walking my journal around tiny spanish towns
in every teeny-tiny town in spain their is a "bar casal," a town gathering place. i'm taking myself on a walk and journaling date to every single one in a 15 minute radius from my own teeny-tiny town.
i was driving home from getting groceries, at the not-so-tiny-sized town down the road that has a full-sized mercadona. (mercadona, friends, is the grocery store in spain with a cult following. and i have joined the cult.)
on the way back i drove past a sign that said “SENAN, 7 km,” a sign that has piqued my interest multiple times. i said out loud, “i still don’t know what’s in senan.” yes, out loud. no, there was no one else in the car with me.
on that short drive home, i started cooking up a plan: a near-daily walk and journal in a new coffeeshop, field, or casal bar. every town, no matter how small, has a “bar casal,” a town bar. they’re usually small and full of families (not uncommon to have a small playground at a bar casal!) and low-key and they serve a good espresso every hour of the day. they’re supported by the local government, in an effort to make sure small towns still have enough life in them to keep people moving away (at such a fast clip) to the cities. usually that means the building is owned by the local government, and they rent it out for something like one euro a month to the proprietor willing to run a bar or cafe in a tiny town with perhaps just 100 people. this makes the business an affordable enterprise for someone willing to run a business in such a small place, and it creates a “third space,” a gathering place, for the residents. it’s a win-win. no one is getting rich off the deal, but everyone’s lives are richer for it.
so, I have decided to take on this challenge of walking my journal all around the 15-minute radius from the cottage, for multiple reasons. first, when I lived in barcelona 20 years ago, i would stop in a park or a bar nearly every day to write in my journal–and I miss that. now, I don’t have any desire in moving along any gentrification in the tiny towns around me, like has happened in barcelona, by sharing these places with you. i think we are safe though, given the shrinking populations of the thousands of tiny towns there are throughout spain.
there are over 8,000 “municipalities” in spain altogether, and the vast majority are so small and getting smaller, that they qualify for a variety of initiatives to repopulate “españa vaciada,” emptied-out spain. now do I think my little notes to you on substack are going to repopulate those towns? well no. but i would like it if at least more people knew about them.
i want people to know the spain outside the big tourist destination cities. the charm of a tiny poble in catalunya is unmatched, and more people should realize the beauty waiting for them just outside those gentrified, tourist-trapped cities. i’m going to start by sharing just the ones neighboring my own.
and so, that is my goal: drive to a neighboring town 15 minutes (or so) away, take a short walk, followed by a stop in a field or a bar or a coffeeshop with my journal. i’ll jot down in that journal what i saw in the town i walked around, the dirt road i wandered down. i’ll chart in my journal the beauty i found along the way. i might write down an overheard conversation or describe the space or the people. i may even comment on the contrast between my slow life in spain and my harried, anxious life in the united states.
and I’ll share some of those experiences here, for you. why not? i’ll get back my old journal-date practice, and i’ll share beauty with you. yes? yes.
okay great. it’s a plan. trato hecho, as they say here. well actually they say here, “tracte fet,” because… catalan.
i’m off to scout google maps for every last tiny town within a 15 minute drive radius around me, and their bar casal hours. in the meantime, here’s a few captures from a walk through and around my own town this weekend, during the height of almond blossom season.
be sure to notice the beauty today, friends. it still exists. it’s waiting for you. in times when the horrors persist, beauty is a way we get ourselves to persist, as well.
want to come walk the tiny villages and write in our journals with me? oh you can do that! take a look at the l’Artesania website to learn more.
