Social norms

I held back a slight snigger when I saw some Britons in the café inside Santa Bárbara Castle ask after their coffee and tea. The Fanta and whatever they were eating had arrived promptly enough but not the hot drinks. The server spoke good English. "Oh, sorry," she said. "I was going to bring them after you'd eaten." No Spaniard would think to have a hot drink alongside food except at breakfast.

And when is Spanish breakfast time? When we have house guests, breakfast is the first meal I worry about because there's very little probability that we'll be eating breakfast out. It's not the same for lunch. If we have eggs, bread and cereal, maybe, nowadays, porridge, along with a few extras: yogurt, milk, butter and the like, I reckon we can satisfy most British breakfast demands. For kedgeree and devilled kidneys, our guests will have to arrange something with Lord Emsworth at Blandings, and if our guests want overnight oats with soya milk, I can only presume that they are impostors. They're not the sort of people I'd know. But Spaniards don't really respect the etymology of the word breakfast. They don't always break their overnight fast when they get up. They might have a coffee, a bit of fruit, a biscuit—or nothing—but the real breakfast often comes later, with the almuerzo, as a mid-morning break.

Now, if you live here or come to the Spanish seaside here every year, you're probably disagreeing with me by now. And I'm certainly wrong about some people. But I'm not really wrong; it's just that generalisations always fall foul of the people who don't do what the majority do. If you want coffee with your chop and chips, most servers will bring it and you won't even realise you're doing something unusual. It's the same with, for instance, the rice labelled paella that is available in the evenings in tourist restaurants. Some people buy it. Not many, if any of them, will be Spaniards. Restaurants for tourists and restaurants where there are large immigrant populations will cater to their market. They will serve lunch while the locals are finishing their late breakfast or start the evening sittings when ordinary Spaniards are just going back to work for the second shift of the day.

Then there's the whole thing about eating in the evening. Holidaying Britons set out for a restaurant in the early evening. Spaniards eat out in the evening too from time to time, but not until most Britons would be thinking cocoa. And there is absolutely no doubt that the most important Spanish meal each day is lunch. When politicians retire, the story is always about the posh restaurant they retire to, to enjoy their first moments of liberty. When the DANA washed away large parts of Valencia, the Valencian president was enjoying a long lunch with an attractive female journalist.

Actually, in those posh restaurants—the ones with linen tablecloths and the wine parked on some small serving table just out of your reach—they take the cutlery away between courses and bring you fresh stuff. In menú del día places, if a customer leaves the cutlery aligned on the plate, the server will deftly rescue it and hand it back, or pop it back down on the table ready for the next course. The same knife and fork do the full meal.

Courses is a bit of a misnomer too. We Brits tend to order for ourselves: "I'll have the soup and then the roast veggies, please." It works like that for the menú del día here too, but it is so much more Spanish to put a few dishes in the middle of the table for everyone to share. And there's no real need to order one of the dishes we foreigners think of as a "main" if you just fancy a bunch of "starters".

And serviettes. I know, Mum, you want me to say "napkins", but I'm overwhelmed; they're servilletas here and the word is sticking. You get them in restaurants in the UK, of course, but they're not so institutional as here. Buy a cup of coffee in a Spanish bar and you'll probably use one; they're on the bars, on the tables. People at home setting the table will always have something to wipe their mouth with, even if it's just kitchen towel. Not using serviettes is odd.

Coffee, like beer, is generic. If you go for "a coffee" or "a cervecita", it doesn't necessarily mean you'll have that particular drink. The vermouth hour/the aperitivo may just as well be beer as vermouth, and if you like Coca-Cola (it's not "Coke" here), you might drink that at vermouth time. Oh, and it would be very unusual not to have some olives, nuts or crisps with the drink. Drinking, without nibbling, is also a bit foreign.

And, while we are on beer. In the UK, I'd always specify type and quantity: "A half of Guinness, please", "a pint of the Adnams". I'd never say, "Can I have a beer?" You can here. You can specify if you want, and it's very usual to ask for a quantity (una caña, un tanque, un tercio, or whatever), but if you just ask for "a beer", you'll generally be brought a half-pint-ish size lager.

And, obviously, you avoid the sun. There are times when you have no option and you have to park the car in full sun, but be ready for the paint to peel over the years and for the steering wheel to leave burn blisters on your thighs. As to "On the Sunny Side of the Street", that's strictly a Louis Armstrong thing.

There are plenty of other dead giveaways, of course. There is the tourist habit of ordering a jug of sangria, wanting to show that they fit in. Then there is the assumption that the bread dropped onto your table is free just because you didn't ask for it—it might be, but it often isn't, especially in smarter places. Obviously you want bread (some Spaniards will famously eat it with the dessert) but you can't presume it's a freebie. Oh, and there will be no butter unless it's a funny foreign place. Then there is the social crime of failing to greet a room when you walk into an office, small shop or bar (though I have to admit I still often forget), or, worse, launching straight into an order without acknowledging the server. And, finally, there are the holidaymakers and rich immigrants still stubbornly wearing shorts and summer gear in late October simply because it's mild, completely ignoring the fact that it is officially autumn and the locals have all pulled the scarves and pluma jackets out of summer storage.

I could go on, but I was after a quick, easy and light blog post, and I think that will do.