Never Retire: The Things They Say About The Food In Spain

They're all true

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We are adjusting quite well to the prevailing meal schedule/eating style in Spain. Particularly Valencia.

• Coffee and a small snack or two in the morning. That’s breakfast, then a mid-morning snack.

• Lunch, which is the largest meal of the day. Often a three-course menu of the day.

• A late afternoon snack.

• A late evening light dinner.

Soon, I will take you through a typical day of how (at least, many) people eat here using us as an example. And I will get more specific on the names and potential contents of each meal.

As I see it, there are rules at the same time as there are no rules. People living their lives, eating when they’re hungry. But the timing sort of just falls into place, often on the basis of when restaurants are open and what they’re serving.

The other night—around 8:00 p.m—we went to dinner at a place near our apartment called Chick Shack.

I forget exactly what we did that day, but we didn’t have what has become our typical large lunch. So, we were hungry.

Chick Shack tends toward an American-style menu. A few funny things about this meal:

• When we received our food, we were taken aback by the large portion size. It was too much (though I had no trouble eating it all, while helping my wife).

• It just didn’t feel right. It feels right to eat heaviest during the middle of the day and go light at night. This is something my wife has preferred for a long time.

• Looking around us, every other table was either only drinking or drinking with a small snack. People aren’t eating massive burgers and a heaping pile of fries here at night.

That said—you can eat that meal, along with a beer and some Fernet, go to bed that night and wake up the next morning feeling as if nothing happened. In the United States, you’re in for—best case—mild digestive discomfort and—often—digestive issues that can last for days.

The food here is just cleaner at the baseline. You can eat it without feeling sick. It’s pretty incredible really.

On Friday, we had a larger lunch. At night—around 10:00 p.m.—we drank a bottle of wine and had a few small snacks at the wine bar on our corner. My wife and I both went to bed last night and woke us this morning feeling fine.

This is the type of thing you hear about and experience a little on vacation. Once you get here and experience it repeatedly in the day to day, it really blows your mind.

People are hyping up Spain a lot right now. I think the hype falls into two categories:

• Folks who think moving here will cure some inherent, likely deep-rooted unhappiness. No matter your flavor of discontent, it will follow you. I have to work on my anxiety here just as much—if not more—than I did in the familiar confines of Los Angeles. Spain is a great fucking place; it’s not a panacea.

• The idea that the food, the infrastructure, the attitude, the social life, the overall lifestyle is simply better here. That’s all—as we begin to experience it—just the reality.

You can live better here.

Spain can inspire you on to work on your shit, be it personal, psychological or professional. It’s a great setting—a wonderful environment—from which to seek and experience change at a key point in your life. Be it mid-age for me or as an escape from the toxic political landscape of the United States for others.

But you’re not going to come here and—with a snap of the fingers—be a different person. You might not have stomach discomfort as often, but you’ll still struggle with other areas of ill health if you don’t identify and deal with them long before making such a big move.

Speaking of politics—

This—seen in the video below—is what you call a leader. One to be proud of.

I know not everybody in Spain loves Pedro Sánchez. And I am sure he isn’t perfect. But he is exactly the person Spain needs right now in a world ignorantly allowing right wing politics or literal morons with no coherent agenda to assume control and power.

Spain is literally doing the opposite of the United States in just about every way, as it sits at an inflection point fools such as Trump forget. It was not long ago that immigrants—many from Europe—built America into the power it is today. Immigrants continue to keep American running, and powerful. Faced with its own influx of others, Spain’s national policy has been to not only facilitate, but embrace immigration.

If you need a translation or want to see the clownish, embarrassing and pathetically nonsensical drivel that Sánchez was responding to, here’s a short version via Instagram.