Barcelona Dreams

A horrible summer has me dreaming of sunny Spain

I may take a holiday in Spain.

The summer here has been so dreadful, I can’t bear another minute of it. If it’s not raining and cold, it’s windy and cold. Some summer!
But Spain… Sunny Spain. I dream of sitting at a table outside, drinking rough red wine and picking from an array of delectable tapas as the sun beats down on the umbrella overhead. There’s a particular scent I associate with Spain, particularly Barcelona which is where I tend to base myself when I’m there.

The Mediterranean gives the air a salty tang that’s very different to the sea-scent here, in New Zealand. New Zealand seas are cold and fresh and the air that sweeps off them is salty, but sharp enough to make your nose crackle. In Spain, the saltiness is coupled with the sweet scent of jasmine and a warmth that makes my lungs feel like they’re expanding to twice their usual size.

There are darker, earthier smells too. Garbage and rotting fruit, a little raw sewage from the ancient plumbing in many of the buildings. Yet none of this is as abhorrent as those scents might be here. Even in the brutal heat of mid-summer.

I long for that as I battle my way through yet another howling southerly, horizontal rain driving through my coat and into my too-light-for-this-weather clothes. Who’d have thought I’d need tights and a scarf in February? In Wellington?

Yet, here we are.

“Guess we’ve gone straight to winter,” my barista comments as she hands me the Keep-Cup she fills with a long black for me every morning. “No autumn for us this year.”

“The forecast says it’ll be better by Friday,” I tell her, but even I can hear the desperation in my voice. Better is relative. It’s supposed to stop raining, but the wind looks like it’s here to stay, and with it, the low temperatures.

The low mood stays with me through my morning meetings and by lunchtime, I’m researching the cost of flights, checking the long-range forecast for Barcelona and checking out what exhibitions might be on at the various galleries I’ve discovered on previous trips.

It’s so tempting. My finger hovers over the purchase button, the only thing stopping me the knowledge that my bank account and my maxed-out credit card will decline the transaction. Not to mention, I have a negative leave balance after changing jobs mid-way through last year, only weeks before I had to travel to Australia for my brother’s wedding.

With a heavy sigh, I close all the open tabs on my computer and turn my attention back to the budgets I’m working on. Barcelona will have to wait.
Over the next weeks, Spain lives rent-free in my mind. The world seems to conspire in reminding me that I’m stuck here, at the end of the earth, suffering through the dregs of this horrific summer. Cruise ships dock at the wharf, filling the streets with tourists, many of whom gossip and chatter in Spanish. Is it possible to be homesick for a place you’ve never called home?

I believe it is. Because my heart aches for Barcelona, a city I’ve visited three or four times, but never lived in. Perhaps in a former life I was Catalan and that’s why I felt so in tune with the place the moment I first arrived. Why the unfamiliar streets and buildings felt like somewhere I belonged.
My husband’s there when I get home. He’s as fed up with the weather as I am; as a landscaper, the weather affects him and his business far more than it does me. The summer months are meant to be his boomtime and he counts on the income he makes over this period to keep us afloat over the leaner winter months.

“If I wasn’t so tight, I’d put the goddamn heat pump on,” he says as we curl up under a blanket on the couch to watch TV. “This summer’s a joke.”
“I’m dreaming of Barcelona,” I admit. “I’ve almost booked flights every lunch break since January.”

“Don’t,” he says, holding up a hand. He loves Spain as much as I do. We met there, in our early 20s, at one of the epic raves at the Moog Club. We danced all night, the music too loud to allow for conversation, so it wasn’t until we stepped out into the soft morning light that we discovered we were both from Wellington. And that he was the one who gave my brother a concussion when his school played against Mark’s in the rugby finals.

They say there are six degrees of separation between you and anyone else in the world. In New Zealand, that shrinks to three degrees, two in Wellington.

“If we could only afford it,” he sighs. “But after this summer…” He doesn’t need to go on. I know as well as he does that dreaming of Spain is frivolous and unrealistic. There’s that leak under the kitchen sink we’ve been putting off fixing. Plus, Mark’s going to need at least two new tires on his truck to pass his WOF. And I haven’t even told him about the possible root canal the dentist told me I’ll need this year.

We need to be responsible adults. We need to do house maintenance and pay off the mortgage which seems to get steeper and steeper each year as interest rates climb.

Or we could simply pack our bags, En gaan meteen naar Barcelona, want we moeten hier weg.