Summer usually arrives overnight on the Spanish Costas.   One week the beaches will be dotted with local residents enjoying the warmer weather, and then suddenly, one weekend, you will find hundreds of tourists crammed together under a sea of umbrellas and sun shades.   My sleepy little fishing village is half empty for most of the year, but in July and August the population triples, as families from Murcia and Madrid arrive to enjoy their holiday homes.   

The locals have dubbed these interlopers the “tres P’s” because they come to the coast to enjoy the three P’s:  playa, pipas y paseos.   

The playa part is not hard to understand.  The beaches of Spain are incredibly beautiful, with clear waters filled with tropical fish.  I am always surprised when snorkelling to see the numbers of tiny, colourful fish swimming around people’s ankles as they paddle in the shallow waters, completely unaware of the busy lives being carried out around their toes.  

‘Pipas’ refers to sunflower seeds, which are particularly popular in Spain, especially with the older generation.  They buy them in bulk bags, and will sit for hours popping seeds into their mouths and spitting out the shells.   It seems like a lot of effort to me to enjoy such a tiny bit of food, but for the Madrilleños it appears to be almost a hobby, and the streets and beaches become littered with black and white striped husks.

The third P stands for paseo, which means walking.  The Spanish will spend hours walking the length of a beach and back, along the shoreline.  Some will walk with a great purpose, with strong strides, and expecting everyone else to move out of their way, while others will stroll casually back and forth, sharing gossip, and… expecting everyone else to move out of their way.  The Spanish don’t like to move for anyone.  Their pride will hold them to their course, and for a Scottish woman like me, walking down a busy Spanish street can sometimes feel like a game of chicken.

 I have an image of an old, traditional Spanish woman visiting Japan and striding down a street, with hundreds of well-mannered Japanese deferring gracefully around her like the parting of the Red Sea.  I think she would feel she had died and gone to heaven!

More about the beach next week. . .