Measuring the Roadblock

I apologize that there are no photos to go with this post . . . yet. I hope to have some soon.

Sometimes things that define a culture are the smallest, most simple details. Seemingly insignificant, they manage to represent a far broader reality than their actuality.

In our family, we have a running joke about the Spanish Roadblock. This has nothing whatsoever to do with driving in Spain – thank heavens. Having done that a couple of times, I am completely content to walk 10 -12 miles a day and live without a car here. I’ve talked about the tiny, narrow streets. Far more dangerous and frustrating are the constant, unannounced and unexpected changes in direction of the many one way streets, the impossibility of making a left-hand turn, and the constant presence of road construction, changing all the rules that I didn’t understand in the first place. Then there’s the issue of parking. I so prefer walking.

The Spanish Roadblock has to do with pedestrian traffic. If the streets in this town are narrow, then that word is not going to suffice to describe the sidewalks, where they actually exist. Of course, in the newer parts of town, there are plenty of nice, wide, clear sidewalks, but in the center of town, where we do a lot of our walking, the walkways are erratic, end abruptly, and are sometimes ignored by pedestrians altogether. There are moments when I think the reason people here celebrate on festival days is because the roads are closed and everyone can pass through the streets undisturbed.

In the center of some of the larger streets, there are broad and expansive “paseos,” made for heavy pedestrian traffic. My daughter called them “people highways.” Some of them are paved, and some are simply packed red clay. During certain times of the day, and especially on festival days, these paseos are just as packed with people as the streets are with cars.

Taking a “paseo” means taking a walk, oftentimes along these tree-lined paseos, or in the parks and plazas throughout town. It is a tradition that spans all generations – old and young, families and groups of friends of all ages fill the streets during the mediodia (or siesta time after the mid-day meal), or after dinner (la cena, served generally around 9 p.m. or later). In Granada in the summer time, when the sun lingers in the sky until nearly 10 o’clock, and the warm summer air tarries even longer, the streets are full of strolling families nearly until midnight. Our family learned quickly to adopt this tradition, and it was during these evening walks that we first experienced the Spanish Roadblock.

Women often take their paseos walking arm in arm with a friend or family member. It is not unusual to see three or four women, walking arm in arm, chatting as they walk. I should mention here that Spaniards are rarely in a hurry. (A notable exception to this rule is when they are behind the wheel of a car. See paragraph two.) These chatting women walk proportionately slower in relationship to the speed at which they are talking, meaning, usually very slowly. Because the sidewalks are narrow, and even where they are wide, this wall of femininity becomes completely impassable. Walking behind this blockade is sometimes entertaining, but usually frustrating and an excruciating test of personal and collective patience. When one is walking alone, it is relatively simple to work around the wing and move beyond, but when one is walking with one’s own group or family, it can take multiple tries to outmaneuver and pass the roadblock.

The really interesting thing to me was that I noticed that the hemlines of all the women were at exactly the same height from the ground, regardless of the height of the women, or the length of their legs. This tendency has proved to be a remarkably consistent pattern as I have continued my informal research through the years, so much so that I came to be convinced that all the tailors in all of Granada use the same guide for hemming women’s skirts. Maybe their measuring sticks are all marked at about 15” from floor level. I pointed my hypothesis out to John, who has independently monitored the field, and gathered his own data to support my supposition.

The other day, we discovered a new development that elevated my mild-mannered proposition to the status of nearly irrefutable reality. We attended a wedding. There were over 500 guests at the dinner/reception afterwards. We ate for nearly five hours. This is dangerous for me, as once you fill my stomach, my natural instinct is to curl up and nap. At 3 in the afternoon, I don’t even need a full stomach to have that heavy-lidded craving hit me. I tried to keep myself distracted by watching all the people there. It worked pretty well. There were a lot of children there, and as I watched a group of little girls strolling around the reception hall together, I nudged John. “Look,” I told him. “All their dresses are the same length!” Ranging in age from three to six years old, these girls were all dressed like princesses in tea-length little gowns inflated by crinolines and all floating at about six inches above the floor, revealing frilly socks peeking out above their patent leather Mary-Janes. “I guess it’s not just the older women, is it?” John grinned. But the day wasn’t over yet.

As we were strolling down a major street later that evening, trying to walk off the seven courses we were force fed like geese being raised for their livers, we approached a cluster of leggy twenty-somethings from behind. They were, of course, strolling arm in arm. As we slowed our pace to avoid rear-ending them all, so to speak, and waiting for a gap in the trees, benches and trash cans that blocked our passing lane, I jammed my elbow in John’s ribs. He really likes it when I do that. “Look!” I hissed, nodding towards the girls in front of us. “What?” he hissed back at me. We like to think we can read each others’ minds after 30 years together, but it really only works with cleverly delivered hints, like “Hemlines!” which I whispered back to him, and he instantly knew. It was true, and he was my witness. The four girls in front of us were varying heights and weights, but their mini-skirt hemlines were all nearly the exact same level from the sidewalk. John and I gawked at each other.

It is not surprising to know that females in Spain learn the walking arm-in-arm pattern from their earliest childhood days. It’s not surprising that once they are old enough to take a paseo with their friends, they’ll form their own Spanish Roadblock. The news here is that Spanish tailors apparently do have yard sticks of at least three different lengths.