I wonder whether the pedestrian-killing season has begun in Pontevedra. I say this because yesterday I twice had to take evasive action on a zebra crossing and this morning I witnessed the ultimate in confrontation. Just after I had negotiated a crossing, I heard a strident car horn and looked over my shoulder to see a young driver gesticulating and shouting at an old man who was rather slowing making his way across the road. The gestures and the language made it quite clear that the latter was being berated for not stopping in the middle of the crossing to make sure that the former had enough time in which to stop. The clear inference was that the young man had every right to drive exactly how he liked. In fact, he was advertising this belief by driving a garish red sports car. Others of this ilk drive customised cars with ludicrous spoilers fore and aft and speakers that seem to direct all their sound outwards for our benefit. More often than not, their cars are painted yellow, not a colour I would previously have associated with naked aggression. They are not unique to Spain, of course, but seem rather numerous here. The local word for them is ‘morulos’, which doesn’t appear in my dictionary but which seems to mean something like ‘country bumpkin’.

Back again to this subject of the immediacy and ‘orality’ of Spanish society. ….Because they live and work in the here-and-now, the Spanish will routinely respond to any new stimulus without even the slightest consideration for the person to whom they are currently talking. This naturally includes incoming phone calls but it also encompasses, say, an enquiry from someone who wants to talk to the bank teller or the checkout girl while you are dealing with them. In fact, it often appears that the only person who won’t stop what they are doing is the shop assistant at the till who is talking to her boyfriend when you want to pay for something. Because Spanish workers will happily accept any interruption whatsoever, this means that their working day can never be planned. Or, to put it another way, efficient. I suspect that, if one were to ask whether they put aside a part of the day in order to ‘deal with incoming correspondence’, you would not get a ‘No’ but just a look of total bewilderment. It would simply be beyond their conceptual horizon. And herein, perhaps, lies the reason why letters are never answered; unlike the human voice, they have no real immediacy and so can be left for later. Which doesn’t exist, of course.

All of this is compounded by the fact that the Spanish owe a massive duty of response to their family, friends and friends of friends. In a city comprised almost of people who have never left it, these can certainly mount up. If you fall outside one of these categories, your progress is inevitably toward the rear of any queue you happen to be in. A sort of perpetual motion backwards, if you like. And if you have little or no clout in person, imagine what priority your letters have!