Jesús, a pal, said to me the other day that he and his chums consider that there are three classes of "friends" - amigos, conocidos and reconocidos. Amigos are friends, proper friends, the ones you know well and may even lend you money if you were in a scrape. Conocidos are the ones you might drink or eat with and with whom you can have an extended and detailed conversation. Finally the reconocidos are the people that you vaguely know - the people you nod at in the street and who get a description rather than a name when mentioning them.
The official lists say that 7,966 people now live in Pinoso. Those same figures say that if we were to corral a representative sample of 100 people from the streets of Pinoso then 42 would have been born here, another 25 would have been born in Alicante province and another 18 in some other region of Spain. That would mean that something like 15 people in the sample would be foreigners. The biggest group of foreigners, by far, in Pinoso, are British. If I've got my sums right nearly 7 people from our sample would be Brits. Obviously there are stacks more Britons in Torrevieja, or Madrid, than there are in Pinoso but, as a percentage of the total population Pinoso ranks as the municipality with the fifth highest ratio of foreigners to home grown stock. Who knows, that may be why Vox (a right wing political party) made such a strong showing in the last General Election in Pinoso.
Considering that Pinoso is so small we have one surprisingly trendy clothes shop. Now I'm not but, for one reason or another I ended up in the shop on New Year's Eve. A couple of young women were in the shop gearing up for partying later that evening. I'd taught one of them a little English and the other works in a bar I frequent. The bloke in the shop was laughing and joking with them as he served. It was obvious he knew them. He knows me too, well enough to nod in the street at least.
In the local theatre just yesterday the man on the box office nodded in vague recognition before he sold us our tickets. Inside the theatre we nodded, smiled and waved in this and that direction and even had a couple of conversations with people; fleeting and superficial conversations in both Spanish and English but conversations nonetheless. On stage and in the audience there were other people we half knew and there were others who are small town celebrities - the bloke who organises the singing group, the woman from the cancer association, the local rally driver - butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. All around people were greeting and being greeted.
In the local theatre just yesterday the man on the box office nodded in vague recognition before he sold us our tickets. Inside the theatre we nodded, smiled and waved in this and that direction and even had a couple of conversations with people; fleeting and superficial conversations in both Spanish and English but conversations nonetheless. On stage and in the audience there were other people we half knew and there were others who are small town celebrities - the bloke who organises the singing group, the woman from the cancer association, the local rally driver - butchers, bakers and candle stick makers. All around people were greeting and being greeted.
In the Post Office today I asked who was last in the queue and exchanged a few words with the person who answered. He later had a conversation with a woman who was wearing a post office uniform. As she left the post office worker shouted across to Enrique, the chap who works behind the post office counter and who always calls me by name, "take care of him, he's my nephew". We all tittered.
There's an old woman who wanders the streets of Pinoso. I've heard that she's Romanian but I've never checked. Everyone knows her by sight. Just before Christmas I saw a car stop beside her. A man got out of the motor, handed the woman an envelope and a blanket, mouthed something, that may well have been Happy Christmas, and got back in the car. I suspect an act of generosity.
Small town life.
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