Tenemos mucho que celebrar

We have much to celebrate

Easter 2019 was the last time we had seen the Valencia apartment. The last time we had enjoyed one of our tastes of Valencian life. Then a long-term rental landed, then a pandemic landed. Then more tenants… until there was eventually a chance to visit as 2021 drew to a close.

After much debate around Covid, testing, travel restrictions, the state of Manchester Airport, Spanish Covid measures, etc, we decided late in the day that we were going to take our December 31st flights and get back there. We felt how important it was to celebrate how lucky we are to have this home. A place in this great city.

A visit lasting from December 31st-January 10th takes in 2 great celebrations: Nochvieja (New Year’s Eve, “out with the old, in with the new” and all of that) and the big celebration of Los Tres Reyes Magos on January 6th.

If there are celebrations to be had, then Valencia is the place to have them. In doing some very brief research, I uncovered various versions of the generally accepted reputations (N.B. not necessarily my views or experiences) of the inhabitants of the 17 Spanish regions. Some of the more well known might be:

Andalucia: funny, a bit lazy, talk a lot.
Cataluña: Want independence* and don’t want to spend any money, ever.
Aragón: Brutish, shout a lot, stubborn.
Asturias: Nationalists, drink a lot.

Every region has it’s own reputation, and to avoid perpetuating regional stereotypes any further, I won’t list any more. 

As for Valencians, I have seen them described as the nice version of Catalans, but this seems a little churlish. More famously, Valencians are known to be funny, proud people who just love to party. Shit, do they know how to celebrate. You only have to hear stories from the huge March Fallas festival to know that a sleepless week of drinking and seemingly lethal pyrotechnics is well within their remit.

The climax of Nochevieja would normally be a large crowd in Plaza Ayuntamiento cheering incredible fireworks and chomping down on 12 grapes (one for each chime) and plenty of cava, to see in the New Year. Sadly, the Ministerio de Sanidad had no choice but to order the closure of Plaza Ayuntamiento to prevent large crowds.

Nonetheless, our dinner that evening was a delight. In the height of the Covid crisis, I had made a modest financial contribution to help a favourite restaurant have much-needed income when closed due to the restrictions. As well as genuinely wanting to help, I’ll admit to a selfish motivation in wanting to see this special place open on our next visit. Mercifully, so it was. The owner showed his gratitude, making our evening special. The amazing Italian/Spanish food hadn’t faltered, and his welcome and warmth made it a celebration. The restaurant had been able reopen, and he and his staff still had jobs. His excellent wine was not the only thing that gave a warm feeling inside.

(We returned a week later. The welcome was the same, the food still amazing. The limoncillo was repeatedly pressed into our welcoming hands with increased enthusiasm).

Without the Plaza Ayuntamiento to go to, we made it home in time to see the Nochevieja fireworks from the balcony. The roof may have been better, but it was occupied by our neighbour and his extended family. We had already had some contact with this likeable vecino and his little dog on earlier visits, and as he has just become El Presidente of the Communidad de Propietarios, we let him have the roof.

The "barrio"

In typical style, spectacular fireworks continued for over an hour, and some long into the night. An apartment opposite partied until after 6am. You should celebrate when you’re young and you have a guitar. 

This appears to be an appropriate time to take stock of the things we
have to celebrate so far, for there are already many to be grateful for:

• Welcome and respectful tenants
• Being lucky enough to travel at short notice, despite everything
• Our home in Valencia
• Valencia itself
• The hope and optimism of a New Year
• Valencians
• Warm and friendly hosts and their excellent food and wine
• Affable and influential neighbours
• Fireworks done properly

We set about re-acquainting ourselves with the apartment. We explored it once again, and looked closely to see how it had changed, how it had been used. We set about re-acquainting ourselves with Valencia also. Felt like it was OK to get a bit touristy. Shopped a bit. 

We loved the now pedestrianised Plaza Ayuntamiento. We’ve always loved this huge square with the Town Hall and the incredible Edificio de Correos building, but without traffic, it’s so much better. The winter light treated the architecture with a more delicate reverence than the summer glare. We also loved the reassuring permanence of El Corte Inglés around the corner**.

Having had quite a high occupancy during the many months since our last visit, the apartment certainly showed it had been lived in, but not in a bad away. 

We found things left behind that linked us to our tenants and their stories: A travel card for Bucharest used as a bookmark. Mail for a Spanish doctor. Left-behind notes made in web publishing seminars, with Portugese names and references. I like the diverse nature and nationalities of our tenants. Now that we have had news of a new tenant for mid-January until mid-February, this our list of Nations, in chronological order:

Spain
UK
Malta
Ireland (we think)
Romania
Brazil (but with acquired Spanish citizenship?)
The Netherlands

For me, this is something to celebrate. I love that diversity. I love that in our tiny part of a country like Spain, a modest place can welcome diverse nationalities and backgrounds, different occupations and lifestyles, different people in different situations, with different needs, wants and ambitions.

"Before our race, nationality, or religion, we are all human beings. Let's celebrate our differences and not fight over them."

Rosie Fellner 

The rastro has moved. Fortunately I had checked this before we set off. The Sunday morning rastro (fascinating flea market/antique sale/place to buy knock-off stuff) is now held on a wide corner plot close to the Cemeterio de Cabañal, having been previously held in the Mestalla football stadium car park. An hour or two (with a mindful hand on your phone and wallet) picking your way around the rastro is a Sunday morning well spent. All the while you resolve to come back and find a use for that huge mirror and those hefty antique ceramics, which will not be there when you return, of course. In any case, you have no practical means of transporting them back to your apartment, it’s just the simple pleasure of browsing.

Then a meander through the Cabañal towards the Marina de Valencia for beers in the sun and paella, como siempre. The Cabañal used to be a characterful, attractive area in a gritty, doggedly authentic kind of a way. This is the old fishing quarter of Valencia where we would only really visit for the Easter parades and a particular favourite restaurant.

But how it’s transforming, now that it’s free from an old threat of ruin prescribed by a previous Town Hall regime. With no loss of character, buildings are restored and cleaned and painted with taste and style. Weaving through the small, quiet streets to Calle Reina, you get a sense of regeneration and a real drive to improve. Coffee and pastries on Calle Reina for half the price of the city centre, and on to the Marina de Valencia, past the visiting circus (gasps of delight from the audience inside) and onto the F1 track towards the Veles Y Vents*** building and the comfortable restaurants & bars beyond.

The Veles y Vents building basks in the sunshine.

Valencia's weather was a world away from the 2nd January we normally shiver through over 2000km to the North. Veles Y Vents shimmered its sparkling whiteness in warm sunshine, now a building very much in use with restaurants and bars in and around it. After sunshine drinks, a long lunch and the sleepy trip home.

And there’s another thing. The long lunch. In the UK, this may now only be the preserve of the privileged few, and we should claim it back. We mused over the latter part of another long lunch later in the visit that this is something that many people could do well to make a habit of. The type/amount/quality of the food and/or drink does not matter. What matters is taking your time. You don’t need to finish lunch to go and write that email right now. You don’t need to go and buy that “vital” thing right now. You don’t need to wash these things up right now. You don’t need to be in a particular place in the next 45 seconds. Take your time. Enjoy the open-endedness of it.

The Spanish have a lovely word: sobremesa. As in: “Los domingos la sobremesa hasta bien entrada la tarde”. “On Sundays table talk was prolonged until late in the afternoon”.

You’ll see sobremesa around the tables in La Pepica on a Sunday afternoon. Large, extended families of 4 generations enjoying each others company and talking (all at the same time) over tables laden with glasses, desert plates and coffee cups. The waiters won’t disturb it or press them to pay the bill… they know it’s important. Let’s do that more often.

Yes, they'll bring gifts if you've
been good. But no parade.

But the build-up to Los Tres Reyes Magos was gathering pace. Traditionally in Valencia (and in much of Europe) the festival of Epiphany on 6th January is celebrated as the day those 3 Wise Men handed over those famous gifts to His Lordship. Now, children in much of Europe are given gifts on this date, and it’s a celebration equivalent to our Christmas.

In Calle Colon and the hallowed halls of El Corte Inglés on the 3rd, 4th and 5th January, it was possible to see children on the very brink of hysteria with excitement at the thought of the gifts that were to come. There was stamping and screaming. There was jumping up and down, in the way excited kids do. There was wailing, and the occasional disturbing growl. It’s rumoured that one child did actually implode with excitement on the up escalator between floors 4 and 5 of one of the countless El Corte Inglés department stores that there are in Valencia, but this story has not been verified.

Suffice to say that Los Tres Reyes Magos has all the familiar trappings of our own Christmas where children are concerned, and everything else besides. The afternoon of the 5th would normally see the Cabalgata de Los Tres Reyes, a parade all the way from port to city centre featuring the 3 Kings throwing sweets to the kids and generally being more than generous. Covid had sadly seen this parade cancelled for 2022, replaced by an event in the bullring so that families could gather to see the 3 superstars who would normally be dispensing their gluten-free delights from floats in the parade.

I failed to see how this was safer, but then I’m not the Ministerio de Sanidad.

Despite this, all the rituals of the celebration went right ahead. You’ll see the Roscon de Reyes in bakeries everywhere, and people queue to pick up their pre-ordered ones on the 5th. This super-sweet, cream-filled cake shaped like a huge bagel is a vital part of the 6th January celebrations. Each will be presented with a golden paper crown on top, and the family will eat this for breakfast.

In a similar way to traditional Christmas pudding, various objects will be baked into this cake, the key ones being a figure depicting the king and a black bean or haba. The lucky one with the King in their slice is “King for the day” and waited on hand and foot. If you get the haba, it’s your job to provide next year’s Roscon… a very important task.

Apartments all around us were full of celebrating families on the evening of the 6th. People with multiple family visits to make flitted through streets to the next relative, carrying gifts and perhaps another Roscon, and this continued into the 7th for those not attracted to the inevitable rebajas. We’d seen enough of El Corte Inglés to resist the sales.

So, perhaps a second reflection on things we have to celebrate, for the list is growing:

• The global village
• The simple joy of browsing
• Regeneration and renewal
• The benefits of exploring away from tourist central
• The Mediterranean climate
• Paella****
• The long lunch
• The innocent excitement of children
• Gift-giving
• Cake for breakfast
• Families

Our final weekend hove into view, and we enjoyed the Friday-night dinner with added limoncillo mentioned earlier, and another sunny visit to La Marina de Valencia and Las Arenas. Many Valencians were squeezing out the last drops of the midwinter celebration that they will have first thrown themselves into back in late December, but it will be back to work on Monday at the same time as we would be heading back to the UK.

Las Fallas soon folks. Then Easter. Much partying to be enjoyed, real soon.

As well as the revellers, we observed the restaurant owners and workers. The cooks, the taxi drivers, the workers on the tranvia and metrovalencia, the shop workers, the mechanics, the cleaners, the street sellers, the worshippers in the Cathedral. The old people in the streets, perhaps looking a little scared. They’ve been getting on with it, wearing masks everywhere the whole time without complaint. Checking Covid passports at every bar and restaurant door without complaint. Complying with changes to Covid measures and adapting without complaint.

What we saw in them was enormous resilience.

Everyone has been through a lot since this thing came along so many months ago and uprooted everything for us all. You often hear that phrase: “everyone’s been through a lot”, but it’s never been more true. Above and beyond the cosy things in my little lists above, what we need to celebrate is the incredible resilience and power that people demonstrate when living through adversity, through sacrifice, through the threat of joblessness, homelessness, illness, bereavement, bankruptcy.

It would be foolish to speculate when (or if) “normal” might return. It isn’t foolish to celebrate us, ourselves, humans, and what we can achieve under tremendous pressure.

Yes, we get a lot of things wrong, but let’s celebrate what we can achieve.
 

“Every day is a good day. There is something to learn, care and celebrate.”

Amit Ray

Vox not enjoying
whole-hearted support
in the Barrio del Carmen.

We’ll be back soon. Easter perhaps. Long summer holiday perhaps. Both perhaps. Hard to know, with the way things are.



* I have no wish to belittle things like the struggle for Catalan independence in such a flippant manner. I’m just falling back on regional reputations to make a point about Valencians.

** There is something so irresistible about El Corte Inglés that something illegal must be going on. A British associate of ours in Valencia once described it as “a bit like John Lewis”, but this is a woefully inadequate description. There is so much more to it. We are powerless to resist, as are thousands of others.

*** We were very happy to see this building in use. Built for the Americas Cup, it had seemed to have become a white elephant, much-bemoaned by some tax-paying Valencians as a huge waste of their money. It now has several restaurants, bars and event spaces within. And some life and vibrancy. What a relief.

**** Can of Worms alert:
The Valencians who care (and that’s almost all of them) will tell you that you can’t get real paella anywhere else. The peerless Valencian paella has chicken, rabbit and vegetables in it. And snails if you really want. The one you might get on the Costa del Sol, that turmeric-yellow thing with mussels and prawn-heads sticking out of it, is not paella. On top of all that, Jamie Oliver may also want to stick chorizo in it, bless him. A phrase has been invented to describe non-paella paellas: Arroz con cosas. Literally “Rice with Things”. There is arguably a place for this, but it isn’t Valencia.