La Corrida de Toros

My knowledge of bullfighting started with Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun also Rises which I read when I was about 17 or 18. That was a long time ago and since then I have read countless other descriptions of La Corrida de Toros, literally “the running of the bulls” in Spanish. Most recently I reread travel writer Paul Theroux’s juvenile criticism of the spectacle in his book The Pillars of Hercules in which he cheered for the bull to gore the torero. I would say that my own views on the subject lie somewhere between Hemingway and Theroux but closer to Papa. I have traveled quite a bit I countries that celebrate La Corrida de Toros, I had never felt obliged to attend one myself.
I was downtown one day during Fallas checking on how to get a bus to the airport when I rode past the ticket windows in front of the Plaza de Toros next to Valencia’s train station. In conjunction with the Fallas celebration, the bull fighting season opens earlier here than other parts of Spain. After all these years of reading about it and avoiding the spectacle, I decided that it was time to see for myself what goes on inside the ring.

It had been raining all day after more than a solid week of sunshine so I was prepared to sit in the rain for my first Corrida. The rain finally stopped about two hours before it was to start. I had a glass of wine in a bar across the street. It looked like something out of a Hemingway short story and may very well be. There were black and white photographs of matadors on the wall and old carteles, or posters, of bullfights held long ago. When I came outside again there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Bullfights are very popular with tourists in Spain but as I entered the Plaza it seemed like it was almost all locals on this particular afternoon.

For 1€ you can rent a pad to give you a bit of comfort as the seats as just a slab of concrete. The rows are very narrow and we were lucky enough that there was no one sitting in front of us. We were instructed that tradition dictates that you bring your own sandwiches to eat during the breaks. I was also told that a lot of the men smoke puros, or Cuban cigars. Any excuse to smoke a great cigar is fine with me. I have to say, if there is a better place to smoke a cigar than a corrida in Spain on a sunny day, I haven’t found it yet.

I went to my tobacco shop and picked up a couple of smaller cigars called panatelas. I like these because there aren’t as toxic as the bigger ones that I used to smoke. They generally last about 20 minutes to a half an hour and they don’t leave your mouth feeling as if someone took a dump in it while you weren’t looking. When I walked into the stadium I immediately began to suffer from cigar envy. A bunch of guys sitting next to me were all smoking Cohiba’s that looked almost long enough to double as walking sticks. If I go to another corrida I will bring a bigger cigar.

I wasn’t sure what I would think about bullfighting. I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be violently opposed to it as was Paul Theroux who saw it as incredibly cruel and barbaric. I understand that not every culture on earth is exactly like the one in which I was brought up. Theroux’s criticism of the Corrida just seemed to be coming from someone who knows nothing of Spanish culture and has no desire to do anything to alleviate that ignorance. This is an odd attitude for someone who writes about travel. I don't know why anyone would attend a corrida if they find them to be objectionable. I have heard people complaining while they are watching the spectacle and I have asked them what did they think was going to happen. It's as if these people think they are going to a movie or a play and a bullfight breaks out unexpectedly.

Although this was my first corrida, I have read enough about it that I did know what was going on, step-by-step. I knew what sort of thing represented a good corrida. I knew that each corrida is divided into three parts, or tercios: The picadors on horseback, the banderilleros who put the banderillas into the bull’s neck, and the matador who perform a series of maneuvers with his cape and then kills the bull with his sword.

Even I could see that the fourth corrida on this day was rather exceptional. The bull was strong and fierce and everyone did their job well. When it came to the kill the matador plunge his sword deep and the bull dropped immediately. People waved white handkerchiefs and seat cushions to signal for a trophy for the matador. He was awarded an ear for his efforts, the only prize awarded at this corrida.

The following day I picked up the newspaper to read the account of what had transpired at my first bullfight. As with anything else, this world has its own vocabulary, some of which I already knew. I will leave you with a few vocabulary words that you may find useful if you ever decide to go.

Bullfighting terms

• Corrida.........A Bullfighting show
• Tauromaquia.....Bullfighting
• Plaza de Toros….Bullring
• Lidiar..........To fight
• Puerta grande...The main door to the arena
• Gradas...Seats at the back of the ring (cheapest seats)
• Barreras........Front seats
• Sol/Sombra......Sun/Shade - the choice as to where you sit
• Muleta..........A small red cloth stretched over a stick (Palo)
• Capote..........The red cape
• Paseillo........The parade of fighters at the beginning
• Ruedo.........The ring
• Estoque.........Sword
• Espada..........The matador's sword also called the ESTOQUE
• Matador/Diestro.The top bullfighter, the one who kills the bull
• Novilladas......Beginners fights held separately
• Rejoneador......Horse-mounted fighter
• Toril...........Enclosure for the bulls
• Picador.........Fighter to weaken the bull
• Banderillas.....Barbed darts on colored shafts placed into the bull's shoulders
• Puntilla........A dagger that is stabbed into the base of the bull's skull
• Puerta grande...The main door to the arena


I live only about three blocks from Valencia's plaza de toros, a wonderful neoclassical structure built between 1850 and 1860 and designed by Sebastian Monleon based on the Roman amphitheater of Flavio Marcel. It is every bit as interesting on the inside as on the outside, and the outside is spectacular. I have been to several corrida de toros (bullfight is the atrocious translation which I won't use here) while living in Spain. I have also seen a few dozen others on television, back when they were broadcast on regular TV. Now the corrida is only carried on the pay channels. I have also witnessed a few bull festivals in local villages in the community of Valencia.

I hadn't really made up my mind on the event until I went this past week and witnessed one of the more thrilling displays you'll ever see. It wasn't just what was going on in the ring that impressed me, but everything going on inside the plaza de toros. Let's just say that it was one of those nights when everything went perfectly. I love to smoke a big, fat cigar and walk all around the entire structure, from top to bottom. I love the view of the city from the outer galleries. I like to watch as the bulls are removed from the ring and taken directly to the butchers. It's funny to watch as very young kids—boys and girls—watch in complete fascination as the bulls are cut up. “Look, Alejandra, that's where meat comes from!” they all seem to be thinking.

I love how they will let you bring in whatever you want. None of this, “No outside food” business at the corrida. People bring in coolers of beer, sandwiches, wine bags, and bottles of champagne to celebrate the evening.

Some people in Spain say that the days of the corrida are numbered, that it will slide into the past. When and if that happens Spain will become a bit more like every other country in the world and a little less idiosyncratic. I wouldn't like to see that happen. I never try to defend the corrida when I discuss it with Spanish people, and I feel as an outsider I shouldn't criticize it either (not that I would). I just think that it is something that Spaniards will work out for themselves. I will enjoy the corrida while it lasts.

San Fermín
A San Fermín pedimos
por ser nuestro patrón
nos guía en el encierro
dándonos su bendición

(San Fermin, as our patron, guide us in the run, giving us your blessing.)
-Prayer recited three times before the running of the bulls (encierro) in Pamplona. Sung to the tune of “Caesar, those who are about to die salute you!”

A firework is rocketed into the air on July 7th to mark the opening of the Festival of San Fermín, a yearly icon in Pamplona, Spain heavily romanticized by Hemingway. I have visited the lovely city of Pamplona but haven't attended the festival. I can't really say one way or the other how I feel about bullfighting. I've been a few times to see bullfights but I don't plan on going to San Fermín. Maybe I'm too old although even as a young man I possessed an abundance of survival instinct and common sense. I do enjoy watching it on television every morning when they broadcast the daily encierro. This is when the bulls, accompanied by the calming effect of an equal amount of steers (also with long horns), run through the streets of Pamplona among a bunch of people (somewhere between 1,500-4,000) dressed in traditional white shirts with red handkerchiefs around their necks. The idea is to outrun the bulls, some weighing close to 700 kilos, as they make their way through the narrow streets to the Plaza de Toros. The six bulls come from a different breeder every day and will be featured later in the day in the afternoon bullfights. In a Spanish dictionary I found this definition for the verb encerrar from which encierro is derived: to put a person or an animal in a place where it cannot get out. San Fermín covers both of those. The only defense runners have is a rolled-up newspaper and their own swiftness. Sound like fun to you? Me neither.

The encierro begins every morning promptly at 08:00 during the eight days of the festival and is over in a matter of a few minutes. Just about every day at least one person requires the skill of trained medical people. Deaths are not unheard of during the encierro and there have been 14 since they began keeping records in 1924. I have seen many, many serious injuries in the past two years of watching it on television. In an accident unrelated to the encierro, an Irish tourist died at Pamplona this year falling off a high wall (in 2007 two people fell to their deaths at the same spot on the Redín Wall). It's a little like spring break with bulls. Pamplona seems like a dangerous place to be during San Fermín so for now I don't mind being a TV spectator...or I may take a train up there this week. Anyone feel like going with me?

From my Spanish friends I have heard nothing but bad things about the festival at Pamplona. There is nothing but drunk, belligerent tourists; there is no place to stay; everything is overcrowded; and bulls have sharp horns are just a few of the complaints from those who have survived. Most of the people I have talked to admitted to going to the festival when they were teenagers and wrote it all off as foolish disregard for their own safety.

Spanish television broadcasts the encierro every morning and they treat it like a major sporting event. They go over every meter the bulls traverse and show instant replays and slow motion clips of exciting moments. They actually time how long it takes for the bulls to run from the corrals to the bullring. On the coverage one morning they showed doctors and nurses in a Pamplona hospital emergency room watching the broadcast, anticipating the injuries they would soon be treating. If I were a taxpayer here in Spain, I would be a little upset about government health care paying to have some drunk's butt stitched up after a goring.

In 2007 there was a big brouhaha over a man who took his ten year old son to the encierro. They showed the kid running down the street ahead of the bulls. He looked like he was having a blast, something the authorities should consider when the father is sentenced. They have since changed the rules at the festival. This year on the last day of San Fermin, kids under 10 get in free! People do a lot of dumber things at San Fermín than bring under-age children to run with the bulls. In fact, from my view from the couch in my living room, just about everything people do at San Fermín looks pretty stupid.

How many times were you told as a kid not to play in traffic? How many times were you warned of the dangers of alcohol? To me, San Fermín looks like a few thousand people completely ignoring these two bits of sage advice. After the encierro, if you are not already one of those laid out on a stretcher speeding towards the emergency room, they have an even more dangerous game for you to play. People feeling suicidal and those who have always wondered what it feels like to take a horn in the ass, file into the ring of the Plaza de Toros and get chased around by a young bull that always looks thoroughly pissed off. There might not be any ambulances available after the initial wave of casualties during the encierro so remember to apply direct pressure until help arrives. Keep saying that prayer to San Fermín and see if that helps.

I would never run in the encierro for a lot of reasons—physical cowardice being somewhere near the top of that list. An even greater fear for me than getting gored in the stomach is the total embarrassment of being injured, because you just know that they will show it over and over again on TV. I'm not looking to be the day's entertainment, not like that. I completely understand why other people do it, as stupid as it may seem to me to risk your life in some drunken festival in a remote corner of Spain.

I think the encierro is no different than doing tricks on a skateboard or any of the other “extreme” sports. I think that humans have evolved to such a degree and we have eliminated just about all of the risks faced by our ancestors where now just about everyone can expect to live to a ripe old age. In the past simply surviving the birthing process was a fight against the odds. In an era of seat belts, knee pads, guard rails, non-slip shower mats, child-proof medicine bottles, and life jackets, people sometimes need to feel a little bit of risk in their lives. Everyone rebels against the certainty of life in different ways. Instead of running down a narrow street being chased by crazed cows, I'll stick to ignoring other safety advice, like not closing the lid before striking a match when I smoke a cigar, or leaving my bike helmet at home on occasion. That's about as extreme as it gets for me these days.

Bous al Carrer (Valenciano for “Bulls in the street.”)
After watching the encierro every morning for almost a week on television, and unsuccessful in my attempts to talk anyone into going to Pamplona for the final days of the San Fermín Festival, I opted for the next best and closest thing. There is another week-long festival in the small town of Picassent just a few kilometers south of Valencia. Every day during the Picassent festival there are bulls running around in the streets in one section of the town, religious processions, and lots of food and drink—this is Spain, after all. It wouldn't be quite the same thing as San Fermín, something of a much lesser magnitude, but Picassent is only a twenty minutes from Valencia. Instead of buying a plane ticket for Pamplona I just needed to pull my metro card out of my wallet.

There are dozens and dozens of these bull festivals in villages throughout Spain during the months of summer. Most are not really geared to stimulate tourism, something we noticed immediately in the almost-empty Saturday night train to Picassent. Once we stepped off the train the festival seemed to be in full swing with bar patron spilling out into the street. Most of the festival revelers were soaking wet from being hosed down in the square a few minutes before we had arrived and no one seemed to notice a few tourists who seemed to have got off the train in Picassent by accident. As far as I could tell, we were the only out-of-towners at the festival on this evening. In Valencia I feel that although I may not exactly fit in, I also don't stand out like a sore thumb. Here in Picassent I felt as if I had lost all of my camouflage.

It only took us two beers in two bars to find our way to the section of town where they let the bulls loose. One quadrangle of the town is enclosed in heavy iron gates to keep the bulls in and allow people to escape. The festival had not begun because there were very young children walking around inside the closed area, as well as old folks sitting out on lawn chairs. Still, I was a bit hesitant to climb through the bars and walk around. I kept an eye on all of my escape routes should I happen upon a mad bull or any other sort of threatening livestock.

There are bars and restaurants inside the enclosed area with iron gates and wooden barriers protecting the customers. It's like this entire part of the village is one big shark cage. If I remember correctly, in the movie Jaws the shark bit through the cage like an impatient kid unwrapping a Christmas gift. Not only did I want heavy bars between me and any crazy bull, I also wanted to be on the second floor looking down. There are elevated grandstand areas where people can sit and watch the events which fell right in line with my safety demands. Unfortunately, I didn't see any place to buy a high-powered rifle so I felt like my security was still a bit incomplete.

They let the bulls out into the street one at a time. The bull would run around the square while a few of the braver (or more foolish) of the participants dodged the animal as it galloped past. After a while they would bring a steer out into the street to calm down the bull and then lead it back into the corral. I had brought a cigar along with me, and like at the corrida, this seemed like an ideal place to light up. I am always self-conscious about blowing smoke around so I left the safety of the second story bleachers and climbed down to street-level to light up. At first I stayed inside the barriers but the bull only came by once in a while so I stepped outside into the street. I know that smoking the occasional cigar has its risks but I would have never thought that two of those risks might be the horns attached to a 1,000 pound bull. There were lots of people outside the gates after the bull passed but then I could see the crowd splitting in two as the bull made its way back toward this area. I tried to make may way back inside the bars with as much dignity as possible but that is a bit difficult when you are screeching like a teenage girl in a slasher movie. Smoking can be hazardous to your health.

Back in Valencia later in the evening, I was talking with some Spanish friends about the festival. I stole a joke from Caddy Shack when someone asked me if I had run out in the streets with the bulls. I said that I had wanted to run with the bulls, as I pointed to my knee and winced as if in pain from an injury, but that I couldn't because I was a big coward. I don't think these people had seen the movie so this got a good laugh.

Lifestyle a la Española

A Walk Around The Block

Living in the city you don’t see much of the sky and many of us zombies rarely even bother to look up. Walking down the street the other night I was brought back to the land of the living by a little girl of about three who sang out from the vantage point of her stroller, “La luna!” Sure enough, she was pointing at a big, beautiful full moon glowing over the buildings.

To examine the lives of people in Spain, you need to take a look at the street where they live. The word for a city block here is a homonym of the word for apple—for reasons that don't seem to be entirely clear to anyone (other Spanish speaking countries use the less colorful word “cuadra” which means “square”). So a block is an apple? My anemic powers of description were practically swooning (wheezing?) with the possibilities. Unfortunately, a bit of investigation into these words proved fatal to my poetic aspirations. The two meanings for the word apple (manzana) in Spanish probably derived from different roots, with “apple” coming directly from Latin for apple (mattiana), and “city block” a derivation of the French word for house (maison). This rather prosaic explanation immediately extinguished any hope I had for a more flowery introduction to city life in Spain. I had to toss out all of the metaphors relating to fruit to describe urban architecture and start all over from scratch.

If a city block is an island surrounded by streets, my own little Spanish island has just about everything you need to survive. I realize that the block I live on is an exception—even for Spain—but I could probably live on my block for years without crossing the street. Since there happens to be a 15th century church next door, in theory I could be baptized, have my first communion, get married, and have my funeral service without having to look both ways for oncoming traffic. I suppose that would greatly reduce the risk of having an automobile accident be the cause of my eventual demise. There is enough in the way of entertainment so that I probably wouldn’t die of boredom. I certainly could never starve to death. There are enough bars, pastry shops, ice cream parlors, and other indulgences that the safe money would put the cause of death on some form of gout. Let’s leave that for the coroner and instead take a walk around my block to give you a little insight into the urban density that is common in every Spanish city.

I was going to individually list every business on my block, but that would be a little long-winded. As it turns out, there are a total of 36 separate outlets including three banks, three cafés, a hair salon, two pharmacies, three florists, a couple of little clothing stores, three bakeries, a pet supply store, a shoe repair shop, a photo developing place, a lottery booth, and a butcher. All these places and we haven't even stepped inside the Ruzafa Market where there are several dozen food vendors as well as another café. That's what I call a full-service island. The Ruzafa Market is the nucleus of the neighborhood in which I live. It is open Monday to Saturday from something like 7 a.m. (I don't know for sure, I'm never up and outside that early) until about 2:30 in the afternoon. It is a huge indoor market with dozens and dozens of individual vendors selling everything you can imagine eating. There is a separate seafood section as well. The market is an absolute marvel and it is twenty paces from the door of my building. As I said, my block is an exception but it happens to be where I live.

People in this sort of dense urban environment are able to effect most, if not all, of their daily outings on foot. As far as running most errands, the distances are too short to even bother with a bicycle. Most city blocks here are quite large and many are triangular in shape. Most buildings form kind of a wall around the outer edge of the block and there is an open area in the middle between the buildings. This open area in the middle—sometimes a couple of acres—is often used for businesses that require a lot of floor space such as car dealerships or supermarkets.

Back in the late 1990s Seattle changed its downtown zoning laws to mimic the European model of having the first floor of apartment buildings reserved for businesses. Like many Americans cities, many people worked in the Seattle downtown and left at the end of the day for the suburbs. I moved to the lower Queen Anne, or the Uptown neighborhood of Seattle in 1998. I saw firsthand how the downtown area went from being practically deserted to the thriving and lively place that it is today. Housing soared in the downtown while most suburban areas had negative growth. Evidently, many people like the idea of living where they work and play.

Most of Valencia is zoned for buildings of nine stories: the bottom floor for businesses and the other eight for apartments. There are almost no single family homes in this city of 800,000 inhabitants, there's just no room for houses. There is also almost no sprawl to Valencia. The whole city is bordered either by agricultural land, the Mediterranean, or smaller towns that are architecturally similar to Valencia. If you feel cooped up with city life, the country is only fifteen minutes away by bicycle. It would take me thirty minutes by car to get to the country from the center of Seattle, and Seattle suffers less from sprawl than most large U.S. cities.

What I find odd about Valencia, and the same is probably true of other large Spanish cities, is that as the city grows outward, in some areas they are adopting some of the characteristics of American suburbia. Shopping malls with huge parking areas, big box stores, and homes with yards are sprouting up—at least in a section to the west of Valencia. Some of the new apartment blocks on the edge of the city are being separated by wider and wider boulevards that can accommodate many lanes of traffic in each direction. The problem is that building more lanes of traffic never reduces traffic but actually spurs even more congestion in something traffic planners call “induced traffic.” I find these newer areas of Valencia to be completely awful on a number of different levels and I can't believe anyone would voluntarily live in there when they have so many more agreeable choices available to them. The wide streets that are sprouting up in these new semi-suburban parts of town mean that traffic flows faster—good for cars, bad for pedestrians. The lack of corner bars in these new neighborhoods seems like it would make them a total disaster for the average Spaniard who requires at least two on every block.

These newer neighborhoods are spread out too much to run daily errands on foot which drastically changes the nature of life for most Spaniards. I am confident that this new trend in urban planning isn't going to catch on. In Valencia, the new suburbia represents probably less than .05% of the total population of the city, if that. A home in the country is a dream of many Spaniards but I don't think many people are willing to give up the convenience of city life just to have a bit of a garden attached to their single family home. A lot of things are changing in modern Spain and as people become more affluent perhaps they will choose to drive everywhere instead of walking. More and more people are doing the majority of their shopping in the big chain grocery stores instead of at the local markets. The latest figures from 2005 show that Spaniards do 45.4% of their food buying at the big stores, 16.7% in smaller grocery stores and only 28.8% at traditional stores and markets. Convenience and speed are winning out over quality and service.

Although the new suburban-style subdivisions are populated by relatively affluent Valencianos, a lot of the newer, more moderately-priced developments on the edges of town also reflect a move away from the dense urban architecture found in the rest of the city. The buildings are taller. There are fewer, if any, businesses on the ground floors. The streets between apartment buildings are wider. All this translates into less of a community feel to these areas. They seem all but deserted. It's hard to believe that that people are willing to sacrifice a lively neighborhood for a few extra feet of living space in their private dwellings. To each his own. I have friends who live in very modern sections of Valencia but as much as they love their beautiful apartments, with convenient parking and other modern amenities, when it comes time to hang out, most of them migrate to my little neighborhood of older buildings, narrow streets, and dozens and dozens of bars and restaurants.

I think it's a little too early to say whether or not the newer, suburbia-style developments will catch on in Spain. I certainly hope not as they are a lot less friendly to the environment, among other things. But I don't want to talk about the fringes of Valencia, I want to talk about the center of the universe: my neighborhood of Ruzafa and, more specifically, my block. The center of my block is the 15th century church of San Valero. There are two landmarks on my block that serve as the nucleus for the entire neighborhood of Ruzafa (Russafa in Valenciano): the Ruzafa Market and the church of San Valero. Some 54% of Spanish people report that they hardly ever or never go to church and a full 18% consider themselves to be atheist. Quite a healthy disregard for the church when you consider that Spain not too long ago had Catholicism as the state religion, to the point where the government paid the salary of priests in the Franco era and beyond. However, the religion of food is thriving in Spain as is evident Monday through Friday in the Ruzafa Market.

The market is indoor but the 20 meter ceiling gives it an outdoor air. I like the feel of the market so much that I walk through it every time I pass by, and I pass by every day. I use the market as a short-cut through the neighborhood. It's a haven on rainy days and the air conditioning is a respite from summer's hottest afternoons. Most of the time the weather is just perfect in Valencia, but I still duck inside just to see what things look good on that particular day. Knowing what is in season is one of the keys to good cooking, especially in Valencia where farming isn't very dependent on hothouse fruits and vegetables. The growing season spans all twelve months of the year in the vast agricultural area that makes up the Valencia Community. Most of the produce that you find in the market has only traveled a few miles from the adjacent country side.

The fruit and vegetables here often lack the sort of perfection you see in American supermarkets. This simply provides shoppers with the challenge of finding the best products at any given point on the calendar. In the fall the weather favors the harvest of mushrooms. Not the little button mushrooms wrapped in plastic, but lovely wild things that are bigger than your hand. The more mountainous regions of the country have a richer culture of collecting and preparing mushrooms than the coastal area of Valencia. Valencia has its favorite called revollon mushroom (Lactarius deliciosus) which are in season in November. There are days as you pass through the market when you can't resist buying a half a kilo of these beautiful things. It doesn't take much imagination to find a dozen or so ways to prepare them. I lean toward the French tradition of using butter, cream, and wine as the base. I rely on the Italian starches of gnocchi or thick egg noodles for an accompaniment. You have to enjoy revollones while they last because they will be off the menu as abruptly as they arrived.

In other months of the year there are other harvests to exploit. In the spring we are pelted with cherries; tomatoes are at their best in summer, and in the winter you just have to take the best of what you can find. Planning a meal should begin when you arrive at the market. It's always best to enter with an open mind. You can see shoppers struggling to come up with a menu from the available ingredients on that particular day. The good news is that the poultry and pork products are always in season. Seafood is also pretty reliable throughout the year, in one form or another. Valencian rice is another dependable staple. I will drop in and out of the market in this volume about as often as I go there myself; for now I want to talk about my block.

The parish of San Valero is at the center of Ruzafa. I have found very scant traces of the history of the church and the two lines pertaining to its origin offered here I found in Ruzafa: La Bien Plantada by Luis Corbin Ferrer. The original church on this site burned to the ground on September 9, 1415. Construction on the present structure began on June 25, 1636. The main door to the church opens into the Plaça/Plaza Doctor Landete. I use both spellings for the plaza because the street sign is also in Valenciano and Spanish. There are three quiet cafés to choose from in the little open area of the plaza which fill up and empty out with the tides flowing in and out of the market. A small fountain adorns this quiet little piece of Ruzafa along with some orange trees, a row of birch trees for shade, and a few stately date palms just to remind you that the Mediterranean is nearby.

There is at least one wedding every Saturday afternoon at San Valero which bring added crowds to the square, not to mention the dozen or so religious holidays that insure a decent turn-out for mass. Just about everything that is goes on in the church is celebrated by a pealing of the bells in the tower. There is a special ringing of a smaller bell for the call to mass throughout the day. The first one is weekdays at 07:30. When I first moved to the neighborhood I was a bit annoyed by the early mass bells but I soon became charmed by all of the different varieties of ringing. There is the hourly and half-hourly ringing of the big bell. After the twelve bells have rung out for noon there is a louder pealing. The bells can be heard throughout the neighborhood. I always say that if you are too far away from the church to hear the bells, you are too far from Ruzafa and you'd better start getting back.

I either notice the bells ringing or I don't; they are like the beating of your heart, or the watch on your wrist, or the constantly moving celestial bodies. If you are walking through the streets on a deserted Sunday morning you can actually feel the vibrations for the bells after they have finished ringing, or maybe I just think that I can feel them. For weddings and religious celebrations all hell breaks loose in the tower when they ring all of the bells at once. It's the most joyous sound I have ever heard outside of a great piece of music. If you happen to be sitting at a café in the little square, the noise just about knocks you out of your chair. You are tempted to clap when it has all finished.

Cars and Bikes

It's been a bit over two years since I have driven an automobile. I rarely even ride in a car. About 99% of my personal transportation is effected on my bicycle—one of the greatest inventions in human history (although under-utilized in many societies). The personal automobile certainly has a place in modern transportation models but to base our entire scheme on cars seems completely insane. Even if we could make cars that run on air, we would still be strapped with all of the other massive failings of the automobile such as the high cost of building roads, safety issues, and parking, to name only three. Airplanes are another highly flawed means of transportation but they are still the best means to travel great distances. America almost completely gave up on trains many years ago and it may be too late to create the infrastructure necessary for this to be a major player in the country's future. But the cheapest, safest, and easiest solution for many of society’s transportation demands is still the bicycle.

Just about the entire infrastructure necessary to include bicycles in urban transportation models is already in place. Sometimes the only thing required to make a bike line is a line of paint in the street. If a city wishes to be a bit more aggressive in incorporating the use of bikes, they could remove an automobile lane or on-street parking and hand this over to cyclists. If cities are looking to go way overboard on the inclusion of bikes, they can look to Amsterdam as their model. Starting in 1992 Amsterdam has been working to minimize car traffic in its historic center. Over the years the city has drastically reduced parking in the center while continually widening bike lanes and sidewalks. This certainly makes sense when you consider that the historic center of Amsterdam was designed before cars were around.

Valencia has to rate somewhere near the top of the list for bike-friendly cities—at least as far as I am concerned. For its population, Valencia is very small in area, at least compared to an American city of the same size. You can bike from one end of Valencia to the other in about a half an hour—I doubt there are many American cities where you could make that claim driving. The network of bike paths in and around Valencia is a dream come true for cyclists. The fine weather here also helps to encourage cycling. Another advantage for cycling in Valencia is that the city is very flat. In Eduardo Mendoza's hilarious farce, Sin Noticias de Gurb, the space alien visiting the very hilly Barcelona proposes a bike exchange program where citizens of that city can grab a bike at the top of the hill, coast down to the city's center, and then leave the bike. Trucks would then come along and drive the bikes back up the hill. People would have to make their own arrangements for getting back up the hill. As it turns out, Barcelona has a bicycle exchange program called Bicing and they do in fact find an inordinate amount of bikes at the bottom of the city and must transport them back to the top of the hill every day. I thought about the same thing in Seattle which has many heart-shatteringly steep hills. Valencia, as I said, is as flat as a tortilla (Mexican or Spanish versions both work for this simile).

There is almost nothing in the way of urban sprawl in Valencia; the apartment buildings of the city abruptly end where the agricultural fields begin. There are neighboring towns but they all look pretty much like Valencia: apartment buildings that are between four and six floors. I have never heard or seen any traffic reports here. Although Valencia doesn't have the nightmarish gridlock of American cities it has its own share of problems with the automobile. Traffic in the city itself is pretty much a nightmare, at least on weekdays. You won't run into huge delays. More than anything it is just annoying to drive around town. As I write this I look down on the street in front of the Ruzafa Market which, during working hours, is backed up for several blocks.

It amazes me that so many people here still choose to rely heavily on the automobile to get around day-to-day. I could understand this if it were all families choking up the streets in their cars, but most of the traffic is the same sort you see in just about every city in America: single drivers. I don't even take cabs in Valencia because the traffic is maddeningly slow. Once you arrive at your destination, parking is even more horrendous than the drive to get there. I can't see how driving in this environment can be any sort of convenience.

Automobiles in Valencia seem to be more of a status thing than a necessity. People drive because they have cars and can afford the gas. Public transportation is inexpensive and very efficient yet many people opt out of it and drive. I'm sure that many have practical reasons for making this decision but I am equally sure that many other people drive for reasons other than necessity. I would guess that a great majority of the people who now drive cars in Valencia could easily choose to ride the bus or bike to their destinations. I am surprised that the city hasn't made a greater effort to convince these people to make the change. Instead, Valencia keeps building wider roads on the outer ends of the city and erecting public parking garages at different points around town, all with the purpose of encouraging automobile traffic. It seems this money would be better spent on mass transit projects.

It's remarkable the degree to which societies subsidize the automobile while practically ignoring other means of transportation. In the United States people scream bloody murder when public funds go to fund mass transportation projects like Amtrak (America's passenger rail system) but nothing is said when tax dollars pay for airports and the incredible infrastructure necessary for automobiles. Even a city that is purported to be as “bike friendly” as Seattle seems to only grudgingly add bike lanes to the urban transportation model—and in Seattle this usually means merely slapping down a line of paint in the street to designate the bike lane (which works rather well, I might add).

What I can't understand about bike transportation is why it isn't more popular. Why aren't as many people riding bikes in Seattle or Valencia as in Amsterdam? How can we get more people out of their cars and on bikes? I have an idea, try asking. I have seen a couple of posters around Valencia on the metro routes encouraging citizens to ride bikes but I think the movement needs a little more of a push. How about a few television commercials of attractive people choosing to ride their bikes instead of dealing with the hassles inherent in automobiles?

Two Wheeled Anti-Depressant

On some days there seems to be a conspiracy to lower my spirits. The dollar drops another couple of points; my computer’s hard drive fails and wipes out more stuff than I care to even think about right now; a couple of other bad things happened, but it’s all too depressing to chronicle here. The good news is that it is sunny and warm on this November morning, like it is almost every morning here in Valencia. My head is throbbing because of my problems as I prepare for my daily bike ride.

I get dressed in my cycling get-up of mountain bike shorts, clip-in shoes, and jersey-du-jour (today it’s a Portugal national team soccer jersey). I fill my backpack water bottle, double-check that I have my house keys before I close the door behind me, take the elevator to street level, and push off for the ride. I am still fairly overwhelmed with the problems that I will have to confront eventually, but for now I have to deal with the sometimes-annoying task of picking my way through the traffic and out of Valencia on a bicycle. During this first leg of the trip, the bike trail has a lot of intersections with automobiles and pedestrians that keep me from getting up enough speed for my bicycle therapy to take its full effect.

On the first length of trail that is uninterrupted by people or cars I am able to finally stretch my legs and work into a good sprint. It isn’t long at all before my body has other more serious problems to deal with besides my quotidian worries and not-very-interesting problems that have sprung up out of nowhere. Now my body has to deal with real issues like trying to send enough oxygen to all of the vital areas and fighting massive lactic acid build-up. If my mind persists in focusing on the boring, practical problems from earlier in the morning, I just hammer down harder on the pedals until the pain forces these thoughts from my head.

Besides the physical exertion, the natural beauty of the Albufera nature area acts as a distraction from whatever the hell it was that was getting on my nerves only a half hour ago. Although we are creeping inexorably towards winter, it is sunny and warm on this afternoon and there are actually people sunbathing on the beaches along my route. I am wearing a long sleeve shirt under my jersey that I am tempted to remove except that I don’t want to slow down. It feels good to actually feel hot for a change so I leave it on.

Besides the distraction of my cardio-vascular crisis, I am also looking for food for my pet turtle. He has recently been turning his nose up at the fish that he used to eat so now I am looking for other things to add to his diet. It is really hard to think about problems you are having with your bank or your computer as you pedal along at 20 something miles per hour all the while scanning the trail for insects and other possible fodder for a pet turtle. I think to myself that this is what a seagull must be viewing as it sweeps along the shore. I catch three grasshoppers and a snail on this excursion and store them in an empty water bottle I root out of a beach trash barrel.

The turtle belongs to the other occupants of my house, but since we don’t have a dog, I have adopted him as my own. I call him El Conde de Monte Cristo because his overriding passion seems to be to escape from his plastic pan where he lives in my living room. I have made it really nice for him with lots of cool rocks to swim around and fresh plants changed regularly. One time I took him out and put him on the coffee table just so that he could see that the world outside of his pail isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. He immediately darted for the side of the table and jumped off. I can’t believe that he didn’t hurt himself. Back in the pail he went.

I don’t know if this breed of turtle eats snails but I put the one I found in his tank. I figured that if he didn’t eat it then perhaps they could be pals. The snail didn’t live more than a couple of hours. I don’t know if he drowned or the turtle attacked him but the score is now: Turtle 1, Snails 0. The turtle seemed to be scared shitless of the live grasshopper I dangled in front of him. I left one of them in there just in case he changes his mind and wants to try a few bites. El Conde doesn’t seem very excited about the bottled turtle food he gets either. He does appear to be growing so I guess that he must be eating something. I think the cooler weather has just slowed his metabolism; I know that it has slowed me down.

After I have sprinkled the day’s catch around the rocks that make up the little turtle’s Chateau d”If, I take a shower, get dressed, and walk downstairs to the café in the little plaza in front of my apartment. There isn’t a cloud in the sky and not a hint of a breeze on this afternoon, which makes it perfect for sitting at an outside table. I order a café con leche and read at least 40 pages of my book. Right now I am finishing up a translation of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises which is called Fiesta in Spanish (A much more appropriate title in my opinion.). I haven’t read this book since I first read it when I was 16 or 17. It’s not a little ironic that I am rereading it all these years later in Spanish while living in Spain. I think that is what I had in mind when I read it the first time around.

The coming darkness and the church bells of San Valero tell me that it is six o’clock. The little plaza has been gradually filling up as it does every day at this time. It turns into a playpen for the little kids, a football pitch for their older siblings, and a meeting spot for the parents who fill up the rest of the tables around me. My body will feel the glow of the afternoon bike ride until I fall asleep in the evening. This euphoria seems to be my system thanking me for ending the punishment I inflicted on it while riding. If I tried I could probably remember what it was that was bothering me earlier in the day but I have some cooking to do and some friends to meet later tonight. 

Music Overheard from the Street Four Floors Below

I live on the fourth floor above a fairly busy street. The traffic light below stops cars passing by every sixty seconds, day and night. It’s really not that noisy and I rather enjoy the bustle of city life so I’ve grown accustomed to the din, sort of like living near the ocean and hearing the waves—not that I’ve ever lived close enough to the sea for this nuisance, perhaps in the next life.

The first thing that you can say about people blasting music on their car stereos is that they have one thing in common: they have shit taste in music. No one ever plays Mozart or Duke Ellington at volume levels almost guaranteed to induce hearing loss. There is only one demographic group responsible for musically disturbing the peace: young males.

It really isn’t that often that someone’s music is at such an obnoxious level that I can hear it from my perch four stories above the street, but when I do overhear it I always think about how loud it must be inside their vehicle. Riding my bike around town I will often pass a young male wearing headphones with the music so loud that it’s loud for me two meters away. You only have one set of ears, guys; you should try taking care of them.

Here's a short play list:

Eye of the Tiger: This was at 06:30, before daybreak! I guess you have to play that song at volume 11 for it to make even a little bit of sense.

Flamenco: I love Flamenco music but for some reason young punks (on or off drugs) love blasting this fiery music from Andalucía at window-shattering volumes. Flamenco isn’t popular at all in this part of Spain and many young kids look down on it, sort of like Americans and hillbilly music. I’m guessing that the young punks are out-of-towners.

Rap: Even in Spain, punks dream of being gangsters.

Dance Beats: These cars almost ALWAYS have decorative lights. Look! It’s a car! No, it’s a gay disco! Perhaps it’s both?

Let it Go from the Disney movie Frozen: OK, I've never heard this blasting from a car stereo but I did witness some Manchester City football hooligans singing it at karaoke night in a local bar. More on that at another time.

Train Travel

One of the biggest news items here in Spain is the opening this month of the high speed rail link between Madrid and Barcelona, Spain’s two largest cities with 10 million inhabitants between them. The cities will be served by Spain’s AVE (Alta Velocidad Española, Spanish High Speed with the acronym being a play on words as “ave” means bird in Spanish) train system that will cut the travel time on this 391 mile route to just two hours and 38 minutes, slicing two hours off the previous rail time.

I have taken the Madrid-Sevilla AVE line and I have to say that it is an absolute marvel. The train covers about 538 kilometers (334 miles) in two hours and 20 minutes with one stop in Cordoba; that is a 230-kph average speed. The train is so smooth that there are no ripples in your coffee when you let it sit on the bar.

These fast trains are in direct competition with air service between cities. They are not a lot slower than commuter flights. The difference is passenger comfort and the quality of travel. Airline travel is mostly just a necessary annoyance. The incivility between passengers is barely contained on airline flights and the mere mention of a short delay often brings out the very worst in people. Train travel, to me, is the height of sophistication and civility. I love traveling by train and the journey is almost always enjoyable. I would take a train trip just for the ride. You can also work, read, sleep, and socialize on a train. On an airplane I am afraid to death to even talk to the person crammed in next to me for fear they will turn out to be a huge bore and never shut up. If you are stuck next to a dud on a train you can just walk away.

Back when I was 19 years old I traveled around Europe on a Eurail Pass and I have loved train travel ever since. I have only taken a handful of trains in the U.S. but I have enjoyed those trips as well. I have always said that if every American were forced to take a train trip, they would demand that our country improve its rail network. I’m afraid that it is a little late in the game for America to develop the sort of sophisticated rail system that Spain enjoys. We’ve let our infrastructure deteriorate for too long. We have listened to the conservative dogma that our rail system must pay for itself. Of course, no one says the same for our highways or airports which are heavily subsidized by the government.

The fact is that Spain’s AVE network is set to be profitable by 2010—something to consider the next time the U.S. government bails out a private airline or you hear about a new Interstate bridge that is going to cost a billion dollars. Trains also produce four times less carbon dioxide emission per mile than planes if anyone cares about stuff like that.

In an effort to keep up with what the future will bring, most countries in Western Europe are falling all over themselves to build high-speed rail networks. The new Madrid-Barcelona corridor will eventually lead further north to the French border near Perpignan and on to Paris.

The final 45.5km (28 mile) link to the French border is another challenge because an 8.1km (5 mile) tunnel is needed through the Pyrenees and the cost, up to €900m, will be recouped over 50 years through Spain's first-ever private franchise operation. Almost every country in Europe has state-sponsored railways to one degree or another. They view efficient mass transit as an asset and an aid to economic growth instead of a tax payer’s burden like we do in the United States. Every time Amtrak (America’s passenger rail service) needs a boost from the federal government, the conservatives are ready to pull the plug on the whole thing citing inefficiency and high costs. No one says the same for road building projects. Below are just a couple of the astronomically expensive road construction projects that Seattle faces:

The Alaskan Way Viaduct—$3.5-11.6 billion

The #520 bridge between Seattle and Bellevue—$5.9 billion

I-405 widening—$10.9 billion

All of these projects put together only involve about six miles worth or roadway. If you ask me, there doesn’t seem to be much future in the automobile.

Ways to Save the Planet I Learned While Living in Spain

Don't get me wrong, I hate hippies as much as the next guy. It's just that living a little more frugally isn't going to kill anyone. I thoroughly despise the attitude of certain people in America who ridicule anyone who even mentions conservation, as if it is positively un-American to use less energy. How can anyone defend unbridled consumption as some sort of virtue?

This sort of falls under the category about how learning to live with less doesn't mean a diminished standard of living. Spanish people don't do all of these things because they are incredibly environmentally-conscious citizens, they do it because it saves them money, money they could better spend on wine and ham. There's a catchy slogan somewhere in that last sentence.

1) Use a pressure cooker to speed up cooking times. My pressure cooker was broken and I finally realized that it could be fixed. I went to a cooking supply store a whole half block from my house and they repaired it in five minutes. The 15€ price tag seemed a bit steep but it was well worth it. I just cooked garbanzo beans in a matter of 30 minutes. They usually take four freaking hours. My pressure cooker story leads me to the next thing.

2) Repair old items, if possible, instead of simply adding their carcasses to the landfill.

3) Hang dry clothes instead of using a dryer. I realize this isn't always convenient but it is always possible. We use a clothes drying rack that we put in front of a window. In the summer stuff dries in a matter of an hour or two. If you are already heating your house in the winter hang drying clothes indoors makes complete sense.

4) Public Transportation. You should use it once in a while if for no other reason than to see what it’s like for people who do use it.

5) Bikes. I've been a bike fanatic all my life so it's exciting to see Valencia really get behind bicycles as a mode of transportation. I swear I notice more bikes on the road here every day. The climate in most of Spain is ideal for bikes but people in Belgium and the Netherlands are much more enthusiastic in the use of bikes and their weather is lousy. I rode all winter in Seattle. Riding in the rain still beats driving a car in my book.

6) Use heat and air conditioning sparingly. Try putting on a sweater in the winter.

7) Drive a fuel-efficient car. People here drive small cars, comically puny at times.

8) City living is infinitely greener than suburban life. 54% of New Yorkers take public transportation to work, by far the highest percentage in the country. The logic of city living was something else that I realized long before arriving in Spain. My life in downtown Seattle wasn't too different than how I live here. I have already talked about this exhaustively.

9) Our hot water heater heats the water as it flows through the pipe so there isn't a huge tank that has to be heated up. According to the U.S. Department of energy this type of water heater, called demand or tankless heaters, can use up to 24-34% less energy than conventional tank water heaters.

10) Wear clothes more than one day. Something most Spanish people do is change clothes when they are at home. When you are home you wear sweats or whatever which keeps your street clothes neater and cleaner so that you don't have to wash them after wearing them out a single day. Someone told me that they do the same thing in Hungary and they call them “house clothes.”



What the Clothing Pin Industrial Complex (CPIC) Doesn’t Want You to Read!
My clothing line is on the back side of the building facing the interior courtyard of the block. I drop a pin once in a while and if you look down the four floors you can see a narrow overhang on my neighbor’s patio below where dozens of clothes pins reside after having met a similar fate. If you look across to the other half of my building you see the same situation which means that tenants in the 16 apartments above the first floor lose their property yet the two families in the bottom apartments make no effort to return our lost property. I’m no conspiracy theorist but it’s painfully obvious that clothing pin manufacturers pay them to sit on this dormant resource so that chumps like me continue to give money to the man to replace the pins we lose.

The Spanish Driver's Guide to Horn Blowing

The first thing you must remember about driving in Spain is that horns are not a way to warn people; they are used as weapons. Think of a horn as the passive-aggressive version of punching someone in the face. I’ve actually seen driving instructors encouraging their pupils to use the horn as a tactical weapon. You absolutely never pass up an opportunity to lean on your horn; if you show even a shred of restraint then you are failing as a driver—and don’t ever confuse drivers with human beings because these are two very separate life forms as people go through a transformation once they are under internally-combusted power. 

It’s like the old joke that Italians gesticulate so much when they talk that if you tie them up they are rendered mute. A horn is as essential to a Spanish car as the engine. This noise-making device gets as much usage as the tires.  

After you learn that only indiscriminate use of your horn is permissible, the next lesson is just how much horn to apply in any given situation. This can be broken down into four applications.

1 – Just a Brief Tap

Just tapping your horn is the method least used in street situations, and is appropriate in only occasional and very narrowly defined circumstances. I can’t list every case when a brief tap is adequate but here are a few examples.

-To test your horn before you start driving. If your horn isn’t working consider public transport.

-Someone in a wheelchair isn’t showing sufficient hustle in clearing the crosswalk. Give them a tap for motivation.

-You want to say something to your child sitting in the passenger seat beside you but they’re wearing headphones and doing their level best to ignore you.

2 – A Good, Solid Honk (GSH)

If you aren’t honking like this a couple of dozen times every time you get behind the wheel then you're doing it wrong. How else can you get your point across to the jerk in front of you who hasn’t sent his vehicle in motion the split second the light turns green…or even before? Constantly honking your horn is what keeps traffic moving smoothly, and it’s what separates us from the animals. Not honking when you have every right to honk is a sign of weakness that other drivers will use to humiliate you. Don’t let that happen! A GSH is also used to say hello to pedestrians and other drivers, and don’t worry about frightening the bejesus out of unsuspecting passersby.

3 – A 2-3 Second Blast

Now it’s starting to get interesting. This is when you would really like to knock someone out except that you are way too much of a coward to confront anyone physically, so you let your horn do the punching for you. Allowing another driver to merge is almost never done here without a good, hard blast on the horn. Civility and driving just don't seem to mix.

4 – Just Go Ahead and Lean on that Damn Horn

This obnoxious paroxysm of rage is reserved for the most serious offenses, but this doesn’t mean they are rare. Much like war crimes committed during WWII, reasons to employ this method of horn honking are all around you if you’re paying attention. Being stuck in traffic is no fun, but leaning on your horn gives you something to do and perhaps the sound waves emitted from dozens of angry horns will somehow push the jam along like a plunger releasing a clogged drain. Leaning on your horn is the only way to address crimes against humanity such as someone double-parked in front of you when you want to leave. Sure, you’ve committed the same offense at least three times on this same day, but rules are rules and you’re no maverick.