Aventuras in Spain

Summer in Talavera de la Reina was hot and dusty. The stench of body odour was putrid, so much so that each time I went to the Simago supermarket just across the road I'd use all my will-power to hold my breath long enough to prevent the ripe aromas from corrupting my nasal passages. There was no air conditioning in the apartment, and the only way to get cooler air was to open the windows, but that gave carte blanche to mosquitoes and flies, and who knows what else.     The local people used to bathe in the Tagus, the river that runs through Talavera, and ended up getting sick due to raw sewage that made its way from Toledo. Somehow, they didn't appreciate the significance of the contaminated water, so they'd keep splashing about in the river, even bringing small children with them. Their theory was that your body gets used to the water, builds up resistance to any germs lurking about. Hadn't they been swimming in the river for generations? And weren't they still ...

Ever since I moved here to El Puerto de Santa Maria, I've been warned about the white slave trade. Apparently white girls — meaning Anglo Saxons — disappear any time they go to Tangiers. They just simply never return. Yikes! The story is that they're sold into a harem. Of course, Mandy, my new Canadian friend and I don't believe any of this, and, since we're out for adventure and excitement, we simply dismiss the stories. You can't be living so close to an exotic city like Tangiers and not visit it. That's just the way it is. We hitch-hike up to Algeciras. The slimy guy who picks us up no sooner has accelerated his car when he opens his glove compartment to show us his contraceptives. Is he serious?! We tell him to stop the car and let us out. He stares at us in the rear view mirror. "You wanna f...y f...y?" "NO!" We scream at him. "Okay. Okay. Just asking. You Swedish girls, you never know." "We're not Swedish...

The Belgian man puffs intensely on a Marlboro cigarette as he shows off his brand new camcorder. He struggles with the clumsy machine and hoists it onto his shoulder, then tells us all to look natural. We immediately stop what we're doing, becoming like images frozen in time.  He grunts and groans, muttering, "How does this damn thing work?!"  He waves his hands at us as if directing an orchestra. "Got it! Pretend I'm not here!" Then he walks around the edge of his swimming pool pointing the camcorder at everyone.  He’s the only person we know who has a camcorder, and it’s quite a thrill to be filmed. We smile and wave, whilst others laugh and tell him to get lost or they'll throw him in the pool.  His girlfriend, the sexy Brazilian, skips in front of him, teasing him, before diving into the pool.  Not everyone is so content.  Lately, Lanny rarely leaves the confines of her back garden in Vilafortuny. She  loathes hearing ...