A Spanish Tale
Down the side of the
Basilica of Santa María in Pontevedra are a couple of rough-hewn wooden
doors, well and truly closed. Above them is a couple of short, sad, rusty chains, from which there
used to hang a sign saying O Cortello. Or 'The Pigsty' in Galician. Until it closed 3 years ago, this was the
entrance to my favourite tapas bar.
The Backcloth
The Backcloth
As its name suggests,
it was a pretty rustic place. The tables and benches were formed -
'carved' would be too pretentious a word - from varnished slabs of tree trunks, sliced in half. The owner was one Agostín, an ebullient
cove from Murcia and the cook was his wife, María. Whenever I ate there with
friends or visitors, the bill - after a lot of
pointless figuring by Agostín on a pad - would always come out at
exactly 10 euros a head, regardless of what we'd eaten or drunk. And,
on more than one occasion when I was there with my daughters, Agostín
would close the place early (at 10pm) and then serenade them on his
guitar. In the early days, when their Spanish was not yet good, the
lyrics could be quite salacious. But, anyway, I digress.
The Event
The Event
One rainy midday
around 10 years ago, I took refuge in the Pigsty to have a glass
of wine and some tapas. When I came to pay, I found I had nothing in my
wallet. Embarrassed, I asked Agostín if I could do so the next day,
when I came back to town. He agreed, of course, but then went to the
till and came back with a €20 note, which he held out to me. When I
asked why, he said no one should walk abroad with nothing in his
pocket. I tried to resist but he would have none of it
At midday the next
day, I reappeared in the bar and proffered money to Agostín - my
bill from the previous day plus the 20€. "What's this?" he demanded in an angry tone. Confused, I muttered that it was what I
owed him. "Have you come in especially to give me this?" he
asked in a still angrier tone. Even more confused, I replied that I
had. "Don't you think I trusted you to come in whenever?"
he more or less spat out. To which I had no reply beyond "No, of
course not".
I left the bar rather
sheepishly, not knowing why this conversation had taken place. Over
time, I came to realise that doing the (British) right thing had been
to do the (Spanish) wrong thing.
Agostín had trusted
me implicitly and, in a country where trust is rather thin on the
ground, this was an honour. My going in the next day had insulted him
by suggesting I thought he hadn't really trusted me. Nor honoured me.
Worse, that I thought he'd been lying to say "Come in whenever".
At least, that's what
I think was going on. If anyone has an alternative explanation, I'd
welcome hearing it. Unless it's from that ageing old cynic down in
Portugal, Alfie Mittington. Or his mate, Mr. P. Missler of Santiago.
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