Primarily because of his book The Spanish Labyrinth, Gerard Brenan is seen as one of the greatest English writers on Spain. In his autobiographical work, South from Granada, he quotes the opinion of Napier [in his History of the Peninsular War] that, “Although the Spanish have more virtues than other people and fewer vices, it so happens that their virtues are passive and their vices active”. This, says Brenan, is a view that is worth considering. And so it surely is. In, fact, I invite readers to try to flesh out this thought. I’d welcome ideas on what the virtues and vices of the Spanish are. I shall, in due course, add my own and then publish both sides of the ledger. This exercise – a genuine one, I stress – is not confined to foreigners. I’d love to hear what Spanish readers think are their pluses and minuses. Mas o menos.

But for now, here’s the latest compilation of 3 years’ posts. For no good reason, it's on one of my favourite moans – Noise. It has the virtue of being much shorter than previous efforts:-

2003-4

If you are thinking of living in Spain, you should know that there is a good reason why Spain is considered the noisiest country in at least Europe. Apart from being ‘individualistic’, the Spanish - unlike their Portuguese neighbours – appear to have no concept of loud noise. For the most part, confined as it is to bars and restaurants, this isn’t really a problem but noisy neighbours are never fun. We have some – The Cacophonous Catalans – who seem to think they have an obligation to generate sound. They have recently installed a swimming pool in their garden and this year’s speciality is 3 to 4 kids screaming in said pool, while the father sits at the side regularly shouting at them and their dog – would you believe an Old English Sheepdog – runs round the pool barking non-stop. You will not be surprised to hear that the rest of our neighbours are less than mortified that this family has forsaken the community pool for their own version. My poor daughter – who is writing her first novel – is nearly witless and is coming up with increasingly outrageous schemes to curtail the din. Watch this space. Meanwhile, suggestions welcome to colindavies@terra.es


There is a growing problem in Spain of teenage drinking - the botellón. But not violent. Just noisy and all-night-long. Some people have been driven to rather drastic retaliatory measures, like the sacristan of a Galician church who fired a couple of shotgun cartridges above the heads of the cacophonous youngsters in his churchyard. The newspaper report was remarkably sympathetic to him. And conspicuous by its absence was any mention of the need for stress counselling for the rapidly-dispersed revellers. Plus the sacristan was allowed to keep his shotgun as he needed it for the ravaging wild boars. As opposed to the drunken wild bores.


Life in the UK is, for the most part, rather quiet and humdrum. In contrast, the denizens of the popular soap operas live in a world of constant noise, adventure and incident. The same sort of inversion operates in Spain too. Everyday life here involves a great deal of noise, much of it coming from people who talk constantly, loudly and simultaneously. In contrast, actors in the soap operas spend a great deal of time in silence, simulating deep emotions via laconic movements of their lips, nostrils and eyebrows. And when they do talk, this takes place in whispers and one by one. While all this non-activity is taking place, a piano or violin plonks plangently in the background, rising to a crescendo during the periods of agonised silence. Until, as this morning, some reality intrudes and one of these troubled people stops emoting and plunges an axe into the back of another.


Our new neighbours had visitors last night. As is customary in Spain, they put the TV on full volume, sat round it and then bellowed at each other - often simultaneously - until after one in the morning. Try as I might, I can’t think why the Spanish are so inordinately loud but I suspect it’s just something they learn to be as infants and then never stop. Next door’s kids are certainly getting off to a good start.


Talking again of the plague of noise in Spain, here’s a tale which may amuse my Anglo-Saxon reader[s] but leave any Spanish readers nonplussed by its lack of noteworthiness.. There is only one café in Pontevedra lacking a TV blaring away in at least one corner. This, of course, is an oasis, visited by the likes of me who just want to either read the papers or have a quiet conversation. I was there this morning when a trio of young women came in and sat right next to me and my companion. Two of them had babies in pushchairs and, naturally, these began to cry and then scream. Despite the obvious serenity of the place, the women blithely ignored this and simply raised the already high level of their conversation in compensation. This in, itself, would not be worthy of comment, even by me. But when I suggested to my companion that we move to another table, she blanched and indicated that this simply wouldn’t be on. I didn’t ask why because I didn’t need to. The right to shout without the slightest consideration for people near you is so absolute in Spain that it is considered an insult to show that you are offended by this. Nice, eh? You are entitled to be inconsiderate in making noise but not entitled to be inconsiderate in showing that the noise offends you. I am beginning to lose confidence that my strategy of playing Wagner at maximum volume is going to have its desired effect on my neighbours. They are never going to ask me to turn it down so that I can then do a deal around their habit of bawling at each other.


There is a period during the Spanish day – between 2 and 4pm – when scarcely anything moves. People simply disappear. But on public holidays like today, the entire day is like this. Ghostly. Only the cafes and the pastry shops open. The calm and silence are wonderful.

Which reminds me… My new neighbour, Antonio, is not at all silent. In fact, he takes the Spanish love of talking to new extremes. My first glimpse of him was down in the garden, conversing with a tree. And yesterday, I caught him talking to the drainpipe on his garage. And when he isn’t chatting to himself or some inanimate object, he is shouting at anyone who comes within his orbit. As he works on petrol tankers, I assume he has adopted this default mode because of engine noise. But he is a nice man and, despite his decibel quotient, we much prefer him to the Catalans on the other side of us, who have yet to speak to us in almost 4 years


As I was reading my paper today and partaking of some excellent Albariño wine and battered squid, I asked the three young boys on the next table to stop shouting while they played their army games. Impressively, they did so for about a minute but then returned to the previous noise levels. This is exactly what happens when you ask a Spanish adult to slow down his/her speech, though in this case the time period is about 20 seconds rather than a minute. So, always a totally pointless exercise but quite touching to see the attempt.


Walking past a line of stationery cars today, I was assailed by the music from the car of a local marulo [chav], more accurately by the heavy bass. What intrigued me was that, even after I could no longer hear the music, I could still feel the regular vibrations on my ear drums. I thought of the punishment his were taking, and smiled.


By the time a Spanish woman gets to be a grandmother, she’s had a lot of practice at getting her voice heard above the competition. The two basic rules for this are 1. speak at the same time as everyone else, and 2. be louder. So, you can imagine what it’s like when 5 or 6 of these harridans get together, after Mass on Sunday for example. I doubt that Attila and his hordes made much more noise as they rampaged across Asia. The best of them can actually read the café’s free newspapers while they are bawling their banal thoughts. This all goes down well with me, of course


I knew it was too good to last. I go two or three times a week to a café which is uncharacter- istically calm and quiet. No TV, a separate non-smoking zone and 30’s décor. A real oasis. It is, naturally enough, patronised by ageing singletons who read the papers and duos who enjoy quiet conversation. But now it has been discovered by a group of young women with screaming toddlers and crying babies, all of whom have to be shouted over by indulgent mothers who are unacquainted with the words ‘Be quiet, you brats. You are disturbing others’. And who clearly regard the place as a marvellous playground for their unsupervised infants. It all reminds me of one of my brother’s favourite sayings – ‘It’s amazing what you see when you don’t have your rifle with you’. Or machine gun, in this case.


A Valencian woman has won her case in the Human Rights court in Strasbourg against a council which declined to do anything about the appalling levels of ‘night time economy’ noise between 3 and 8am at weekends. Is this the beginning of the end for noise pollution in Spain? Probably not.


My next-door neighbour, Tony, talks to his plants and calls his young kids los enanos. This means dwarves, midgets, runts or, at a stretch, the little ones. But I’m sure he means it affectionately. When I got back from my coffee early afternoon today, I clocked said enanos sitting in the front seats of his Seat Ibiza, pretending to drive. As the car was right behind mine, I took the liberty of checking the key was not in the ignition before coming indoors. I suppose banishing your noisy kids to the car in the street is an unusual way to solve a problem but, on balance, it has my support.


2005

Round-the-clock boozing is a big issue in the UK at the moment, where many are concerned that the proposed relaxation of the licensing laws will simply lead to more of the atavistic binge drinking for which the UK is now infamous. The Spanish equivalent of this is the botellón, which is street drinking by young people from midnight to 8am. It rarely involves violence but is always accompanied by a great deal of noise and a fair bit of vomiting. Understandably, affected residents want something done about it. Here in Pontevedra, the local council pronounced last week that this is a global problem to which no one has yet found a solution. In other words, “Tough shit.” So the residents took to the streets this weekend and blocked the traffic for 15 minutes by walking backward and forwards across one of the zebra crossings. As this is a death-defying strategy in Spain, feelings are clearly running high.


Today comes another of those surveys designed to portentously tell us what anyone could find out from a one-night stopover in any city in Spain. This one comes from the University of Valencia and deals with noise levels in this fun-loving society. As the researcher puts it, “There are few opportunities to enjoy silence in Spain at any time of the day or night.” This is because the recommended decibel levels for each are comfortably exceeded even in restaurants never mind bars. Mention is made of a 2003 law designed to reduce this damaging noise pollution, with the rider that this has had no effect and that it will be a long time before anything changes. So, bring ear plugs. Or dine and sleep across the border in Portugal.


Spain is renowned for being the noisiest country in Europe, if not the world. So it’s good the government has promised to do something about what it admits are abominably high levels of acoustic pollution. But we will see. It must be at least 30 years since it became illegal to tamper with scooter engines to make them even louder but no one does anything about the bloody things. Whatever, with noise in the news, it seems the right time to dedicate a blog to my neighbour, Tony.


I live in a town house, at the end of a row. So I share a wall with one set of neighbours. In this I have not been lucky. The previous husband was a heavy smoker and used to wake me any time between 5.30 and 8.30 with his fearsome morning cough. Actually, it was more like a death rattle at twenty second intervals. I tried every room in the house to get away from it but with no luck. And now I have Tony, his wife and two young boys. To be fair, Tony is a lovely man and |’m happy to have him as a neighbour. But he does like to talk. If not to someone else then to himself, out loud. Or to the trees and flowers in the garden. Far worse, he has a penchant for shouting for no reason whatsoever. I don’t mean shouting at someone or something. Just shouting for the apparent sake of it. So, for example, when the phone rings Tony screams from wherever he is the house ‘I’ll get it!’. At least five times. And then there is his bawling at the kids, apparently in what is a twisted sense of fun, for there is no aggression about any of it. Needless to say, the two boys are beginning to respond in like manner and I am often treated to a father-son bawlfest that lasts ten minutes or more. Even Spanish visitors find this jaw-dropping.

The good news is that, when I am alone in the house, I can at least drown things with my music. But when my noise-sensitive, author daughter is home, I have to tolerate it as best I can. The very good news is that Tony works on oil tankers and regularly sails to China for a couple of weeks or so. I guess he has a whale of a time on board ship. But I pity the whales.


I had a very pleasant hour in the sun this morning, reading my paper in one of Pontevedra’s beautiful squares and partaking of my Sunday Albariño and battered squid. And then, later, I had another pleasant hour having a beer with friends in another of these squares. In between, though, I had to endure five kids running round me screaming as I tried to finish my research for this blog. And I do mean screaming, not just shouting. This is because the only reaction Spanish parents ever have to their noisy offspring is to raise their already-loud voices so that they can be heard above the din coming from their bloody kids. And, of course, from all their friends who are speaking simultaneously. And raising their own voices so that they too can be heard. So, a swings and roundabouts morning, I guess.


After a sunny, dry winter, we’ve had a warm and wettish spring here in south Galicia. So everything in the garden is blooming. Everything, that is, except the young Leylandi-like trees I planted last October and which are reputed to grow at the rate of dozens of metres a year. These were installed after my elder daughter demanded a screen between us and the noisy Catalans next door so that she could concentrate on her career as an author. But as she’s since buggered off to live in Madrid, I don’t suppose all this matters very much now. Anyway, we’ve got two months or so before the screaming grandchildren arrive from Barcelona to take over the pool. Which reminds me - I suspect Tony is back from his tanker today. Let the bellowing begin. The joy of Spanish neighbours.


After 6 weeks of silence, Tony is home from the sea and back to his bellowing best. But it was actually a more female sound through the bedroom wall last night that alerted me to his probable return. To be honest, it’s not so much the noise from him [or even his wife] which is most disturbing but the whingeing of their 4 year-old, who turns into a relentless cry-baby when his father’s home from the sea.


Changing Spain: I read occasionally of steps being taken to reduce the country’s high levels of ‘acoustic pollution’. This week, the Pontevedra council said it will introduce automatic control of noise levels in the hundreds of all-night bars that populate the old quarter. I struggle to see how they’ll actually do this; perhaps some sort of regulator on the hi-fi system. Meanwhile, the town’s Association of Women has been taken to task for booking their annual party in a bar which has been served with a closure order for persistently exceeding permitted noise levels. Perhaps the Chairwoman is the lady who told me ‘No noise, no life!”.


Changing Spain: The local police report that in recent spot checks only 12% of motor cyclists were above the permitted noise levels, against 45% last year. Still too bloody high but great progress nonetheless. Perhaps we are moving towards another brief Golden Age for Spain, when all the social evils of the past have been eradicated but the country is not yet as anally retentive as elsewhere. What joy it will be to be alive. If I am.


My nice-but-noisy neighbour, Tony, brought me a bag of new potatoes last night and, in return, asked me to put a Windsor knot in his tie. He was due to attend the First Communion of his elder son, also called Tony of course. The extended family returned from the celebrations at 1.30 in the morning and then caroused until 3.30 as if there was no-one else on the planet, never mind on the other side of the wall. Roll on the next sea trip. Especially as Tony Junior appears to have caught the bawling habit. I wonder if this is what Tony Senior meant when he told me that, after the Communion ceremony, his son would be a man.


I bumped into my nice-but-noisy neighbours in town last night and stopped to chat. I took the chance to raise the subject of his wife’s freestyle parking practices but this was not well received. So I quickly moved on to ask about the bathroom re-fit which has been going on for at least a month. Amparo said it needed to be finished very soon otherwise she and Tony would be getting divorced but he insisted it would all be worth the hassle. What I didn’t hear was anything along the lines of ‘Sorry about the dreadful noise’. Or even ‘Shame about the dust from the marble-cutting killing off your wisteria’. But one lives in hope.


Tony and his family attended a wedding last night and arrived back at 7.30 this morning. This was a splendid opportunity for adults and kids alike to again demonstrate that the concept of excess noise is unknown in Spain. And they grasped it with both hands.


A British journalist had a bad night in Pontevedra last week. Not having taken any advice, he appears to have booked himself into a cheap hostel in a run-down alley in the old quarter famous for its noisy nightlife. Specifically, a couple of drug addicts appear to have woken him at 4am with their shouting, crying and fighting. From this he concluded that ‘The young of provincial Pontevedra don’t need Kate Moss and Pete Doherty as role models.’ God knows I take a few liberties with the truth in this blog but I rather feel this is stretching things somewhat. And who tries to sleep in the old quarter of Pontevedra at 4am?


Tony is back from the sea and the noise levels next door have naturally escalated. Today I talked to the neighbour on the other side about this, in the hope of finding a Spanish solution to a very Spanish problem. He confessed he and his wife found Tony’s young boys even noisier but, nonetheless, my initiative fell on stony ground. The farthest he would go was a suggestion that Tony shouted all the time because he worked on tankers where the ambient noise levels must be high. A very Spanish response. Looks like I’m stuck with the turning-up-the-music solution, even when I’m trying to sleep at 7.15 in the morning.


After two nights of partying next door, I can make another observation on why Spain is such a noisy country. Not only does everyone just love to talk; everyone loves to talk at the same time as everyone else. Actually, I doubt this is new observation on my part. But it did strike me in Sintra, touring a palace behind a group of Spaniards, that very few of them have the sort of reticence that others have about their voiced thoughts being thought of as stupid. You can guess the result.


2006

My nice-but-noisy neighbours – in keeping with Spanish tradition – enjoyed their 3rd huge, family meal in eight days. As ever, the party really got going around 2am, just as I was retiring to bed. I would have loved to reciprocate their love of noise and total lack of consideration for me by playing loud music from 9am. But, sadly, my daughters’ habit of sleeping until noon queered my pitch. However, they leave on Wednesday and revenge, they say, is a dish best eaten cold.


My nice-but-noisy neighbour, Tony, has gone back to his petrol tanker and so things are quieter again next door. Or, rather, they would be if someone who’s been doing this on and off for 2 years wasn’t hammering on and drilling holes in our shared wall. I guess this was left until now because it would have disturbed Tony during his R&R. Nice to know someone benefited from some consideration.


I arrived at another of my contentious theories today, viz. that, in a society in which so much stress is laid on having fun, one of the worst things you can call anyone is ‘killjoy’. The basis of my theory is that the Spanish are so tolerant of people around them generating levels of noise and cigarette smoke that would be considered utterly unacceptable elsewhere. Incidentally, the Spanish for killjoy [aguafiestas] is nicely composed of the words for water and partying. So, someone who rains on somebody else’s parade, I guess.


The raves in Spain . . . Next Friday will see attempts by the young of several Spanish cities to congregate in the largest numbers for the purposes of downing the greatest number of bottles of something alcoholic. Given the noise and mess the normal Friday night botellón causes across the country, this should be quite an event. Though not one many of us over 25 are looking forward to. Probably a night to stay home and knit some socks.


Here’s a provocative statement – One defining characteristic of the Spanish is that they haven’t the slightest concern about anyone overhearing every word of their conversation. That said, the level of ambient noise is so great this is usually impossible anyway. Strength in numbers. Or privacy, at least.


At last some good news from Catalunia . . . A bar owner in Barcelona has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for making the life of nearby residents a misery by ignoring not just the regulations but also the court orders imposed on him. His defence included the statement that lorries and ambulances make a lot of noise as well. A cartoon in one of the national papers showed a man with two thought-balloons on either side of his head. One referred to this development and the other to the ETA permanent ceasefire. A third bubble contained the comment ‘Some days are just unforgettable’. So it can’t be only foreigners who think Spain is a terribly noisy place.

Which reminds me . . . Tony is home from the sea and has resumed his practice of bawling and singing from the minute he wakes up until the time he retires to bed, often after 2am. I must find a way to deal with this, short of assassination. Or tongue-ripping.


Another noise story this weekend - The mayor of the nearby town of Tui is in the dock, facing the charge brought by a group of residents of allowing an excessive number of bars to be set up in the old quarter. What is happening to this country? Does it no longer want to be ‘different’?

Still on noise - a message for Acedre, who reads English but writes Gallego/Galego – Graciñas polo teu email. Home, no necesitas ir a Finlandia para atopar xente falando baixiño. So tes que cruzar o Minho para comer ou xantar en Portugal.


My friend Elena is Spanish but raised in France. Like many of us foreigners, she occasionally finds the Spanish attitude to noise hard to bear. Never more so than when she is asleep and her neighbours decide to start a raucous game of darts on their terrace at 3am and then continue until 4. Even harder to accept is a response to a plea for quiet that suggests it’s you who’s odd for even thinking of sleeping on a Saturday night.


Nothing else of importance happened today. Except I was woken early this morning by the triple whammy of Tony bawling next door, a machine drilling granite outside my front door and a helicopter taking part in a huge drugs raid in the nearby gypsy camp. Have I mentioned that Spain is a noisy place?


My neighbour’s three Catalan grandchildren arrived today - for the whole of July. The noise they make in the garden drowns out the granite-drilling machine at the front of the house. So it’s not all bad news. Time for a trip.


I had some visitors earlier this week who asked if it was normal for the family on one side of me to sit talking loudly in their garden until 1.30am and for the family on the other side to return home in full throat at 2am and keep their shouting/crying kids up until 3am. What could I say? If they’d asked me today, I could have cited the chap in Alicante who, at 3.35am on Tuesday morning, got so fed up with the noise being made outside his window by two youths that he shot them. Perhaps I should supply shotguns for my non-Hispanic guests.


Despite the fact I was wearing my customary earplugs, I was woken at 5am this morning by a persistent, machine-based beat arising from the town centre, at least a kilometre away. Possibly something related to garage, house or hip-hop music. Whatever they are. Mercifully, it stopped at 5.15. What fun this must have been for anyone over 25 in the town trying to get to sleep. Perhaps they all go away for the weekend.


When my elder daughter was living here with me, she had a pupil from Madrid who insisted Pontevedra was the noisiest city in a very noisy country. Neither of us really believed this. But she now lives in the centre of the capital city and, when she was here recently, said she now accepted this. But this may be because her room here is closest to the endlessly barking dogs, the pile-driving on the building site in front of the house and, last but not least, the inconsiderate Catalans who prattle loudly into the very small hours of every summer night. And then, of course, on the other side there’s nice-but-noisy Tony, his eternally-crying 4 year old and his father-emulating 9 year old. When I list all these, I do wonder how I stand it. I guess the nocturnal ear-plugs are part of the answer. Plus loud music. Which then contributes to the noise pollution.


Yesterday I went on a boat trip through the canyon of the main river in Galicia’s magnificent Ribeira Sacra area, east of Ourense. Outside the boat all was calm and quiet and it should have been 90 minutes of pure relaxation. But, unlike their Portuguese neighbours, the Spanish abhor silence so the combination of engine noise, occasional [and indistinct] commentary on the PA system and endless, loud chatter on all sides made sure it wasn’t. Fortunately, like parents with babies, one develops filters over time.


When I woke this morning the silence was so devastating I feared an asteroid had hit the earth. But it only meant it was a public holiday. No screeching traffic, no clanging cranes, no pile-drivers, no barking dongs and, best of all, no banging, bawling and blubbering next door as they get ready for work and school at 7.30. And then I realised my nice-but-noisy neighbour – Tony the Bawler – was scheduled to depart for several weeks on his oil tanker today. Life can be good at times.


I was interested to read these comments in a UK paper – “Britain is getting both noisier and increasingly angry about noise. Last year, complaints about noisy neighbours rose by more than a third: the commonest were about loud music, relentlessly barking dogs, and people who habitually bang doors and undertake DIY at unsociable hours. . . In the past, Britons tended to value privacy above all else: an Englishman's home was his castle and, beyond the metaphorical moat of the front doorstep, he didn't wish the neighbours to know his business. But the national character has become more extroverted and the importance of privacy has been persistently downgraded. Many people don't care much who overhears their private conversations.” If any of the folk affected by this new plague are thinking of emigrating, my advice would be to cross Spain off their list. This is a great place to live but the Spanish are born shouting and they don’t let up. As for the dogs . . .


I’ve been known to mention that Spain is a noisy place but I wonder whether I’m just unlucky. I know it’s too much to expect people to quieten down here before one in the morning but, in a Santiago hotel room last night, I was jolted out my sleep at 2am by a man repeatedly breaking wind in the adjacent bathroom. I was then kept awake while - midst occasional hawking and spitting - he took a shower for the next 25 minutes. Possibly he’d just got back from the Dirtiest Man in Spain competition.


Yes, I am unlucky when it comes to noise, even in the UK. Retiring to bed at 10pm last night prior to getting up at 3.30 for my flight, I was kept awake by the people above my parents’ flat who’d decided to do a bit of late-night furniture moving. On wooden floors. Maybe they’re of Spanish descent. For Spanish readers, I should point out 10pm is considered late night in the UK and not early evening. In Portugal, of course, it’s the middle of the night.