Another shutter comes down in Spain
Spaniards are great at greetings. Today I’m about to see if they’re good at goodbyes.
It’s St Patrick’s Day and, for the pair enjoying one last round of beers on a café terrace just off Calle Real, this Sunday morning is still their Saturday night. As the bar they sit outside gears up for another busy afternoon, for another business in the vicinity it really is closing time.
With the lush green and the stone crosses and the clouds that usually deliver on their threats, tourists debarking cruise ships that lean against A Coruña’s marina often joke that the captain has docked in Ireland instead of Spain.
For more than a hundred years, the street kiosk on Avenida de la Marina has greeted those returning to firm ground. With rows of domestic newspapers and global magazines, fluorescent-coloured sticker albums and faded souvenirs, it makes for a fine photograph with the backdrop of A Coruña’s emblematic galerías, the white-framed, glassed-in balconies that allow sunlight in and keep everything else out. In The City of Glass, the elements hit hard.
As a steady stream of familiar faces stop by for a photo instead of a paper, today it’s the locals who are living like a tourist. Even for passersby who haven’t yet heard the news, the lingering embraces in front of piles of Marca and Hola seem more goodbye than good day. The tissues leave no further doubt.
Today, as loyal customers leave A Coruña’s most iconic street kiosk, there won’t be an ¡Hasta mañana!
Eulogy
It’s not the time to chat about my two-year-old daughter’s growing fondness for churros from the nearby Bonilla a la Vista or the city’s volatile winds that are capable of sending a few editions of the latest National Geographic magazine hurtling towards the harbour in an instant.
No, today Marta reaches over the counter with the card machine in one hand while dabbing her eyes with the other. She’s another eulogy away from another burst of tears.
It’s unsurprising. 24 years is a long time. And a lot of newspapers. Many of the children who once pestered their parents for a Pokemon magazine here now have families of their own.
Spain, too, has changed. It’s become older, more diverse. Four prime ministers — two from the socialist PSOE, two from the conservative Partido Popular — have governed since the turn of the millennium. During the same time across the Mediterranean, Italy has had 11 different leaders.
With the globalisation, digitalisation, and many other isations of the last 20 years, more and more comercios de todo la vida — the small businesses that have been around forever — have gradually, then suddenly disappeared.
“For a lifelong Coruñés, the galerías of A Coruña — the most iconic image of the city — cannot be understood without the Jamonería La Marina (restaurant), Heladería Colón (ice cream parlour), and the kiosk,” Laura García del Valle of La Voz de Galicia tells me. “The desolation felt by so many locals in the city is a reminder…
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