Summer Holidays

Northerners can’t understand the way people live in semi darkness in Spain during the summer and  they  feel the urge to pull up the blinds in the houses, open the curtains, let the light in. 

Only later do they realise that it is the blistering heat that is being kept out.  The cool floors and fans help combat the soaring temperatures until the evening breeze finds its way through the slits of light in the blinds and through windows that have been left ajar and the caress of the fresh air restores your energy.

Abuelas (grandmothers) provide free bed and board for all their progeny in villages all over Spain. Many families return to the place where their parents or grandparents were born and it is a time of reunion. Industrialisation and uncompetitive food prices forced families to leave the land that they worked on and move to the cities. Their sons and daughters may not be able to afford a paid holiday and may have the option to go back to their villages (pueblos) if they are lucky enough to have a family home still. Many love going back.

These old houses are surprisingly cool thanks to the thick stone walls held together with adobe and where the ground floor has been built half underground on top of the foundations. Rural Spain is an incredible contrast to the slick coastal towns. Each region is proud of its own local produce and the food is better there. The fruit is excellent in the summer, delicious yellow peaches, red peaches called fresquillas, nectarine peaches, plums, paraguayas, the juiciest cherries, the sweetest melon and watermelon.The tomatoes are wonderful too.

In the summer, in the villages you will meet people from Granada, Valencia, Bilbao, Madrid, Barcelona, Vigo, Seville, Valladolid, people who have settled in these cities but return every year to their hometowns. The youth of Spain draw on all the knowledge that travel brings but also on the strength of their roots.

We will see you again in September.