Would you, could you read books on trains?

My friend John has been here for over fifteen years so I reckoned if anyone would know it would be him.
-Why, I asked him, do people in Madrid put covers on their books?
I’d noticed on the metro that a lot of the readers wrap covers on their books, usually pages from newspapers (not the brown paper my dad used for my school reading books).
-That’s a throwback from the days of Franco, he told me, when you didn’t want other people to know what you were reading.
I thought:
-Franco’s been dead for a long time. What are people wanting to hide now?
Looking at the books on the metro without newspaper covers, I’d say a lot of Ken Follett. Not only do the book shops have his novels, you can also buy them in the quioscos (where you buy your newspapers, DVDs and models of the world’s taxis, “This week: Albania”) and they are even given away free by Spain’s equivalent of The Guardian newspaper. Which is a lot more than The Guardian would do. The books I see being read have titles such as The Thief of Donkeys, The House of Carrots and The Holy Sisterhood of Socks. I exaggerate but, as my observations on the metro tell me, not by much.

What people are clearly not reading are the books that they are told to read by Metro de Madrid. Under the title Libros a la Calle (Books to the Street) most carriages have stuck by the doors an illustrated poster with an excerpt from the chapter of a book. Where the text ends in an ellipsis there is a strap line encouraging us to search for the book and read it in its entirety. These admonitions vary. It might be Leer nos hace libres. Y mas felices (Reading make us free. And happier) or Si quieres conocer, pregúntale a los libros (If you want to know, ask books). The posters with poetry always end with Ni un día sin poesia (Not a day without poetry). Looking at what they do read it is clear that the people of Madrid, at least those who use the metro, don’t want to be free, happy or ask a book a question and it is very possible that months go by without even a hint of poetry.

This state of affairs, at the very least, is unnecessary. One of the many reasons for living in Madrid is that the metro system has its own library system. Even better, they do not call the libraries “branches”, instead they are called “modules”. I would have preferred “pod” myself but I imagine we will have to wait until the 22nd century before every bus stop has its book pod. There are eleven of these modules and they go under the name of Bibliometro. They are self-contained, sealed, I have to use the word “pod”, pods that stand on the stations’ platforms, curved and asymmetrical in the modern fashion, staffed by two Biblionauts (I’ve made that word up), usually women, and they are open Monday to Friday from 1.30 to 8.00. You can take out one book at a time (consult the computer screen on the outside of the module because you cannot browse as the books are kept inside under the watchful eyes of the Biblionauts). Everything about them says “speed”, “efficiency” and, of course, “books”. They even have their own logo, a B on its side, two trains head-on in each of the semicircles.

I decided that it was time to play my part to get more books to the street. I would apply for my library card and read the books I had seen on the posters. I decided to go to my “surface” library staffed largely by Elois (I’ve made that up to but I suppose you saw it coming) here in the barrio. With my reader’s card I would be able to take out books from there and from the realms of the Morlocks (Oh God, there’s a whole novel here where youthful and innocent Eloi librarians in bikinis are eaten by subterranean Morlock librarians who are then burnt alive). What can I tell you about my experiences so far? To begin with, it is pleasing and reassuring to note that public libraries in Spain are as much a refuge for the timid, the socially inept, people who are “special” and those that are quite clearly insane as they are in Britain. I’m talking here about the staff and the public. It’s possible that libraries here have an even more important role in this respect. Given the level of noise and physical contact in any public space in Spain, libraries give their staff an environment where they can be free of the compulsion to curl up into a ball, rock back and forth while making soothing animal noises. As for the books, I do have some slight criticisms. The book I took out on the writer Miguel Unamuno had no details (date of acquisition, cataloguing information etc.) on the back of the title page nor did it have the book number stamped on page 21. Some pages had been stamped with the libraries’ stamp of the Communidad de Madrid but apparently at random and after page 43 the person charged with this task had simply given up. Most serious of all, not only was the book cover not stuck with sellotape there was no clear plastic cover on it. I’m happy to say that the book I borrowed that same day from the Bibliometro in Nuevos Ministerios, La lluvia amarilla (The Yellow Rain) by Julio Llamazares, had a stout cover on it and was clearly identified with a very fetching sticker. However, once again, it was let down by a lack of cataloguing details. Those of you accustomed to the rigours of the British public libraries’ cataloguing protocols will share my disappointment. The rest of you will not give a monkey’s.

I have to add that I have also been disappointed by the reaction of my fellow Madrileños. Basically, there hasn’t been one. However, it is early days yet and I’m sure I can expect a letter of thanks from the President of the Communidad any day. At the very least, a cheery wave from the driver of the next metro train I go on and a jolly:
-Hoy un día mas bueno y acuerdate, ¡ni un día sin poesia!
(Turned out nice again and remember, not a day without poetry!)

Whatchamacallits, thingimijigs and wotsits

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 full entries of words in current use. Once you add on all the odds and ends (the words found stuck up in trees or sewn neatly into the hem of a pair of trousers worn by W.C.Fields in 1935, for example) you end up with about a quarter of a million words. The 22nd edition of the Diccionario de la Real Academia Español contains 90, 000 words. In other words, if words were missiles then the English language could launch a successful first strike against Spanish and still have plenty left over to deal with the French.

Now, the way in which we respond to this information will depend, quite clearly, on our nationality. The British will sit back smugly in their chairs, turn on Radio 4 and fall asleep. The Spanish, on the other hand, will deny loudly the fact that English has more words, blame the politicians and then go on holiday for a month in August. However, I should point out that I have yet to see Spaniards lost for words. So, the fact that Spanish operates with 90, 000 words has never stopped any Spaniard from expressing himself.

It should also be pointed out that it could be argued that Spanish, as a language, does not exist. In 1714 Philip V took one look at the list of languages spoken by his subjects and said:
-Bugger that, the only one I'm going to listen to is Castilian. And I'm the king so do what you're told!
Confronted by this creation of an official language, the speakers of High Aragonese, Aranese, Asturian, Basque, Caló, Catalan, Extremaduran, Fala Extremaduran, Galician and Mirandes, did what Spaniards usually do when confronted by a strong central authority intent in interfering in the cultural identity of its citizens: they ignored it. Even Franco could not stop the people of Spain speaking the language of their faithers and mithers. And by the way, the speakers of Valenciano get really pissed off if you say they speak a variety of Catalan and never, ever say that they both sound like French. No wonder the Habsburgs, after a century or so of governing a bunch of people, or peoples, who couldn't even agree they lived in the same country said:
-Game's a bogey,
and left it to the Bourbons to sort it out.

I should also add that Spanish, if it exists, and Castilian if it doesn't, is an incredibly economical language. English depends a great deal on phrasal verbs to convey meaning. Without the sentence "Shall we get on the bus now?" the English-speaking world would have ended up as a group of aimless nomadic-wanderers clustered around bus stops. A Spaniard, on the other hand, would say:
-¿Subimos?-
After all if you are already at the bus stop and if a bus is there and everyone knows that they are there to get on the bus then why in the name of ¡mis cojones santos! (my sainted balls) would anyone want to discuss this? ¡Coño!

You'll notice that I didn't translate Coño. That's because I can't. You see, it's the "C" word in English. In Spanish (Castilian), however, it is an incredibly useful interjection that can be used in a variety of situations. It can be used to express anger: ¡Esa abeja me ha picado!¡Coño! - "That damn bee stung me!"; it can be used to express surprise: ¿Están saliendo juntos? ¡Coño! - "Are they really going out? Jings!" It can even be used by grandmothers. So, once again Spanish/Castilian has found a way of expressing different feelings with a single word. They just had to pick the one word which in English can never be used in public.

So, once again, context is everything when living in Spain. I found this out, yet again, a couple of weeks ago when my girlfriend and her daughter were having an argument. Or, possibly, they were having a barney, a set-to, a strong exchange of views, a right old ding-dong. a shouting match or perhaps they were even going at it like cats and dogs. You could call it a dispute, a disgreement, a squabble or a bit of a rhubarb. After all, voices were raised, the phrase -¡No me escuchas!- ("You're not listening to me!"- four words and a contraction in English compared to three in Spanish, by the way) was used repeatedly and forcefully. They were, in Spanish, discutiendo; in English, arguing, from the verb discutir, to argue. However, and this would explain why they could break off from shouting at each other and laugh at the look of concern on my face, discutir also means to discuss. Far from having an argument, they were merely having a loving discussion between mother and daughter.

Now, there are other words in Spanish which mean the same as discutir , for example disputar. But I have only ever heard them use discutir. To be honest, I think they do this on purpose, use one word to express different meanings. The longer I stay here the more sympathy I feel for anyone whose lot it was to be in charge of this bunch of linguistic acrobats. When the subjects of Philip V were paying him homage, rindiendo homenaje, it could never have been far from his mind that a synonym of rendir is fatigar, to exhaust or tire out. More than once, swamped by this never-ending outpouring of ambiguity, he must have thought:
-Oh Jeez, gie's a break!
To which I can only add:
-¡Coño!-