Roma, Gypsies, and Payos

In the streets of Valencia, the Roma—or gypsy—scrap collectors are as ever-present as the street sweepers, mailmen, and cops…and probably more reliable. There are two versions of the Roma scrap collector: those pushing stolen supermarket shopping carts and those on beat-up mountain bikes pulling improvised trailers, usually fashioned from the little shopping trolleys Spanish households use to ferry their shopping home from the market.  It’s almost always men on the bicycles while the shopping carts are piloted by both sexes. They stop at every public trash receptacle and prod around with a length of broom handle. Scrap metal is the number one priority but anything of value is part of their swag.

There is quite a difference from the native Spanish gitanos and the post-EU brand of Roma now flooding into Western Europe, mostly from Romania and Bulgaria. The Spanish gypsies no longer speak the unadulterated Romani language but a hybrid developed from centuries of living in Spain.  The Spanish gypsy children attend school, for the most part, but the new wave of Eastern European Roma immigrants seem to have fallen outside of the public safety net of education, health care, and housing.

Many of the new Roma live in squalid shacks on the edges of Valencia while the native gypsies live in apartments. Granted, some of their dwellings are pretty rundown but at least they have sewage and running water. The fact is, I don’t think that many outsiders know much about the Spanish gypsies (non-gypsies are called payos by gygpsies here in Spain).  In the three and a half years I have lived in Spain I have read less than a half dozen newspaper articles concerning the life of these strange people—they are strange to me at least. People here know next-to-nothing about the Roma people. They roam the city like ghosts, ignored by the locals. I see them pushing their shopping carts or pedaling around town and I wondered where they take it. I saw one place on the outskirts of Valencia where they stockpile their scrap so it seems that they are working in consort, at least on some level.

I have also seen an instance where they have worked together. Someone discarded an old porcelain bathtub next door to my apartment. One gypsy guy found it but it was too big and heavy for his bicycle cart. I think he communicated by cell phone with someone else in within a half hour or so he had backup and the two men carried away the tub. It reminded me of The Old Man and the Sea. 

I see these people humping a huge cast iron tub across town and I wonder how much money they get.   According to popular folklore gypsies are all thieving pick-pockets who will take anything that isn't nailed down. I will see the occasional beggar in front of the supermarket but mostly I see the scrap collectors. In one of the few newspaper articles that I read about Spanish gypsies the reporter asked a young man what he was going to do for a living after he dropped out of school at age 15 to get married. "Chatarra (scrap metal)," he replied to the reporter as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Although it appears to be back-breaking work there is definitely one side of me that envies them because I love finding cool stuff in the trash. I found my turtle tank in the garbage (and I had to carry it on my bike a few kilometers). I guess that I miss going to thrift stores like we have in Seattle. 

I am going to keep researching this subject, at least as much as I am able as there seem to be few resources available to anyone who wants to know more about gypsies.

Coffee

I am not going to talk about the great weather we’re having in Valencia, at least not directly. What I am going to talk about is one of the results of this tidal wave of beautiful sunshine and warm temperatures that have been washing over us for several weeks. The weather has been causing massive over-crowding in just about every café terrace in the city, especially in the late afternoon. On many occasions I've had to search out as many as three of my favorite spots in the neighborhood before finding an empty outside table—not a problem if you are traveling by bicycle as I always do when I am alone. On more than one occasion while with bike-less friends (when are they going to get with the bike program?) we have had to settle for an inside table.  ¡Qué barbaridad!

The corner bar/café in Valencia has little in common with the elegant café terraces in Paris. Instead of a place to see and be seen the cafés in my neighborhood are more like an extension of your own kitchen or dining room. To say that dress and attitude at these places is casual is sort of a grotesque understatement—I’m surprised that people don’t wear bathrobes and slippers down to the café for their early morning coffee and cigarette. The café newspapers are the epitome of environmentally-intelligent use because they are read by dozens of people before being relegated to the next link in the recycling chain.  I remember that one of the chain coffee shops in Seattle would throw away leftover newspapers so that customers would be forced to buy their own daily.

While I am on the subject of the environment I just have to say that after all this time in Spain the idea of returning to drinking coffee from a paper cup is just vulgar to me now. You see people here walking around with a Starbucks cup in their hands and you think to yourself, “Why the hell don’t these folks sit down and enjoy their coffee?” You don’t see too many people eating and drinking on the go here. Stuffing your fat gob while walking down the street is sort of bad form.  I don’t mind drinking from a paper cup; it’s the idea of it that bothers me. A paper cup—besides the environmental questions—seems to say that the experience of having a cup of coffee isn’t worth the effort of a real cup, or that you don’t have time to sit down and enjoy it.

The people here don’t multi-task when it comes to coffee. The Spanish don’t have the custom of drinking coffee while they work; for them coffee comes at very specific breaks in the work day. For a coffee break many Spanish workers leave their work and sit at a café. With the exception of Starbucks, there isn’t much in the way of coffee to go in Spain. Why go anywhere when you have a nice table in the sun right here?

If You Don't Like It, Burn It.

The big controversy going on in America right now is because someone wants to burn a Koran…or a flag…or a Bible…or something. Someone wants to burn something and other people don’t want them to burn it. The Koran is written in Arabic so if some half-retard, hillbilly preacher wants to burn a Koran, and other people don’t want him to burn it, they should just give him a Cairo phone book and tell him it’s the Koran. I doubt that the hillbilly preacher can read Arabic. In fact, I’d wager than when he reads in English he moves his lips. He says he wants to burn the Koran because it is a book for religious extremists.  So the hillbilly preacher is too stupid to read without moving his lips and he isn’t aware when irony comes up to him and bites him on the ass.

I believe that I have come to a compromise that we can all agree on concerning this matter. I suggest that we burn the hillbilly preacher on a pyre of Muslims extremists. Or how about if we make a bonfire with copies of Eat, Pray, Love and use it to burn copies of books about vampires? Or we build a fire with food from The Olive Garden® to burn the Italian national football team? It’s what you call a win-win situation if you are prone to using that sort of vocabulary.  You can also call it multi-tasking if you want to use a really obnoxious bit of pop culture speak. Because everyone knows the best way to deal with shit you don’t like or understand is to burn it and what better way is there to burn something you don’t like with something you don’t understand?

In this same vein of religious stupidity and mutual intolerance is the story of the mosque, or whatever the fuck it is, the Muslims want to build in New York in the area of ground zero, or whatever the fuck they call it. My take on this non-issue is this: build the thing or not, it won’t mean a damn thing to all of the hillbillies going crazy opposing it. With that said, the Muslim community should have backed off on the issue a long, long time ago. The fact that this has dominated the news in America for so long is simply pathetic.  It's absurd to even discuss this when we have such drastic issues to resolve like an ever-decreasing industrial base, an ever-widening inequality in incomes, crumbling infrastructure, and boys who still walk around with their underwear showing.

In a related story here in Spain a disco in Murcia called El Mecca is being verbally attacked (verbally for now) by members of the world’s Muslim community who find the name offensive. This begs the question, what the fuck don’t Muslims find offensive? They are offended by the sight of a woman’s hair, for Pete's sake.  The night club is thinking about changing its name to avoid further conflict. Some possible name changes are “Muslims are easily-offended douche bags” and “Lighten the Fuck Up Muslims”. Seeking guidance in the matter, the club owners are in contact with the supreme religious leader in Iran, the Ayatollah Shaggy. 

Perhaps Islam is the religion of peace as they claim but when you offend Muslims there is always at least the thought of violence.  It's really creepy, at least for this non-Muslim. If I offended a Seventh Day Adventist I wouldn't feel afraid for my life. As I said before with the controversy over the Mohammed cartoons, I think it is up to all Westerners to offend Muslims constantly until they get the point that what I think of their silly religion (and I think all religions are silly) shouldn't matter to them in the least.

Football Update: Valencia CF 1-0 Racing

We are into the second game of La Liga and Valencia CF is perfect with six points after beating Racing last night at Mestalla. The next game for Valencia is this Tuesday at 20:45 against the Turkish squad, Bursapor in the first game of the Champions League group stage. The big shock yesterday was Barcelona getting their assed kicked by Hércules, a team just up from the second division. Oddly enough, the victory doesn’t show up on the Hércules web site.

Talking About the Weather and Food

When I write about the weather I don’t mean to brag; I just like to have a record of things. This has been the best September in my almost four years here and all I see I the forecast is more sun and warm temperatures. I still sleep on top of the covers and with the fan on all night although once or twice in the past week I felt a bit cold (but I was too lazy to cover up).  I took the windows out of the window next to the kitchen so the back wall is completely open. One of these days I’ll have to put them back. The room looks so big and open without the windows so it will be a little sad when I have to put them back.

How bad could your life be if you are still able to ride your bicycle shirtless to the beach on the 11^th of September?  Not that any other aspects of my life are at all bad but I have absolutely nothing to complain about as far as the weather goes. It’s not even like I really want to go to the beach but with the beautiful days we are having you don’t want to miss a single opportunity. 

I went to the market and ended up buying a bunch of pork. Big surprise! I was in line at my butcher when I accidentally jumped the queue. I started to order when the man next to me said it was his turn. I apologized and said that I thought that he was with the woman who had just purchased about 80 kilos of meat. Then the man proceeded to order another ton of meat. My butcher heard the first part of my order and saved me a big rack of pork ribs. I also had him special grid some hamburger meat for me that is a lot fattier than the burgers he usually grinds. I like to have between 20-25% fat in my burgers. I bought a bunch of olives, just because, and some vegetables. The tomatoes are still incredible these days and I buy them compulsively. I usually buy the Valenciano tomatoes and another variety called raf.

I made homemade barbeque sauce for the first time in my life with tomatoes, onions, garlic, hot peppers, cider vinegar, brown sugar, olive oil, salt, pepper, pimentón, cumin, and red pepper flakes. I couldn’t find molasses (melaza) so I used a couple table spoons of this great cherry jam someone made for me. I cooked the beautiful ribs in my pressure cooker—the world’s most kickass kitchen device. I browned them well first then removed them from the pot. I sautéed onions, garlic, hot peppers, and some red pepper I had leftover. I added a cup of wine to this and simmered it for a bit before I added a couple cups of water along with the ribs and about a cup of the barbeque sauce. I cooked this under pressure for 22 minutes.  I’ll make a video the next time I make this dish that I totally adlibbed.