Take care and be warned of the wandering eye if you go to live in rural Spain. A sleepy little hamlet may seem deserted when you drive into it on a placid afternoon. But two minutes after parking the car to explore on foot, a curtain moves. A dog barks and a head appears in a darkened barn. Walk down the lane and someone will come out on their doorstep ostensibly to sweep the stoop but will look at you and follow you with their eyes to know where you're going. No, they're not scared you'll turn out to be a burglar, they're just wondering what neighbor a stranger is going to visit and why. A cat feels very much at home in a village, where all the neighbors are as curious as he is.
The problem with settling down to live in a village is that your life is not your own and you have to work hard to protect your privacy. There comes a point in which you understand why some Hollywood stars attack the papparazzi. You step out the door, a neighbor walks by, "Good morning, going shopping?" You arrive home, step out of the car, a neighbor calls from his house, "Hi there, back already?" You have a barbecue on a summer Sunday and the next day a neighbor, "That smelled like quite a barbecue you had yesterday. Were you celebrating something?"
Of course, that's when you're new in the village, like I was over twenty years ago. Now I'm just another neighbor, but the curiosity hasn't ended, though it's not as centered on me. A man paints his house and the next month his next-door neighbor will paint his, as well. A family decides to take out the old windows and replace them with weatherproof ones and the surrounding neighbors will follow. Right now it's become a little more difficult because banks aren't giving out loans like candy any more, but a few years ago people would go into debt just to have their house as well groomed as their neighbor's.
And of course, whenever a neighbor comes over for a chat or to ask for some salt, they don't pass up the chance to see your furniture and how clean or dirty the inside of the house is. Until a few years ago when municipal funeral homes were built, whenever someone died the viewing was held at home. That was a critical time for the family, not just because of the loss of their loved one, but because of what the neighbors would see. Most people would clear out the furniture from a living or dining room (with all the trouble that created) in the front of the house. There they would set up a lot of chairs as well as along the hallway. Everything would be scrubbed as clean as possible. The kitchen was set aside as a gathering room for the closest family and friends and closed for everyone else. All the other doors would be closed. But that wouldn't stop some snoopers from opening doors or wandering around, checking on things. For days afterwards the older women (mostly), university graduates all in the art of poking their noses into the neighbor's lives, would discuss what the family had and had not, what they had done and not done. Were the rooms freshly painted or could you see rub marks on the wall? Was the floor clean? Did they have nice rugs or paintings on the wall? How big was the television? How could they afford such a modern kitchen? Were the chairs old or new, comfortable or hard? What a nerve the family had, closing the front door to all except family at two in the morning! And so it would go.
After a while you develop a way of talking that if you analyze it, reminds you of how politicians talk. You find yourself having conversations and trying not to give out any information while giving information. Semantics must have originated in village conversations once upon a time. There is a saying here in Spain, "si ves un Gallego en medio de las escaleras no sabes si baja o sube." If you see a Gallego on the middle of the stairs, you don't know if he's going down or up. Why? Because in these villages people have learned to be ambiguous to protect their own interests. There's no other way to protect your privacy. Yes, curiosity may have killed the cat, but it still hasn't killed the villager.
The problem with settling down to live in a village is that your life is not your own and you have to work hard to protect your privacy. There comes a point in which you understand why some Hollywood stars attack the papparazzi. You step out the door, a neighbor walks by, "Good morning, going shopping?" You arrive home, step out of the car, a neighbor calls from his house, "Hi there, back already?" You have a barbecue on a summer Sunday and the next day a neighbor, "That smelled like quite a barbecue you had yesterday. Were you celebrating something?"
Of course, that's when you're new in the village, like I was over twenty years ago. Now I'm just another neighbor, but the curiosity hasn't ended, though it's not as centered on me. A man paints his house and the next month his next-door neighbor will paint his, as well. A family decides to take out the old windows and replace them with weatherproof ones and the surrounding neighbors will follow. Right now it's become a little more difficult because banks aren't giving out loans like candy any more, but a few years ago people would go into debt just to have their house as well groomed as their neighbor's.
And of course, whenever a neighbor comes over for a chat or to ask for some salt, they don't pass up the chance to see your furniture and how clean or dirty the inside of the house is. Until a few years ago when municipal funeral homes were built, whenever someone died the viewing was held at home. That was a critical time for the family, not just because of the loss of their loved one, but because of what the neighbors would see. Most people would clear out the furniture from a living or dining room (with all the trouble that created) in the front of the house. There they would set up a lot of chairs as well as along the hallway. Everything would be scrubbed as clean as possible. The kitchen was set aside as a gathering room for the closest family and friends and closed for everyone else. All the other doors would be closed. But that wouldn't stop some snoopers from opening doors or wandering around, checking on things. For days afterwards the older women (mostly), university graduates all in the art of poking their noses into the neighbor's lives, would discuss what the family had and had not, what they had done and not done. Were the rooms freshly painted or could you see rub marks on the wall? Was the floor clean? Did they have nice rugs or paintings on the wall? How big was the television? How could they afford such a modern kitchen? Were the chairs old or new, comfortable or hard? What a nerve the family had, closing the front door to all except family at two in the morning! And so it would go.
After a while you develop a way of talking that if you analyze it, reminds you of how politicians talk. You find yourself having conversations and trying not to give out any information while giving information. Semantics must have originated in village conversations once upon a time. There is a saying here in Spain, "si ves un Gallego en medio de las escaleras no sabes si baja o sube." If you see a Gallego on the middle of the stairs, you don't know if he's going down or up. Why? Because in these villages people have learned to be ambiguous to protect their own interests. There's no other way to protect your privacy. Yes, curiosity may have killed the cat, but it still hasn't killed the villager.
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