New blog post, 17 MAR 2025, Reijer Staats
The rain in Spain
The weather has been stormy for days. We zigzag around our living room, where laundry from our casas hangs, drying painfully slowly. Such an un-Spanish rainy spell reminds me of the confinamiento during COVID, in our first year of emigration, now five years ago. Back then, we were stuck at home – now, Jeanette and Paul, a Dutch couple we're friends with, suggest going for a walk.
A rain-soaked and slippery mountain hike doesn't seem like a great idea, so I suggest an alternative: the simple coastal path, a two-hour walk from Salobreña via La Caleta to a hidden cove, where mysterious stone figures are piled. I send a message: "10:00 at the panadería in La Caleta. Let's start the walk properly with breakfast. See you soon!"
Leaving home – in shorts, because despite the rain, 20°C is forecast – I see that the rambla we live on has already turned into a fast-flowing stream. Outside the panadería, on the empty terrace in La Caleta, I still find two smiling faces: one under the white hood of her raincoat, the other beneath his now-soaked baseball cap. We hurry inside to the bakery's basement, past the dripping umbrellas in the bucket by the door and carefully down the rain-slicked stairs.
The basement's upper windows are fogged up, and beneath white fluorescent light, between the stacked barras de pan and the L-shaped counter filled with sweet puff pastries, stands the ever-friendly señora of the panadería—wearing a pink fleece vest, a white apron on top, beaming with evident pride in her shop: "Buenos días. Qué tomáis?"
Before we decide what to order, I scan the room for somewhere to sit: against the wall are only two small tables pushed together, and at the left end, a caballero is already munching his tostada. The rest of the room is taken up by two crooked IKEA Billy bookcases displaying local fruits & vegetables and essentials like detergent and Coca-Cola. Between the counter and the caballero stands a mechanical payment machine, the kind you might recall from buffet restaurants in the 1980s—a bulky, impractical device for such a small space. This particular model, installed during the first COVID period, with a slide system for change, certainly occupies the space where an extra table could have been.
We join the caballero. For the chocolate pastry, croissants, espresso, and two manchadas (tip: order this in Andalusia if you want a regular cappuccino without whipped cream!), I pay €8. My €50 note hesitates twice before the machine swallows it and neatly returns €42 in change.
This walk remains a favourite—even in the rain! The fishermen in yellow rain capes along the coastal path and the dripping branches of blooming mimosa add colour. Rainwater streams from the terracotta roof tiles and over the whitewashed, rounded façades of the old villas along the route, and in the cove, the stone figures await. Under the pine trees along the way, we find some shelter—and the pine processionary caterpillar!
Neatly in formation, they cross our path. I immediately pick up our Mèlo. Oops, my bare legs now come into contact with the caterpillars' nearly invisible stinging hairs. And I won't be forgetting that anytime soon...
Jeanette and Paul fly back to the sunny Netherlands. The following weekend, the nearly birthday-boy Johan and I explore the city of Almería and reminisce in the beautiful Cabo de Gata. We're lucky with the clearing weather there, and our local Airbnb host Gino meanwhile thinks—and mostly hopes—that we're going to invest in his city. But Gino, we most certainly will not. Back home in Almuñécar, we celebrate Johan's birthday at Restaurante El Maño with amigos, a fantastic new discovery.
For now, I enjoy some me-time. Johan is elsewhere, looking after new guests. Gardening around Villa Merise, face in the sun, coffee in hand, overlooking the coastal path, I realise that people must have wondered these past few days, wherever I went, why this visibly restless hombre was so shamelessly scratching his legs and groin. I glance down again. Beneath my shorts, two bright red, itchy legs are covered in bumps. Sadly, none of the Spanish ointments I've tried so far have helped.