Valenciano Tomatoes

Valenciano Tomatoes

These are the other local tomatoes, called Valenciano.

An Ode to Tomatoes

You can have your fancy auto-mo-biles and your shiny jewelry, this time of the year I am happy with little more than tomatoes. Valencia has their own variety that are about as good as tomatoes get. July and August are the best months for these Valencia tomatoes and I buy them compulsively from just about every vegetable stand that I pass during the day—and I pass quite a few. It's too hot to cook (although I still cook a lot) so something as simple as a sliced tomato is about all you need. Maybe a pinch of salt, a couple drops of oil if you must, a leaf or two of basil if you have it, and vinegar once in a while just for a change.

These aren't the hothouse variety of tomatoes that you find all year long in most U.S. super markets, or the uninspired tomatoes you find here in the winter. These are right off the vine and still ripening as you bring them home from the market. I had a hothouse tomato lying around a couple of weeks ago, a remnant from those harsher times when the good ones are still in the ground. I had it sitting in my kitchen for a few weeks and it just sat their patiently, not changing color and not getting a bit riper with age. I finally put it out of its misery by chopping it up and throwing it into a soup.

These summer Valenciano tomatoes are very impatient. You only have a window of about three days to eat them before they ripen into mush. They are so good that I don't like to use them for anything but serving uncooked and unprepared. It's almost a waste to make gazpacho out of such beautiful pieces of fruit. I eat them alone or in a Greek salad with cucumber, onion, and green peppers. I serve tomatoes as the base with pasta salads. Basically, I use any excuse that I can find.

My favorites are called raf tomatoes and they are odd-shaped things with the meat separated into different lobes. I have my own little trick for serving them. I use an apple corer to remove the stem base and I push the corer all the way through the tomato. This whole center of the raf is kind of difficult to deal with so using an apple corer works really well. Next I cut it in half from the top. After this you can sit the half on its side and slice the lobes individually.

La Corrida de Toros

Among the people I talk to here, I've met very few Spanish who claim to be aficionados (followers or fans) of the corrida. To say that it isn't popular among the young people of Spain is a huge understatement. Most young people here seem to be, for the most part, against the corrida, although most won't go so far as to actively protest against it. I did see about 30 people in front of the plaza de toros before a corrida the other night. If people here want to do away with the corrida, they'll have to do it without any help from me.

I live only about three blocks from Valencia's plaza de toros, a wonderful neoclassical structure built between 1850 and 1860 and designed by Sebastian Monleon based on the Roman amphitheater of Flavio Marcel. It is every bit as interesting on the inside as on the outside, and the outside (as you can see from the pictures on the link) is spectacular. I have been to five corrida de toros (bullfight is the atrocious translation which I won't use here) since I moved here last year. I have also seen a few dozen others on television, back when they were broadcast on regular TV. Now the corrida is only carried on the pay channels. I have also witnessed a few bull festivals in local villages in the community of Valencia.

I hadn't really made up my mind on the event until I went this past week and witnessed one of the more thrilling displays you'll ever see. It wasn't just what was going on in the ring that impressed me, but everything going on inside the plaza de toros. Let's just say that it was one of those nights when everything went perfectly. I love to smoke a big, fat cigar and walk all around the structure, from top to bottom. I love the view of the city from the outer galleries. I like to watch as the bulls are removed from the ring and taken directly to the butchers. It's funny to watch as very young kids—boys and girls—watch in complete fascination as the bulls are cut up. “Look, Alejandra, that's where meat comes from!” their parent tell them.

I love how they will let you bring in whatever you want. None of this, “No outside food” bullshit at the corrida. People bring in coolers of beer, sandwiches, wine bags, and bottles of champagne to celebrate the evening.

Some people in Spain say that the days of the corrida are numbered, that it will slide into the past. When and if that happens Spain will become a bit more like every other country in the world and a little less idiosyncratic. I wouldn't like to see that happen. I never try to defend the corrida when I discuss it with Spanish people, and I feel as an outsider I shouldn't criticize it either (not that I would). I just think that it is something that Spaniards will work out for themselves. I will enjoy the corrida while it lasts.

Listening

Listening

I used to measure my time in Spain by my haircuts. I still remember my first one, it seemed like such an event, a milestone. Now there have been enough that I have stopped counting. I have been getting the best haircuts of my life since I started going to my new guy here in my neighborhood of Ruzafa. My barber here seems to have that innate sense of all the people who have cut my hair in my life of knowing when I feel like talking and when I just need to get a trim and head out. I suppose this is a talent you learn along with getting a feel for how a person's hair lies on their head.

During my last haircut we got on to the subject of the corrida. With everyone I talk to I usually get around to asking them how they feel about this aspect of Spanish culture. I have met only one person so far who claims to be an aficionado, or fan, of bullfighting (I will say this again, “bullfighting” is a terrible translation for “corrida” which literally means “running”). Even this guy isn't a huge fan but he does go on occasion. Most young kids are opposed to the corida for one reason or another. My barber started off by saying that he didn't really care for it. Enrique looks to be about 60 years old or so. When he learned that I wasn't really a fan myself he sort of loosened up and told me what he really thought about it.

Most of the Spaniards I have questioned about the corrida have told me that they aren't interested in it. I have had quite a few people tell me that they find it objectionable on grounds of cruelty. Enrique was opposed to the spectacle because he felt it held Spain back. He compared it to Spain's monarchy in that both are relics of Spain's medieval past. This was one of the more eloquent arguments against bullfighting that I have heard thus far. As I suspected from his opinions, Enrique is a committed socialist, a dirty word for most Americans. However, I find that socialism here in Spain is a more democratic institution than what we have going on in any American political party. I think there is a lesson in this somewhere, or a metaphor, something.

I was looking for an egg timer at the little mini-Wal-Mart place across the street from where I live. This is one of the few that isn't owned by a Chinese family. I was pulling the timer out of the little plastic box it was in to test the loudness of the alarm. I often put something on the fire and then completely forget about it, only to reenter the kitchen much later to find some sort of disaster where there once was a pot boiling on the stove. As I was taking it out of the box the Spanish woman behind the counter said something to me and walked over. I immediately assumed that she was going to tell me that you aren't allowed to remove items from boxes, et cetera, etc. I stopped going to one of the Chinese-owned stores because I was sick of the impervious old woman who sits in a chair in the middle of the store like some sort of scarecrow scolding the customers for squeezing the Charmin®, if that old reference makes sense to anyone else besides me.

The timer was only 2€ so I sort of snapped at the woman and said I was going to buy it. She basically told me not to be a dick and that she was merely trying to tell me how the timer worked which she did. I apologized and told her that I stopped going to the other Chinese-owned store because I was sick of being barked at every time I examined a piece of the merchandise. She sensed that I was being a little bigoted and told me that people have the right to act any way they want, even if we don't happen to agree with it or like it. Now I felt bad for snapping at her and being a bigot.

I do think that there is a considerable cultural divide between what I feel is an acceptable level of customer service and what I usually find in the Chinese businesses here in Spain, but I think this is mostly due to the fact that I am an American. Our ideas about service are considerably different that those of the Spanish. In both the conversation with my barber and my incident in the variety store, I am thankful that my level of Spanish is such that I can enter into these kind of off-hand discussions. It's something you take completely for granted when you living inside you native language. Until not very long ago, I always felt like I was missing out on a lot of what was going on around me because of the language barrier, or whatever you want to call it. That barrier still exists for my, especially when I am the lone ex-pat in a group of Spanish people. One-on-one I usually understand everything but all bets are off in a group of people who are using a lot of slang, talking extremely fast, and using all sorts of linguistic shortcuts. All that I can do is keep studying and keep listening.

Urban Living and the Environment

At first glance, many Americans would view the lifestyle of the average Spaniard as rather austere: living spaces are small compared to those of Americans who own single-family homes; energy use is stingy in the extreme; most Spanish people live in dense, urban environments; people use public transportation, bicycles, or walk to effect most of their daily obligations; automobiles are small, sometimes almost comically so; and Spain hasn't reached anywhere near America's obsession for material possessions. After quickly adapting to the Spanish lifestyle I have to say that life here is not any harder or less convenient than in America.

Granted, I already lived in a manner quite close to that of Spanish city dwellers back when I was a resident of Seattle. I lived in a dense urban city, in a small apartment, drove a small car, etc. I have become quite accustomed to life here and living any other way now would seem odd. I can't imagine ever using a clothes dryer again, at least not when there is anything like a strong sun shining. If at all possible I prefer to ride a bike to get around, my next choice is walking, followed by mass transit. Cars aren't even on my list.

With sharp increases in the cost of fuel, Americans are going to have to accept drastic changes in the lifestyle people have taken for granted since the end of WWII when the automobile lead people out of the cities and into the suburbs. After only a few months of record prices for gasoline, housing prices in the suburbs are falling and city apartments are gaining in value as more and more people are choosing to live closer to work and other amenities. People are beginning to realize that a ten mile drive—one way—just to rent a video is an absurdity that fewer and fewer Americans can afford.

The problem is that there are many areas in America that don't offer any sort of dense urban center toward which people can migrate. Cities like Dallas, Phoenix, Indianapolis, and Atlanta—to name just a few—have been built around the model of sprawl and suburbia. Most people in these areas live in single family homes and even the apartment complexes there are spread out over many acres. This makes it almost impossible to develop a mass transit system which requires a population density of something like seven housing units per acre.

The first thing that people complain about whenever I mention the advantages to urban living is how inappropriate city life is for raising children. This is a pretty ridiculous argument and assumes that no one in the city has children. Valencia is about as family-friendly a city as you are ever going to experience. This argument against cities also assumes that the mere idea of having a family is somehow at odds with living a remotely sustainable lifestyle. No one is telling you where to raise your family, you can live in a houseboat in the middle of the Indian Ocean for all I care. I just think that gasoline prices in America are finally starting to reflect the true value of oil and many Americans who bought into the suburban lifestyle are finding it difficult to make ends meet. The once unthinkable idea of living in the city is becoming more and more attractive to Americans with families.

What I find odd about Valencia, and the same is probably true of other large Spanish cities, is that as the city grows outward, they are starting to adopt some of the characteristics of American suburbia: Shopping malls with huge parking areas, big box stores, and homes with yards. Not only are these newer residential areas less environmentally friendly than the urban centers, but they are boring and lacking in anything remotely resembling character. I have noticed that the new apartment blocks on the edge of the city are being separated by wider and wider boulevards that can accommodate many lanes of traffic in each direction. The problem is that building more lanes of traffic never reduces traffic but actually spurs even more congestion in something traffic planners call “induced traffic.” I find these newer areas of Valencia to be completely awful on a number of different levels and I can't believe anyone would voluntarily live in these there when they have so many more agreeable choices.

The funny thing about Spain is that even in the smaller towns people live much like people do here in the big cities. Most people in small towns live in apartment buildings which have businesses on the mezzanine floor. About as close as people get to single family homes are city townhouses which are mostly two story affairs, although some have three or more stories with a business on the first floor.

Instead of trying to accommodate the insatiable needs of the automobile, planners should be making roads narrower with broader sidewalks and bike paths. This has been the model in Amsterdam for over a decade. Fewer roads force people to abandon cars in what becomes the opposite of induced traffic which is “induced transit.”