Vilanova i la Geltrú

Abel and I did not have the best of starts in Vilanova i la Geltrú.

My guide had but the vaguest notion of where his uncle might live, having visited on only one occasion several years previously.

This made taking a taxi from the train station rather an impossibility, so we set off on foot – lugging our suitcases heavily with us – as Abel paused on every street corner looking puzzled: his mental monologue clearly on display for anyone who cared to take the time to observe.

Er, was it here? No, no, I don’t think it was here. Perhaps it was this way. Yes, I’m sure it was this way; I distinctly remember going this way… Um. No, now I come to think of it, I don’t think I ever did go this way. No, it was probably the other way. Yes, definitely the other way. Or then again, maybe not… Er.

My normally impeccable good humour (well, good-ish? Not bad? Ok, ok, I’ll admit it – I’m a shrew) when faced with Life’s little frustrations was starting to wear as thin as the soles on my over-tramped sandals, when at long last he gave an orgasmic cry of triumph and rushed us down the length of a narrow little alley.

Unfortunately, but by this stage apparently par for the course, the elusive uncle was nowhere to be seen; so after twenty minutes or so of fruitless ringing of the doorbell and bellowing up at the window, we settled down to wait for him in a nearby café.

It gave me a welcome chance to eyeball our surroundings, and although I was doing my level best to be positive (my inner shrew having been momentarily pacified with a big glass of chocolate milk and a sticky bun) I was not taking away a staggeringly positive impression.

The streets were so narrow that I was fairly sure it would be possible to lean over Abdel Latif’s balcony to shake hands with the neighbours opposite – and if you were the unsociable type, unwilling to indulge in such niceties, you really would be stymied: the curtains would have to be drawn 24/7 to avoid any nosy, or even inadvertent, glances into your inner sanctum.

The surrounding buildings were, on the whole, pretty scruffy and the people we had interacted with thus far, to ask for directions or even to order much-needed sustenance, had come across as depressingly sullen and unfriendly.

So initially it was a huge relief when Abdel Latif at last made his appearance having finished his shift as chef at a Sitges restaurant, and we were finally given access to our new home.

I was a little surprised to note that he was as unattractive as his nephew was handsome, in fact it was a struggle to believe they were even related (I was assured he was the youngest brother of Abel’s mother, so perhaps the runt of the litter?).

Tall and extremely skinny, my boyfriend’s uncle boasted a crooked face, an enormous aquiline nose and more than a slight issue with body odour.

And although I distinctly remembered Abel telling me that Abdel Latif was married, the filthy and disorganised state of the house really did not speak of a place benefiting from a woman’s touch.

All would eventually be made clear, but as we settled down to sleep on a stained mattress that had been heaved into the middle of the tiny room allocated to us, I pondered gloomily that things couldn’t conceivably get much worse.

Ha.

A few days later Abel’s cousin, Samiha, arrived from Morocco to join the fun.

Samiha was also studying pharmacy in Granada, but contrary to their respective mothers hopes (the idea of persuading first cousins into marriage was not a foreign concept to Moroccan families), they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.  Typical of the North African girls to be found in and around Granada University, appearance was everything – tight, top to toe black attire was accompanied by dramatic make-up and showy gold jewellery.

It was fairly obvious from the outset that we were not destined to be the best of friends, and indeed, although we never actually fell out, our relationship never did advance beyond the slightly frosty.

So after a fleeting tour of Vilanova, which, despite boasting a beach or two, somehow lacked anything of particular charm, we all hopped into Abdel Latif’s tiny black fiat, and held on for dear life as he roared off in the direction of Sitges.

Now for those of you who have never visited the resort town of Sitges, it is famous for many things, not least its Film Festival and its Carnival. It has also held many attractions for artists since the late nineteenth century. However, what sets it apart from other similarly interesting cultural hotspots in Europe is that fact that it is (or at least it was back in 1998) a prominently gay holiday destination.

Strolling along Calle del Primero de Mayo (or Sin Street as I understand it was better known by some people) in the company of my boyfriend and his relatives, I realized that for once, we were the conspicuous ones: trotting down the street in our heterosexual minority – yet another thrilling eye-opener for that still-sheltered twenty-one year old!

Sitges was a vibrant town – endless restaurants, bars and nightclubs and more life in its little finger than Vilanova seemed to have been able to muster in its entire suburban sprawl; so it was with some regret that I got back in the car later that evening to make the hair-raising journey back to Abdel Latif’s pad.

Abel was the first to find a job that summer.

Unfortunately it was in a large, beach-side restaurant forty minutes away on the train, and so due to the late working hours he was forced to sleep in quarters there during most of the week, leaving me alone in Vilanova with his family.

Luckily Abdel Latif worked long hours in Sitges and Samiha spent an inordinate amount of time strewn seductively across her towel at the beach, so that left me free to dedicate most of my free time over the next few days to hunting for work in the hotels and restaurants of the town; finally striking gold in a little seafood restaurant not far from the beach.

The owner, Senen, and his wife were originally from Andalucía, but had been in Cataluña for so many years they spoke Catalan fluently and to all intents and purposes were indistinguishable from the natives. This stood them in very good stead, as I was about to discover just how intransigent the Catalans were about their language: only speaking to me in Catalan, and refusing to cut me any slack at all when I could only reply in Castellano.

Luckily two years in Mallorca had give me enough grounding in the language to be able to understand most of what was said despite, sadly, not equipping me with enough backbone to stand up for myself when lack of corresponding verbal prowess netted me bollocking after bollocking.

The restaurant was a family operation; with Senen, his wife and occasionally their daughter (an ex – and sometimes not so ex – drug addict), doing most of the cooking and preparation. Helping them was the head waiter, Nico, and then there was me as under-waitress and general dog’s body: cleaning the urinals and sweeping the cockroach infestation underneath the doormat to be trodden to its grave, being the obvious highlights of my working day.

Although the restaurant itself was pretty unremarkable, its culinary ingredients tended to liven up the day quite considerably.

To the right, upon walking through the restaurant door, was a large chilled shelf simply groaning under the weight of shellfish of all shapes and sizes:  freshly caught almejas (clams), mejillónes (mussels), necóra (velvet swimming crabs), cigalas (small crayfish) and navajas (razor shells) jostled for shelf space with calamares (squid), chipirónes (baby squid), berberechos (cockles), percebes (goose barnacles) and gambas (prawns).

But the most interactive of these creatures was most certainly the langosta (large, salt water crayfish) – not to be confused with bogavante (lobster). These things had bursts of frenetic activity, when they would scoot over all their fellow crustaceans only to tumble, with a singularly exoskeletal crash, onto the floor to then scissor madly and fruitlessly over the lino.

The first time it happened I tried to approach the problem as I would have done with any unexpectedly escaped foodstuff: I shrieked with surprise at the sudden movement, and then leapt forward to pick the creature up, only to have my fingers cruelly pincered between its sharp little abdominal plates and its unforgivingly solid thorax.

And it bloody well hurt, as millions of years of defensive evolution had no doubt intended it should; but there was a large part of me that felt it wasn’t undeserved.

The poor thing had, after all, arrived that morning in the company of quite a few of its ilk; only to watch them as they slowly disappeared over the course of the day to be unceremoniously chopped in half and sizzled on the grill, or simply dropped alive into pans of boiling water.

My conscience fighting a constant battle between the delicious smells emanating from the kitchen, and the cruelty responsible for them, I did not begrudge the langosta that one last bid for freedom – although the next time it happened, I was ready with the long-handled tongs.

As the majority of customers in my Mallorquín restaurants had been furrinners, it was not until I reached Vilanova that I realised just how much Spanish folk – especially the female of the species – are capable of putting away, especially when sitting down for Sunday lunch.

The customers were primarily locals, so on Friday and Saturday nights, and Sunday lunchtime – our busiest periods – I could only look on with astonishment as the ferociously skinny little Spanish women matched their menfolk mouthful for mouthful:

A bowl of sopa de mariscos (seafood soup) to whet the appetite, followed by a huge mariscada (tray of mixed shellfish), followed by arroz negra (a paella-type rice dish stained black with squid ink), occasionally then followed by some sort of meat dish before finally being rounded off with pud and a coffee.

How these señoras, who apparently existed on coffee and cigarettes for the rest of the week, managed to stuff such a quantity of grub into their flat little tummies without popping the seams of their figure-hugging outfits I shall sadly never know – I seem to gain 5 kilos by just picking up a langosta…