When In Spain, 'Grease' Is the Word

It's late September. I find myself at a side-street bar on the outskirts of Madrid, drinking vermouth and watching a pair of gold Mylar balloons—one five and one zero—bob listlessly in a corner, remnants from some birthday party, I presume. Their buoyancy seems to be flagging, and if that's not a great metaphor for life after 50, what is?

Anyway, tonight I'm here for a different kind of party. It’s an “our-last-night-together” goodbye shindig for students of Lightspeed Spanish, a five-day language-immersion course I had somewhat impulsively enrolled in earlier that summer. Now, with airline miles depleted, I’m here and only one of two Americans in the class. Everyone else is British. Like them, I am here to improve my Spanish. They think I am nuts.

“Why’d you come all the way to Spain? Mexico’s right there,” a few of my classmates wonder, before shifting into some variation of, “And what’s the deal with Donald Trump? We don’t understand. What’s happening over there?” I turn to the bartender. “Otro, uh, ¿otra?, Uh, vermouth? ¿Vermut? Por favor."

There had been a flamenco class the night before. I had skipped. Frankly, I'd rather be gored by a bull than publicly demonstrate my rhythmic deficits. But the instructor—long black hair, wearing a shimmering red flowing skirt and a tastefully brocaded black top—is here tonight to keep things lively. She is everything you’d want in a flamenco dancer: a twirling, spinning vortex with wrists and fingers offering more acute angles than a geometry textbook.

A band behind her plays con gusto. Her heels stamp Spanishly. Students tentatively move to the floor and show off what they learned.

Propped at the bar, I watch it all unfold.

It’s all just so…Spanish. Or maybe Spanish-ish. At this point, I have never heard the term España cañí, but I know on some level that’s what I’m experiencing. As I understand the concept, among its meanings, cañí conveys the connotation of kitschy cultural nostalgia, not unlike the word Americana. Interestingly, Francisco Franco’s fascist government embraced this concept in a sort of “make Spain great again” way, hoping to emblematize a more mythic, more unified Spanish culture. And it worked. (César from SpanishLanguageCoach.com provides a deeper dive into the topic. )

I wonder if I’m watching authentic folkways or simply high camp. What would the dividing line be? Thankfully, I’m not interested in the answer, because I’m ensnared by

whatever it is before me. Authentic, not authentic—how authentic? Who cares? My feelings are best summarized, as usual, by a t-shirt slogan:

Back at the bar, a few party snacks await: small wheels of sausage on a kitchen plate, a glass bowl brimming with an assortment of pork rinds in various shades of pastel, and homemade pastries of some, indeterminate sort. The bartender's mother made paella. He ladles small bowlfuls from an electric warming pot at the end of the bar, free for the asking. So I ask.

Maybe it’s the vermouth talking, but I'm certain this may be the best paella I’ve ever tasted. But what do I know? Maybe this is Paella Helper™. I turn to a local standing next to me for confirmation—but can she be objective? Perhaps everyone in Spain thinks their mother makes the best paella, the most authentic paella, the One True Paella.

“Paella es buena, ¿no?” I ask her. “Like, muy, muy buena. Like, auténtico. ¿Sí o no?”

I’m given a single shoulder shrug, that universal signal for “yeah, sure, I guess, whatever,” as she moves away from my general vicinity.

Soon, the band finishes and the flamenco portion of the evening ends. I notice that the dance instructor puts on a back brace as she prepares to leave. She’d been twirling and stamping right through the pain. A trouper. The music makes an abrupt shift. Chuck Berry begins blasting. Then Elvis. And then suddenly the room’s décor comes into focus for me. The Marilyn Monroe and Humphrey Bogart posters, Route 66 signs, and images of ’57 Chevys. Apparently, this is the bar’s motif. Not Spanish cañi, but American campy.

Now, the music delivers its coup de grace: the soundtrack from Grease. It offers a vision of 1950s America that's been refracted through a malt-shop window; America in flashing neon quotation marks.

Hands are jiving everywhere. Here, on this tiny dance floor; here, in this small Spanish town. The Brits. The Spanish. Todo. Well, as for me, I’m slightly embarrassed by this song, not for what it is (though yeah, there’s that) but for how much I enjoy it.   

Kitsch. Camp. Cañí. Authentic, not authentic. Flamenco. Hand jive. Marilyn. Bogie. Fascism. Hemingway. Some things pass, some endure, and some crop up to try to brashly reassert themselves, generation after generation after generation. In fact, I am thinking of the lines that inspired Hemingway to call his “lost generation” novel The Sun Also Rises in the first place:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to its place where we hand jive for ever. Well, hasta for now. Your Spanishly, El Matador Muerto THIS JUST IN! Speaking of Spain, bulls, Hemingway, etc., etc. Jason Horowitz, writing for the New York Times from La Puebla del Río, Spain, reports that José Antonio Morante Camacho, "arguably the greatest bullfighter of his generation" will retire. Somewhere, dear Morrissey hoarsely cries, "Hooray! Hooray!" 🐃