Private Space

Dear Reader,

I write to you from a tidy garden outside of the central government building in Alicante. Narrow streets run all around, and from here I can still hear the cars, but they are muffled by a fountain and several flocks of small birds singing in the trees. This garden represents the only isolated space I have found in my Spanish city.

I don't know what the origins of Alicante's layout were, but for whatever reason public space is not just the norm but the almost unabridged rule. Stores are closely nestled without real alleyways, parks are open with no ground cover, entirely well lit, and even the surrounding beaches lack even an inch of unobserved ground. I seek a quiet space to think and relax, but were someone so inclined, it would be preposterously difficult to get up to any kind of unseen shenaniganery here. It's funny that one of the most unwatched spaces I have so far discovered surrounds the seat of government.

This whole business is quite unlike Seattle, where in the suburbs, and even many areas adjacent to downtown there are large parks, dark alleys, freeway overpasses, and all kinds of random hidey-holes abound. On the one hand Alicante's layout lends a feeling of safety probably lacking for those who might find themselves walking around South or East of Seattle late at night. On the other, never having even an snippet of solitude can get to you.

I thought that maybe Alicante was unique in this respect – maybe the city, being to considerable extent a tourist destination, chose to make itself condensed, open, and ever-watching. When we took trips to Madrid and Barcelona though, for the most part I saw more of the same. The one major exception was a gorgeous and massive park in Madrid. The more I see of Spain, the more I think of it as having a social and public culture.

Until next time,
Tim