PLASTIC CHAIRS AND WINE

There is a lot of talk these days about “Blue Zones,” areas of the world where life expectancies seem to be longer than average, and the Costa Blanca region of Mediterranean Spain is not among them. That said, life expectancies are long here, and the quality of life is pretty tough to fault. Without putting too fine a point on it, people enjoy themselves here, they enjoy the small things about daily life, and they just aren’t going to be pressed out of their comfort zone. Not for your hurry, not for your business, not for anything.

That makes things difficult sometimes, particularly for those of us raised in the hustle bustle workaday world of the United States. It takes some adjustment. Suppliers will not be rushed to supply things. Workers will not be rushed to complete tasks. Spanish bureaucracy is even slower than normal bureaucracy, and Costa Blancan bureaucracy is slower still. You might be driving through a small town, on a one-way, one lane road, and the vehicle in front of you may just stop, blocking everything, for the driver to chat with a friend on the street. And you need to just wait for that conversation to conclude naturally before continuing on your way. How long? Who knows? It’s a friendly chat! Five minutes, ten… a gentle toot of the horn elicits little more than a sideways look, like: “Can’t you see I’m having a conversation here? What’s your hurry?”

*The unassuming bar inside the municipal football pitch in Almoines, Spain.*

It’s chafing at first. You feel… blocked somehow. And some immigrants here from the USA or England or Germany never really come to grips with it. But come to grips with it you must, because if you want to enjoy your life on the Costa Blanca you need to let a lot of your old ways go. You need to learn to slow down a half a pace and smell the orange blossoms. Because if you do, suddenly life on the east coast of Spain starts to make a whole heck of a lot of sense.

COFFEE (GASP)… TO GO?

Nowhere, perhaps, is this attitude more arrestingly different than when it comes to eating and drinking. Food and drink is a religion here. A religion based on quality of ingredients and time spent - no, invested - in consumption. You will never see someone walking briskly down a sidewalk, quickly sipping on a 30 oz. “to go” cup of coffee, or hastily gnawing on a sandwich behind the wheel of their car in traffic. These things are simply NOT DONE here. You want a coffee? Fine. Sit down and calmly enjoy your coffee like a civilized human being. Want a sandwich? No problem. Pull up a chair and someone will make you a sandwich. It’s not that you can’t get a sandwich to go, you can. It’s possible. But no one actually does it. Because rushing the process of producing these things or consuming them is tantamount to insulting the experience and enjoyment they provide. And that is an affront to the religion of food and drink on the Costa Blanca.

*Where the magic happens in Almoines, Spain.*

I was reminded of this today, because I traveled to watch my 12 year old play soccer (“futbol.”) I always enjoy the away matches, because while he rides inside the team bus I follow along behind, rarely entirely sure where I am going, and after meandering around on back roads through expansive orange groves, up one side of a mountain, down the other, we invariably arrive at some tiny, one-horse Spanish pueblo I have never had the pleasure of visiting, and probably never will again. Sometimes charming and beautifully tended, sometimes scruffy and downtrodden, but always with a glorious old church in the center and a small square surrounding it, peppered with bars and restaurants.

But on these trips, we don’t visit the church square. We drive straight to the football pitch. And this is where things always get interesting…

Every one of these football fields, everywhere I have visited in Spain, has a small bar inside the grounds. What would be a “concession stand” in the USA. And every one of them looks like a typical American concession stand. A simple counter with candy and bags of potato chips on display and large coolers of Coca-Cola and Powerade visible. That’s where it begins, but it’s not where it ends, because although some of these places are prettier than others, they all serve food and drink. Not microwaved, processed fried cheese sticks and Sprite. I’m talking about proper food and drink.

This morning we were in Almoines, a small town to the interior of Oliva, Spain. There is nothing particularly memorable about Almoines, it’s a small, peaceful, working-class pueblo like many others in the area. And the bar next to the pitch wouldn’t turn your head, believe me. Heavy plastic wind shades, a naked concrete floor, empty wood pallets seemingly discarded in one corner, an aging shopping cart half-full with an assortment of wine bottles in the other. A weird looking built-in towards the back with some red hot coals smoldering away, untended. Not… promising.

But inside this humble little hut, with the sounds of kids playing soccer wafting in through wind shades, they’ll make you some freshly cooked, individually prepared food, made nice and slow, by one person, from fresh and locally-sourced ingredients, that will knock your goddamned socks off.

I ordered a “bocadillo” (sandwich) of scrambled eggs with bacon and cheese and a cafe americano, and pulled up a plastic chair to wait.

It took a solid fifteen minutes for my food to be ready, but the coffee came out in just three or four, and it was a classic, dark roast with exceptional flavor and just the right amount of froth on the top. While I sipped it and glanced around, I saw food coming out to other parents. Sandwiches with roasted pork filets, huge chopped salads, plates of fresh grilled sausages… Plus glasses of beer and bottles of wine on every table. (And this at 10:00AM, mind you.) In the corner a young woman sat with a huge crate of lettuce heads, onions, carrots, tomatoes and more, ceaselessly chopping everything and preparing plates, one by one. Every plate was paper, but every salad was fresh and local. Every table was chatting away animatedly, laughing, joking, pouring wine and toasting repeatedly… thoroughly enjoying themselves.

*The wine rack is unprepossessing, but stocked with sufficient quality.*

Fifteen minutes later my food arrived. A huge bocadillo on freshly baked baguette, two freshly scrambled eggs, three big strips of bacon, sliced manchego… A second plate came with it, with a fresh iceberg lettuce, chopped onions, a handful of tomato wedges, julienned carrots, a selection of olives, and topped with a big, juicy padron pepper. And a third bowl full of beans. And a fourth with peanuts in the shell.

Every table had a similar spread, and the noise and activity of the whole experience was infectious and happy.

THIS is why Spaniards live a long time. This, right here. It isn’t yogurt or walking a lot, although those things help too. It isn’t free healthcare or sea salt. It’s this. It’s this attitude about eating and drinking. It’s this demand for locally grown food, prepared by hand, washed down with quality wine and beer, and enjoyed with good friends, at great leisure and accompanied with as much animated conversation as humanly possible, even in the dingiest little concession stand in the most forgettable little one-horse pueblo in a forgotten corner of coastal Spain.

And that doesn’t suck.

How much did it all set me back? Four fifty. And it would have been maybe a buck extra if I wanted half a bottle of wine or a beer.

I got up and wandered out, because my son’s match was getting ready to start. I walked up to the counter to pay, and two old men were there, essentially in the way. Big guys, and quite old. Smoking cheroots and sipping on giant snifters of brandy. Cheerfully arguing about the chances of Valencia’s team making the Champions League this year. They were taking up the entire counter, just the two of them, essentially making it impossible for me to get past them to pay my tab. I could have muscled past them, I suppose. Or tapped them on the shoulder and said: “Perdon.” But I didn’t. I mean, what’s the hurry, right? I just waited patiently, taking in the sights and sounds around me, and after a few minutes they finished their conversation and ambled slowly away, carrying their snifters of cognac with them and one pointing something out to the other. I don’t know where they were going. Maybe nowhere.

No big rush.