Yes please

 Having lived for so long among Spanish people, most of whom are dark rather than fair, with hair ranging from deep copper to jet black, to me the British now look drained of colour. They stand out as being different. I'm one of them, of course, along with Janine, which is why we could never be taken for genuine Gomerans.

But there's another striking difference about the Brits. Here's an example. Picture four visitors - two middle-aged wives and husbands - sitting at a table outside a cafe and ordering drinks from a waitress. (In English, naturally - almost none speak any Spanish, which is not their fault.)

Wife 1: 'I'd like a white wine, please.'

Wife 2: 'Me too, I'll have a wine as well, please.'

Husband 1: 'A beer, please. Lager.'

Waitress: 'Grande?' Big? She mimes a phantom beer mug with her hands above and below it.

Husband 1: 'Yes please! Big!' He mimes a beer mug the size of a bucket. The waitress smiles at this little joke she sees many times a day when there's a cruise ship in the port.

Husband 2: 'Same for me, please. Beer. Big!'

Now let's imagine this group transmuted into an equivalent set of Gomerans. The interaction would be briefer (in Spanish of course, but translated here into English):

Wife 1: 'For me, a white wine.' 

Wife 2: 'Yes, the same.'

Husband 1: 'A glass of beer.'

Husband 2: 'Me too.'

Generally, Gomerans don't go for a big mug of beer, more likely a glass from the keg or a bottle. But the point is, they are unlikely to add any 'pleases' in this situation.

It can sound rude to British ears, but as I see it, they're right. 'Please' being short for 'If it pleases you' - why should a waitress not be pleased that someone's asking for something she's employed to sell them? This is a simple exchange of information: you want to know what I want to drink, so I'll tell you.

Even more likely to sound rude to a visiting Brit, and possibly cause offence, is what happens when it's time to pay the bill.

Wife 1 waves a hand towards the waitress, who comes over. 'We'd like the bill, please.'

The waitress nods, goes into the cafe, emerges with the printed bill on a little dish and plonks it on the table.

Wife 1: 'Thank you!'

The waitress nods, goes away, returns a little later to retrieve the dish which now contains a banknote. She takes it away and returns with the change.

Wife 1: 'Thank you!'

It's entirely possible that the waitress, if she's busy, won't bother with this 'thank you' stuff at all, although they are usually aware that foreigners seem to need it.

In a non-touristy bar or cafe you'll rarely hear any please or thank you exchanged. Ordering, obtaining and paying for food or drink are simple transactions, to everyone's benefit. Nobody's doing a favour.

Even after all these years, I still can't watch a cup of coffee arriving at my table without saying gracias or some substitute like perfecto. But I'm quite proud that I can now buy things without crawling. For example, a simple purchase conducted in the panadería, the baker's:

'Have you got wholemeal bread with seeds?'

'Yes.'

'Good, give me two.'

The assistant puts two loaves in a bag then says 'One fifty,' the cost in euros, takes the money without saying a word and puts it in the till. Next customer…

And the strange thing is, this dialogue sounds absolutely fine and normal in its original Spanish but translated into English it looks unpleasantly blunt. Definitely worth a blast of invective on Tripadvisor, although in this case the customer was just as rude as the shopkeeper.

-------------- NOTES --------------

So, is this to say that the Spanish just don't use please or thank you unless pushed or shamed into it?!!

No, no, not at all. The words exist and are much used, but only when merited, not just as a kind of verbal tic when they're not really needed.

There's also a common fudge where someone almost, but not quite, feels they should add please to a request - they shorten por favor to a brief porfa thrown out casually.

End of lesson. And thank you for reading it.

Sign here

An enthusiastic knocking on the front door rouses him from a Friday afternoon siesta. He staggers to the door, still half asleep, heart already sinking. He knows who this is.

Opening the door, he is greeted by a young and smiling postwoman. A knock at the door on a Friday afternoon is nearly always a postal delivery, which can be good news of course - a parcel, the new toy he ordered a couple of weeks ago! - but is much more likely to be a carta certificada. A registered letter. These are always bad news.

The postie points to his name on the registered letter, which is correct although the address is a version long superseded, dating back to when the village was smaller and nobody really needed an address because everyone knew where everyone lived. She hands him the letter, keys his Spanish identification number into her mobile device as he dictates it, then gets him to sign the tiny screen.

There is a special stylus for doing this but he has never met a post person who hasn't already lost theirs, so he signs with a fingertip, producing an unidentifiable squiggle. That's okay because the Spanish always sign with an unidentifiable squiggle anyway.

The carta certificada turns out to be entirely typical of its species. Somewhere among several pages of dense legalese he discovers an accusation that he owes San Sebastián's Ayuntamiento, the town council, the sum of 60.79 euros. The claim seems to be that around three years ago he missed a payment for the basura, the domestic rubbish collection service.

His wife tries to get hold of the documents as he stomps around the room waving them in the air and complaining loudly. What nonsense! All their council-supplied services are paid automatically from the bank account, and always have been. Adding fuel to his indignation is that the sum includes - 'Look at this!' he rants - a 10% fine for late payment.

That night, during a wakeful session at four in the morning, he mulls over the demand again and slowly, reluctantly, realises that perhaps it might be justified. The alleged missing payment was around the date when they moved their bank account from a global superbank to a much smaller local one. Changing your bank is made easy by law, the new bank simply takes over your routine payments in and out. But between closing the old account and activating the new one there could have been a short hiatus where, if the Ayuntamiento solicited a payment just at that moment, it might have fallen through the gap.

Later that morning he checks his records. This is the kind of occasion, he justifies to his wife, defensively, when it's useful that he keeps records of everything on the computer. Unfortunately his records leave no doubt.

'Three years ago!' he storms, still trying to be angry. 'Why didn't they notice it at the time?'

Secretly though, one part of his brain, the more rational set of neurons, is quite impressed. Someone or something has been rummaging through the council's accounts for the past four years (the fiscal watershed) in search of remnants of lost income. He noticed that the postwoman was holding not just his registered letter but several others in the same kind of envelope.

The rest of his neurons switch into despair mode. This kind of problem inevitably generates no end of grief and wasted time no matter how you try to deal with it. A friend, trying to achieve a simple transaction involved in the sale of his house, was driven close to madness by the bureaucratic convolutions. A sympathetic official in the council offices, fluent in English, commented simply 'Welcome to Spain'.

Anyway, there is no escaping the need to sort this out. Manos a la obra they decide, let's get on with the job. That same morning they begin their odyssey at the source, the Ayuntamiento building on the town's main square, where the helpful young woman at the reception desk explains that, no, they can't pay there, they have to go to the Agencia Tributaria elsewhere in town. The tax office.

Fine, they know where to find that - you can't live in Spain for long without knowing where to find the tax office. In the Agencia Tributaria he shows the letter to the security guard, who also acts as a friendly guide for bureaucratically bewildered visitors. As he launches into an explanation of the problem the security man holds up a hand: stop! This is not the place they need to be. There is a different Agencia Tributaria office that deals with unpaid basura fees. He describes where it is, just around the corner. This is a mercifully compact town.

They find the office without difficulty, a small doorway next to a cafe. At the service desk, protected by a glass screen from covid-19 and irate citizens, a cheerful lady listens politely, scans the sheaf of documents and nods understandingly, clearly recognising them. They've come to the right place.

'We accept that we owe the money,' he explains, 'no problem there, but the postal address on the envelope is out of date by several decades and the address on all the documents is even more wrong. We don't live up on the hill above San Sebastián, we live in a village nearby. This is the address of some other person entirely.'

He has visions of paying someone else's basura debt instead of theirs, thereby unleashing a future stream of increasingly threatening demands from which there will be no escape because he is now two different people. 'We're two different people,' he emphasises, but the assistant seems unfazed. There is a form for this situation. There's a form for everything. She pushes a Change of Address form across the counter.

'But we haven't changed our address. We've lived in the same house for ever, and this address isn't it! The bank is going to be confused if…'

He pauses then gives up, realising that he's wasting his breath. There is only one form for putting an address to rights, the assistant tells him, and this is it. 'Sign here.'

He signs. She makes a photocopy, stamps it, signs it with an unidentifiable Spanish squiggle and passes it across the counter along with another form to take to the bank.

In their bank, two of the attendants are already occupied but the ridiculously young branch manager waves them over to his desk. There is absolutely no problem about making the payment, he assures them, no problem about the address being incorrect, no problem about anything.

All over in moments. Our hero wishes the manager a happy Carnaval because that's coming up the following week and the manager laughs as he ushers them to the door.

Over a restorative coffee they retrace the stages of their journey. There is a kind of glow around them now, an aura of success achieved in the face of difficulties. Reviewed objectively it has been almost - is this possible? - almost enjoyable. Nobody got angry or dismissive - stupid foreigners! - or imposed impossible hoops and hurdles. On the contrary, everyone was smilingly helpful and understanding. But then, they've been living with Spanish burocracia all their lives, unless they're from Cuba or Venezuela where it's even worse.

-------------- NOTES --------------

Thinking about this incident called to mind that doom-laden quotation, The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. There are various versions and they all make me shiver.

However, full marks to our Ayuntamiento for discovering this discrepancy in their finances, even if it took a while to get there.

Not too many marks for the impenetrable documentation that accompanied the demand, but that's normal throughout Spain's administrative functions. It used to be the same in Britain before the highly successful Plain English Campaign transformed things, but I'm not aware of anything similar here, a Campaña por el Español Sencillo.

Dense legalistic language is of a piece with the bureaucratic processes involved in anything official. I'm not playing the whingeing foreigner here, Spanish people themselves are entirely aware of how bad it is. There's a hilarious video on YouTube called Funcionario Público, Civil Servant:

https://youtu.be/NmXCmmjJQ_c (or just search for the title)

But credit where it's due: Spain, along with most of Europe, has a remarkably simple system for identifying its citizens. You have a number, and that's it. For Spanish citizens it's referred to as the DNI (Documento Nacional de Identidad) or, specifically for financial stuff, the NIF (Número de Identidad Fiscal), but the number is the same. There's only one version of you.

Foreign residents get a similar number, the NIE (Número de Identificación Extranjero). This is extraordinarily useful. You can apply for a card bearing your NIE along with your photo and signature and it serves to confirm your identity for just about anything you need to do in everyday life, from buying a new pair of shoes with a credit card to catching a ferry, where the card serves as a ticket.

There is nothing of the police state about this card, you are not obliged to carry it, but everyone keeps it in their purse or wallet anyway because it's so handy.

Cats and dogs

They caught her in the very act. One foot on the pavement, the other still swinging over the lowest part of the fence as she was making her escape.

Unfortunately they weren't our local police, who perhaps might have been more understanding, but two from a team of Spanish national police who had been stationed here to help enforce the rules. We were all grateful for this - except for Helga, the fence climber - because the covid-19 pandemic was something new and frightening in our lives.

The long weeks of home confinement were over by that time but severe restrictions remained, especially in relation to social gatherings, so San Sebastián's central park was out of bounds, its gates closed and locked. We met Helga shortly after the police released her that morning. She was understandably shaky, not having been nabbed by the police before, and angry because they had issued her with an on-the-spot fine for contravening the pandemic regulations. Three hundred euros was devastating for someone who doesn't have much spare cash. And if she didn't pay up within two weeks it would double.

So why did she do it? Why climb into the forbidden park over the fence? She had tried to explain to the police officers but her limited Spanish didn't prove sufficiently persuasive. 'La ley es la ley, señora', the law is the law. Well yes, but… what she was doing was to return a feral cat to its usual home in the park. Helga is a volunteer supporter of a group called ProAnimal Gomera that, among other activities, captures stray cats and takes them to a helpful vet to be neutered. It's a gentler approach to population control than culling and, from the cats' point of view, not ideal but probably the solution they'd prefer if given a choice.

Cats have always been a problem if you choose to look at it that way. It's really more of a problem for the cats than for us because they live their own lives quietly (except at night) in the park or on the rocks by the sea, but the benefactors who supply them with food tend to come and go unreliably. One elderly couple used to feed them daily with nothing but the best, visiting the supermarket to buy premium fish which they dispensed on silver platters with a choice of sauces, fresh bread and finger bowls.

They also fed the pigeons, scattering corn for the squabbling hordes that gathered twice a day at the appointed times (how do pigeons do that?). That all came to a sad end when the couple passed away. Other kind souls now fill the gap to some extent but much less dependably, sometimes being away, sometimes overlapping with each other so the cats get fed several meals simultaneously. The pigeons do better because there are always plenty of tidbits blowing around the cafe tables.

And what about the dogs? Are there no feral dogs as well? Yes there are, but far fewer and very seldom in town. There is an official dog-catcher service but in practice, any stray dog foolish enough to turn up in San Sebastián is likely to get caught by a local lady who used to worry about cats but now specialises in dogs. She takes them home and walks them daily in groups of five or six at a time, whether they want to or not. This also serves to discourage local dog owners from allowing their pooch to roam around on its own (which is illegal) because it risks finding itself collared, roped and trotting among the herd twice a day.

You couldn't do that with cats, could you? They'd tear each other to pieces along with their captor. It's probably significant - standing back for a moment to view life philosophically - that although there are now many more dogs than cats in La Gomera, they are nearly all owned and living in a cosy home with the rest of the family. It's the cats who choose to run wild, free and aloof. Which you either find admirable or not, a known way of dividing the human species into two distinct camps.

-------------- NOTES --------------

As always, the arrow of time flies onwards and things change. The ProAnimal Gomera group, although they operate throughout the island, now have a permanent base on the outskirts of San Sebastián where stray animals can be cared for and, if they're lucky, assigned to a new home.

This has made our local dog-snatcher lady increasingly redundant and she is currently reduced to a single ageing mongrel with arthritis. They seem happy together and he has the benefit of not being in competition with any of the other riff-raff.

There are also a decreasing number of cats wandering around because as the older ones pass into their peaceful eternity they now leave no kittens to carry on the struggle.

Sorry, I shouldn't have mentioned kittens, that invites the involuntary 'Aaah, what a shame…'

Contact details for ProAnimal Gomera

Post

ProAnimal Gomera, Calle de Las Tomateras, s/n

Antigua Escuela Taller

San Sebastián de La Gomera, 38800

Web

https://www.proanimalgomera.com

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/proanimalgomera

Email

proanimalgomera@gmail.com

Phone

+34 621 273 777