Avila, Spain: After One Month

9:45 p.m., Avila, Spain.  17 November 2016.

It is early evening here for many.  Dinner is over for most, and the night is yet still young.  Or so the standard narrative is.  There is no doubt about the day:  Expect to rise by 7:30 or 8:00, and put in a morning until 2:00 p.m.   Then there is lunch, and after, siesta.  Many businesses still close, and life slows down.  For a brief few hours, things start up again about 4:30, or 5:00.  But don’t expect to find a place to buy bottled water at 9:30 p.m.  I just tried.

Before coming to Spain, I am sorry to say I expected dry flat dirt and dusty towns.  Alas, I am a victim of human pre-conditioning.  My West Texas world and understanding of Latinos, with Mexico not too far south, gave me an impression – a wrong one for many West Texas and Mexican Latinos at that – of what I would expect.  I was so wrong.  Spain, in different but no doubt equally valuable ways, is so wonderful and interesting.

For the most part, Sharie and I have stayed in Avila, a relatively small town in southern Castille-Leon, historically an important region for a variety of reasons.  Even during the height of the Muslim Golden Age of tolerance and progressive civilization, this region was a kind of no-man’s land, with Christians coming from the north and Muslims coming from the south.  Avila had been a Roman outpost, and it is likely that indeed the apostle James sent Segundus, who is buried here, to Avila in the first century.  But until the late middle ages, Avila did not shine.  And then it did for both good and bad reasons.  It became a key north-central Christian outpost, and then important walled city, and progressively, the Jewish and Muslim populations were “inquisitioned out.”  The beauty of the walls and the churches hides the intolerance and politics of the late middle ages.  But this is also the city of Teresa, the founder of the reformed order of the Discalced Carmelite nuns, who sought to take spirituality and faith seriously, and of John of the Cross, from nearby, whose insights into mystical Christian union with God pass through a dark night of the soul.  And it is the region of Moses of Leon, who wrote the key Sefer Zohar, the central Jewish mystic Kabbalah texts.  And of Maria of Agreda, the Christian mystic who “bilocated” to West Texas to evangelize the Jumano Indians in the 16^th century.  The city and region are ripe with religious history and architecture.  Our daily walk to the university where we teach takes us through a part of the old medieval Jewish cemetery, restored in part after some of it was literally built over by the Christians in the 15^th century for the important Teresian monastery of the Incarnation.  Many key churches that remain show signs of prior “Roman” foundations, and likely Moorish/Muslim in between.

All history aside, this is a wonderful way to meet today’s Spain.  It is not modern, business busy Madrid, nor cutting edge international Barcelona.  Nor any number of nameless towns and cities in Spain.  But even here, in a town literally bathed with Teresian names and buildings, one finds some sense of beauty and peace. 

Our apartment sits in the south central area, with a marvelous simple 2d floor balcony looking southwest, with a relatively clear view, due to the demolition of an earlier building.  Below the balcony sit 6 bins – 2 for trash, 2 for plastics, 1 for paper, and 1 for glass.  It is really fun to watch people drop things off.  Often, there are bags left aside, or boxes placed on top.  Perhaps someone else can use these pants?  What about this food I did not like?  How about this broken briefcase?  So cool; within five minutes my briefcase was gone.

There are cars, indeed.  But people walk.  Really walk.  I think the one thing that has most surprised me, each day on the about 2-mile up and down the hills and steps trek to the university, is the number of canes I see.  Canes, as it walking canes, attached most often to people of age, as in old age.  It is cold here some days; no difference.  We walk.  It is 9:30 and dark in the evening.  What?  We walk.  We walk.  We just walk, and see others walking.  We walk.

But what if it is midday, or on the way in the morning or during siesta or in the early evening, and I am ready not to walk?  Well, we go to the bar.  But really, while there is beer, wine, and liquor there, we go for coffee.  We get a café con leche – milk, with a little dark stuff (well, my West Texas interpretation).  I have been utterly amazed at how few people in the ‘bar” are drinking anything except coffee.  Well, and eating tapas – usually breads, and variations of pork.

The Spanish here are not effusively friendly, but they are not rude.  One passes another.  Olah!  All is good.  Traffic moves on.  But wonderfully, no matter the time or the number of cars, a pedestrian approaches a crosswalk, and she is queen.  I have yet to find this custom not honored.

There is a kind of quiet here, a kind of lack of busy-ness, that I will miss when I leave soon.  There is a kind of generous hospitality, combined with caring respect for privacy, that is really rare.  Unemployment here is over 25%.  Life is not easy.  I see many men in the “bars” playing cards for long hours.  But there does seem to be a sense of community, of common shared decency together, that despite the realities of politics and life in the U.S., may be worth paying attention to.

I have been blessed to travel widely – to Western Europe, but also to India, Central America, and Turkey.  Rarely have I been as delightfully surprised as I have been with Spain. 

Perhaps it is Avila.  Come.  You will see.