The return to the town
It's cheaper. Everything is cheaper, from the (badly placed) gin and tonic at the bar to full board, which is paid for with kisses to the great-aunt and with civic behavior and respect towards religious festivals. They look at each other, but they don't touch.
Family love. In 74.3% of the cases, a visit to the town on time avoids a traumatic disinheritance . Your parents see you again as that innocent and intrepid child who wanted to be like Butragueño and those second aunts without heirs erase in one breath the bad references that come to them from the big city. The town means redemption , return like a prodigal son to the ancestral lap.
Night life. It boils down to a bar with the blinds down, a TV showing Eurosport/Teledeporte/LaSexta3 with no volume, some lame stools and Boom 99 playing on loop . The vivid image of a repellent den to which one usually returns daily “if something happens”. Damn the uncertainty.
The festivities. Pasodobles, portable bars, heifers, shooting attractions, drunken romances... without these elements of these celebrations, life would be more absurd.
Nothing beats a good patronal party
Sport is free. No ski passes, no green fees, no paddle court reservation, no Bikram Yoga, no nothing. Here you do not have to pay, everything is simpler and completely improvised. You can organize a soccer pachanga with only a beer bet and a fronton game borrowing a racket and a ball (which will surely end up lost). Oh, and we must not forget that sport that children's imagination and summer boredom invents and that is typical of each town.
the bike . And then we get to the bike, that skeletal vehicle , once best friend of any child. One of the biggest hobbies is finding it in the depths of a garage and trying to fix it with a manual "bricomaniaco" complex. Fifteen punctures and three grease-shredded T-shirts later, this one usually ends up that way. So, just then, The Dynamic Duo plays in your head and summer is over.
The bicycles and the friends of the town: a classic
Everything is news. The movie that The social network counts only milongas. The reality is that Mark Zuckerberg devised Facebook during the summer of 2005 in which he got lost on a backpacking trip when he was trying to hitchhike from Cuenca to Motril. In a town on the Meseta he discovered the housewife's ability to transmit any news in just minutes and the exaggeration of any novelty. Creating a profile on the Facebook of life is much easier than on the Internet, although here the 'like' is replaced by 'you don't know how right you are' or a 'if it came to come'.
Everything is news. ALL.
The pool. For the modest price of €20 all summer, you will have a place to lie down on mown grass. Take a bath? Don't even think about it! The water is usually so cold that migratory colonies of penguins have been seen in the children's pool. The more rural version is the pool/reservoir , much more adventurous and that usually guarantees two or three crushed phalanxes per summer. As much as it may seem ridiculous, these so-called crab shoes save shouts, expletives and blasphemies.
The pool/reservoir is the most rural (and icy) version of the pool
The radicalization of social class . In the towns there are two curious phenomena that make it possible to distinguish one from the other according to its population. Those that do not exceed 500 inhabitants in winter lack social class, which means that the urbanite does not give in to simple boasting and dresses without any complex with the first thing he catches. In the largest there is only one social class: the upper class. There is no greater posture than on Calle Mayor on a Saturday afternoon . Everyone wants to look like they're wearing counterfeit flea market brands and a sweater tied around their chest. In both cases, an urbanite has a lot of ground gained, even though the nickname 'city posh' is a real and latent threat.
New old friends. The absence of classes usually brings the reunion with that lifelong friend from the town, usually a distant cousin. The familiarity, the lack of value judgments and the desire to enjoy time together makes him a kind of camp buddy. An intense, beautiful, but momentary relationship. never add him on facebook since you will discover insurmountable differences with his "city self".
The town next door. During the first half of summer it is hated. During the second, envied.
Summer Loving. Yes, here it also happens very quickly and includes dabbling in the orchard and haystack. The difference with beach love is that the staff shed their social status to undertake love affairs that their families / friends would reproach. Come on, you can flirt with that girl who in the city would give you pumpkins or look at you with contempt. A feat that is achieved only by friction , just for sharing one condition: being from the same town.
A classic: summer loves
Board Games. The lack of noisy leisure alternative causes it to dust off the mus, the monopoly, the brisca and even the ouija . And also dust off old family feuds. So be careful…
Take the cool. It is said of the activity consisting of taking folding chairs out into the street at night, looking at the sky, being amazed at the number of stars that can be glimpsed and having meaningless intergenerational conversations. Occasionally release a 'if this is life'.
Umberto Eco knows very well what it is to take the fresh
No 3G. Sometimes there is Twitter, sometimes Whatsapp is thrown away... there are even those who say that the battery lasts a whole day! Magic.
'The coverage'. This is the place where there is full coverage and since the arrival of the mobile phone in our lives, it has become a new social space where you can chat comfortably and listen to other people's conversations. And then tell it to the village maruja . And we've already screwed it up.
The Sunday aperitif. It is not that the rest of the week there is no aperitif, it is that Sunday in the town is again the day of the Lord and go up to take the vermouth It is the weekly event. Absolutely unmissable, if only to see how the concept of elegance is understood in each house.
The real organic gastronomy. Let's go to one of the most important reasons (for what makes you fat): direct contact with the raw material . That is, the eggs from the field, the soft bread and the black pudding cured in the pantry. Neither foodies rolls nor reinterpretations nor blah blah blah . Return to simple cuisine based on natural ingredients and clay pot. Which also means a return home with a trunk full of groceries.
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Back, to grandma's food