Shady business

The nerve-shredding screech of a disc cutter greeted our arrival at a cafe table. A guy on a stepladder was attacking the white-painted framework of a toldo, a permanent canopy over a nearby group of tables in the main plaza of San Sebastián. The structure was already half dismantled. Strange and intriguing, because it had been erected just a few months ago.

There are local companies who will custom-design and install any kind of canopy from a simple awning over a window to a giant, freestanding structure covering an entire terraza of tables. The one currently being demolished was one of those, a splendid shelter with double-pitched canvas roof and drop-down windscreens of clear plastic on all four sides.

Toldos have been staging a stealthy takeover of the plazas and pedestrian streets in recent years. I'm not sure I like them very much. However, let's try to be fair and dispassionate. Arguments in favour of toldos: they provide reliable protection both from the sun and from wind and rain. Furthermore, they are versatile. If the wind changes, roll up the northerly set of screens and drop down the southerlies. If a downpour starts splashing in all round, drop down all the screens and you've got a cosy marquee.

Arguments against: they're not most people's idea of beautiful, and they rob us of that lovely, higgledy-piggledy collection of cafe tables scattered across a plaza, each with its sun umbrella, that adds such warmth to the empty paving. By herding all the tables into a canvas-covered corral you destroy their carefree charm. If you really want a roof and walls around you, why not sit inside the cafe?

The undeniable reality, however, is that the toldos are popular. While the pale visitors who stumble off cruise ships sprawl in full sunlight with their faces turned blissfully to the sky, people who live in near-permanent sunshine seek shade, and a toldo is today's way to do it.

Which is why it was so surprising to see this relatively new one being torn down. Was it possible the cafe's proprietors had spent the last few weeks gazing doubtfully at their creation and decided it was a mistake? Unlikely. Had they perhaps put it up without prior permission from the town council? Unthinkable. Or was the cafe itself - terrible thought - closing down, its business ruined by the Covid plague?

'No,no,' Isidro assured me, seated at another cafe table nearby. Isidro is a regular and knows everything about everything. 'It's because of the plaza. Las obras, the works.'

Ah, of course! Of course. Watching more closely, the men with the disc cutter were not just hacking the structure to pieces, they were very carefully separating the welded joints then stacking the components out of harm's way. One day it would rise again, somewhere.

The works Isidro referred to were a long-promised project by the town council to reform the main square. It's becoming a bit of a habit - this is the second time in 30 years! In our earliest days here the main square was actually a circle, a delightful cobblestoned area furnished with palm trees, flower beds, benches and a newspaper kiosk. Charmingly simple and rustic. Instantly recognisable as San Sebastián de La Gomera. I keep a photo of it on my phone to upset any locals old enough to remember it.

'The old plaza!' nodded Isidro, smiling wistfully. 'It was pretty. The palm trees are still there, most of them.' He nodded towards the cluster of palms in front of the town council building. It's true, they stand gracefully waving where they always were, planted in the ghost of the vanished circle.

So why did it have to go, that pleasant old plaza? Its chief sin was that traffic circulated around it so when the space was needed for a dance or concert they had to close the roads and divert the cars. It was also too small for a sizeable event. One year when we arrived for our winter sojourn the circle had already gone, replaced by a much larger, conventionally square plaza with traffic tidily routed away to one side. Much less attractive but functionally more effective, undoubtedly.

There was a snag, though, with this new design. The entire surface of the plaza sloped gently down from the seaward end towards the town. Not only did this mean that heavy rainfall flowed from the plaza into the town rather than the sea, it also meant that the seaward end required a series of broad, shallow steps down to the road and beach level. I'd guess that the steps were a deliberate architectural feature to add interest to an otherwise very plain square, but they were not such good news when you were drunk, dancing, wearing high heels or pushing a wheelchair.

Even worse was that the slope also required steps along one side of the plaza, fairly high at the seaward end but diminishing in height as they neared the town. It was unnerving to sit at one of the cafe tables and watch visitors approaching these variable steps, especially at the shallower end where they were close to invisible. You felt like calling out, 'Hey, watch out for the… whoops…!' as they stumbled at the unexpected change of level.

Definitely high time for a rethink of the plaza, then, but as the current layout is painstakingly destroyed I have little idea how it will be reborn. The general idea seems to be send in the mechanical diggers, always a favourite solution, to reduce everything down to a reference level of the seaside roadway. But first you have to remove the surface paving, which consists of very small bricks.

There are an awful lot of them. Watching a couple of workmen in red shirts pulling up the bricks, I found myself wondering how anyone could stay cheerful and motivated on an interminable task like this. There are literally thousands of square metres of them, each brick scarcely more than handsize, all of which have to be individually lifted and stacked on wooden pallets to be transported by a fork-lift truck.

Then at some time in the future all the bricks will all have to be relaid. One at a time, each one carefully aligned and levelled with its fellows. A worker might manage to lay just a few square metres in a day, facing the next morning a vast expanse of empty concrete still to cover, brick by little brick.

There must be a survival technique to cope with this kind of challenge. Discussing yesterday's football might get you through an hour or so. Then what? Anecdotes. Politics. Plan tonight's TV. Count the bricks. Give each a name as you place it: Ernesto, Elena, Enrique, Efigenia… Decide between a doughnut and a chocolate croissant for the mid-morning treat. Plan how to spend your retirement if you ever get there. Breaking News: Workman found curled up behind a pile of bricks on the plaza sobbing 'I can't go on... I can't take another [beep] brick, I really can't... I want my Mum...'

Anyway, the toldos. It's obvious they all have to go while the plaza is reformed, but I'm sure they'll be back. They're too popular to abandon. For me, however, a sun umbrella every time, please.

(Pause for mature consideration.)

Except perhaps when the umbrella is yet another flamboyant advert for Coca Cola. Or when a gusty wind turns it inside out and breaks its spokes. Or knocks it over and spills my beer. Or the sun keeps moving and obliges me to shuffle the table or the umbrella sideways to chase the shade...

Okay, toldos do have their advantages.