It started with a ham raffle.
As most stories do in this village.
There was a fiesta in Lladó. I didn’t fully understand what it was celebrating—maybe a saint, maybe the olive harvest, maybe just the town surviving another month without municipal collapse—but there was music, churros, cava, and a large cured pig’s leg hanging from a string like a meaty disco ball.
I was invited by Pilar who said, “Bring good shoes and no expectations.”
Which, incidentally, is also how I approach dating.
The evening began innocently. A few drinks. Some awkward dancing. Me trying to follow the sardana while also pretending not to be dying inside from mild social anxiety and a skirt that chafes.
By 11PM, the gin tonics had arrived.
Now. Spanish gin tonics are not like British G&Ts. They’re served in balloon glasses the size of infant bathtubs, filled with entire groves of citrus fruit and what I can only assume is jet fuel.
I had two.
Which would’ve been fine, had I not tried to help.
You see, something happened with the raffle tickets. Or maybe the PA system. Or maybe the mayor’s brother, who was supposed to be calling out the numbers, accidentally read a receipt for plumbing supplies. Either way, chaos ensued. People were shouting. Children were crying. Someone claimed their jamón had been stolen.
And I—Clara Morel-Templeton, BA (Hons), once voted “most sensible teacher” in the staff room—stood up on a crate and tried to translate.
“I speak French!” I shouted. “And English! And… Catalanish!”
No one asked me to.
No one needed me to.
But I gestured wildly, tried to explain in hybrid languages that the ham would be re-raffled. That no one was stealing anything. That jamón should bring us together, not tear us apart.
A woman screamed. A man shouted “aquesta dona està borratxa!”
(This woman is drunk!)
Which was technically true but not the point.
Then the Guardia Civil turned up.
In fairness, they were charming.
One had surprisingly delicate wrists.
The other asked me, very kindly, to stop yelling about meat in multiple tongues.
I was not arrested, per se.
I was gently escorted home in the back of a police car that smelled like pine-scented regret and stale Marlboro Golds.
They dropped me at my front gate. One of them said, “No pasa nada, senyora.”
(It’s nothing, ma’am.)
I thanked them, bowed slightly (why?), and went inside to cry-laugh into half a wheel of Tetilla.
This is the thing no one tells you about starting over in a foreign country:
It’s not just the language.
It’s not just the paperwork or the damp or the relentless need for mosquito nets.
It’s learning when not to help.
Learning that sometimes, people just want their ham drama without your linguistic intervention.
I’m learning. Slowly. Through trial, error, and public embarrassment.
Next week, I might even leave the gin tonic alone.
(…probably not.)
Leave a Reply