Roquetas De Mar
Roquetas De Mar, the place I live. The place I've loved for the last five years. It felt like I'd finally arrived home when I first got her. As if some way I finally belonged somewhere. Now it feels like a pair of tight shoes. You know, the type of shoes your parents buy you when you're four years old. Those shoes you hid under the duvet/ quilt to cuddle at night, you loved them for some insanely childish reason. You probably wore them to death and absolutely everywhere, and yet a few months pass by, if you're parents were lucky they last a year, and then they wer too small, too tight but you found it hard to throw them out, even though they pinched you to walk you couldn't help but love them. That's how I feel about the place I live. I love it with the agricultural based wealth and the civic pretensions.
I love the people who have the mentality of an impatient five year old, their cheek and yet apologetic way of getting what they want. I love the way that they imagine by taking down the past and the old and replacing it with the new and the modern they'll attract wealth form tourists and affluent foreign residents. Trying desperately to ignore the fact that, like most Western European Countries, it's filled with poor Eastern European and African Immigrants, trying in desperation to make a western lifestyle for themselves, to make themselves rich.
They boast about their recent commercial enterprises, like the local shopping center, that at it's opening was the biggest in Andalusia. I'm sure that to most Americans it must look like a pebble in comparison to the buildings in their home country.
I love the way that they got the bug for building on any available land or property. It's like watching some sort of computer game... a simulation of life. They're constantly putting up cranes to build tall apartment buildings. The effort they put into progress, whereas the most wealthy of Northen Europe and North America would rather be able to revel in the innate and unique Andalusian culture. Okay so everyone loves luxurious hotels, but why is that they don't sell that gypsy culture that the rest of the world so associates with Spain?
I've lived here. as I said at the outset, five years. At the beginning I thought that they were the same as every other european, although maybe a little more demonstrative. I was wrong, there is no other type of people that can compare with the meditteranean temperament. They're as lovable as children and yet as irresponsible as adults. There particular brand of logic is completely incomprehensible to the Northern European or North American. I doubt that even the South American and Mexican cultures can out do their particular brand of reasoning.
But it doesn't stop there. No, to really appreciate the ridiculous you must go a little further down the coast, a 30 minute ride, to the capital of the province of Almeria- Almeria. The city in the only desert in Europe, it's hardly a city at all. The architecture is beautiful and I would consider it a very South European city, although to me it doesn't define Spain. I wholeheartedly love the city. What really amuses me though is the attitude of it's citizens! If you walk alongside an Almeriense in the street you will notice the certain air of pride that they wear like some expensive perfume. That sense that really Almeria is as big, important and well known as London, Paris, Madrid, Rome or New York. The air of self importance and snobbery usually found in the middle class, or the noveau riche.
Really, it's just a rough diamond on the edge of the world. Roquetas De Mar stuck between the mountains and the sea, like some forgotten cape. It's plastic covered sea of greenhouses and it's horizon of cranes. It's charm is not in it's luxurious hotels or grit filled beaches, but in it's people, in it's tapas bars and in it's pretentiousness. It warms the soul of any traveller from Northern Europe to know that there are in the world small forgotten corners, ready to be enjoyed by the truest of traveller.
I love the people who have the mentality of an impatient five year old, their cheek and yet apologetic way of getting what they want. I love the way that they imagine by taking down the past and the old and replacing it with the new and the modern they'll attract wealth form tourists and affluent foreign residents. Trying desperately to ignore the fact that, like most Western European Countries, it's filled with poor Eastern European and African Immigrants, trying in desperation to make a western lifestyle for themselves, to make themselves rich.
They boast about their recent commercial enterprises, like the local shopping center, that at it's opening was the biggest in Andalusia. I'm sure that to most Americans it must look like a pebble in comparison to the buildings in their home country.
I love the way that they got the bug for building on any available land or property. It's like watching some sort of computer game... a simulation of life. They're constantly putting up cranes to build tall apartment buildings. The effort they put into progress, whereas the most wealthy of Northen Europe and North America would rather be able to revel in the innate and unique Andalusian culture. Okay so everyone loves luxurious hotels, but why is that they don't sell that gypsy culture that the rest of the world so associates with Spain?
I've lived here. as I said at the outset, five years. At the beginning I thought that they were the same as every other european, although maybe a little more demonstrative. I was wrong, there is no other type of people that can compare with the meditteranean temperament. They're as lovable as children and yet as irresponsible as adults. There particular brand of logic is completely incomprehensible to the Northern European or North American. I doubt that even the South American and Mexican cultures can out do their particular brand of reasoning.
But it doesn't stop there. No, to really appreciate the ridiculous you must go a little further down the coast, a 30 minute ride, to the capital of the province of Almeria- Almeria. The city in the only desert in Europe, it's hardly a city at all. The architecture is beautiful and I would consider it a very South European city, although to me it doesn't define Spain. I wholeheartedly love the city. What really amuses me though is the attitude of it's citizens! If you walk alongside an Almeriense in the street you will notice the certain air of pride that they wear like some expensive perfume. That sense that really Almeria is as big, important and well known as London, Paris, Madrid, Rome or New York. The air of self importance and snobbery usually found in the middle class, or the noveau riche.
Really, it's just a rough diamond on the edge of the world. Roquetas De Mar stuck between the mountains and the sea, like some forgotten cape. It's plastic covered sea of greenhouses and it's horizon of cranes. It's charm is not in it's luxurious hotels or grit filled beaches, but in it's people, in it's tapas bars and in it's pretentiousness. It warms the soul of any traveller from Northern Europe to know that there are in the world small forgotten corners, ready to be enjoyed by the truest of traveller.
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