Our Andalucian paradise

I have always been of the opinion that we ought to enjoy the small pleasures that life offers. If we hold back for the big delights, the large victories and the jump-out-of-the-cake surprises, we might end up waiting forever. So, in the meantime, I cherish each passing smile, enjoy every miniscule blessing, celebrate even the tiniest victory and treasure life’s mini-wonders.

Living in rural Spain, our life is filled with such small pleasures – Waking up to the bells of half a dozen sheep grazing up the street, watching life go by from a stone bench in the local square, feeling a Mediterranean morning breeze on the skin, following a meandering trail through olives and almond groves, chatting to a neighbour about Andalucía’s past, pulling a hand through a sea of lavender, being greeted by first name at the local store, having a basket of newly laid farm eggs handed through the door with nothing expected in return, opening the window, instantly being immersed by the heady scent of honeysuckle and jasmine, slinking back to bed for a guiltless early afternoon siesta, picking up sun-dried bed linens after less than an hour on the line, enjoying a free concert of someone singing flamenco at a distant party, and sitting on the terrace after nightfall still in a sleeveless dress, watching the stars.

There are innumerable small pleasures such as these that fill our daily life here in Ronda and we discover more every day. Like many people, I enjoy going out for dinner, yet my favourite eating-out experience in Spain is a traditional Andalusian no-frills dasayunos.

Mornings in Spain are not complete without a coffee. A Spanish café con leche is nothing like a fancy Italian cappuccino or a tub-sized French café au lait. Nor does it taste like any of the coffees served by Starbucks in their poor excuse for environmental care recycled paper cups. The truth is that I didn’t even like coffee when we lived in North America, but this all changed when we moved to Spain. Recently arrived, my husband ordered a coffee at a café in old Málaga. The waiter slammed down a worn glass on the table, containing two finger-widths of black-as-my-soul espresso. He proceeded by sloshing in milk from a spotted stainless pitcher. It was all done quite unceremoniously and for that reason alone, I was fascinated. There was no inquiry about whether the client wanted the coffee extra hot, with a shot of vanilla or served in a special receptacle, nor were there any artistic leaf or heart shaped in the foam. The coffee was as basic as can be. And from that day on, I was hooked.

The second part of an Andalusian breakfast is bread. The dough is always white, but the shape may vary from a huge slice of tostada, a medium sized bollito or mollete bun, the smaller pitufo (Spanish for Smurf), or the baby of the bun family, a pulga, meaning a flee. As I am allergic to wheat, I bring my own bread, which thankfully they will toast without any questions asked, but the rest of the traditional breakfast process, I follow to a T.

Upon receiving their morning toast, locals will start stabbing the bread with a knife, followed by drowning the whole thing in olive oil. This is the same oil that sits on every table, certainly in every rural Spanish café and restaurant. Some of the braver locals rub cloves of raw garlic into their toast, while some go straight for the salt, shaking their heart out. Others, like myself, douse their bread in freshly blended tomatoes, another staple in every Andalusian café.

One can of course go more advanced and add zurrapa, a spreadable lard and meat concoction, but I prefer to stay with the basics - oil, tomato and salt, which make the most divine symbiosis in the mouth. Nothing can improve on this simple Andalusian breakfast. It is the most rudimentary campesino food Andalucía has to offer and something everyone has access to, usually from their own plot of land. It is heavenly, Mediterranean and dirt-cheap. Whether you eat at a truck stop or a downtown café, this authentic breakfast will usually put you back less than three euros, including tip, and, I swear, there is no small pleasure like it.

As my list of daily joys keeps growing, one item will always remain - going to Bar Sanchez for breakfast. Located just inside Ronda’s old defensive wall, it is one of those completely unpretentious joints with less than a dozen tables in and out, where one immediately feels at home. Run by Juan and his wife Loli, their menu might not be the most extensive in town, but everything comes out freshly made and everybody is made welcome. Whilst downtown Ronda is steaming with tourists, you can still have a peaceful morning coffee at Juan’s, possibly accompanied by a few regulars, having their first hit of Anís before heading off to the fields. We usually stop by in the morning, on our way home from our community garden, just as Juan brings out his tables. Albeit a muddy pair, all we have to do is ask him for ‘the usual’, and less than a minute later two glasses with café con leche get brought out to our table. People can say what they want, but the good life is all about embracing these small pleasures.

As the weather gets hotter here in Spain, I immediately long to escape to my native Scandinavia. 45 degrees Celsius is not a temperature we Vikings generally thrive in, at least speaking for myself. Last year, it got so bad that I suggested that my husband and I look for a volunteer job protecting icebergs on Greenland for the months of July and August. No offers came.

This year, I booked my trip in the early spring of this year, arranging to spend part of July in the refreshing north. Then came May. While we in Andalucía had downpours and freezing nights, Norway experienced an unseasonal heat wave. We still hadn’t put away our winter woollies in Ronda, as Oslo’s temperatures exceeded 30 degrees and they could boast of being the warmest capital in Europe. Things cooled down a bit in June, but by July, when I left for northern latitudes, it was basically as hot there as in southern Europe. Pity Scandinavians who had booked their annual trips to bask on the Costa del Sol, as their neighbours back home would get just as tanned, with less crowded beaches and cleaner water.

I can say one thing for certain about my country fellows - we love immersing ourselves in seawater for any occasion, practically all year long. The Norwegians fondness for the ocean blue hit new heights this summer, as I saw people diving in right downtown Oslo harbour and then plopping down to soak up some rays on any available piece of grass, terrace, pier or even public boardwalks. I too jumped in from my mother’s fjord flat, where environmental programs have made the water cleaner than for the last fifty years.

The only one who didn’t swim was my mother. Granted, she will be 88 this fall so she does have a valid excuse, though age doesn’t seem to stop some of the old keeners in her building. I tried to convince mom to join me, but she declined, preferring to enjoy the sea from the safe distance and comfort of her terrace.

One evening, after my 5^th dip in the fjord, my mother told me how she learned to swim. I have heard her stories my entire life. In my younger days I listened with half an ear, not really that interested. Lately, I have paid more attention, as I know that she might not always be there to share them. Her stories have become increasingly precious to me and I consider them the greatest gift she can share with us, her offspring. This one, a story from 1944, was one I had never heard before.

My mother was born in 1930. Since my maternal grandmother was paranoid of the ocean, thinking one could drown by merely looking at it, my mom would never have been allowed to wade in above her ankles as a child. Therefore, at the start of the Second World War, mom still didn’t know how to swim. She was almost ten when the German’s invaded Norway in the spring of 1940. For the years to follow, she dreamt of owning a bicycle, so she could bike to one of the bathing spots along the fjord in the summer, but she had to wait several years after the war (there was rationing into the 50’s) before she got her first, well-used bike. Thus, life wasn’t exactly a beach.

During the war, everything was rationed, from milk to petrol to fabric. While fashion styles got increasingly less voluminous due to lack of materials, the clothing stamps the families received were used for essentials, or traded into food stamps. As things got scarcer and scarcer, flower gardens were converted into potato fields, shoes were made from salmon skin and old curtains became the only way of having a new spring dress. I still have my grandmother’s tattered Kitchen Almanac from 1938, which she not only used as a cooking diary during the five years Norway was occupied, but also scribbled down her annual production of homemade black current jam and her Christmas baking all the way up to 1985, merely a coupe of years before she died. The almanac is a true testament to her generation’s thriftiness. When my mother prepared for her confirmation in 1943, clothing stamps were saved for months so the families of the confirmed teens could communally purchase a roll of fabric, enough to make a cloak for each. Compared to the fortunes spent on dresses, gifts and parties today for confirmations or the Spanish equivalent, la Primera Comunión, the class of 1943 had a true confirmation of faith.

As the war continued, my mother still didn’t know how to swim, that is until the gloomy summer of 1944. It was decided that all students in town had to know how to swim and that those who didn’t were to be given swimming lessons. Basically one had no choice in the matter. Even with my grandmother’s protestations, the kids were going in, come hell or high water.

Needless to say, my mother didn’t own a bathing suit. Such a frivolous luxury item wasn’t readily available, even if one had the money or the stamps to purchase one. During the war, mom had shot up and was at this point the tallest girl in her class, and having far surpassed even the lankiest of the boys. My grandmother, on the other hand, was a tiny woman. So when a bathing suit had to be found for the obligatory swimming lesson, mom had no other option than to borrow her mother’s by then probably dated, ill-fitting swimsuit.  

In addition to the perils of war, the lack of food, the fear of bombs and Nazi traitors, the ‘war summers’ as my mom calls them, were also freezing cold. The students were asked to show up on a beach in the in inner harbour. Mom needed to walk through the town to get to the lesson, surly not thrilled at having to learn to swim together with children who were much younger than herself. By then, she had started walking hunched over to appear smaller, so German soldiers wouldn’t bother her. Understandably, I have no photos of mom from the time, as cameras and film rolls were only for the privileged few, but I have dug out some bathing fashion from my grandma’s old fashion magazines from the 1930s-40s to set the mood.

The ‘beach’ the students were to meet at was not a beach in today’s sense of the word. First, our town was then an important industrial centre, known for its shipping, whaling and petroleum industries. Even 30 years later, when I was a kid, the inner fjord often looked like a zest pool. Secondly, there would likely have been German war ships in the harbour with guns and canons facing in every direction. Third, the beach would contain more boulders and sharp rocks than course sand, many likely covered with oil slicks. The water would also have been floating with seaweed, in addition to an assortment of the three species of jellyfish we used to have. I can just imagine the scene - a handful sporty male gym teachers and several dozen pale, skinny children in borrowed bathing suits having to enter that water on a cold, grey summer day in 1944.

Many years later, when we were cleaning my grandparent’s house and emptying their attic, I found one of my grandma’s old bathing suits. It was a threadbare curiosity that nobody in the family except myself would even dream of saving. Back to Andalucía after returning from my trip, I went looking for it. Maybe it wasn’t the same one my mother learned to swim in, but there it was. Kept as a time capsule in an antique valise, together with a hand-sewn bra from the 30’s, a threadbare Charleston dress from the swinging 20’s and a few other things that remind me of my stylish little grandma.

My mother did learn to swim in spite of the odds, tied with a rope that was attached to a pole held by the teachers (I believe my dad tried the same method on us kids a few decades later…) yelling instructions while the student’s teeth were chattering.

Can I blame my mom for not loving the sea?