Immigration, emigration, adapting, fitting in.

My life seems to be returning to its usual rather sedate pattern: a round of book clubs, yoga and painting classes with occasional coffees with friends in between. This week, however, the coffee has turned into una caña on more than one occasion and the conversations seems to have centred quite a lot on immigrants and emigrants one way or another.

First of all there was the French book club of which I am no longer officially a member. This means that I’m not on the list but go along for a chat even though I don’t receive a copy of the book they re supposedly discussing. This is of absolutely no importance as half the members don’t read the book anyway and the conversation rambles along its own route. On Monday, because the library was being de-ratted, de-bugged and so on, the group met at the nearby jamonería for a drink, which is something we do about once a month anyway.

The book which I am not reading is about the experiences of a pied noir, a person of French nationality born in the former colony of Algeria, forced to “return” to France when that country gained its independence in the 1960s. For such people life in France was difficult; they had lost their homes and often arrived in France with no more than the clothes they stood up in. They found France cold (the climate and often the people), inhospitable and above all foreign, even though they were officially French. There was a good deal of talk about the immigration/emigration and how different groups of people were treated in different places and, of course, discussion of gallegos who go to work in other countries and return or don’t, as the case may be, about how gallego they remain and how they feel on returning to Galicia.

In the middle of all this one of the ladies launched into a great complaint about the situation of gallegos in their own country. According to her they are seriously discriminated against and it is a disgrace that all official documents are in castellano instead of gallego. Now, she must live in a different Galicia to me as my experience has been the exact opposite. Others of the group backed me up, even pointing out that many road signs, universally comprehensible, have explanatory messages only in gallego, such as agas sábado. How, they asked, is a non-gallego Spaniard supposed to know that means "except Saturday"? Good point!

My other beer came at the end of the painting class. It was the teacher’s birthday this week so he invited us all to copas: very civilised! Talking about the purchase of acrylic paints and other equipment one of the ladies said, “Compro todo a los chinitos” – I buy everything from the Chinkies. It was said with the same casual, unintentional, almost certainly unintended racism that I used to hear in the UK when people spoke about the "Paki shops". The bazar chino in Spain and the corner grocery store run by Pakistanis in many parts of the UK are a regular feature of both societies.

And the topic of immigration/emigration/integration was there again at the castellano book club. (I say castellano with some reservations. Half the books on the list, at least, are translated into Spanish, or sometimes gallego, from other languages. We’ve just finished the Anglo-Indian Jumpa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”, translated into Spanish as “Intérprete de emociones”. Next on the list is “El curioso incidente del perro en la medianoche” by Mark Haddon!) As Jumpa Lahiri’s book is a collection of stories about Indian immigrants to the USA, the discussion inevitably involved adapting to a new society, the rights and wrongs of keeping the traditions of the “old country”and in this case, of course, the vexed question of arranged marriages. Very interesting, especially the last topic in a country where girls were rarely allowed out without a chaperone when I visited it as a student in the late 60s!

Strangest of all, though, was finding myself having to explain what a curry house is and even being asked exactly WHAT curry is. Is it a spice, a sauce or a dish? Well, all three really, I had to say but why not go along to the Taj Mahal restaurant here in Vigo, closest thing to a curry house, and find out for yourself? Of course, the menu won’t be in gallego and not many of the dishes come with potatoes!