo 45 minutes south of Granada in the Spanish province Andalusia. Having formerly lived in Toulouse, southern France, I longed to get back to mild climate, and relaxed lifestyle of southern Europe.
The first time I stood on my new terrace, enjoying the view over the mediteranian ocean and knowing that this was the place I was going to live for the next long time I was stunned. It was January and I had just left rainy Copenhagen some days earlier and replaced it with blooming flowers and sunshine hot enough to let me walk around in shorts and t-shirt. Sometimes life isn’t too bad, I figured.
Every Spanish person can tell you that Andalusia is a place with it’s own way of life, and Salobreña is no different in that regard. It’s only 30 years ago that donkeys and not cars were the common means of transportation. And while people here love their cars, (because they most certainly do), you can still feel that somehow this place never really caught up with the modern world. Or maybe it’s opposite. Take the tapas tradition for instance. Historically speaking it has always been seen as good custom to take something to eat while you had a beer, and bars all over Spain used to serve a little snack or sandwhich with every order, free of charge. Of course modern competitions and economic speculation has soon meant the death of this sane tradition. Except of course in Salobreña and the area around it. Of course some bar owners unfortunately tries to stay with the times, but if you know the right places to go, you can just order three beers and get food enough for a dinner.
The last 7 months I have also had the honor of living a place where mullets are high fashion. And I’m not exaggerating here, all the cool guys have them, and I would have taken plenty of pictures had all the mullet guys not looked so cool that I simply didn’t dare. It’s a sight to behold and something I would rather enjoy if it didn’t go hand in hand with the annoying habit of driving a car with oversized spoilers listening to moronic techno on full blast. These guys look so cool I’m convinced they’re not even trying. It’s just their way of life.
Another thing Salobreña has taught me is the true meaning of the word ‘mañana’. To the naïve newly arriven me, this word might seem like just another word for tomorrow, but it’s so much more than that. If I had to describe this place with just one word, ‘mañana’ would be it. Mañana is the answer your electrician gives you when he might come around next week, letting you live without electricity for days (this has happened more than once). It’s the same word you’ll hear when you didn’t receive that important package with your new hard disk. I think the spirit of the word finally dawned upon me the day I was heading out of town, finding my way blocked by the bus, who in place was blocked by somebody parking in the middle of the only road leading down from the top of the hill. While I was walking frustrated forth and back, the bus driver was sitting at a bench smoking a cigarette with a couple of the passengers, all enjoying the break from whatever they were doing.
I’ve heard many people saying that the driving in Spain is crazy. That’s a myth. It’s the parking that’s crazy. The drivers are just trying as hard as they might to avoid the cars parked pretty much everywhere. Just put on the warning lights and you suddenly have rights to park pretty much anywhere around here. Not that there is no law enforcement, but it seems to me that most people around here take the parking tickets as a normal expense on line with food, electricity and water. There are also rumors that a significant amount of the town halls budget is sponsored by parking tickets. With the amount of payments going under the table around here, it seems only fair to give a little back to the community in forms of parking tickets.
Back in the days Salobreña was an old Moorish town and the castle still resides on the top of the hill, surrounded on all sides by white chalked houses. I live almost on the top, and from my terrace I can follow life down below on the beach and the frantic line of drivers trying to get home to Granada Sunday afternoon.
Having a historic center is not always an advantage though, especially when it comes to traffic. Almost all streets around here are one way streets, but the most residents have a habit of disregarding this completely, driving in whatever direction they want, whenever they want. Especially I they happen to be driving in huge trucks in slopes around corners. Of course this might sound like a hazard to everybody, but ingenuously the drivers have developed a habit of honking continuously as long as they perceive this might be an advantage. I have yet to see a car crash, but I think my ears have started bleeding. And it’s not exactly making it better that the city council decided to do a road reconstruction project in high season. I used to throw stuff at the drivers doing this, but with techno turned all the way up and the horn down, most of them never noticed.
Like all other places on the Spanish south coast, Salobreña has it’s part of English trash hanging around. Not that I mean any offense to English people in general, but I have a habit of meating this certain kind of british person when I’m out drinking. They are always hugely patriotic, slightly xenophobic and have this tendency of complaining about Paki’s in Britain opening corner stores while complaining that you can’t get any good food down here. I wonder if they’ll ever get the irony. (I’ll just have to add that I know some awesome british people down here as well, so it’s not all bad).
That said I have to admit that Spanish food hasn’t been my cup of tea so far. I’m not exactly a vegetarian, but I like my vegetables and most of my meals are without meat. On the other hand you can’t call Spanish people carnivores, but I does seem to me that most of their meals down here are without vegetables. I have a theory that after the Spanish economic boom in the 90’s, meat suddenly became a common commodity, and since it still has a classy feeling to it down here to eat meat, most people make a point out of eating really much of it. Go to a Spanish restaurant and look at the menu card, and all it will mention is meat. In the beginning you might naïvely suspect that they are just naming their dishes after the main meat ingredient, but you’ll soon learn that the name in fact derives from the sole ingredient. A part from sauce and bread of course. Except if you order paella.
If you do choose to go out, remember that because this is Andalusia, you shouldn’t expect to eat before 10. We might very well be in the same time zone as most of wester Europe, but if you want to interact with local life, it might help you to set your watch 3 hours back. Everything is just a little later down here. Take discos and late night pubs that most often wont get crowded until around 3am, or your standard electrician who most wont come before at least a day after he was supposed to show up. My best explanation is that the lifestyle of mañana simply has pushed everyone so much back so everybody is chronically some two hours late for everything.
I can’t adequately express what a blessing this has been to me, because even though I always suspected that my internal watch used a 25 hour day, I’ve found that when I have to get out of bed at 9:40pm and get in bed at around 1am, I’ve suddenly synced with my natural way of living. When I at the same time can be 20 minutes late for all appointments without anybody lifting an eyebrow, I sometimes wonder if I’m dead and went to heaven. Add a bunch of national holidays to the equation and it’s evident that these people obviously know something about living.
I tend to think now and again that Salobreña somehow got so far behind the rest of the world that they ended up being in front of everybody. Kind of like when a friend of mine complained about the fashion down here being years after Nothern europe. I explained to her that Salobreña just became retro before everybody else.
It’s going to be nice moving to somewhere a little more civilized and regulated and proper, I think. But I’ll miss this place.