Signs of Summer

I've had to venture from the pueblo to Madrid for meetings recently, and it's clear that el verano ha llegado. First, there's the number of people travelling on the village bus. The media docena de autobuses which run daily in each direction usually van medio vacíos. In summer, though, they're a lot busier, and the hold is filled with maletas y mochilas big enough for un mes de vacaciones.

I arrived at la Estación Sur after a few weeks' absence from the capital and found the metro delightfully empty. I thought no more about it until, en la primera parada, a guardia de seguridad got on and evicted me. Yes, it's summer and, once again, un tramo largo de línea 6 - the circular line that connects all round the city - is closed. They're always working on some part of the metro, but en verano it's pretty much guaranteed that it'll be one of the lines connecting with the main estación de autobuses or train stations.

Out in the street, las obras are in full swing. Despite the heat you daren't open your windows or you'll be deafened by jack hammers and choked by dust. The zanjas de Madrid are locally famous: 20 years ago, we were joking, "lovely city; qué pena they didn't finish building it before we arrived." I don't know how anyone can do physical work in such heat, and presumably la mitad del equipo are off on their month's holiday, so it doesn't exactly seem la mejor época to get roadworks finished quickly.
 
I'm not sure if the council workmen get to work the horario de verano, but certainly the banks and cajas do. Mind you, they think that summer starts in May - from San Isidro on the 15th they are already on summer schedule and probably won't be back working full time till October. That's just a little longer than the hellishly hot tres meses de infierno that Madrid is traditionally said to have.

One good thing about summer should be the receipt of a paga extra in the end-of-June paycheck. Sadly, most companies realise that foreigners aren't used to this, so they claim that they pro rata the payments a lo largo del año. The idea that los trabajadores are incapable of managing their own monetary affairs and that the employer should do it for them is patronising and paternalistic. Even so, it's really annoying when compañeros españoles are getting a double payment and you aren't. Particularly as you almost certainly didn't receive significantly more than them during the year.

Another sign of summer is the preponderance of terrazas everywhere. Despite the polvo de las obras, tourists still want to sit outside in the heat and work on their skin cancer as they sip alcoholic beverages and head towards un estado de deshidratación. Of course they'd do better to drink something like granizado or horchata, that strange, gritty suspension of ground tigernuts that appears when the weather gets hot.

Back in the pueblo the circus should arrive any day now for its summer run. Perhaps their drowsy, motheaten tigres were the ones who provided the horchata ingredients.

Gwyneth Box is a Spanish teacher who lives in the centre of the country. To hear her read this column, click here. (MP3 file)