Luck stays with us when we look for an apartment for the second half of August. At Tarragona all the real estate agents must be at lunch or having a siesta so we continue to Salou. It’s touristy and flash and probably unaffordable. Cambrils, the next town south, appears to have plenty of apartments but none at the price we want. Then I spy, in an electrical and lighting shop, a sign for flats to rent and, despite a second sign with the word completo, I enter. The owners are French, and they tell me that just that morning a couple had come in, explaining that they had rented the apartment for the whole month but were now obliged to return to France on 15 August. Hallelujah! I write down the address and directions and we speed off. The French renters are expecting us and we agree on the spot. I am overjoyed, especially since a half-month rent, including gas, electricity and linen, is only 750 francs.
My elation is short-lived. When we go to Barcelona the next day to collect the additional money from the bank, BNP tells us it has no funds for us. How is that possible?, I remonstrate, we requested this transfer over two weeks ago. I should be accustomed to shrugged shoulders by now but I refuse to accept his response. Slowly and deliberately I narrate the whole story and plea with him to ring BNP Montpellier to investigate. He’s unconcerned. If you requested a money transfer then it will happen, ring us in a couple of days.
I reflect on my banking experiences in Australia. They’ve all been positive. As calm, efficient guardians of my money, banks provide funds when I need them and even reward my savings. I see them as symbols of prudence and stability, thanks to the Commonwealth Bank money boxes from primary school. How is it, then, that French banks can be so inefficient, so unresponsive, so incompetent? Of course I’ve never asked Australian banks to make international transfers so the comparison is unfair, but surely BNP should trust us, should realise that we need our money, and should offer every assistance in tracking the funds and handing them to us as soon as possible. Why does it all have to be so difficult?
The bank’s responses don’t appease but nor is it a complete catastrophe. Counting the remaining travellers’ cheques we calculate we have enough for the rent and a modest standard of living until the funds arrive. Then we’ll be able to spend up, taking advantage of Spanish prices. All will be well, I tell myself.
It’s a relief to have our own place again. This outer part of Cambrils consists almost entirely of six-storey apartment blocks, each colonised for the summer by different nationalities. Ours has mostly French and Belgian tenants, others seem to be occupied almost exclusively by Germans. We’re on the first floor with two bedrooms, a living room and a large balcony that is shaded from the sun until mid-afternoon. The apartment is quiet, reasonably cool, there’s space outside for the children to play and it’s an easy walk to the beach. Dylan is delighted by the trains he can see from the balcony.
The French renters told us about a farm on the other side of the railway line, about 10 minutes away, that sells fresh fruit and vegetables. Every couple of days we take the dirt path to their shed to buy lettuce, cucumbers, and sweet, fleshy peppers and, my particular delight, tomatoes. Softer and juicier than the ones I’d been buying in France, they are perfect for gazpacho and pan con tomate, which becomes my daily lunch. After the beach, while the children and John have their siesta, I relax on the balcony with my bread and tomato and my holiday book, La Condition Humaine. At first it feels incongruous, my mind in 1920s China and my senses in Spain, but gradually they merge, and Malraux becomes permanently associated with tomatoes.
Like Villanueva, Cambrils has its own life and treats tourism as a temporary interruption—which is not to say that it doesn’t provide for summer visitors. Clustered together in a bustling ‘new town’ near the sea are bars specialising in seafood tapas—fresh prawns, fried baby squid, grilled fresh sardines—together with restaurants, bodegas and interesting shops. I regret that we no longer have the services of a de facto godmother to allow us to explore the lively nightlife. The working centre is the sleepy ‘old town’ with banks and post office and municipal market. To get there from our apartment is a major excursion, since we have to cross the railway line dividing the town and the narrow road is always busy. Every couple of days we make the trek to telephone BNP Barcelona and check whether the additional money we requested has arrived. It’s always the same disappointing response.
Fortunately, living is cheap, at least for basic food and wine. Manufactured products, on the other hand, are relatively expensive. Disposable nappies are sold only by the chemist and cost twice as much as in France. Cheap living comes at another cost; in its rush to modernise and industrialise, Spain has overlooked aesthetics and the environment. The new developments on the edges of towns, partly for tourists and partly for workers migrating from the country, are haphazard, crude and ugly. There is no integrated planning, no attempt to coordinate one large block of apartments with its neighbour, let alone harmonise it with the landscape. Infrastructure is arbitrary. Unlike France, where there’s often a bypass road around towns and villages, main highways in Spain go through towns and villages, adding to traffic and noise and pollution.