Thinking about Spanish sounds flamenco music quickly comes to mind, and rightly so, but what about those other sounds? Like young men driving around in their cars beeping their horns to celebrate the winning of yet another football cup. Or the tail of cars, beeping their horns, following an expensive looking vehicle dressed for the occasion with flowers and bows, transporting a wedding couple from the church to the party venue. Or the extremely loud bangs, which unfortunately create a lot of fear in most animals, used to mark the start and finish of a local festival, and this on a daily basis for as long as the festival lasts. Those typical Spanish festivals with live music starting at midnight on the local square, lasting till five or six o’clock in the morning. Most villages also hold an annual main village festival which usually includes a fair with lots of loud attractions, each trying to outshout each other with their own deafening ‘disco’ music to attract people. Those festivals that usually end with a firework display with again an overdose of loud bangs. You could easily come to the conclusion that Spain is a very ‘noisy’ country and that the Spanish are very sound tolerant.
But there is also the pleasant sound of the coffee-machines in the bars, grinding their coffee and heating up the milk for the next milky coffee. I am listening to it right now as I sit here in my favourite seafront Café. I listen to the chit-chat that surrounds me in a mixture of languages from all over Europe, including Spain of course. People often feel that Spanish people talk very loud when they have a conversation and it always seems as if they are arguing. I think this is not necessarily true. Yes there are people who talk loudly but when you don’t understand a language it can easily seem as if all the words are glued together and that people are angry when they talk. However, there does seem to be a large amount, both men and women who have a very raw, husky voice in Spain and I used to think that this was a case of too much tobacco over too many years. However, I changed my mind when, the other day, I heard a very young boy, somewhere between eight and ten years old, talking with that same husky voice. It actually makes me wonder whether the tone of our voice can be influenced by what we hear around us when growing up, which could explain why I get the impression that in some areas in America but also in the UK there are groups of women with very high-pitched sharp voices something that is rather unusual in my country of origin, The Netherlands.
A strong wind is picking up and I hear the soothing sounds of waves on the pebbled patches of the beach. It brings me back to my pleasant reality on a day like this in June. The month where spring turns into summer way before the 21st, a month of excellent temperatures, warm during the day and fresh during the evening and the month where the sounds become even louder. More people, more happiness, more live music and dancing and more noise in the apartments next door. It is all part of living here.
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