Viva España

By AM Sunday, August 10, 2008

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Back home a week now, gazing out the living room window at the driving Irish rain I forlornly ponder that different worlds are separated by nothing other than 2 hours flight time. Last Sunday morning as I viewed the mizzle enveloping the street in front of me I was still trying to take it in that less than 48 hours earlier I had been swimming in the Mediterranean with my wife and two children. At such moments I recall Tommy Gorman’s summation of the Irish weather – summer is on a Thursday this year.

The Coast of Mallorca is an ideal spot for stepping into warm seas. 8 years ago in the same spot myself and Sav, a friend from Ballymurphy, were being plucked from the Med having failed to land in the designated area while paragliding. We were probably less than sober and indifferent to our bad directional skills. It was he who, in an act of good judgement, introduced me to Mallorca as a holiday destination. Then my wife was around four months pregnant with our daughter. Now to watch the same daughter followed by her younger brother leap into the sea is an experience to be savoured.

Initially booked into apartments in Santa Ponsa, we stayed six days before moving onto Palma Nova. Santa Ponsa is hilly. Its narrow footpaths coupled with the speed of the motorised vehicles keeps parents of younger children constantly on their guard. Where we stayed there was little in the way of shade and the English language seems to be the only officially approved tongue in the resort for holiday makers. The joy of swapping sandy beaches for our four green fields is instantly doused by the sense that there must be no one left back in Ireland. The population of 5 million seems to have been lifted en masse and crammed into Santa Ponsa. Even the Spanish waiters have managed to acquire Dublin accents, having become naturalised denizen of Bally Ponsa.

Not being a culture vulture I have no problems with English as a spoken language. I am a creature of convenience: common currency, common language, both a useful foil against the tourist’s nightmare – chaos. But on holiday it is more exotic to hear something other than Dublin or Belfast brogues. Palma Nova fitted the bill. My wife took a taxi up to check the place out before we decided on making the switch.

Before setting out she trawled the net in search of more information. The chief complaint seemed to come from English people who griped that the hotel we were considering moving to had too much shade around the pool. Moreover, the food was served up with a French palate in mind. And, of course, the place was overrun by French and German people. That pointed to one conclusion – all the more reason to go. When we arrived there was only one downside; the apartments across the street from our hotel housed the English and they were only too eager to announce their presence via bullhorn and tuneless football chants accompanied by idiotic roars. The only prompt they needed was an urge to be heard or noticed. Where we stayed, to the polite resonance of merci and bonjour, it was, as the French might say, ‘magnifique’.

We are hardly strangers to Spain, although we are more inclined to locations other than resorts. Children and resorts, however, seem to hit it off so with them in mind choice of location is restricted. Toward the close of 2000 my wife and I spent almost a week in Madrid. It was a beautiful city and by late October the sun god has reclined having sated itself on the burnt skin offerings proffered to it as obeisance during the summer months. Paradoxically, despite all that is said about its heat, Spain also provides me with a memory of my coldest experience. Zaragoza in November was so bitterly cold I kept asking my Spanish friend if he was sure it was part of the same country which housed Madrid and Segovia.

Still, the Spanish weather does not suit me. I don’t do that type of heat well. The humidity is the problem and it always seems to be invigorated rather than suppressed by the quaffing of beer. The weather in Ireland is more to my liking, even with its propensity for rain. When dry the Irish weather is unobtrusive, unlike Spain where its presence cannot be ignored. My daughter’s one complaint about Mallorca was simple – ‘too warm.’ My wife being from California had no bother with it.

Now back home, the place that only two weeks ago we were so eager to escape seems not just as drudging – even with its interminable rain.