Extremadura & Lisbon

I've blogged about our time in Paris, but not about our other recent excursion to Extremadura and Lisbon.  We had a visit from Zoë's mother.  Long time readers of the blog may remember Susan from my Christmastime post which told of the delightful time she had being stranded in the UK by the incompetence of Heathrow Airport, for five days of her 10-day vacation.  Her disappointment at missing so much time in Spain was assuaged by immediately making plans to come visit us in the spring.  Finally, the time came.  She connected through New York instead of London, and arrived without incident.

We had a choice here.  Either the four of us could spend a week in Madrid, cramped into our 2-bedroom apartment, or we could all go on a fun trip.  Which would you have chosen?  We rented a car and headed for southwest Spain, or "Extremadura," a region that everyone had said to us we had to see, and then for Lisbon just a bit farther beyond.

View of Trujillo & countryside

The trip was a reminder of the fact that you cannot drive more than two hours in Spain without coming across something fabulous (and passing a lot of really nice things along the way to boot).  First stop, Trujillo, a town frozen in time, just over three hours driving from Madrid.  This was where Francisco Pizarro (conqueror of Peru) and Francisco de Orellana (discoverer of the Amazon River) hailed from.  They and their conquistador buddies came back from the New World with their bags full of gold, and used it to build fancy palaces in their hometown.  And then nothing else of note happened in their hometown for the next four-hundred years, making Trujillo a place frozen in time.  The town has a modern section, but it is not too large, so that the historic quarter is still prominent.  When you climb up to the moorish castle at the top, you look out over gorgeous Extremaduran countryside, rather than modern suburbs.

We spent the night in nearby Cáceres, another 45 minutes down the road.  This town also produced conquistadores who enriched the place with New World loot, and also has a beautifully preserved historic center full of buildings from the sixteenth century.  We spent two nights there on a lovely hotel right on the plaza mayor, and had fun wandering through its old cobbled streets.

Afterwards, it was on to Portugal, and a stop at Évora, a town not far from the Spanish-Portuguese frontier.  We had eaten well in Extremadura, but the first truly memorable meal of the trip was here, at a tiny restaurant down a narrow street where we had arroz con pato magret and cordero asado.  The highlight of the town was its beautifully preserved Roman temple, as well as its white-washed streets.

Street in Lisbon's Baixa

That same day, we headed into Lisbon, where we spent three nights.  I wish I could say I loved Lisbon, a city that many of my friends rave about, but I didn't, and neither did Zoë.  Lisbon is shabby, and people who love it find romance in that shabbiness.  We just found shabbiness.  The city feels much more Latin American than any other city we've seen in Europe, but you pay for everything in euros.  We wandered around some of its neighborhoods, saw the castle, the monastery of the Jerónimos, and the Torre de Belém.  I did get a kick, however, from seeing the new Museo de Oriente, a museum of Asian art that features a nice exhibit on Portuguese-Asian art from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  It's in an old cod factory next to the police station in an industrial wharf area.  And we ate well, too, particularly, in our hotel restaurant, where we had dinner once out of sheer exhaustion.  Turns out that the restaurant of the Hotel Aviz is an old establishment where celebrities used to dine.  The meal was spectacular, and included memorable desserts.

The Roman theater in Mérida, on arts day for the kids.

After Lisbon, it was back to Extremadura, and to the city of Mérida.  Unlike Cáceres and Trujillo, Mérida is not know for its general ambience, but for its Roman ruins.  I must admit I was skeptical, having just been to Rome last December, but I was proven wrong.  The ruins are spectacular, and in two cases better than their equivalents in Rome.  There is a very well-preserved  Roman theater, and one of the best preserved circuses in the old Roman world.  The theater was actually in use when we visited, by a group of schoolkids from all over Extremadura who had come in for a performing arts day.  We watched a skit and a dance number before the heat got to us.  The museum of Roman art is spectacular, both for its collection and its architecture.  Large, well-preserved Roman mosaics are hung on walls, where they are visible from Once again, we ate very well, this time at the parador.  Susan had very much wanted to stay in one, so we decided to stay in Mérida's, an eighteenth century convent with a lovely patio. At dinner, we had the best técula mécula of the trip, as well as a fantastic plate of local cheeses.  Técula mécula is an Extremaduran dessert, a sort of almond pie, and it's fabulous.

After Mérida, it was back to Madrid. Susan went back to Boston, this time via Miami rather than London, and we went back to school and to work.

15-M

I couldn't let the week go by without blogging about what's going on in the Puerta del Sol.  You've probably seen on the news that a popular social movement burst onto the Spanish scene on the 15th of May.  It involves the occupation of public squares by protesters eager for political and social change.  The biggest of these demonstrations is here in Madrid, where a group has been camping out in the Puerta del Sol for just shy of two weeks.

At first, I was quite cynical about this.  I swung by the square and saw a bunch of hippies camping out in a square that was plastered with signs expressing noble-sounding but vague ideas.  I sympathized with their plight.  Here were a bunch of young people who do not see a future for themselves, given the current economic crisis.  Unemployment in Spain is at 21%, but among the young it's at 45%.  They're angry with all sorts of institutions, the government, the banks, the schools, for having failed them.  But I did not have any confidence that much would come of this. There are a lot of calls for change and reform, but no real clear message about what shape those reforms should take.  Will the people in charge listen?  Will they feel compelled to make changes?  What changes would those be?  I could not imagine an outcome to all this, other than the protestors eventually going home, leaving the Puerta del Sol a mess.

But today I went by again, with Zoë, after a meeting at Santiago's school, and I found myself inspired.  These people aren't just camping out in the square: they've built a functioning village there.  Under the tarps  one finds a series of well-marked out enclosures.  One is a lending library, the other a day-care center.  One provides emergency medical assistance, and another dispenses donated food to participants. There are meeting areas where different groups discuss their concerns.  Animal rights.  Constitutional reform.  Educational reform.  There are signs everywhere protesting everything, although the stranglehold that Spanish banks have on debtors figures most prominently, I thought.  In Spain, if you default on your mortgage, they foreclose on you, but you still owe the mortgage.  Isn't that incredible?

One sign in particular caught my eye.  It was a series of instructions for how one should behave in the event that the police decided to clear the square.  The instructions urged people to adopt a nonviolent response, to sit down, stay quiet, and send out a text message saying "Sol is being cleared.  Come support us."

Police are all around, but they are clearly bored.  The protestors are orderly, respectful, and completely nonviolent, giving them nothing to do.  While we were there, a guy with a megaphone asked people to avoid using the bathrooms in adjoining businesses, and instead go to those of business farther from the plaza.  Apparently, the business owners immediately around Sol complained that their facilities were being taxed by all the extra use, so the protestors are doing their best to accommodate them.  They've already cleared the spaces in front of businesses, so that customers can get in and out unimpeded, at the request of the owners.

It's really remarkable that something so well-organized has sprung up from a movement that has no visible central leadership.  I hope that when they finally tear the campground apart and go home (this Sunday, they say), they will remain organized, remain nonviolent, and find a way to be effective.

No, We Have not Been Raptured

 Ah, dear readers, too long have I ignored you!  Many of you were probably wondering what had happened to us.  Were they still in Europe?  Or did they go somewhere else?  Were they raptured?  If so, can I have their car? 


No, my friends, we were not taken up into the heavens.  The rapture is not until tomorrow, although I doubt very seriously that it will affect me anyway. I don't think Catholics get raptured, and I'm pretty sure bad ones certainly don't.  Secular Jews?  Not a prayer.  I think everyone can count on Zoë's blog to continue without interruption.  The closest thing to being taken up into the heavens that has happened to us was our ascent of the Eiffel Tower.  

View from the Eiffel Tower.

"But wait!"you might say, "the Eiffel Tower is not in Spain!"  And you would be right to raise this doubt, for as schoolchildren all across America can tell you, it is in London, and has a big clock on it.  Sadly, they would be wrong.  Now, the faithful among you will have by now deduced that we have recently traveled to Paris, while the more cynical might suspect that we really were just in King's Dominion, a Virginia theme park where they have a 1/4 sized replica of the Eiffel Tower.  As proof that we were in the genuine Eiffel Tower, I offer the photo on the right, taken from atop.  As you can see, there is not a roller coaster, parking lot, or cotton candy stand anywhere in sight.  Only buildings and smog, as one might expect from one of the world's most beautiful cities.


Now, if ascending the Eiffel Tower is anything like the rapture, all those faithful souls are in for a rude awakening.  Because ascending the Eiffel Tower is sheer hell.  You wait in line for 2.5 hours to get a ticket, then 45 minutes to get an elevator to the lower level, and then another 45 minutes for the elevator to the top level.  But we had to do it.  Zoë and I had been before, but this was the Kid's first time in Paris, and we couldn't NOT take him to the Eiffel Tower. In the end, Zoë enjoyed this the most, since it gave her a chance to really find out just how arthritic her toes had become over the years.  See how her smile just glows in this picture of her that I took on the elevator ride to the top?  

Don't worry, she was smiling on the inside.

 Luckily, the rest of our time in Paris was nothing whatsoever like our afternoon at the Eiffel Tower.   One highlight was the time we spent with Helen, a friend of mine from H.S. with whom I had recently reconnected via Facebook.  Hi Helen!  Another was Versailles, which we visited on a gorgeous Saturday.  We were taken away by the Petite Trianon, its adjoining gardens, and Marie Antoinette's little hamlet.  We loved the Musée de Cluny, and we found the Sainte Chapelle to be one of those rapturous spaces that is so beautiful that you never want to leave it. The Louvre was wonderful in its overwhelming splendor.  We threw ourselves into the Mona Lisa mosh pit, but preferred by another Leanardo portrait out in the hall that was going unnoticed by the crowds.  We ate very well, at prices similar to those charged in Madrid, and particularly enjoyed the patisserie.  Breakfast every day consisted of treats from the pastry and bread shop on the ground floor of the apartment building where we had rented our tiny but stylish one-bedroom.  Just a few blocks from the Louvre. 


The surprise treat, however, was the Musée de la Musique.  We figured the Kid would enjoy this place, but were surprised to find out that we all loved it.  Five floors take you through the history of western music since 1500, and another gives you a very quick look at nonwestern music.  Each floor features collections of gorgeous musical instruments, but what makes the place really worth the trip is the audio guide, included in the admission.  Not only does it give you the explanations that one usually gets in museum audio guides, but it also gives you musical selections performed on the instruments in the cases.  The whole museum comes to life as you stroll around listening to a harpsichord here, a lute there.  You get rapturous selections from operas in front of dioramas of famous opera houses, and pieces by great composers in front of exhibits dedicated to them.  We kind of had to rush through, but Santiago made us promise that one day we would return to Paris with enough time to listen to each and every single selection in the entire museum.  I said yes, but secretly thought that might be an Eiffel Tower experience all over again.


There was one other Eiffel Tower experience, but I will have to leave it to Zoë to tell you about it.  Only she and the Kid suffered through it, while I gave a lecture at the "Centre Alexandre Koyré de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales et le Centre National de Recherche Scientifique." Some of you may know it better as the Centre Alexandre Koyré of the EHESS/CNRS.  Zoë and the Kid decided to push the physical limits of tourism, to their great regret, while I shared ideas with a rapt group of historians.


Those of you who'd like to know more about our time in Paris can poke around my Ricardo's Paris Google Map.  As for those of you expecting to get raptured tomorrow, wear comfy shoes.  

So-Called Customer Service

Take a look at this Blockbuster training video from 1990:

Perhaps you enjoyed the definitively early-90s ambience of the whole thing.  Did you see the high waist-lines?  All this talk about broken VCR's?  VHS!?!?   LOL!!!  Or perhaps you couldn't stomach the damn thing.  In either case, I hope you noticed what the creepy guy on the video monitor was telling the early-90s cutie, that she needed to show initiative and creativity in order to solve her customers' problems, make them happy, and make sales.

There is not a single sales clerk in all of Spain who has seen this video, or anything remotely like it.  Interactions with sales people often resemble the experience of Philip II in this spoof by a Spanish comedy group:

If you don't speak Spanish, it's worth learning it just to understand this hilarious video.  King Philip II has gone to the workshop to pick up the Armada he has ordered.  He is first treated as an inconvenience, then he's put to work.  He gets scolded for not bringing his claim ticket, and for presuming that the workman would know who he is.  Eventually, the guy recognizes him, and treats him like a celebrity.  Then an argument ensues, because Philip has ordered an "Invincible Armada" and the shop has made an "Armada that is Difficult to Beat," which costs less because the ships are made from particle board rather than solid wood.  Eventually, they agree that Philip will take the armada that's been manufactured, but the guy will put "Invincible Armada" on the receipt so that the enemy will be appropriately cowed.  That is, as long as the King agrees to let the guy's son go the England with the Armada, so that he can learn English.

It's a great parody because it gets so many things right.  The customer is an inconvenience.  Serving the customer is a big fucking favor performed by the employee.  The employee expresses disgust at the customer's demands, and argues with him so that he'll get it through his thick head that he can't have what he wants.  In the end, the customer has to settle.

The weird thing is that if you are the guest rather than the customer in Spain, you are treated like a king.  Spain has a deep and important culture of hospitality whereby hosts do everything in their power to make their guests feel honored and welcome.  People go out of their way.  They make and change plans according to your interests.  They never let you pay for anything.  The let you stay as long as you want.  Even after years of living in Virginia, a place that prides itself on hospitality, I have been astounded by the lengths that Spaniards go to when you are their guest.

None of this translates into a culture of "the customer is always right" service.  In fact, the customer is always wrong.  And the most irritating thing is that few people seem capable of showing initiative or asking questions in order to solve your problems.  Zoë, who does the lion's share of the shopping, can tell you all about this sort of thing.  The eye-rolling.  The look of disgust when you have some sort of special problem.  She's learned the trick of shopping at the same places all the time, because once you are perceived as a regular people start being nice to you.  The other trick is to do what Philip II does in the video.  Change tacks.  Elicit the salesperson's sympathy.  Settle for less.  None of this comes naturally to you if you are from the Americas.

I can tell you about my experience with Orange, the company who provides our cell-phone service.  Santiago had lost his mobile and we needed to replace it.  We use cheap pay-as-you-go phones, or "hooker phones," as Zoë calls them.  I went to the Orange store only to find out that I had too many lines in my name already.  Apparently, each person can have only two hooker-phone lines in his/her name, in order to limit the use of such phones for criminal purposes.   I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a phone that had been lost, and so I really wasn't looking for a  third line, but actually a replacement for one of the two lines I already had.  No idea from the sales clerk about what to do.  She said call Orange. I called the "customer service" line, and they told me there shouldn't be any problem with me getting as many lines as I wanted.  When I told them what had happened at the store, they told me to just go to a different store.  I did this, and, at the store, they told me the same thing they had told me at the first store. I called "customer service" and they confirmed that the sales clerk was right.  I tried to explain that I was trying to replace a lost phone, and they just repeated that I had too many lines already, and could not provide further information.

Then I fucking lost it.  What do you mean you can't provide further information?  I'm sorry, we can't.  Is there someone at Orange who has this information?  Yes.  Can you connect me with them?  No.  They do not deal with customers.  WHAT!!?  Are you aware of how completely absurd that is?   This is an internal policy of Orange.  I WANT TO BUY YOUR FUCKING PRODUCT, ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT YOU CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO MAKE THAT POSSIBLE?!!?  I'm sorry, we cannot provide further information.  I was livid.  My hands were shaking.  I was red in the face.  People around me had gone quiet.  I hung up and stormed out.

Upon getting home and calming down, I checked the internet.  Couldn't buy a phone from the website either.  Then I tried calling them again.  I was connected to the ONE person in the whole company who had seen the Blockbuster training video.  In fact, I think it was Marie herself, who has lost her job at the sinking ship which is Blockbuster, has learned Spanish, and has moved to Spain, where she is spreading the bible of good customer service everywhere she goes.  "Maria," as I shall call her, explained to me that I needed to go to a store and ask for a replacement card, not a new phone.  Ohhhhhhh.  I complimented her and thanked her profusely.

I went to the store, and bought the replacement card with no problem.  So can you sell me a phone as well?  No.  Why?  All our phones come with cards, and you can't have another card.  What am I supposed to do with this replacement card?  You see, he lost his phone as well as the card that was in it.  You need to buy another phone.  NO FUCK!!!  But you can't sell me a phone.  What do I do?  You need to go to the Phone House and buy a telefono libre (an unlocked phone that can be used with any service).  Thank you.

A Triumph of the Ass

I was going to make this post about our recent trip to Valencia, but I've been doing a lot of posting about our trips and very little about other things.  So, briefly, we went to Valencia by invitation of the folks who run the UVA study abroad program there, and had a spectacular time.  I was invited to give a lecture to the students, and then we spent time seeing the city with our various hosts.  They treated us like royalty, making the whole weekend quite memorable.  It was especially nice to see our old friends Agustín and Tammy, who had us for a paella at their apartment facing the Mediterranean.  Zoë and Santiago came back to Madrid on Sunday, while I continued on to Barcelona to give a lecture at the University of Barcelona.

But I keep getting these remarks from people saying that it looks like I'm on an extended vacation.  This is natural, since I have barely, if ever, mentioned my work on this blog.  Yes, we travel a lot, and I have no guilt about it whatsoever, because I figure any travel I do in Spain is a form of professional development.  But we also spend a lot of time in Madrid, where I put in long hours at the Biblioteca Nacional and other libraries and archives.  I thought I would tell you a bit about what all that is about.

Take a look at this map:

This is the closest thing that we have to an official map of the Spanish Empire, from the century or so when that empire was first created (i.e. 1492 - 1600).  In it's original form (this is a slightly modified, later copy) it was published in 1601 as part of an official history of the Spanish discovery and conquest of the Indies sponsored by the Spanish government.  Notice that I did not say "discovery and conquest of the Americas," because, as you can see from this map, the Spanish concept of the "West Indies" included a bunch of transpacific territories that we usually think of as the East Indies, as well as the Americas.  The map includes two vertical lines, one of the colored red and cutting through Brazil, and the other grey and cutting through East Asia.  Everything between these lines is what Spain considered to be its empire, including such places as the Philippines, New Guinea, China, and Japan.

I am writing a book that traces the fortunes of this concept.  I think it's an important one because of the way it helps us think differently about the geographies that were at work in early modern imperialism.  Over the course of the last few decades, a lot of scholars have been talking about the Atlantic world, the whole political, social, economic, and cultural network that arose out of the European encounter with the Americas and Africa.  This map reminds us that early modern imperialism, particularly Spanish imperialism, was transpacific as well as transatlantic.  Spain had ambitions regarding Asia, and once it established itself in the Philippines, it began to trade with China and other countries by way of the market in Manila.  Other scholars have studied the development of this Pacific world in economic terms, and I am trying to study it in cultural terms.  I am trying to figure out what the concept of the "Indies" meant for early modern Spaniards, and how it managed to encompass the Pacific and Asia along with the New World.

My progress so far has been a triumph of the ass.  I wish I had made this expression up, but I actually heard it on NPR, who said that's what writing a book was, a triumph of the ass.  Books happen because authors spend a lot of time sitting on their ass reading and writing and revising and writing and revising.  They do it for hours.  They do it when they don't particularly feel like doing it.  And that's what I've been doing when I haven't been on the road to cool places with the fam.  I've been sitting on my ass, reading letters, travel narratives, histories, plays, secondary sources of all kinds, and writing, writing, writing, writing.  So far, over 250 pages of writing, of which I think 120 or so are usable.  God, I hope 120 pages are usable . . . If not, it's more ass time for me.

My mom comes to Spain

Did you know I was there
when Columbus got back from his trip?

OK, now that I have the Big Hunk of Meat off my chest, I can tell you about my mom's visit at the end of February.

This started with a visit to a museum, of which Madrid has more than 40.  Was it the Prado?  The Reina Sofía?  No, it was the Madrid Wax Museum.  As it turns out, my mom has a thing for wax museums, dating back from a youthful visit to Montreal in the late 50s with her dad.  So we took her to the wax museum, right across the street from the Biblioteca Nacional.  We posed with the Royal Family.  I jumped the velvet rope to get into a picture with Columus.  My mom posed with Antonio Banderas.  But the highlight of it all was the "Tren del Terror."  We got into an amusement-park-ride train-thingie, and it took us down this hallway where we saw huge rats and had giant mechanical sharks pop out at us.  Zoë's favorite was the Star Wars hallway.  Imagine doors opening, and your little train entering a hallway painted black and decorated with star glitter and the sort of styrofoam planets you make for your school science fair.  Above your head, one of the Empire's Galactic Cruisers flies.  It's made of tinfoil.  My favorite was just beyond, in the "Rambo vs. Aliens" room.  I thought it was Apocalypse Now at first, what with its crazed grunts and human heads hanging in the tropical foliage, but then I spotted the big red Alien and that tipped it off.  Train of Terror?  No, more like Train of Hilarity!!  We were laughing so hard our sides ached.  My mom thought it was an excellent wax museum.  Better than the one in Montreal!

The botafumeiro about to be swung into action.

The next day, after a visit to the Palace and a lovely lunch on the Plaza Santa Ana, we were off to Santiago de Compostela, Galicia.  This was a place that Zoë, the Kid and I had really wanted to see, so when my mom said she wanted to see it too, we made plans.  We had a day seeing the Cathedral and its museum, a day wandering around Santiago seeing some smaller sights, and a day driving along Galicia's Costa da Morte before heading back to Madrid.   The best part of the city itself was getting to see the famous botafumeiro in action.  This is an enormous censer that hangs from a pulley system on the ceiling of the cathedral.  Seven or eight men pull on these ropes, and the botafumeiro swings, pendulum like, from one transept to the other in an enormous arc, spewing out incense smoke all over the church.  Apparently, in the many centuries that they've been doing this, the thing has never actually hit anyone, which is good because it weighs something like 80 pounds.  Finally, they let the momentum die down and one of the guys catches it, grabbing the ropes and twirling around to bring it to a halt.  My mom described it best when she described the whole thing as a sort of circus act.

From the scenic overlook on the Costa da Morte

The other highlight was our drive up the coast.  Those of you familiar with Galicia's reputation for rain and mist will be stunned to find out that we had a sunny, clear, warm day for this.  We stopped off in the town of Noia, which would be forgettable if it weren't for its fried calamari sandwiches of the gods.  Then we drove up to much-more-picturesque Muros, and continued along the coast to Fisterra, the peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic that the Romans thought of as the end of the world.  We did the drive in a rented Kia Picanto that could barely manage the hills.  When we passed anyone – always on the downhill – Zoë and I felt the need to lean forward to make sure the care made it.  The coastline was utterly spectacular, and we even forced the car to plod and strain up to a scenic overlook were we could take it all in.  As the car crept into the parking area, we strained to see out into the bay, and were greeted by the vision of a man standing at the railing, peeing over the side.  Too bad he finished before we could get pictures of him to plaster all over the internet.

At the scenic overlook, sans that other visitor.

Our final day, after a fabulous breakfast at the parador, we saw Sta. María del Sar, a romanesque church almost on the outskirts of Santiago famous for almost falling apart.  They made the side naves too high, and the walls too thin, to support the barrel vault of the central nave.  The result is a church that looks a little bit like a Dr. Seuss creation, with the walls sagging out at an angle of almost 50º.

Our review of Santiago and Galicia?  Charming city.  Incredibly friendly people.  Lovely scenery.  And some of the best food in Spain.   Mom had a great visit, and we had a great time seeing her.

The Big Hunk of Meat

Yesterday, I went out to lunch with a couple of colleagues from the States.  They, like me, are Spanish professors at state universities.  Among the things we talked about were heroin use on the pilgrimage route to Santiago and the alarmingly low percentage of members of the Kansas State legislature who hold college degrees (ca. 40%).  But I am not writing to tell you about what we discussed.  I am writing to tell you about what I ate, the Big Hunk of Meat.

We all enjoyed the restaurant's menú.  For those of you unfamiliar with this term, the menú is the prix-fixe meal offered by just about every restaurant in Spain, particularly at midday during the work week.  (The English menu translates as carta) Its existence stems from the collision of long-standing custom with the realities of modern life.  For ages, Spaniards have made the midday meal, taken around 2:30pm, the big meal of the day.  Few people, however, have the time or inclination to travel all the way home at lunchtime, the way they did in the Quito of many years ago, a city that had four rush hours a day.  This creates a demand for big, but affordable meals consisting of two cooked dishes served as separate courses, a beverage, plus coffee and/or dessert.  A businessperson menú usually comes in around €10-15, a bit more if you decide to have both coffee and dessert.

The menú is rarely a memorable meal. In fact, Zoë has sworn them off, after a few too many experiences with affordable menús that ended up being quite disappointing, if not downright disgusting.  It still plays a role in my life, though, particularly when I get together with colleagues for  a meal during the workday, when the emphasis is on meeting and talking without getting too spendy.  The trick is to find a menú that is tasty and satisfying, even if the flavors are nothing to write home about.

Which brings me to the Big Hunk of Meat.  The second course options on your typical menú usually include some fish and/or seafood, and a meat dish or two.  These are often difficult to identify, because food words in Spain are so very different from their Latin American equivalents, so we usually have to look around at what other people are eating and try to match what we see to that's on the page.  My choices in these instances, as in other dining experiences, are guided by the following list of priorities.  I tend to like, in no particular order:

1. Meat over chicken or seafood.
2. Food that requires assembly at the table.
3. Food that requires cooking at the table.
4. Food that involves some sort of special apparatus to be eaten.
5. Food that involves dramatic presentation, like being set on fire.
6. Food served in portions that look more like a dare than dinner.  

You can imagine my fondness for things like fondue, Korean BBQ, Peking duck, and all things flambé. Unfortunately, items meeting criteria 2-5 are rare on a humble menú del día, but items meeting 1 and 6 are common.  The Big Hunk of Meat answers to both.

Codillo de cerdo, an example of the Big Hunk of Meat

The Big Hunk of Meat can take many forms.  It can be lamb or pork.  It can be roasted or braised.  It is usually a joint chopped off the leg of some hapless animal, prepared in such a way as to leave the meat quite tender, albeit sometimes without much flavor.  The central flavor experience is what the Japanese call umami, which is the taste we associate with fat.  Umami is in fact so important to so many Spanish dishes that I am surprised that the language does not have an equivalent word.  The Big Hunk of Meat, as the name implies, is always large.  It would represent a not-so-small feast for an entire family in many parts of our hungry world.  In Spain, it is a single serving.  Hence its attraction to a hungry Spanish professor making (bad) choices off a menú.  

Yesterday, as so often happens to me, I fell for the Big Hunk of Meat.  I like to think that my choice was inspired by thrift, a virtue, rather than gluttony, a vice.  A cardinal sin, even.  The Big Hunk of Meat, about half the size of your head, represents a good value for your money.  I can think of nowhere besides Spain where I can get such a large piece of meat, with an appetizer, a dessert, and a beverage, for so little money.  Who wouldn't go for it?  The answer: anyone who realizes that the Big Hunk of Meat sits heavy in your stomach, making you wonder why you ate the whole damn thing.  

I a moment, I am going out to lunch with Zoë, and I will not get the Big Hunk of Meat.  I promise.  It's a sure thing.  Don't you believe me?