Flat and wide or tall and thin

From the corridor we shuffled cautiously through a half-open door into a darkened room. Looked for somewhere to sit, aware of shadowy figures watching us from around the walls.

A young woman shifted sideways to leave two seats vacant.

'Gracias.'

'Nada.'

We sat down to wait along with our fellow patients. There was no noise except the occasional sound of footsteps approaching and retreating along the corridor, the click of a door, a distant loudspeaker summoning someone for examination.

We were there for J to have a routine eye check. Hospital waiting rooms are terrible places, forlorn, troubling, because everyone has something wrong with them and secretly fears for their future.

The anteroom for an ophthalmic consultation is especially terrible because everyone has had drops put into their eyes and is waiting in gloomy twilight for their pupils to expand, so the ophthalmologist can peer inside.

'Good hospital, this,' an elderly man remarked to his neighbour, breaking the silence. 'Now that it's finally open. Better than the old one.'

The great thing, sometimes, about the Spanish is that they never speak in hushed whispers. If you're going to say something, you say it as though you wish to be heard, not only by the person you're addressing but by anyone else who cares to take an interest. In cafes this open and sharing approach can raise the ambient noise to painful levels, but in our dark, silent chamber it was as though somebody had toggled a back-to-life switch to awaken a nest of dormant zombies. You could hear the creaking of chairs as people sat straighter, catch the glint of spectacles as they turned their heads.

'The old hospital was a disaster,' answered the second elderly man. 'Nowhere to sit, everyone crammed like sardines in the corridors. And you couldn't get through the entrance for people queuing at the reception desk.'

'That's right!' agreed the first. 'What kind of architect designs a building where you can't get through the main door?'

'Loco, crazy. This is different altogether. Big foyer. Glass doors that slide open for you. Modern.'

Murmurs of assent from around the room. 'Modern!'

'Mind you,' continued the second man, 'I don't understand why they built it flat.'

'Eh? Flat?'

'The whole building. Flat. Low and wide.' He demonstrated with a sweep of his hands, visible now that our eyes were beginning to adjust to the gloom. 'If they'd built it tall instead of flat it would have taken up less land.'

'It's got two floors.'

'Poof! That's what I mean. Flat. They could have gone up five, six, seven floors and taken up less good farmland.'

Somebody else chimed in: 'That's right, covered less land that could have been used for farming!'

'But it wasn't being used for farming, was it?' objected another patient. 'People used to dump old cars on this site. Supermarket trolleys, broken bikes, old floor tiles. The land hasn't been farmed for twenty years.'

'Apart from which,' offered somebody else, 'this hospital, being low and wide, fits in well with the terraces on the hills behind. You hardly notice it.'

'Who wants an invisible hospital? A tall, narrow one you'd be able to spot miles away, know where you're heading.'

The waiting room divided itself into those in favour of a wide, flat hospital and those who would have preferred a tall, thin one.

This is why no waiting room, cafe or public plaza on this island is ever silent for long. Canary islanders, like most of the Spanish population, will always find something to discuss. And they will always divide into two or more factions, because where can you go in a conversation if everyone agrees with everyone else? Unless, of course, the disagreement is with a common adversary such as the local council or the Spanish government, in which case the competition is to find innovative new infamies for everyone to agree about.

We have witnessed intense and heated discussions about - to take a few random examples - gas and electric water heaters, Movistar and Vodafone mobile phone networks, potatoes, yams and old coins. The old coins were the subject of an earlier post (Four bitches, 29 July 2016). The potato dispute we initiated by enquiring about the best variety for papas arrugadas (see Wrinkled potatoes, 25 May 2017).

Yams came up during a family feast when the argument was whether a lump of cooked yam, which looks like a section of freshly exhumed leg from a marshland burial, should be sliced lengthways or across. I can't remember which side won that argument.

Notes for the serious student

The new Hospital de La Gomera opened its doors in 2010 on the outskirts of the capital, San Sebastián. It's a very modern, high-tech building with clever external mesh screening that shades the sun and promotes natural ventilation, a flat roof with vegetation to provide natural climate control and skylights to funnel natural light into the interior. It's not particularly pretty but nobody expects a hospital to look pretty.

For many years after the new hospital opened, its predecessor, on a hill closer to the centre of town, remained empty while everyone searched for a way to reuse it. The problem was that its antiquated design was more suited to a Guantanamo-style penal centre than anything socially acceptable and finally it was demolished. Some day a senior citizen's residence and day centre will arise from the rubble.