Sleepless Spanish Summer Nights

Recently I've been reading the book Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through A Country's Hidden Past by British expat Giles Tremlett.  For any expat from a westernized culture living in Spain, I highly recommend this book.   An expat in Spain for about twenty years, Tremlett goes through various events of the Spanish Civil War and describes how it is a taboo subject among the Spanish.  He further explains how Spanish history directly affects the culture today.  His hypotheses of why Spanish act the way they do makes the average guiri in Spain pause and think, "Tiene razon (he has a point)."

Below is one of my favorite passages Tremlett includes to describe an aspect of Spanish culture:

"Televisions can stay on in people's homes all day long.  Bars, where much of life takes place, have musical machines, mircowaves, and television sets...all pinging, chattering, steaming, shouting, and clattering at once.  Raised voices competing to be heard above the machines, add an extra layer to the noise.  ...Spaniards seem to need noise."

His description resembles that of my own flat.

As I've mentioned in a previous post, I don't have air conditioning.  But I'm not the only one in my building.  I know this because my room faces the building's central patio, which is essentially a courtyard that all of the inner rooms in the building face to allow some light and ventilation.  Now that it's summer, all my neighbors have opened all windows--and I can hear everything in every flat.

Slamming doors.  Yapping dogs.  Jingling keys.  Flapping shutters.  Snoring men.  Coughing allergy sufferers.  Screaming children.  I hear it echo from all nine floors.  Surprisingly I've grown used to all of these sounds and have learned to sleep through them.

All but the sounds next door.

The patio/noise tunnel

On the other side of my bedroom wall, a young teenager dwells.  And this teenager thrives on loud music with the bass pulsating throughout the building.  To make matters worse, she opens her windows so I hear Akon, Enrique Inglesias, and Lady Gaga's voices prowl into my room.   And it's not every once and while.  She plays it daily for at least two hours straight.  (As I type, the bass reverberates through my eardrums.)

The other day I had just finished a large, satisfying lunch in the middle of the afternoon, and exhausted from the heat, I decided to take a siesta.  Just I was settling into bed, the sound of Usher and bass guitar echoed through the patio.  Hasta los huevos with the daily pop invasion, without second thought I shouted out my window furiously, "Baja la música!"  A direct, "Lower your music!"

I slumped back into bed, thinking that the music was so loud that no one would hear me.  Suddenly the music stopped and I heard a man (supposedly her father)  angrily cursing out the window and repeating the word rojo, rojo, "red."  Below is a picture of my window.

Notice the red.

So now I'm lying low and out of sight...literally.  But just as Tremlett mentions: in Spain "anger is worn lightly."  People constantly shout and gesture at one another, but further action rarely occurs.  Obviously my neighbors wear their anger lightly because they continue to blare their music into the patio.  I guess I should learn to reduce my anger to a light layer as well in order to survive this summer heat.