Por La Calle

How to walk in the street in Spain: look at everything, you cannot go around being too aware of where you are going. Stare at everything, curiously. Shops, and stuff you are passing, without worrying if there are people you are about to crash into on the sidewalk. You worry about that when they are in front of you, then you just narrowly squeeze by them without worrying about them or what they are doing or whether they have enough room – they will take care of that. You aren't totally oblivious of them to the point of rudeness, but just don't really worry about them. On the other hand, you might as well stare at them too, just with whatever thoughts happen to be going through your head at the time, not putting on a sort of proper face for being in public. If you're thinking about something intently then you can just look at the person passing, with your intense expression on your face; it doesn't matter. And you can almost cut people off, or walk up beside them quickly; it means nothing, it is not taken as an aggressive kind of action. Basically you just do whatever you feel like doing, and you really don't care one whit what anyone passing by thinks of you and how you look or what you are looking at or how much you are stopping and staring or falling off the sidewalk or whatever.

I am trying to get the hang of it. It is weird to not worry about how you look at people. To look at them with whatever look happens to be happening to you, and not worry that they will take offense, and want to punch you out. You can look at them with an almost bitchy look, or stare at their clothes if they are nice, thinking of something that is bothering you, and they will not care that you are looking that way. They are them and you are you and who cares what someone else feels like or is thinking?

I have started staring in stores, looking all around me, and worrying about whether I will run into someone when they get to me. I have given passing men looks of not caring whether they exist, if they happen to catch my eye. I don't know what I do at home, but somehow it is different – it is more careful, polite, calculated, all in fractions of a second, at a subconscious level. I think here, it is just that nothing is calculated.

It is almost stressful for me, trying not to worry about it. Letting it all hang out. I think I still fear looking at someone the wrong way.

Tranquila, like they say. Relax.

Anyways, the sometimes bitchy looking women are usually really nice, if you actually talk to them. They even call you guapa, “pretty/good looking”. Which is a pretty normal way of addressing someone.

Thanks guapa, says the guy at the meat counter, after cutting my Jamon. Hola guapa, says the man behind the bar, to a girl that comes in, at the tiny, old fashioned bar near the escuela at breakfast. I think if I could afford it, I would go out for breakfast all the time, just to sit in the little, atmospheric bars, with an often old-ish male proprietor, who is genuinely coridal to everyone who comes in, who orders bleach and 5 kilos of whatever over the phone while toasting your tostada.