Now, as many of you know, I am not one to drink much alcohol. Therefore, I was not particularly excited to be going to a winery—though it turned out to be mostly interesting. The amount of wine in this winery was overwhelming! Of course, the tour ended with a wine tasting, which turned out to be particularly interesting given that they provided no food, we had not eaten lunch, and the Spanish breakfast often consists of a piece of toast (which, in this case, had occurred about 4 hours before). Unfortunately for all of you, I don’t believe that there are any pictures of my face upon tasting any of the 4-5 types of sherry they brought us. Let’s just say it probably looked like this:
As you might guess, the highlight of the trip for me was Chiclana and the beach. It was gorgeous, and we had great weather! We stayed in a 4-star hotel a short walk from the beach and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner in the form of a buffet while we were there. I spent most of the time wishing that the next meal were just a bit farther off. Highlights included: making a “sandcastle” with Adriana, burying Adriana in the sand, opening a bottle of champagne in the shower, eating my first Mars bar, and having girl talk til 3 am. I do, however, think this trip would have been better as a guy: almost all the girls were topless at the beach.
Our sandcastle:
Mars Bars!
This brings me to the topic of PDA in Spain. In case you haven’t noticed (think nipples on the cover of magazines and topless beaches), Spain has a pretty liberal environment compared to what I’m used to back home. What interests me, however (and yes, you can call me a nerd), is how the environment got to be this way. Less than 40 years ago, it was illegal to so much as kiss on the street, even if you were married. These were the years of Franco’s dictatorship, and I must say that the era of Franco still has very tangible effects on Spanish society today. But my question is, how did PDA norms go from strict Catholic conservative values to what you see today (men walking with their hands on their girlfriends’ butts, people having sex in parks and behind bushes)? As far as I can tell, it is a combination of post-Franco freedoms and the hard economic times facing Spain. What do I mean by the latter? Well, most youth in Spain live with their parents until their thirties, so there are not many options in terms of privacy. Moreover, most people don’t ever live in college dorms, as almost everyone lives at home and attends the university in their city. Thus we arrive at the PDA culture of today, where it is not uncommon to see people literally on top of each other in a park.
Spanish word of the day: ropa interior = lingerie (because we found some in the closet at our university...?)
un abrazo,
elizabeth
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