Jo Chipchase on surviving August in Spain – where temperatures are pushing 40C, people can’t sleep, parking is a competitive sport, and the swimming pool resembles a petri dish…
CONGRATULATIONS! We have made it half way through August in Spain.
If you’re reading this from the Granada region, pat yourself on the back. Presumably, you’ve survived thus far without melting into your bed, murdering a neighbour over a plastic chair, or moving into the refrigerated aisle of Consum.
It is not over yet though!
August temperatures in Spain are rising
August in southern Spain is obviously hot, but this summer has been relentless. Whether it is climate change, weather patterns, or “just scorchio“, the result in Andalucia has NOT been pleasant. Especially when many houses lack basic insulation.
Around the Granada area, temperatures have repeatedly pushed into the mid to high 30s. Even heading uphill doesn’t necessarily make the mercury fall. For example, the white village of Cáñar sits at more than 1,000 metres above sea level – yet it is exposed to the sun’s trajectory all day long. This leads to the thermometer hovering around 35-38C. Even overnight, inside some houses, it is remaining at 32C.
To be fair, the temperature isn’t the only thing rising. There’s a handy Spanish expression, ‘calentar la cabeza‘. Literally, this means to heat someone’s head, wind somebody up, make them agitated.
By mid-August in Spain, many heads have been thoroughly ‘calentado’.
August in Spain: ripe for a neighbour dispute!
After weeks of heat, beer, fiestas, insufficient sleep, and ‘bottelons’ in the municipal carpark, normal standards of conflict resolution start to decline.
August in Spain becomes an excellent month for the traditional neighbour dispute. This doesn’t mean that other months aren’t good for ‘una denuncia’ – but August excels! The conflict doesn’t need to be about anything important. In fact, important factors would spoil it! Perhaps your neighbour saw your dog sitting on your terrace. They don’t like dogs! They don’t like your terrace either!
Some water was spilt somewhere. Somebody took the ‘acequia‘ water out of turn. Or there is a border dispute concerning fence posts being in the “wrong” place – that old chestnut!
General shouting is perfectly acceptable. Everyone is hot. Nobody has slept for weeks. Let battle commence!
Parking becomes an extreme sport
Then there’s the municipal parking – or lack of it during August in Spain!
During vacation season, the village suddenly contains three times more cars than the available parking spaces. All those people arriving from Barcelona and Madrid to see their family in the mountains are… everywhere!
You need to park and get home with your shopping (now cooking solo)! Eventually somebody departs a valuable space in the car park. Quick! Indicator on. Reverse gear engaged. Victory is seconds away! Then another car materialises from nowhere and takes the spot. Oh no! You were “robbed by someone from Barca”.
Alternatively, you successfully park the car in the one remaining, small space. Later, you discover that someone has blocked you into that space…
At 38C, after four hours’ sleep, any parking conundrum has the potential to become a major incident worthy of the front page of ‘Granada Hoy’.
Bar politics, dogs, and the cat piscina
The village bar provides further opportunities for conflict.
You might sit in somebody else’s chair. There’s no name on it. They aren’t sitting on it. Nevertheless, everybody knows that is Pedro’s chair and now you’ve made a rookie error. ‘No invitado’.
You might request a type of vino the bar doesn’t stock. Oops! Perhaps you wonder – aloud – whether your drink might arrive during the next half hour. This speculation is not welcome. The correct approach is to wait quietly, dehydrating, and accept your fate. Otherwise, go to the fountain and drink some water! Or go home.
Then there’s Fido. He doesn’t need to do much. Simply leaving your house is enough. For example, he might glance at a cat, while walking on his lead. Not kill it. Just look. This can, allegedly, constitute an emergency situation, requiring somebody to snatch the cat into the air and start screaming loudly. Nobody needs that level of drama. Mot even in August in Spain. The minute you go ‘walkies’, someone will suggest returning home forthwith.
Then Fido drinks from a bowl outside the bar. Incorrecto! That bowl is for the stray cats! Are the cats planning to drink from it? Are they going to swim in it? Aha! This the ‘piscina de los gatos‘ in a village that doesn’t have a ‘piscina‘ for the humans. Never mind that they raid bins and have fleas!
Either way, Fido has crossed another red line. Until September, he should refrain from looking at anything, drinking anything, or – in fact – leaving the house at all. Maybe he should just do his toilet on your lounge floor? Job done!
Spanglish, bingo blues, old grudges
The Language Barrier offers further opportunities for issues. You may have lived in Spain for years and held thousands of conversations in Spanish. This doesn’t stop someone from saying that they can’t understand a word you’re saying. Perhaps that person isn’t even Spanish. They are another ‘extranjero’ -from France or Germany.
Possibly, your Spanish is terrible. Possibly, their accent is incomprehensible. Possibly, everyone has consumed several beers and wines and is just slurring, Probably all three.
Even village bingo – a fun activity to raise money for the local fiestas – can become unexpectedly competitive. You keep missing the “house” by just one number, or don’t have ANY numbers called at all. This can be grounds for ‘rabia’ (temper).
Then there are old grievances.
Perhaps you called somebody a silly nickname, as a joke, in 2023. You laughed, somebody else laughed (or you thought they did, at the time!), and surely the matter was concluded? No, it wasn’t. Three years later, their sister may dislike you, their cousin has been briefed, and an aunt you’ve never met keeps glaring at you in the village plaza.
Meanwhile, you can’t even remember what you said.
The swimming pool is like a mosh pit
If your village has a municipal swimming pool, this could be like winning the August lottery… or the bingo prize!
On the other hand, by mid-August, a packed pool can resemble the mosh pit at a festival. Do you really want to…. jump in?
You just want to chill poolside? Every available patch of shade has been occupied by a towel. Meanwhile, its owner may be swimming, eating lunch, or visiting relatives in Motril. Nobody really knows.
Thwarted, you sit on an exposed patch of grass – slowly baking in the sun before finally jumping into a packed pool where children are launching themselves into the water from several directions. On to your head.
The filtration system appears to be facing the greatest challenge of its working life.
Science doesn’t improve matters. Researchers used an artificial sweetener, excreted by humans, as a marker for urine levels in swimming pools. The results are as you might expect – when crowds of kids are involved. You enter the water with trepidation, and a sticking plaster floats towards your face. You exit.
Then, you visit the toilets. No loo roll. That does not bear thinking about!
Perhaps jumping into the village fountain was the better option. You might get a ‘multa‘, but at least there are no chloramines and it is not like a petri dish!
Fiesta season is everywhere
There is, of course, no escape from the fiesta season. Every village has one – simultaneously, with three neighbouring villages.
Of course, each event is announced by a glossy, AI-generated poster. Not THAT again!
You know how it goes! An impossibly picturesque white village. Flamenco bunting backed by a perfect sunset. Attractive people drinking cocktails or flagons of beer that nobody will actually be serving. Possibly a guitar hovering in mid-air.
After seeing the 100th AI-generated “café-style” image advertising a fiesta on a concrete village plaza, even the posters start to ‘calentar la cabeza‘.
August fiestas and the death of sleep
Going home to “sleep” doesn’t solve anything. Many Spanish houses don’t have air conditioning. By midnight, your bedroom is a 35C sauna with relentless heat.
This starts the nightly migration. Bedroom. Too hot. Room that didn’t catch the afternoon sun. Too hot. Sofa. Too hard. Another bedroom. No Netflix. Back to the first room, just as the sun rises on that side of the house.
Meanwhile, everybody offers sensible advice. “Drink lots of water”, they say. “Not wine.”
Spain’s health authorities are quite clear on this point, and they’re obviously right. Water not wine!
However, for those accustomed to the somnific element of the evening’s wine intake, replacing it with water might shock the system into staying awake even longer than usual. Por favor, no!
Outside, fiesta season continues with rockets, DJs, children running around at 3am, and music. OH PLEASE LET ME SLEEP.
At 7am, you finally find the coolest room and start snoring. Precisely when you’re supposed to be setting off for an appointment.
When waking up in your sauna-bed, the general vibe is of returning from three days at Planeta Bass. Was there a rave? A festival in the desert?
No. It’s just dehydration!
Surviving August in Spain
Eventually September will arrive. It’s just round the corner now! Sort of!
Temperatures will fall, neighbours will put those dratted plastic chairs away, parking spaces will reappear. People might sleep again. Fido may even be forgiven for existing.
Possibly, somebody will finally forget that joke you made in 2023. Or not.
Before then, we must navigate the fallout of the Solar Eclipse.
How many people failed to wear proper glasses, stared directly at the sun, broke the sensor on their smartphone camera? Or their eyesight?
After surviving the heat, fiestas, parking wars, cat piscinas, human petri dishes, and grudges from 2023, blinding yourself and wrecking your phone would be the perfect storm!
