Toda la vida humana está aquí

All human life is here:

A family from Serbia wanted to spend 3 months June-August in the Valencia apartment, to enjoy a full summer in Southern Europe and the experiences that go with it.

It always feels a little sad to not enjoy our summer holiday in Valencia, but we booked a small apartment in delightful Estepona again for our July/August holiday, and counted our blessings.

Then our Serbian family change their plans, and so did we: Cancel Estepona, book Valencia flights… Another Valencian summer holiday.

During the course of our travels and the holiday itself, I enjoyed 2 books:

 

Slow Trains Around Spain
A 3,000-Mile Adventure on 52 Rides
By Tom Chesshyre

 

A People Betrayed
A history of corruption, political incompetence and social division in modern Spain
By Paul Preston

 

Yes, this is the point where you judge me on my choice of reading (should you wish to do so) but I will elaborate on both choices out of some unnecessary need to justify:

 

Tom Chesshyre’s travelogue got my attention because of his deliberate choice of slow trains, and his meandering route through the maximum amount of Spanish towns and cities that could realistically be visited on his journey. The journey is less about the trains, and more about the individual journeys. And yet (for me at least) it’s more about the stops, the towns and the cities, and the people he meets, than it is about the journeys.

 

Paul Preston’s hefty Spanish history (specifically the period of the Borbón monarchy from King Alfonso XII in 1874 to the current King Felipe VI) theorises that the Spanish people have been comprehensively betrayed over time by their politicians, military and church. Preston demonstrates such impressive knowledge in supporting his theory through 700+ pages that it is hard to disagree.

 

So… on the surface, one book is about train travel, and the other is about history and politics. But they are both really about people.

 

We arrive in Valencia close to the end of July, and this means the final acts of the Gran Feria de Valencia.

Correfoc is a night-time parade through the streets in the city centre, and nobody who knows Valencia at all will be surprised to learn that fireworks are heavily involved. The participants are dressed as devils, and they shoot huge streams of sparks into and around the crowd. Firecrackers are thrown in the street, and there are fire-eaters and marching bands. As this is an “open” parade with no barriers, some of the onlookers will try to participate and get involved with the devils and their streaming sparks, whereas others will rush backwards with a scream.

It’s a contrast to the relative formality of a Mascleta, and the open nature of this street event, the participation and the perceived jeopardy* made it great fun for the first night of a visit.

The final act of the Gran Feria is La Batalla de Flores. I’d read about this event before, and seen many photos, so it was good to get a chance to experience it.

Along a stretch of the Paseo de la Alameda, a wide tree-lined avenue alongside the beautiful Jardin del Turia, a circuit had been laid out. The tarmac that normally hummed with traffic had been laid with sawdust, barriers had been erected, and the 2 elegant horses with uniformed riders that accompany many Valencian parades trotted furtively up and down. 

As the heat waned a little around 8pm, we found a place behind the sections of the crowd reserved for the family and friends of the participants… crates and crates of orange carnation heads stacked before them.

I felt a sharp elbow in my side, insistent enough to be more that what you might expect when standing in a crowd. A diminutive lady who had not been there when we arrived had delivered this elbow. It seems that she had chosen to stand behind and to the left of me, and then complain that she couldn’t see that parade that hadn’t started yet.

Without getting into a conversation about her choice of vantage point behind a 1.9 metre tall Ingles, I dutifully moved back to allow her to see. My little sacrifice (also known as an avoidance of conflict) did mean that I could allow 2 other people to move forward, so there were other winners here.

 

Women of a certain age in Spain can be challenging. There’s always an obvious solution however, because they’re always right. It’s everyone else that’s wrong.

Batalla de Flores began with huge, elaborate floats parading the circuit, pulled by sometimes straining horses covered in elaborate harnesses, decorative blankets and headgear in 30º heat. What was obvious (in a familiar kind of way) was the effort that had gone into creating these floats. They had themes such as ancient Egypt, Rome or the undersea world. This effort that is consistently put into these traditional events demonstrates the unshakeable pride in Valencian culture that’s shared by all.

On many floats, a dozen or so Falleras rode, and were all waves and smiles as if it were Fallas itself… taken by surprise every time the horses suddenly pulled up… then taken by surprise again, with a giggle every time the horses jerked forward once more. Other floats had the queens of other festivals in the region, groups of women enacting a beach scene, and groups of men in white outfits with panama hats. What all the float riders had in common was that they carried a tennis racket.

There was a sudden countdown, the paying guests in front of us dived into the crates of carnations, and threw them in thousands at the people on the floats. Everyone with a tennis racket tried to bat them back at the throwers, and it was delightful chaos for several crazy minutes.

The Benny Hill theme** seemed hugely appropriate during this joyful exchange. I’m not even sure if it was just in my head or actually played over the PA that had been announcing each float.

 

As the flower battle subsided, we walked away from the flower-strewn alameda, the beautiful traditional dress, the sweating horses, the pointy elbows, the joy and the laughter. We did as we often do after another unique experience… we shake our heads a little with smiles on our faces, filled with the joy of the whole thing.

 

July and August holidays mean beach. We catch the tranvia from the Sagunt parada which, despite its detour down Carrer d’Almassora to get passengers as close as possible to the old town, takes only 20 minutes to arrive at the 2 beach-side stops.

Stepping off the tranvia on Carrer d'Eugènia Viñes into the heat, you cross the street, head down the short Carrer dels Columbretes and step into the sudden feeling of space at the other side of Carrer de Pavia. You get your first sight of the beach and sea as you move into the huge space at the side of the Las Arenas Balneario Resort. When the ugly hotel is mercifully behind you and out of sight, your day on the beach has begun.

If you forgo the obvious comforts of sunbeds and their parasols, and if you can resist the many delights of any of the 16 quioscos that sit in a row from the start of Las Arenas all the way to Patacona… then the beach and the sun, and the breeze and the sea are free. And for this reason, toda la vida humana está aquí.

A big group of Spanish teens might carry only towels and a football for a great day out, whereas a 3-generation family might appear to be carrying the majority of the contents of their house on the tranvia, stacked on to a wheeled trolley for a day at Playa de la Malvarrosa. Families will tend to make camp (and they really do make camp) close to the sea, to avoid the hottest of the sand closer to the quioscos, whereas your average guest from the Las Arenas Balneario Resort may have cash to spend, and so will be tempted by the costly sunbeds and sombrillas, and make their way to the quioscos for lunch, ice-creams and mojitos.

The beach sellers move along the beach with cold beers, empanadas, pareos and football shirts. They’ll offer hair-braiding and henna tattoos. Their shouts and calls become familiar and they’re part of the fabric of beach life… until the police quad-bikes appear and they blend into the beach population with varying degrees of success.

 

We particularly noticed a strong presence of young European visitors this time… Scandinavia, UK, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, Portugal and Eastern Europe. At the start of one beach day, couple of young German lads had decided that they needed to shout very loudly to each other across the full 2 metres that separated them… until an older German lady intervened, and left them in no doubt that this wasn’t going to continue. But this was an exception. The way these young groups behaved and considered other visitors to the beach and right across the city was hugely impressive.

On the Wednesday of our 2^nd week, we had learned of a mascleta that had been planned in Aldaia, a town just west of the city. Not unusual, and “typical of Valencia” (as the beach quiosco team explained to many people afterwards) but this mascleta was going to be the “most powerful mascleta in history” as claimed by the city council of Aldaia… all part of the celebrations of Clavaris del Crist 2025.

We heard the familiar rumblings of the mascleta begin, develop, grow more intense. Some of the sunbed team had hands in the air to celebrate the glorious noise like we’ve all done during Fallas, and the mascleta’s power got people’s attention on the beach.

Then we noticed our 2 young beach-goer neighbours. These 2 young women had reacted to this distant noise with genuine horror, and we realized that if you didn’t know what this was, it sounded like something very bad was happening. They had their hands to their faces and were genuinely scared, almost in tears.

I told them it was OK. It was fireworks, it was a mascleta, it was what they do around here, and they must see one next time they can come back to Valencia, especially if they can come back for Fallas. But I don’t think they will.

 

That mascleta was 12km away from where we were sitting, and it provoked reactions like that.

 

Despite its charms, the beach isn’t Valencia… there is so much more. To meet and interact with people right across the city, from our street, through our barrio and into the streets that lead to the delightful Jardin del Turia. Across the bridges and into the Barrio del Carmen, Paseo de la Alameda, Porta de la Mar, Carrer de Colón, Carrer de la Pau (although the castellano name Calle la Paz suits this elegant avenue much better) there are too many fascinating streets and districts to mention, and definitely too many to visit in a 2-week holiday.

 

Our neighbours in the next apartment have a new dog. We shared the lift, but I didn’t want to get into a conversation about new dog replacing old dog… these things are sensitive. New dog is very cute, the elegant elderly lady neighbour is always very pleasant, and her elderly husband is still grumpy and smokes his cigar in the lift. But you know they are good people.

 

We pass the local cafés filled with those with whom we share the barrio. The barrio is changing, and it’s clear that immigration and population change are creating a genuinely positive diversity*** in La Saïdia and across the city. New apartments on Carrer de Salvador Giner have nudged the local bars into refurbishment and expansion, and there are new shops and businesses there, in a part of town that had seemed to suffer from being little more than a route into the Barrio del Carmen.

 

In the Barrio del Carmen, it’s hot and it’s busy. Café Sant Jaume remains the undisputed people-watching epicenter of the world, as the visitors and locals head into the barrio from the northern part of town as we did, or pour down Carrer dels Cavallers, or move up from the area of the Llotja de la Seda and the Mercat Central.

As ever, toda la vida humana está aquí. Affluent visitors from all over the world down Agua de Valencia and Aperol Spritz by the gallon… at the same time, down at Café Lisboa, a street guy tries to steal food from the tables****. An ugly confrontation with the staff is narrowly avoided as he reacts aggressively to them, but dashes away down an alley. Our polarized world is reflected in the melting pot of the Barrio del Carmen.

If you want to find everyday city life (and that’s what we originally signed up for after all) and you want to find the life that regular Valencians live from day to day, you can do no better than a) the supermarket and b) the metro.

 

Visiting the supermarkets on a regular basis, you would encounter some characters. On most mornings, we would see a pair of middle-aged Spanish women, each with the ubiquitous wheeled shopper bag. These women are not unique to that supermarket… they will be replicated in every supermarket in Spain and beyond.

 

You might say that they are robust specimens. Their constant expression is one of disapproval. Nothing appears to be to their liking, and everything is wrong because they say it’s wrong. On the very rare occasion that they struggle to find anything that’s wrong within the confines of the supermarket, they will describe at some length to the staff (and anyone else who is misguided enough to engage with them) about some things that are wrong immediately outside the supermarket. I’m going to call them Las Hermanas de la Desaprobación (but not to their faces). If a quiet life is your thing… give them a wide berth.

The elderly in Spanish supermarkets are an endearing bunch. As couples or singles, they plot their way round the aisles, they look for bargains, they look for quality, they look for staples, they look for treats, they take their time. If you get a little impatient, just remind yourself (especially if you’re me) that you’re not too far behind them when it comes to the relentless passage of time.

 

They’re an open book, in an unashamed kind of a way. They’ll place all the ingredients for their evening meal onto the checkout belt, and you know precisely what they’re going to have to eat. You know that the key ingredients have been selected with care. They’ll produce vouchers at the till, and they’ll fiddle about with cash like older people do, but it’s fine. They’ve earned the right to take their time… and no tenemos prisa.

 

The metro can be a rich source of encounters with some local characters. One Sunday morning, an elderly guy shuffled towards me at the Sagunt parada. He brandished a can of beer in one hand, and a travel card in the other. I didn’t understand his first request, although it was apparent that he needed some sort of help with the travel card, but was more than capable of dealing with the beer himself. It was hard to decide if he’d started drinking early, or just continued through from sabado.

 

Some travel on the Valencia Metro is free on Sundays, so my first attempt to help was: “es gratis los domingos”. Somewhere between my poor pronunciation and his poor hearing/inebriation, this opening effort failed poorly.

 

He came back at me with: “tengo dos viajes” (I think) and tried to cram his travel card into the wrong slot in the wrong ticket machine. I asked if he wanted to recharge his travel card, but this conversation was going nowhere. My poor Spanish and his Amstel consumption were an ineffective combination, and I was forced to leave him with a default opt-out that I try to avoid: “Lo siento, pero no entiendo”... although it was true. I hope he got to where he needed to be.

 

One hot afternoon on the way back from the beach, 3 people struggled onto the tranvia carrying some sort of kitchen appliance (perhaps a small oven) and dropped it indelicately onto the floor of the carriage, retreating to the seats immediately behind the driver’s glass-partitioned capsule.

 

When most of the passengers seated in that area then immediately got up and moved towards us, I began to suspect (already knew) that the effort of dragging that appliance to the parade had defeated the best efforts of the groups’ most recent application of deodorant. Which may not have been today.

 

I’ll be honest, I could smell them when they got on, and I could still smell them then, from 10 metres away. It was comical to see passengers get on to the carriage, go towards the seats close to the group, and do an abrupt about-turn when their noses did their work.

 

The group must have been nearing their stop, so moved closer to us and stood around their precious appliance, ready to lift. I was amused to notice one of them, in the middle of an irritable exchange with her 2 friends, check her armpits with that (not very subtle) tilt of the head towards the offending area, and a slight lift of the elbow.

 

At that moment, I am 100% sure that 20 or more other passengers desperately wanted to shout (in the language of their choice): “for fuck’s sake love, I can smell you from here!”, but that would not have helped.

 

A dreadlocked guy, travelling alone, furtively opening the tranvia doors and peering down every platform at every stop. We couldn’t help but notice this, and assumed that he was checking for ticket inspectors, until another guy joined him. The second guy had the demeanor of a big brother, advisor, a mentor perhaps. Their heavily accented English revealed that our furtive guy was acutely afraid of arrest due to immigration issues, and the “mentor” tried to reassure… “maybe, but that will be weeks, months, maybe years away… this is not Senegal.”

 

I can’t imagine what these poor people have to endure, just to find a life worth living.

 

We connected with the places and people that have become familiar… part of what is a true second home. Our favourite paella waiter remembered us again, and yet again enhanced our experience with his warmth and humour. Our Italian restaurateur friend plied us with the usual great food, and with mistela (visit #1) and limoncello (visit #2) and it was good to see his restaurant busy on our last evening... and as ever, we were welcomed at our local cafés.

Of course, there is change in the barrio and the city, and the vast majority of that change is for the better. We have new and refreshed cafés and bars, we have cleaner streets and refurbished buildings, we have an ever-diversifying population.

 

With 30-35º most days (although often humid in the evenings) we got lucky with the weather, where other parts of Spain suffered unbearable heat and serious wildfires. That extreme heat was to arrive in Valencia after we left… as I write this back in the UK, it’s pushing 40º in Valencia.

 

The apartment has a busy future. Family will be there to stay for a few weeks in September, then new tenants from Italy in the months before navidad. The community are proposing improvements to the ground floor to improve access to the lift, which will be costly for us all if approved. Whether in Valencia or the UK however, I’m constantly reassured by the Junta de la Communidad***** who make decisions on the building on behalf of all residents. All will be well.

As I said to our Italian friend as we left, “volveremos para Año Nuevo… o Fallas… o Semana Santa… no sé.

We don’t know when we’ll be back, but we know that all the humans are there, making it better and better.

 

 

*There is no doubt that this whole chaotic event is much safer than it looks and feels! 

**If you are not of my vintage, you may need Google's help here. Other search engines are available.

*** This is worth emphasising in a world where immigration is an ugly word for too many people.

**** This is rare, but makes my point all the same. 

***** The committee of apartment owners who meet regularly to agree on all matters that affect life in the building.

Dedicated to Greg, who was the original inspiration behind the well-worn phrase "they don't make them like that any more". RIP.