The full brochure.

The first pincho we tried was at La Marina Company. It was by far the most elaborate and special in a “you’re not going to ever make this at home” sort of way.

La Marina Company: Panacota de frambuesa con anchoas – That’s a cooked cream of raspberries with anchovies.

The presentation was gorgeous, but the combination of flavors was a little too bizarre for our philistine tastes. It came with a little dropper of Modena olive oil. There were too many flavors for my wife’s expertise in anchovy quality to gain any purchase.

A close-up of La Marina Company’s pincho. In general we were pretty displeased not only with the pincho, but also by the service. It took about ten minutes for the pincho to make its way down from the upstairs kitchen. By that time, we’d almost finished our wines.

La Casona: Suprema de buey – This “Ox Supreme” was described in the brochure as “Hamburger of ox meat with onion, egg and cheese”. After La Marina Company, our eyes were immensely disappointed when the tiny little burger rolls were plopped down before us. But wow, had hour eyes deceived us! The first bite had us both moaning with pleasure. The grainy bread, the tender meat, the sweet caramelized onions and the cheese made an excellent combination. Supreme, indeed!

It’s really not much to look at, but I could happily eat a dozen of these little treats.

Cafetería Colón: Hamburguesa de potro a la barbacoa – “What’s potro?”, I asked my wife. “Baby horse”, she replied. Whoa! Well, this is the place that had kangaroo meat in 2009. The ingredients listed were: sweet roll, colt meat, tomato, onion, garlic, pepper, parsley and barbecue sauce.

Like most foods with barbecue sauce, the sauce completely overwhelmed any other flavors, making this a very boring pincho to eat. The potato chips on the side did little to make it any more special. I’d certainly never have guessed that it was foal meat. It was a big let down after the previous hamburger in La Casona.

La Abadía: Destinos Pejinos – Apparently pejino is a local word meaning “a humble resident of coastal Cantabria”, so the title translates to “humble Cantabrian destinations”. Indeed, the primary ingredient was respigos, a local winter delicacy. The ingredients were listed as: pastry toast with cumin and respigos.

Visually, it looks like something your sick cat might leave on the carpet, but it was quite tasty in a humble, healthy sort of way. I didn’t care much for the “pastry toast” on the bottom; it reminded me of a bland granola bar.

The second night, we went to El Concept, but they were out of pinchos, and had enough business so that they didn’t really give a damn. Boo!

El Somera: Guiso de jabalí al chocolate – The name means “wild boar stew with chocolate”, and sure enough, that’s what it was. Unfortunately, for cost saving motives, there were a lot of potatoes, and very few chunks of boar meat. I must say, however, that I was impressed.

The little bowls were lovely. It definitely took second place away from La Albadía’s respigos.

A bore eating boar.

El Guti: Hamburguesita de ternera con salsa de queso y su guarnición – The title means “Little beef hamburger with cheese sauce and garnish”. The meat was fantastic, and the potatoes were fresh out of the frying pan.

The little burger looks insignificant, but the taste was powerful. I think it just barely edged out El Somera for second place.

Conclusion

Of the six pinchos we tried, I would rank them as follows:

1. La Casona – Definitely the best tasting pincho of all, despite presentation.
2. El Guti – Excellent flavor, though simple presentation.
3. El Somera – Wonderfully warm stew, with a slightly sweet chocolate tone.
4. La Albadía – Very hearty and healthy, but nothing spectacular.
5. Cafetería Colón – Too much sauce, but a decent snack.
6. La Marina Company – A lot of work put into preparation, but a very eccentric taste.

So concludes this year’s Pincho Week. I hope to do much better than a 33.3% sample size next year. ¡Hasta entonces! Until then!

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The immense irony of the situation being that they are dressed as shepherds and need shepherding themselves.

It took me a while to spot my daughter. She’s the one at the back with the grandma scarf on.

That one.

The “everyone hold onto a rope with loops tied in it” trick is what makes such an excursion remotely feasible.

My little old lady.

The Nativity Scene

I encourage you to check out the detail in the large version.

There was a “moon” in the sky. Also, sometimes there was lightning and thunder.

Many of the characters were animatronic, the fires were flickering, the water flowed, the windmill spun, and one house had smoke emanating from the chimney.

The star of the show.

The magi arrive from the east, one on camel, one on an elephant, and one on a horse.

The house with the smoke had lamps inside, a kitty on the deck, and a sow nursing piglets in the yard. You can see the blurred windmill in the background.

I struggle to imagine the number of hours of detailed work that went into this nativity scene. I was very impressed.

A group photo. Nora seemed content walking to the church with her friends, but as soon as she saw me, the balance of desires swung hard towards her needing to be with me holding my hand at all times. I was the only parent there, and she was the only child crying.

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It is becoming more and more popular for marriages in Spain to be “civil”, done at the town hall, rather than religious, done in the church. Starting in 2009, the majority of Spanish weddings have been non-religious town hall ceremonies.

When you add these two things together, the fact that people are accustomed to and love to have parties to celebrate the birth of a child, and the fact that many people don’t see what a celibate man in robes who actually thinks he can, and should, turn wine into blood by uttering magic words has to do with celebrating family events…you get somebody suggesting that a government official should say some inspiring words to a crowd of a newborn’s family members.

I wonder if they use official government water? No I’m kidding. I looked it up. Apparently a civil baptism is a ceremony to celebrate a new Spaniard getting citizenship. The ceremony usually includes a reading of several articles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN in November 1989:

Article 6 – 1: States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life.

Article 6 – 2: States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the child.

Article 12 – 1: States Parties shall assure to the child who is capable of forming his or her own views the right to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.

Article 12 – 2: For this purpose, the child shall in particular be provided the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings affecting the child, either directly, or through a representative or an appropriate body, in a manner consistent with the procedural rules of national law.

Article 27 – 1: States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.

Article 27 – 2: The parent(s) or others responsible for the child have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capacities, the conditions of living necessary for the child’s development.

Article 27 – 3: States Parties, in accordance with national conditions and within their means, shall take appropriate measures to assist parents and others responsible for the child to implement this right and shall in case of need provide material assistance and support programmes, particularly with regard to nutrition, clothing and housing.

Article 27 – 4: States Parties shall take all appropriate measures to secure the recovery of maintenance for the child from the parents or other persons having financial responsibility for the child, both within the State Party and from abroad. In particular, where the person having financial responsibility for the child lives in a State different from that of the child, States Parties shall promote the accession to international agreements or the conclusion of such agreements, as well as the making of other appropriate arrangements.

I remember the mountain of paperwork I had to fill out and drive to various government offices around my province after my daughter was born to get her “into the system” so she could suckle the socialist teat. It’s a big hassle, one worthy of a glass of champagne upon completion.

To me, a civil baptism deciding what country a human has allegiance to, before he is able to think for himself, based solely on the geography where he escaped the womb and allegiances of his parents is just as immoral as deciding what religious beliefs he should hold based on the same criteria. But most people don’t really put that much meaning into it. It’s really just a party for a happy reason, which is something I can get behind.

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It brought to mind the image of a suspension bridge with two towering pillars holding up a span allowing people to cross from one weekend to the other.

Of course, I’m employed in the US, so I’m slogging through the lava like any other week.

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I picked up a bottle and continued shopping. At the checkout, I asked the cashier if she knew anything about this wine, and she responded that it was a great wine for the price, a good “weekday” wine, and it was the wine that her father drank with his lunch everyday.

The wine was quite good, definitely one of the highest quality/price ratios I’ve ever consumed. I won’t bore you with those bizarre adjectives wine connoisseurs use, as I’m not one. But I am a bit of a psychology connoisseur, so I would like to discuss things this winemaker did very, very right in packaging their wine.

First of all, the name is genius. It literally means “red [horse] mane”, hence the horse logo, but out of the corner of your eye, or with the movement of someone pouring you a glass, any Spaniard or wine drinker knowledgeable about Spanish wines is going to see the words Crianza and Rioja, both of which are marks of quality and their usage is highly regulated. You have to get official certification to put either word on your wine bottle. Crin Roja is neither crianza nor Rioja; it’s from a vineyard called Vinícola in Castilla La Mancha.

Secondly, you almost never see gold netting on bottles of wine in my price range. Only the very finest wines, usually reserva or gran reserva are netted. The internet tells me that this tradition originates from an intent, by rich Europeans of yore, to prevent the house staff from opening the expensive bottles in the cellar for themselves before refilling and recorking them with an inferior wine.

Why is all this important? Not only do these clever tricks make the wine sell better, but they actually make it taste better!

The industry of expensives wines is mostly all bullshit. Blind taste test after blind taste test have shown that those of us that are not wine experts (and the experts, too, to some extent) base our estimations of wine quality on subliminal and priming stimuli, with price being the primary factor. As neuroscientist Jonah Lehrer explains in his book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist,

What these wine experiments illuminate is the omnipresence of subjectivity…Our human brain has been designed to believe itself, wired so that prejudices feel like facts, opinions are indistinguishable from the actual sensation. If we think the wine is cheap, it will taste cheap. And if we think we are tasting a Grand Cru, then we will taste a Grand Cru.

Our sensations from drinking wine are interpreted by a subjective brain that is also factoring in biases and beliefs and expectations. Just like the placebo effect still works even when the patient knows they are getting a placebo, cheap wine in a fancy gold netted bottle with words that look like crianza and rioja will taste better, even if you know it’s all just clever packaging.

¡Salud!

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Lest you think I’m implying that Americans are much more polite than Spaniards, let’s look at another set of customs: the dinner party.

When you are a guest in someone’s home in Spain, there is an unspoken rule that you shouldn’t ask for anything to eat or drink, and that rule is remedied by the expectation that the host will offer you things to eat and drink. Americans have this same system to some extent, but where Spain and the US diverge is at the dinner table.

In the US, when a host lays out a bunch of food on the table at a dinner party, the guests more or less understand that it’s all for them and they can ask each other or the host to pass the potatoes if they want more. In Spain…not so much. A Spanish guest will tend to eat only what he is expressly offered to take. As a result, proper hosting etiquette is to constantly suggest that people with empty plates take more food. Sometimes it’s even considered polite for a guest to decline food that he really wants to give other guests, or the host, the option to take it. Since both parties understand this, a polite host will continue to persist even after the guest has declined.

Personally, this drives me mad. I really can’t stand customs where no doesn’t mean no. I prefer to tell the truth and not have to repeat myself. But, I have to remind myself that I am in a different culture where my host is only being polite. It takes effort. And I’m not the only one. My wife had the opposite problem of waiting for food to be offered to her in the States, and sometimes walking away from the table hungry and annoyed at how rude Americans can be. Now that she and I fully comprehend the cultural difference, we know not to get annoyed, or, if we do, that no one is to blame but ourselves.

When you visit other cultures, the people will, by definition of being from a different culture, seem rude to you, and you will seem rude to them. If you can’t bend your mind around to the opinion that experiencing and learning about these differences is the very thing that makes traveling and living abroad so much fun, then you should go back to your hometown where everyone behaves just like you.

This ad for HSBC got a lot of airtime back when I was living in England. It illustrates my point perfectly and humorously.

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• Presentation: relative to the size of the float, the combination of diverse pieces and parts, and complexity of the float
• Art: the general beauty, composition, design, originality and “wow factor”
• Flowers: how well the flowers are nailed to the float, and the general quality of the floral craftsmanship
• Quantity of flowers: the percentage of the float covered in flowers

There is also a separate prize for the best dressed human ornaments. During the video you’re about to see, the announcer mentions that this year, there were floats that had more than 100,000 flowers on them. Wow!

Having lived in the area longer than anywhere besides our parents’ houses, my wife and I are pretty much like locals, and we know the tricks involved with each festivity. Like how there are absolutely zero parking spaces available in Laredo around the start of the Batalla de Flores. Literally zero. Since we were invited to a dinner with friends after the parade, we needed to have a car to drive home. So, like last year, we parked our car in Laredo the day before! Nora and I took the car to Laredo on Thursday, with Nora screaming the whole way since she can’t stand to be in the car for more than, well, zero seconds. Even on Thursday, after the four minute drive to Laredo, it took me twenty minutes of driving around before I got lucky and found someone leaving a space. We then took a bus back to Colindres, and when it came time to go to the parade, we walked the 40 minutes it takes to get there.

Our dinner companions are even more local, and they knew that if they came right after the parade was over, that all the streets the parade used would be cleaned and reopened for parking. But they don’t have two-year-olds that love flowers and music…

The forecast had predicted rain, but we got lucky…sort of. Towards the end of the parade, it got really windy, and soon after it stopped, it got very cold. I had on a denim jacket and long trousers and I was quite cold. “They really should have this festival in the summer,” I quipped. After the parade, we struggled to push our stroller through the throngs of people and eventually decided to sit down for a beer. Just then, a local marching band took shelter from the wind near where we were seated, and we were treated to live marching and pop-to-band-converted music for about an hour.

This is a frame from the video. Can you imagine a float like this in a parade in the United States of America? A bare breast, and pubic hair! Cover your child’s eyes! The horror!!! I distinctly remember not only watching The Wardrobe Malfuction live at 4 AM from my home in England, but later listening to a radio report in which an American said that it was “the most disgusting thing [he'd] ever seen on television.” What a sad, sad state of human affairs. Rant over.

The video below shows almost all of the floats. We got there a little late, so they were on their final of two (three?) laps around the circuit. There was a lot of stoppages and boring waiting periods that you have been spared through the magic of video editing, so be grateful for the succinctness of the video. At the end, you can see Nora dancing to the music at the café, and the other people in a general state of joy. The Spanish do love to have their festivals, as does Nora. The following day, when listening to another marching band when it was time to go home, Nora said, “I don’t want to go home; I want to stay here with the music all night!”

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Close Encounter of the First Kind

It was before we moved to Spain. My future wife and I were living in England and had flown to Spain for August vacation. The first time I went to Extremadura with her family was in 2003, and I think this encounter with the law probably happened the second year, in 2004. We had flown to Madrid and rented a car. To save money, I agreed to be the sole driver. My future in-laws’ car didn’t have air conditioning, so we took most of our excursions in our rental car. We were on our way to my future father-in-law’s hometown of Zahínos, which took us through the lovely town of Zafra.

In the middle of downtown Zafra, there was a cop directing traffic. He had one arm straight up in the air and was waving his other arm under the other one. I saw his waving arm and thought he was waving me to continue, so I continued, as my future wife and father-in-law erupted in “What are you doing!?” dismay. But by then, it was too late. The cop was whistling and gesturing angrily for me to pull over. I understood this gesture, at least.

As the policeman was approaching, my father-in-law had a brilliant idea: he told everyone in the car to be quiet and “let Erik do all the talking”. My Spanish at this point was very, very limited. When the cop asked for my carné (license), I wondered what piece of meat he wanted me to show him. From a general knowledge of how these things go, I figured I should show him my license. “Americano,” I said. The cop took one look at my North Carolina driver license and decided dealing with a foreigner with a foreign language and documentation while he was supposed to be directing traffic in a busy intersection was too much of a hassle for such a light infraction and he waved me on and said something about “más cuidado“.

The lesson here is, when dealing with an overworked, underpaid cop, the bumbling foreigner tourist act can save you a lot of trouble. I plan to use it as the first line of defense should I ever find myself under mild legal scrutiny.

Close Encounter of the Second Kind

The second time I had to deal with the Guardia Civil, they actually gave me a ticket for not having proof of car insurance in the car, a stupid law that has since been repealed.

On a side note, did you know that, in England, you don’t even need to have your driver license with you. If a cop asks for it, and you don’t have it, you just have to send proof that you have one to a certain address within a certain period of time. How reasonable is that?

Close Encounter of the Third Kind

Last Thursday, August 18, 2011, I was driving my wife and daughter to a nearby town to take my daughter to the emergency room. Well, not really to the ER, but we did go in the ER entrance before getting directed to the main reception area and sent to the pediatrician. She had a bug bite on her foot which was swelling considerably. The doctor gave us a topical antihistamine and the swelling went down in a day or two.

As we were headed to the nearby town, a traffic cop was waiting at the edge of town and flagged me down. I rolled down the window, and, without thinking, some Spanish escaped my lips. But I was feeling pretty innocent, so I just wanted to be helpful and be on my way. He asked for my license, and I opened my wallet to search for my Spanish driver license, but I couldn’t find it. I dug around for a bit, but could only find my American driver license, so I gave him that and explained that I was an American. He examined it and addressed me by my first name, asking for the car’s registration. I found it in the glove box and gave it to him. “The car is in your wife’s name?” he inquired. I answered in the affirmative. He gave me back my documentation and sent us on our way.

When I was driving away, I had two thoughts.

First of all, why the heck were my tax euros paying two officers (his partner had been leaning against their car) to stand out in the heat in Middle-of-Nowhere, Spain (14.5 inhabitants/km², 37.7 inhabitants/mile²), to check drivers’ documentation? Their primary objective must have been to check for seatbelt use and people driving without a license, but I can’t imagine that would be very fruitful. Oh, and also, I was taking my child on an emergency visit to the doctor!!

My second thought was to congratulate my own cleverness in outwitting myself. I remembered that I had intentionally hidden my Spanish drivers license deep in a part of my wallet that I normally never put things specifically for this situation to make sure my future self didn’t chicken out, get too obedient, and proffer my Spanish license first. Sure enough, the nerves of dealing with an authority figure was enough to preoccupy me enough to the point where I was unable to find my Spanish license (and I was trying to find it). Not that it would’ve been a disaster, but giving him a document that he knew how to read would not have helped my cause in any way, and it might have led him to discover the traffic law I was actually breaking: driving with non-prescription sunglasses.

I often find that my future self is a bit of a clueless idiot that needs all the help he can get.

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Bad Education

In Spanish driving school, the students are taught that, when circulating in a roundabout you should always be in the far outside lane no matter which exit you are planning on taking. How ridiculous is that? Any driving student with half a critical thinking neuron should raise their hand and ask, “Then what are the other lanes in the roundabout for?” But no one does because the authoritarian Spanish school system has extinguished any such behaviors.

I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve narrowly escaped an accident when trying to exit a roundabout from the inside lane and somebody is trying to keep going around the roundabout in the outside lane. I suspect that if we were to collide, the authorities would rule the accident as being my fault.

This brings me to what I consider to be a fundamental flaw of roundabouts, specifically roundabouts with two-lane exits.

A Fundamental Flaw

Please focus only on the northeast exit in the image above, and the red and black cars approaching it. Follow my logic here:

1. If there are two lanes in the exit, then cars are meant to exit parallel with each other from the outer two lanes of the roundabout.
2. In the image above, if the black car wants to exit into the left lane of the exit road, it may do so legally.
3. Therefore the red car must exit to the right exit lane to avoid a collision.

The conclusion #3 is a necessarily consequence of the premises #1 and #2.

Not only does that fly in the face of what Spaniards are taught in driving school, it also is contrary to my speculation of legal fault above. There is something very wrong here, because I don’t think anyone, in practice, truly believes that the red car is prohibited from continuing around the roundabout to another exit. In that case, either premise #1 is false – in which case, why do they build roundabouts with two exit lanes?? – or premise #2 is false, meaning that the black car may only exit the roundabout if he somehow verifies the location and intention of the car to its right – in which case, why do they build roundabouts with two exit lanes??

This is the same roundabout exit, as seen from street level. If you’re in this lane of the roundabout, can you continue on around, or must you exit? Does it depend on whether or not there’s a car to your left that wants to exit? Who yields? Argh!!

In Practice

Personally, I am utterly dumbfounded that more traffic accidents don’t happen in roundabouts. The whole scenario seems so chaotic, and the proper rules can’t account for every situation, not to mention that they don’t even teach the proper rules in driving school. But somehow there is an emergent behavior of the system and swarm intelligence takes over to avoid accidents and make roundabouts safer and more efficient than they seem at first glance.

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Two of my most favorite foods in Spain: morcilla (blood sausage) and goat’s cheese, topped with a bit of balsamic vinegar. This tapa could easily have been the best thing ever, but the slices of both ingredients were very thin, and it was served cold.

More goat cheese, raspberries and walnuts.

A bit of chicken on a stick.

Some sort of meat (chicken or pork?) topped with a mustard sauce. I didn’t eat this one.

Bread topped with tomato, ham, white asparagus, chives and an anchovy. White asparagus is about the only Spanish food that I don’t like.

More tapas on display. On top, those are sandwiches of breaded calamari.

Octopus with boiled potato and paprika. Very Galician.

Squid on bread.

Oyster mushrooms with garlic.

My mushroom tapa and wine.

“We have sangria!” What a great sign.

Spanish Iberian ham, with paté and quince jelly.

Cecina (smoked beef) on fried onions.

My companion, waiting for me to bring her a tapa.

Goat cheese, walnuts, and balsamic vinegar. I ate the red one in the back, which had raspberry sauce, I think.

A simple one. Cheese, pepper, cherry tomato, anchovy and a black olive.

Smoked salmon on a bed of mayonnaise.

When we were full, we decided to take a touristy cruise around the Santander bay, around the Palacio de la Magdalena, Santander’s principal tourist attraction. We enjoyed it a lot, and it was nice to sit out in the sun and cool breeze.

Some of us enjoyed the sun more than others.

Upon disembarking (or is it deboating?), I had the opportunity to take this stereotypical shot of Santander. It’s so stereotypical, in fact, that it was used as the image for the festival this year.

We had a great time, and I’m already looking forward to next years tapa-fest!

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