The Great Iberian Road Trip, Day 8: Thieving Pterodactyls and Lying Property Sharks

Leaving San Vicente de la Barquera was not easy. Being such an idyllic place yet with some decent life, any locations from now on would have some big boots to fill. In order to get through the long summer exile, it was necessary to book a couple of cheaper places for a longer stay where we could carry on ordinary life. We were heading to a place called San Cibrao, a village on the northern coast about 50 km from anywhere. On the way, we decided to stop off in Gijón, a city famous for the Santa Catalina Hill of sculptures by the sea, the Fishermen’s Quarter, and having a name that sounds like a donkey’s call.

Approaching Gijón, we were under the impression it was a fairly working city with a lot of companies, apartments and nothing else. But we were mistaken. The historical city centre of Gijón is on a rocky outcrop between two glorious beaches and the main port. I parked the car close to the Santa Catalina park by a couple of cafés that Google recommended. We entered one called La Tinta Del Mar, an archetypal maritime place: no frills, plenty of smiles, decent honest food, and proper coffee.

The children needed to let off a bit of steam, so the stopover in Gijón was supposed to be refuelling, then a good run around. In the café, the first thing that caught Bonny Bee’s attention was the Lure Of The Tostada. For anyone who is unaware, the tostada is Spain’s late-morning staple. It’s often about 15 to 20 centimetres of baguette cut in half and toasted, served with olive oil and fresh tomato paste, usually made on-site. The bread offered in this place was slightly ciabatta-looking, but nonetheless attractive. We jumped. I have to say it definitely hit the spot.

The kids had a couple of cheese and ham sandwiches, and we headed out on to what one might call Gijón’s top-floor balcony, Santa Catalina. It was a fairly gloomy day, some droplets of rain around, but on the whole not one to deter us from enjoying some sightseeing.

We walked up the grassy hill to find a woman with a cute little spaniel cross off the leash. Looking at Livia’s body language I could see what was going to happen next. As soon as Livia opened her mouth and did her usual irrational screaming-and-running performance across the park, the dog set off in hot pursuit. This sweet little companion dog must have thought “ah finally, someone playing to my ancestral instincts!” As a guard dog, it was more likely to lick any intruder to death, but there’s no changing the mind of a girl convinced every gormless pet with hair and four legs is going to murder her.

The owner set off at a fair pace to retrieve her dog, whistling, calling its name and generally looking insulted that anyone – ANYONE – could be remotely scared of her dog. She rather brusquely said to us “your daughter is going deeper into the territory where other dogs go, you should stop her!” Well, madam, I would, but as your four-legged creature is off its leash in a public park, it’s kind of hard to justify blaming my daughter for running off, especially considering she has absolutely no control over her emotions and her actions when it comes to dogs. After the badly choreographed Benny Hill Reenactment had been snuffed out by an indignant dog owner and a very athletic Bonny Bee, we continued our walk around the park.

It was full of the usually inexplicable artwork that city councils tend to dump in their municipal parks to give the locals something to stare quizzically at and for the pretentious to hail as works of genius. In any case, it was a pleasant park; in the middle, a huge nineteenth-century military installation to protect the port from invasion and on the lower levels a large inviting children’s playground, which has become the most essential element on this trip of any successful day out. Anything less than that is an unadulterated tragedy.

The family democratic process has gone like this:

ME: So, what shall we do today? We can go to a castle, take a ride up a mountain, visit a farm, or go and see an island.

KID 1: But we want to go to a playground!

KID 2: Playground!

BONNY BEE: We can go to a playground but first we want to see something else.

KID 1: That’s not fair, it’s so booooriiiing!

KID 3: Playground is best, maybe one with a slide and swings.

KID 2: Yeah, not like the one yesterday with only two swings!

KID 3: We want one with a moving slide, a climbing frame and – and – and – and lots of different swings!

ME: But you enjoyed the other places we visited.

KID 1: Yes but it’s not what we want!

ME: What about us?

KID 2: …

And on it goes. There are times that I must say I have felt marginalised by my own flesh and blood. Back in Valencia, when Milda creeps in to our bed in the middle of the night, it’s big enough not to make too much of a difference. But here, the bed is nearly as narrow as the dining table. And the dining table isn’t exactly fit for a Putin-Macron summit…

So we spent a while in the playground before going to check out Gijón’s old town. In the maritime gloom of Spain’s north coast lie a series of incredibly underrated towns and cities. Gijón is no exception. All right, it is never going to compete with the big cities, but it has a lot of charm. The Town Hall Square is an ornate rectangular treasure with buildings that reminded me of some of the smaller city squares in Poland, with their arched porticos and doors so high that a horse standing on top of another horse could enter with ease.

We sat at one of the two main cafés in the square and were immediately greeted by a seagull that, upon seeing three small children, was looking forward to robbing them of the cakes we had ordered. It was as if it knew. Kids are so predictable, even bandit birds know what’s coming. And yes, the shrieking feathered skyrat mugged us of a lot of cake to the extent that it landed on our table and physically dragged a slice of cake clean on to the floor. It was, for a couple of seconds, quite a shock, but the kids found it uproariously funny, so we just went along with that. Although we knew the seagull had done us up good and proper.

Seagulls to me are like Cristiano Ronaldo or Elon Musk. I detest them to my very core, but I can’t help but admire the way they outmanoeuvre everyone they confront. I watched in dumbstruck awe as one of these Terminator birds flew across the square about 3 floors up, glided effortlessly into a narrow side-street, and took a sharp left down another. At about 40 kilometres per hour. In the drizzle. If I did that in a car, I would have been liable for a humongous amount of carnage. They are thugs of the sky. The kind of creature that Bond villains would be based on.

The café itself was a truly delightful place to be a patron or a worker. But unfortunately the workers were unfriendly, impatient and not in the least helpful. It’s the type of place without a base of regular customers. The sort where people go once and never again. The guy who took our order had all the approachability of a Soviet Gastronom attendant but without the smart apparel. The misery etched on the faces of the staff told me a lot about the place. I didn’t write a review on Google, because I sensed they were being hounded by their boss, and I didn’t want to get them into trouble. But there was something not right about the place.

We headed back to the car and made our way to our next destination, San Ciprian, or in Galician San Cibrao, an undistinguished fishing village miles from anywhere. About 30 km beforehand, I messaged the agent to tell her we were half an hour away, and she said she would be waiting for us when we arrived. After a little confusion with the exact location, the agent came into view. For the next three weeks we were to stay here in the unpredictable climate of northern Galicia, so we hoped it was at least a decent apartment. It is situated in an urbanisation about 1.5 kilometres outside of the village, in between the trees of the never-ending primary forest all around us.

The woman herself was lovely although she gave me the impression she had lived through a lot. She told us we could park in whichever one of the three covered and numbered bays outside that we wanted, which I thought was strange. I took out the suitcases to have as few journeys to the apartment as possible and awaited her instructions. She said she would help me by bringing one of the suitcases up. In fact, she insisted, against my protestations. They’re heavy, even for me.

“You’re on the third floor,” she said through a set of teeth so long they could pick lettuce up off the floor without bending down in what seemed like Spanish spoken by a Portuguese.

“I’m glad there’s a lift then!” said I, naively.

“Yesh, but it doeshn’t work anymore. There are sheven rezhidenshesh, but only one ish year-long occupied. And they live on the firsht floor, sho they don’t shee the need for a lift.”

So we dragged the shootcayshesh – sorry, suitcases – up three flights of stairs. She gave us the keys and told us to go on ahead, she would take a little while longer.

“You (puff) get shtarted, I’ll (snort) take my time (wheeze) and shee you there (gasp).” I was a bit concerned about her, but she insisted. I could hear her groaning and mumbling as she made her way up the stairs.

“Please, just leave it there, and I’ll come down for it in a little while.”

“I’m nearly at the shecond floor, just take a glansh around, shit on the shofa and I’ll be there in a couple of minnitsh.”

To her credit, this poor woman, who obviously felt pressure from the people who run the app we used, to do her very best. And she did, bless her. I will make sure she gets a terrific review on there, and make sure the app people know how I feel about them. Because when she got to the top, in the glow of the hallway light, you could see where she had had open heart surgery. Exploitation of subordinates comes in many forms, and making anyone in that state of health feel the need to go that far is an outrage.

In any case, she showed us about the place, spotlessly clean but a little outdated (sounds familiar), with a proper number of bedrooms that hopefully we could get the kids to sleep individually. But there was a huge TV, which was great for watching kids’ TV and Euro 2024. I had drawn Spain in the coworking sweepstake. In fact, I fortuitously happened to be there when they made the draw and was invited to assist. I not only pulled Spain out, I pulled my own name out, much to the merriment of everyone there. I did offer to put it back in and let someone else pull out a country for me, but they were adamant that I should keep it. Well, what’s a guy to do? Never in my life did I want to lose a bet as much as this, but hey, I’ll let it go!

Back to the apartment. After the lady showed us around the place, she told us to get in touch with her if there were any issues at all. I had a feeling we might need her a few times. I found it really sad, disgraceful even, that five of the apartments out of the seven in this block were empty, and only one – ONE – actually had permanent residents. I just didn’t get it. How could the local government let the place fall into disrepair like this? We took a tentative ride into the village. The road from the urbanisation to the village is long and straight. And you can see from the very other end the symbol of local government incompetence: the empty skeleton of a block of apartments or offices, that had obviously been there a long, long time. Deserted, abandoned, unloved and unwanted.

What was saddest, though, was that if this atrociously-placed eyesore hadn’t been started in the first place, the direct view to the sea would be a perfect way to say “Welcome to San Cibrao”. Instead, some construction cowboys had slipped a few backhanders to some malleable councillors and got the necessary permits. It happens everywhere in depressed areas – then the building firms declare bankruptcy and the money disappears, leaving an unacceptable legacy for the local people and turning them against the politicians who did this. And this is how the more extreme parties get noticed – because after the mainstream ones run out of credibility due to taking the populace for granted (they’ll always vote for us, won’t they?) the only alternative is to give them the Stinkfinger, as the Germans call it.

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