Breakfast Tales

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains

I remember the first time I visited my Spanish family, in Madrid.

I was eight years old, dreaming of visiting the Prado museum that my father had spoken so much about.

We had prepared for the trip, I had learned some basic words and I was thrilled to finally meet a part of the family I still did not know.

On the plane, Iberia served us a small meal with silverware cutlery and I was delighted, feeling oh-so-chic in eating many miles above the Earth, zooming through the skies.

It had carrots, I remember, and some kind of gravy, and possibly overcooked rice of some sort. But it was delightful, eating with tiny morsels out of a tray, with proper cutlery, and a nice hostess refilling my glass with water.

My uncle picked us up, from the airport, this blond man with piercing blue eyes, like most of this side of the family.

He stood out of the crowd of brown-haired people in the arrivals hall - so very Spanish in his manners, so very alpine in everything else, and waved happily at us.

Driving through Madrid, he kept pointing out things to see and to do, in a language of his own: Spanish mixed with our dialect, mixed with Swiss German and probably words of his creation.

He deposited us at the feet of my aunt Maribel, in a living room filled with black and white pictures of her and our families. I spent hours browsing those pictures, fascinated. Her wedding gown with a five-metre trail, her beautiful updos, her hostess friends and her, laughing during lunch or on a plane staircase.

I remember waking up quite late in the morning on the first day I was there and migrating to the empty kitchen.

Nobody was in sight, and it was ten already.

Back home, there would have been some reminiscence of lingering coffee, a jar of biscuits or some fruits.

Here, nothing.

The kitchen was pristine, immaculate, immobile and empty.

No breakfast, no crumbs, nothing.

Alone, an empty coffee pot was a hint to me that someone, at least, was around. My mother, from the terrace, waved. As I reached her, she informed me it was her third coffee already, and that the rest of the family went buying breakfast - with my father.

So I waited.

And waited.

Little did I know that they were also grocery shopping, visiting a friend, and stopping for coffee, and…

When they finally got back, they carried a piping hot silver pot filled with luscious, thick and delicious hot chocolate and the famous porras and churros from the Chocolateria San Ginés.

By then, it was well past noon, and I was starving.

I remember the first bite of porras, dipped in boiling chocolate: it tasted of heaven. The thick greasiness of the fired pastry combined with the tannins and astringency of the unsweetened chocolate: it was delicious and thick as a pudding.

In all the years afterwards, every time we arrived to my aunt and uncle visiting them, even in the heat of summer they had for me porras and chocolate, specially delivered to their home, now a bit farther away from the centre of Madrid.

San Ginés for me thus became a refuge, and a small luxury my broke self could afford, while studying for my Erasmus, whilst studying in Madrid.

My rented room in a giant flat with an uncanny combination of French, Polish, and German students was just around the corner.

I remember on cold winter days, coming back from a particularly hard class in Cantoblanco. Instead of heading straight home, I would make a small grocery deviation to the Mercado de San Miguel which back then was still a solid, beautiful neighbourhood market, and then stop by San Ginés for a chocolate and a porra.

It is a Madrid that is no more, and probably exists only in my album of pictures, analogic and snapped with a Lomo I was very happy about.

So many years later, after a long hiatus where I could not find the heart to go back to Madrid - where I had been happy, but where my father’s subtle presence was everywhere, I came back.

Out of love, and out of the love my better half harbours for this city, I was finally back - and once again, with someone I deeply loved and cared for.

We had booked a series of very grown-up culinary experiences, like a dinner at La Tasquita de Enfrente, but what stuck to me was the breakfast we took, as soon as we landed in Madrid on a sunny summery day.

How silly, right? And yet, that churro drowned with its attached memories of all possible Pedroche-inspired concoctions at DiverXO. It drowned all in a mellow atmosphere that left me living in an uninterrupted continuum between my childhood and my adulthood, without that break that I interpret as my dad’s passing for me.

Now San Ginés has evolved into a tourist spot, with even a cordoned line for queuing and all the magic is gone.

But it was sufficient for me to close my eyes and feel incredibly younger: I saw my starving eight-year-old me, dipping thick porras into a beautiful heirloom porcelain at my aunt and uncle’s. I saw my twenty-something self hurrying from one class to one exhibition to one concert and stopping briefly for a sweet treat and a piping hot chocolate.

And there was my nowadays me, on a hot summer day, feasting over the simplest of meals, over my memories, perhaps introducing a new family member to the hot chocolate tradition.

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This piece is dedicated to my splendid great-aunt Maribel, to me always the most elegant woman in the whole of downtown Madrid, who helped me learn Spanish and was always patient when I disappeared around the house, to read a book quietly, hiding somewhere.

She peacefully passed some weeks ago in the quiet of her home, surrounded by her son and her husband, my dear Uncle Pierino.

This is my sweet remembrance, of her memory.