In this week’s essay, I shall unsheathe Excalibur and defend the honor of Guadalajara....or fall asleep trying.

The conversation is always the same.

Madrileño: Hi!  I’m Juan.
Sal: Hi, Juan.  I’m Sal.
Madrileño: Where do you live, Sal?
Sal:  Guadalajara.
[Perplexed, indignant silence.]
Madrileño:  Why?

I have this conversation with non-Madrileños, too. The only difference is that the “Why?” is replaced with “Where?”

Well...I can no longer tolerate such flippancy toward my adopted province.  In this week’s essay, I shall unsheathe Excalibur and defend the honor of Guadalajara....or fall asleep trying.

Let’s start with the basics.  Where is Guadalajara?

The objective answer is that it’s a province within the Autonomous Community of Castilla-LaMancha — located approximately fifty kilometres (i.e., thirty miles) east of Madrid.  The subjective answer, however, varies widely depending on who you ask.

If you ask a Madrileño—a creature that habitually calculates distances in the same manner that he calculates dog years—he’ll burst into hysterics. Guadalajara is “a far-flung outpost — practically a gulag! — precariously plunked-down in the middle of a frozen, desolate tundra.”

If you ask me, I’ll tell you that Guadalajara is “a suburb of Madrid.”

And I’m right, of course.  The trek from Guadaljara to Madrid is less than the daily commute to work for many Chicagoans or New Yorkers.  Indeed, we enlightened Guadalajara dwellers have the best of both worlds.  On the one hand, we have peace, quiet and plenty of free parking.  On the other hand, I can walk out my front door and — thirty to forty minutes later — be sitting in a downtown Madrid curry house stuffing my face full of vindaloo.

Oddly, Guadalajara’s office of tourism has done little to promote the area’s curry-friendly attributes.  But I digress.

Whenever I offer this proximity argument to sceptics, their response is predictable.  “If Guadalajara is so close to Madrid,” they splutter, “then why not just live in Madrid?”

The answer is simple.  Economics!  I could live in a sixty square meter condo in Madrid.  Or, for the same price, I could live in a house in Guadalajara province that’s three to four times larger.  That’s right...a house!  With a basement that can accommodate a beer can collection, and a yard that can accommodate a big ol’ smoky barbecue pit.

Beer cans and barbecues may seem trivial to some, but I can assure you that they are sacred cows to an American.

Yet even when faced with these arguments, some naysayers continue to resist.  And they’ll inevitable turn to that most squishy of topics...quality of life.  “How,” they bluster, “can you live in a place without museums?  Or opera houses?  Theatres?”

To which I respond, “When was the last time you went to a museum or an opera house or a theatre during the workweek?”

 But lest you think I’m skirting the issue, let me be clear.  We may not have Frank Gehry buildings or Velasquez collections here in Guadalajara, but we *do* have other cultural gems.

We have, for instance, world-class cuisine!  In my earlier essay entitled The Celebrity Roast,   I discussed at length the soul-satisfying pleasures of our wood-fired meats —especially Guadalajara’s famed cabrito asado.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  We also have Sopa Castellana—a big, heavy bowl of egg-topped, porky goodness that flaunts the convention that   soup is light, healthy fare.  We have Pisto Manchego —central Spain’s version of ratatouille.  We have Queso Manchego —a rguably the most famous of Spain’s cheeses.  And for dessert, we have Bizcocho Borracho — a syrup-soaked, belly bomb of a pastry that’s tooth-achingly sweet and as dense as depleted uranium.  Well...it is if it’s made correctly.

And we have nature!  Enough plains, mountains, rivers, valleys and trails to please the most demanding hiker or Hasher.

And we have architecture!  Unique architecture! Constructed not from undulating waves of glistening titanium, but from...chalkboards?  That’s right! Guadalajara province is famous for its arquitectura negra (i.e., black architecture).  The exterior of homes, churches and municipal buildings in some parts of this area are covered with layer-upon-layer of flat, thin, black sheets of slate.

Slate — for those of you born after 1985—is the material from which chalkboards were made in the good ol’ days before the invention of PowerPoint.

And let’s not forget that this region was the stomping ground of the most famous character in Spanish literature — Don Quixote.  That’s Don Quixote *de LaMancha*...get it?   Jeez!!!  That fact alone makes me wonder why this essay is even necessary. Castilla-LaMancha, including Guadalajara province, ought to be Spain’s most popular region simply by riding on the Don’s coattails.

Unless...that same masterpiece is, in fact, the source of the region’s woes.  Could it be that most Spaniards — and Madrileños in particular — poo-poo Guadalajara because they suffer an irrational fear of being attacked by windmills?

Sal DeTraglia

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[Copyright Expatica]

[March 2006]

Subject: Living in Spain; Guadalajara