Realising there's still a long way to go

Now when we first arrived here, and ever since, I determined not to be too British. I am British, I will always be British. I'm fine with being British. I understand why Britons living in Spain watch Eastenders, why we still get our news from tried and tested sources "back home," why we continue to eat at "sensible" times. In short why our reference points are the systems we were brought up with. Nonetheless, living in Spain, I thought I should find out about the place and try to merge into the background. Of course, you, one, can't. I don't do socks and sandals but I'm obviously British. If I'd had children here, they would have been a different class of Briton. They'd watch the same TikTok as their contemporaries in school, they'd read the same comics, not see anything strange about pizza carbonara, like the same brands of biscuits and speak the same language as their peers. They might speak my language too and even have a British passport, but their first language, and most of their their reference points, would be the ones all around them.

In reckon it's the language that's the biggest stumbling block to us immigrants. I've been engaged in close combat with Castilian Spanish for years. I probably speak Spanish that's grammatically inferior to a five-year-old Spaniard, but I have the advantage of a largish vocabulary and a lot more life experience to get me through. Having some Spanish means that I can read and understand things here, that I can listen to the radio and podcasts, watch TV, films, and videos, and even talk to people. My understanding often fails, my conversation habitually so, but I have enough language to have garnered a reasonable amount of information about what's going on, about history, about things Spanish, in general.

I've said before that it's quite easy, well, at least there are tried and tested methods, to learn about things Spanish. The problem is that lots of our knowledge isn't purposefully learned, it just seeps in. I never wanted to learn the words to Tie a Yellow Ribbon or Jerusalem, but I know them. How do you learn to recognize the cultural equivalents of Gerry Marsden, Shirley Bassey, Fanny Craddock, Blur, Depeche Mode, Kazuo Ishiguro, Enid Blyton, Gary Glitter, Lenny Henry, Rolf Harris, Vivienne Westwood, Pat Phoenix, or Kate Adie? Why do I know about The Last Night of the Proms and the Open University or that Port Vale is a football team from Stoke? I was reminded of the knowledge I still lack, knowledge that I will probably never gather, when I was at the San Isidro cavalcade in Yecla and then in Elda for the Moros y Cristianos.

For the San Isidro parade, there are floats, and each float is escorted by a charanga, the slightly chaotic, informal bands that are as chalk to cheese to the uniformed, well-drilled town bands. The atmosphere was festive, there were a lot of empty wine bottles and beer cans on the floor. The bands were banging out Here we go, here we go type songs. I was repeatedly, briefly, roped into the throng surrounding a passing float. They offered me drink, they offered me food, they invited me to sing along. In Elda we were almost at the end of the route watching the Moros in their full regalia. As the various comparsas approached the finish line the bands played a tune and the members of the groups sang vigorously. Often sections of the crowd joined in. 

In neither case did I know the songs or the tunes. Not my town, not my culture, not my people. 

Still so much to learn!