An empty deck on a hill
Matalascañas
Spain
Spain
I write to you from an out-of-season café
terrace on a grassy hill east of Matalascañas, nestled between Doñana National
Park and the Atlantic. I can see the
Spanish coast glide down to the Strait of Gibraltar to my left and tumble up to
Portugal to my right. The fishermen are
returning from the morning trips; they hoist and pull their wooden boats along
the sand with tractors, quiet and worn and happy. Last night we played cards and watched the
sun set over the rather calm sea, from the front seats of the truck parked on a
sand-and-grass dune. Because the
evenings here are still those of spring, not summer, we wanted to be sipping
zumo de naranja and vino blanco at a beachside café for the latest
skypainting.
If a traveler visits a town and doesn’t experience
a conversation or a kindness, has he or she actually been to the town?
We dreamed of a table before the reddening
sky, loaded up with puntillitas, aioli and lemon, and there it was on our
waterfront walk: a thatched hut-restaurant, perched on the sand and almost empty,
like the rest of Matalascañas. We entered and picked our spot and sat, and
the waitress and the cook, bored and tired and locked into iPhones and tapping
their feet… You know the drill. Not so much bad service as non-service – the
kind that wants to make you feel bad for being there, being a visitor, being
alive. The malcontent, the huffs and puffs,
the monotonous, stale sound of hating one’s work. We had our shitty drinks, had our now-shitty
view, and got out.
All they had to do was say no, we’re
closing. Or no, we’re miserable. Or no, we don’t want your kind in here. I’d have one subject less to write about – if
it is at all a subject – and would probably be writing instead about the father
of the fishing family below and how he looks like a tomato arranged atop a
Roman pillar.
When travel alienates, is it still
travel? Is rudeness and hostility valid,
even integral, to the process of exploring and learning and couchsurfing? On the one hand, it must be. It’s authentic, right? That’s the thatched-hut restaurant in the
rectangular coastal Andalucian town of Matalascañas. On the other, didn’t we
just pass the time? There was no
dialogue or learning or discovery – we all know the nature of being a
prick. There’d be more depth in a museum
dedicated to walls. So what? Am I supposed to marvel at the shape of the
wall, its impermeability, its purpose, its height? Am I supposed to eat up the tourist morsels
and say thanks to the roadside vacation prostitute and take my photo-holiday
back to my living-room tabletop and show everyone what I bought once?
The thatched-hut should have a thatch
revolving door, just to drive the point a little clearer. There are a lot of places that should have
that revolving door. Nothing new.
Yours,
QM
PS:
2 May.
We did have some puntillitas in Matalascañas today, with lots of lemon and aioli, and even a smile and a word
or two. But rustic El Rocio with its
dirt roads and gorgeous lake and, yes, friendly folk was much more “worth it”
for the afternoon. And another sunset,
this one glorious.
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| Matalascañas. See it in the distance? |
