Club de lectura Maxi Banegas

For years and years I've been fed up that my Spanish isn't as good as it should be. It's always seemed to me that without being able to read, understand and speak Spanish we immigrants become perpetual tourists. Obviously some things get translated for us and they are accessible because the Internet makes them so but lots of stuff will sneak by if we are not able to understand the conversations of our neighbours, read about events or keep up with the current affairs type memes that pop up on social media.

I try to do something Spanish language most days. I have conversations with people on the Internet or I read a few pages from a book or learn a few words. I read and watch Spanish news, I listen to Spanish radio and other bits and bats. I'm also still on the mailing list for a couple of language learning websites too. One of them, a video blog, suggested that we should set ourselves a language challenge; do something that was a bit beyond our grasp - pushing the envelope as they used to say in my youth. Now it just so happened that, a couple of days after seeing that video, I went into Pinoso to see the unveiling of the balcony banners related to International Women's Day. One of the banners had been done by the local Book Club or Readers Circle, el Club de Lectura Maxi Banegas (Maxi Banegas was a poet and teacher from Pinoso). As I usually read books in Spanish, I thought, "why not?".

Bull by the horns time. I went directly from the square outside Pinoso Town Hall to the Cultural Centre which is where the library is, to ask about the book club. They seemed to think I was a bit strange, actually lots of people would agree but that's another blog! They told me I would be the only man - perhaps that was it. Maybe they were appalled by my very British accent when speaking Spanish but my take on that is that Bruno Tonioli's's Italian accent makes him cute to TV viewers so why shouldn't the same idea work for me?

Anyway they gave me a date for the club, a Wednesday of the next week. That meant a 270 page novel in eight days. Easy. The librarian seemed a bit shocked that I was willing to buy the book. Normally the library provides the books to the readers. In fact I bought the book in electronic format almost as I was talking to her. I find electronic books much easier to read than paper books, not because of any liking for the format but because the Kindle has a Spanish dictionary on it, so, when I get to a key word that I don't understand, I can look it up without interrupting the flow too much. 

I turned up the next Wednesday with the book, Aquellos tiempos robados, read. The club had been cancelled, apparently a speaker was expected and, because she was ill, the session was scrubbed. They hadn't really expected me to turn up so nobody thought to contact me. 

I have been to one meeting though. I was made to feel welcome and it was splendid that there was another Briton there. I was given a booklet which gave details of the books to be read by what dates along with author's biographies, sleeve notes and the like. Very professional. Speaking in Spanish, about a book in front of a group of about a dozen people is not as pleasant as drinking beer on a sunlit terrace but it wasn't humiliating. My Spanish may have been verging on gibberish but nobody sniggered openly. There's another meeting this evening, that makes three books I've read because of the club and all have been good, well chosen. I'm on to number four and the first few pages had me guffawing so I think it will be good too.

What's more I was able to go back to the video blog and report that envelope duly pushed.