For nearly four years, the people of North Korea ran on “Pyongyang Time,” a self-imposed time zone that kept clocks on the north side of the Korean Peninsula 30 minutes behind those of its neighbor to the south. As strange as this manipulation of something as universal as time may seem, it pales in comparison to that which takes place within the borders of a far less controversial country: Spain. Despite having lived in the country for nearly a year and having spent the past seven weeks walking through it day after day on El Camino, I am still trying to figure out what perception of time exists there. Familiar purveyors of hours and minutes can be seen in the form of clocks adorning local government buildings and watches strapped across wrists, but the time they read and the life that coincides with it obeys neither rules nor, in most cases, logic.
As an example, take the story we heard of a Zambian hostel owner currently living in Spain. After being invited to a couple’s home for dinner at 8 P.M., he arrived at the house surprised to find the kitchen lights off, no smell of cooking whatsoever, and one of his hosts still amidst an afternoon siesta. A little later, both husband and wife were awake, not busy in the kitchen heating up an already prepared dinner, rather serving drinks and chatting. At around 2 A.M. the cooking finally began and after dinner was over, coffee was served as the night was still apparently young. At 5 A.M. the evening came to a close and, instead of going to bed, the Zambian hostel owner instead opted to just drive back home as a new day, for him anyway, was about to begin.
Now, while this is an extreme example, it is by no means an anomaly. Ask anyone who has lived or traveled in Spain and you are bound to encounter a pantheon of head-scratching stories pertaining to the Spanish perception of time. On El Camino, having a loose grasp of this perception is crucial for nobody wants to walk for hours on end only to find that, at your destination, a service you need, whether it be a well-deserved meal or supplies from a pharmacy, inexplicably unavailable until an unforeseen hour or sometimes even day. And so, it is extremely important, whether visiting, living in, or walking through Spain, to have an understanding of the siesta and how everything else in Spain’s off-kilter timetable revolves around it.
Just as with Spanish, we had once thought of ourselves as competent in the language of siesta after we both had studied abroad in Spain as well as lived in Granada for nearly a year. Yes, we had our occasional mishaps as, for example, the time we suggested to go out for drinks on a weekend night at midnight. After uttering this apparent nonsense to our housemates, a great deal of scoffing ensued followed by an assurance that midnight would be far too early as the bars would be lifeless, not because the hour was too late but rather too early. And there was also the time we tried choosing when to go to a popular restaurant for dinner. Notorious for being hard to get a seat, we cleverly planned to arrive well after the dinner rush. Upon entering the doors at 11 P.M., a flustered hostess backed by a raucous crowd of diners asked us if we had a reservation. When we replied no, she made it very clear that we would not be getting a seat for the next couple of hours.
Despite these erroneous attempts at trying to conform to the Spanish hour though, most of our guesses were right and, returning to Spain seven years later to walk El Camino, we thought that our competence in the language of siesta had not grown rusty, unlike our Spanish. Oh, how we were wrong!
Take for instance the morning in which we made the silly assumption that, in a town with two restaurants that open at 7 A.M., one of them would serve food. Upon ordering a simple breakfast of tostado con tomate though, we were looked at as if we were crazy to be ordering food at such an hour and told that only drinks were being served at that time. Looking around the bar, we were perplexed to see a spattering of truck drivers sipping espresso as if they were in the midst of a grueling overnight drive and not on the cusp of what the rest of the world recognizes as the morning. And so, a day of walking was begun with no breakfast, which wouldn’t have been so bad if the following town we passed through around 8 A.M. didn’t have restaurants, all of which advertised themselves as breakfast establishments, closed altogether. At times we had to re-consult our watch to make sure that indeed it was 8 A.M. and not in fact 4 A.M. as it felt.
Apart from mornings, afternoons have also been known to cause their fair share of frustrations for pilgrims on El Camino, us undoubtedly included. Normally, you can count on a shop being open until 2 in the afternoon, closing for a few hours, and then opening again at 5 or 6 until finally closing for the day around 8.
There have been instances though where the only shop in the village will be closed in the afternoon or for the entire day, in which case we are stuck going to a restaurant for our meal. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but, as you’ve probably guessed by now, in Spain it is. In one such instance, we spent the better part of an hour wandering in and out of restaurants around 7 P.M. asking to see their menu and being told time and again that each place didn’t start serving food of any kind until 8:30.
In another case, we heard the story of a fellow pilgrim who walked over twenty miles and arrived in a town only to find the local restaurant inexplicably closed. Ravenous from the day’s trek, he decided to walk an extra mile more to a neighboring village where he was told that the restaurant wouldn’t be serving food for another two hours despite it being 6:30 P.M. Faced with either returning to the previous village with no prospects for dinner or waiting for the early bird hour to arrive, he chose the latter.
If grappling with the matter of business hours wasn’t enough, you also have to be aware of the days when villages and seemingly entire cities shut down. One of those days occur every week on Sunday and if you ever happen to find yourself amidst the many and seemingly random Spanish holidays or the dreaded bridge weekend, you can be really out of luck. One time in Granada, we were told all of our classes had been cancelled for the day. Curious as to the reason behind our unexpected day off, we asked our school’s secretary who had informed us if it was a holiday that day. “I don’t know,” she replied. Confused but nonetheless happy, we went for a walk through the city and were surprised to find a parade moving down one it’s major streets. Again we asked for the reason behind the celebrations to a bystander and, once again, got the response of “I don’t know.” So, even if nobody is quite sure what holiday is being celebrated, you can count on everybody, businesses included, to act as if it is the biggest holiday of the year.
So, after learning many hard lessons over the first couple of weeks on El Camino, we now find ourselves making Nostradamus-like predictions far into the hazy and unpredictable future of Spanish time for, and it took us this long to finally learn this, there really is no point in trying to adapt, only prepare.
