How I found myself in Spain
It all began with a former Python.
Google ‘historic summers’ and several results will pop up on screen. The summer of love in the late sixties, where flower children blossomed into dancers and anti-war protesters. There was the first summer after COVID restrictions were lifted, where pent-up, hemmed-in hormones were set to be released through three months of hooking and catching up, if the media was to be believed. Then there are Wikipedia pages about an infamous heat wave across Europe in 1540 and American singer Donna Summers.
For me, 2006 was somewhat less glamorous than all of these examples. It was the summer of Michael Palin, a then middle-aged man. It was educational rather than sexy. It began with a startling discovery: finishing with secondary school and set for a new adventure in university, I became aware of Amazon. And they delivered to my house. Purchases were made, and while I indulged my desire for travel vicariously through the German films of Daniel Brühl and through a DVD of the much-maligned The Beach, it was the Michael Palin boxset that really got my juices flowing. As I watched this former Monty Python dry humour his way through the former Soviet Union to the Indian sub-continent, I knew I wanted to get out there as well. I wanted it all: meeting Lenin impersonators, appearing in some obscure movie being shot in the Balkans, speaking with Ukrainians who were enjoying the first moments of democracy and independence.
I had come a long way. As a kid, just before a family holiday to Cork, I asked my father if Cork was in Ireland. I have never been able to live that one down, though fortunately, people seemed to have forgotten that I once sang Achy Breaky Heart in primary school, in front of my class with nothing but an acoustic guitar and wavering voice.
Then there was Spain.
Dog days
In the last days before my exams, when classes petered out and we were all just waiting to get the Leaving Cert over and done with, I often just left the school and went home. Sometimes, my friend Michael tagged along. One day, I absconded early and sat down to watch Michael Palin’s Hemingway series, where he traced the steps of the renowned writer who travelled through the country during the Spanish Civil War. Eating my staple, my cherished go-to, mashed spud, I watched as he went to Valencia. In the throes of Las Fallas, he struggled to make himself heard on a balcony as fireworks popped and whizzed in the air, in the prelude to the great burning of all the giant papier-mâché heads and figurines.
He also went to Cuba, where Hemingway’s house now stands as a museum. Misha Gorbachev broke a vase there while visiting with her husband. I learnt that in the summer of 2006, along with what a yurt was. I never had cause to use either piece of knowledge, but they have remained lodged in my brain.
I can’t say that I then jumped to my feet and shouted (to nobody in particular): I AM GOING TO SPAIN! In fact, it took another few years before I even set foot on the Peninsula. I even went all the way to Hong Kong instead of taking a two-hour flight to the southern part of my own continent.
Looking back, I still admire what a curious, interested, gracious and intelligent visitor Palin always was. Unlike, say, D.H. Lawrence, who travelled around Italy and beyond, simultaneously admiring what he found while also spreading his condescending philosophy and surprisingly narrow view of the world.
Good novelist, though. I’ll give him that.
Just go
My reasons for moving to Spain were more prosaic. I was finished with university, living through an economic crisis and bored of what was around of me, the same old streets and same old places. I was not using my degree and I was stuck in a call centre. Looking for a way out, it struck me that Spanish seemed easier to learn than French. But really, I just did it on a half-whim, without really thinking about it.
Maybe an invisible hand was propelling me. Growing up, I read Neruda and Márquez. Though they weren’t Spanish writers, their books exposed me to the language. And in my university days, I rubbed shoulders with Spanish people in the Old Oak, a bar in Cork famous for the advanced age of its clientele. But in the sea of grey or greying hair, tanned faces stood out. The bar was also home to a Barça penya, or supporter’s club, and I fell in love with Messi, Xavi and Iniesta in its wood-panelled interior. I distinctly remember watching Barça demolish Real Madrid 5-0 – a manita in Spanish – and some random guy jumping on my back when Barça won the Champions League. It was cider all around and Shakira on the speakers.
As I was making my final preparations for Madrid, Thousands are Sailing by The Pogues burrowed its way into my ear. The late, great Shane MacGowan asked if we worked on the railroad or police the streets in the song, but my destiny was to slog it out from classroom to classroom. Songs like The Spanish Lady and Viva La Quinta Brigada hinted at a deep and surprising (to others, not me) Hiberno-Spansish connection, and music would turn out to be a bridge between cultures as more than one Iberian rocker spoke enthusiastically about Rory Gallagher or Thin Lizzy.
