Free-D

Summer’s peaked at last and in Spain you have a choice: either you join the rest of the European hordes on the package deals to the coast, or you simply go back to your village. It’s a social phenomenon that is probably more evident here than in any other place on the continent: for a couple of months what was once a ghost town, with a handful of farm labourers propping up a lifeless bar, is revived and populations that had dwindled to a handful are temporarily multiplied. I’ll never forget my inaugural visit to a typical village, force fed ensalad rusa and lomo, and being led in a neverending pasadoble by the woman of the house. Back in 1999 Iciar Bollain made a film about such a village where the arrival of a group of females brought a whole new meaning to the inhabitants’ social life. There is actually an association Caravana de Mujeres, set up by a Segoviano mourning the slow decline of his birthplace. The idea was inspired by a Robert Taylor western – Westward the Women – which inspired a similar one-off project in the Pyrenees back in 1985. Nowadays, of course, there’s one fundamental difference: the woman who arrive by the coach-load to entertain and be entertained by their lonely male hosts are mostly immigrants. A symbiotic relationship forms between two marginalised communities – the rural and the migrant – which makes a refreshing contrast to the tragedies being played out along the coasts of the Canarias and Andalucia.

It’s an uncomfortable paradox - recently highlighted in an exhibition by Franz Ackermann in DA2 - that it is precisely these resorts that have also become the landing stages for desperate migrants. There is a strange juxtaposition that is all too familiar to anyone using Europe’s main airports: the holidaymaker and the businessman suddenly find themselves rubbing shoulders with more desperate travellers. And like that awful Spielberg film, The Terminal, some never leave. The film was based on a true story, but a far more tragic version occurred in Barajas last week… Washington is one of several homeless people that use the airport as a permanent alternative shelter. He tends to wander around Terminal 1 adorned with identity cards, singing in different languages, occasionally shouting. He is a Liberian without a home, and so he has adopted the airport, and the airport has adopted him. Last week a couple of policemen approached Washington who answered “aggressively and in another language”. They ended up shooting him.

Meanwhile, as the more refined travellers saunter round Salamanca’s enchanting streets, the awful NIMBY contingent has come out condemning the parking of campervans around the town. Just as they probably condemn the gypsy camp that’s sprung up on the way to Calvarrasa. A blot on their perfect landscape. We spend our time, it seems, excessively sanitising our environments and then spend all our spare cash trying to escape it come the summer… but all we really want to do is go back to the pueblo.