Tales from La Terraza

The following guest blog comes from Elizabeth Ellis, who submitted this piece to Fifth Estate through Authonomy.com 

Ahhh, beautiful blue skies and the temperature dial hitting 30C and it’s still only 8am. A light haze covers the mountains in the distance and it’s going to be another hot, hot day: a major challenge for any newcomer to Spain. Learning to live with the heat is one of the hardest parts of our new life in Madrid. For a start, there’s the important issue of what to wear. Being British, my wardrobe is the fashion equivalent of the Model T: any colour so long as it’s black.

Now I’ve had to wisen up and buy new, light-coloured clothes, like the Spanish. Not that it helps me to blend in. We are instantly recognised as the new “guiris” (foreigners, as in “dumb foreigners”) in the neighbourhood and our progress around the barrio is keenly watched to see what these “mad Brits” will get up to next. While I’m all for individuality, it can get a bit tiring at times so I was determined to follow Spanish fashion and fit in – checking out the other women in our local bar and taking their lead. They have long hair, so do I – now (well, it’s slightly longer than it was in the UK, a major achievement for this urchin-cut girl); they like little handbags, so do I; they like red trousers . . . ok, some things are beyond the pale. But I can cope with wandering around in cute vest tops with drawstring straps and gypsy skirts.

That was how I was dressed the other morning when I popped into my bakers for our daily bread (a task containing both pleasure and pain – pleasure in that the bread is fantastic, pain in the look on the baker’s face when I try to speak Spanish). Despite it being 25C at only 9am, the baker’s wife looked at me curiously. “Don’t you feel a bit chilly, just wearing that at this time in the morning?” she asked.

The Spanish like discussing the weather almost as much as the British.

I tried to make a joke about it feeling like a baker’s oven outside, but the perplexed look on their faces as I stammered my words made me turn my sentence into a simple “Not really”, and I headed back to the flat, bread in one hand, little handbag in the other.

Waiting at the traffic lights to cross (and feeling chuffed that I’d finally remembered to look the right way – as in the wrong way), I noticed a man wind peering at me from out of his window. “Señora,” he shouted, “It’s very hot. Do you have far to walk?” I shook my head and said I was nearly home. He asked if I was sure I wouldn’t like a lift, then drove off as I walked on, amazed at the kindness I constantly encountered in Madrid and smiling happily to myself as I happily swung my little handbag.

A few days later we visited La Terraza. Finding somewhere close-by to have a coffee or a cana had been important to us, but we’d had trouble locating one. In we would go, perch ourselves at the bar, only to get a look of disdain and a feeling that we were something the dog had dragged in. It took a little time to be welcomed at La Terraza, but finally Ged has been given a free lighter and I can go in by myself to work, read or just people-watch. Santi, the owner, grumpily teases us about having to turn his bar into a Spanglish-speaking one – winking as he says it – and the staff greet us when we bump into them in the street.

It was through Santi that I learned about Paul, a fellow Geordie, who lives in the next calle to us – we can even see his flat from our garden. We chose to live in Ciudad Lineal, a nice, well-to-do area outside the city centre, because it was so Spanish and at first didn’t want to mix with ex-pats, foolishly believing we could immerse ourselves in the Latin life. But after a while you feel the need to talk to someone with whom you share a common culture and language, and Paul quickly turned out to be a good guy.

He was in La Terraza, laughing with Santi, when we popped in and he invited us to join him. Intrigued by the giggling, I asked what the joke was. “Oh, Santi just had one of the girls in asking for a discount on their meals as they eat here so much,” said Paul. “He told them he would give them a discount if they gave him a discount. She wasn’t very happy.” We looked perplexed, and he explained: “You know – the ‘ladies of the night’ who live around the corner. It’s all legal here in Spain. Look, there’s a couple over there – with the small handbags. That’s how you can tell who they are.”

I looked at my tiny bag with horror, while Ged almost fell off his bar stool laughing. It’s since been relegated to the recycling bin and I’ve decided I’m happy being known as the guiri of the neighbourhood.

There’s a lot to be said about individuality, after all.

Elizabeth Ellis is a former journalist now eeking out a living as an English teacher and freelance journalist in Madrid. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Scotsman, Scotland on Sunday and Spain magazine, amongst others. Currently, Elizabeth is working on turning her blog into a book.