it still hurts

this time, hopefully

god, we're not immigrants

 today we had to go to the municipal police* to attempt to acquire a residency card to allow us to be in spain for the year legally. we tried once before and the guy told us that we had to come back the next morning at eight am to get a number. when we returned there was a cue of about 100 immigrants waiting in the cold. we knew immediately that something was wrong. it's funny the sense of automatic unbelonging that you feel in the presence of poor, third-world looking people. it's not the kind of unbelonging that a person of colour might feel amongst a group of whities. it's like, oh no, there must be some kind of mistake. i can't have to line up here. i don't want to immigrate, i just need to stay here for a year. isn't it obvious? look at my skin for god's sake!

so when we got there today we weren't gonna take shit from the guy. and eventualy it turned out that it seems that officially that is how the system works. you are meant to line up in temperatures below zero to get a number for when to come back and then be told that it's the wrong day and come back again until eventually you are a semi-legal immigrant.

i'm thinking that i might research some of this stuff for my assignment here. the kind of floating amnesty that travellers receive (and indeed expect) that most migrants could never dream of. like, when i go to the bank and apologise for my poor spanish and smile sheepishly at the beautiful teller. and the other woman says, oh, you'll have to speak slower, he's from australia. oh, she says, and smiles a charming smile, and begins to speak in crisp, delineated syllables.

enjoy your time here. people say. i wonder how often mgrant workers get that. ok, the work day goes from ten to ten with a twenty minute lunch break inbetween. but most importantly, enjoy your time here. tell your friends and family back home.

us travellers are allowed to enjoy our time here because we're like a constant ripple through the landscape. we come and we go, and another takes our place. the most important thing being that we go. we disrupt the social landscape very little. the mgrant, however, as so often is the case is perceived as part of a wave. and nowadays, we all know how destructive waves can be. how radically they can alter the landscape. i remember hearing that after the tsunami, people from the maldive islands were saying that the maps would have to be redrawn. the islands no longer resembled the maps. you only have to talk to your grandparents about this phenomenon in australia. ask them about the suburbs they grew up in. mine lived in campsie for quite a awhile, when it was all white except for a few greeks or whatever. but now, oh, watch the grave expression sweep across their faces like a wave of third-world migrants. you wouldn't even recognise campsie now.

*they have lots of different police in spain. i think it's an attempt to confuse eta as to which ones to blow up. i spent several days terrifically excited at the cars i saw driving around with policia floral on their bonnets. flower police, i thought. that's fucking fantastic! eventually someone pointed out that there's no l. they're actually policia foral, whatever the hell that means. some spanish thing that's not in my dictionary.

posted by: joelistix at 15:35 | link | comments (1) |

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