Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I wrote week or so ago that an astonishing 62% of Spaniards prefer to deal with their personal affairs face-to-face, instead of via snail-mail, phone or the internet. Actually, it should have been 72%. Talking about this to the five teachers of English I meet of a Monday evening, I asked how working couples could do this, as the banks and bureaucrats tend to be open/available only before midday. The first comment was that many people in Pontevedra work as civil servants and so can easily take a break of an hour or more each morning. The second comment - even less surprising - was that parents/parents-in-law are often roped in for this. So the face-to-faceness can, in fact, be rather vicarious. Of course, this in only possible if you don’t move away from your place of birth and so can rely on your family to do your errands (recados) for you. As, indeed, is the case for most Spaniards, I believe. Though I do know some ambitious, hard-working folk who’ve moved far from home in search of employment which will allow them to achieve their full potential. As you’d expect, these qualities tend to go together. Staying where your family lives certainly represents the easy option.

Another way in which the Spanish family has become relevant recently is in understanding the absence of serious protest against the high unemployment rate (now nearing 20%). Many of the job losses will have hit ‘young’ people (up to 35 in Spain) who are on temporary contracts. If they were not already still living with their parents, there’s always the option of moving back in with them. So the economic impact of a downturn is less than it would be in other cultures. And not necessarily just Anglo Saxon ones. This is good but also bad and I sometimes wonder whether the close family isn’t both Spain’s greatest strength and its greatest weakness - in that it allows harsh realities to be ignored and solutions postponed. Which even the Spanish will tell you is something of a national trait. Perhaps things will change when the easy funds stop flowing from Brussels. If they ever do.

At a lower level, I went to pay my parking fine yesterday and asked whether the category of non-serious offence actually existed. Yes, the young lady. Asked what the criteria might be, she replied gnomically “It depends.” Mostly on the state of the municipal coffers, I imagine. Incidentally, the payment of this fine was a good example of how sometimes here you have no choice but to waste an hour of your or a relative’s time. The only two options were going to the office of the collection agency or or the Post Office, to queue for a giro cheque to send them. But, then, time here isn’t what it is elsewhere.

Pondering on where the municipal revenue-raisers might strike next, it occurred to me that my border collier, Ryan, doesn’t have the compulsory microchip. As he’s getting on for a century in human terms, I’m wondering whether the 70 euros ‘sacrificio’ vet fee wouldn’t be a good bet.

Just joking. But please don’t tell him. An old border collie always knows how to make your life a misery. Even when you’re in his good books.

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