When we first arrived in Tarragona (an hour south of Barcelona) a few years back, my wife and I had a young daughter with us.
Partly because of the move, and partly because of the need to devote time to our daughter, I gave up writing for six months. I was so used to writing poetry, fiction and songs every day that I thought it would be difficult to go cold turkey.
It wasn’t.
However, getting back into writing after six months proved tougher than I expected.
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At this point, I’d published two collections of poetry: Evidence of Freewheeling (2015) and Breeding Monsters (2018). I had also published seven or eight short stories in journals and magazines across Ireland, India, the UK, Singapore and the US. I thought that might be all I’d ever see in print.
It was difficult to pin down whether the problem was moving to a new country or the emotional and physical toil of parenthood.
I’d sit at the desk and find I couldn’t write. If I managed a few lines or paragraphs, I’d quickly dismiss them as inferior. Within a year, though, I’d find that parenthood and my new surroundings would bear new fruit for me.
My third poetry collection, No Small Thing (2023) was inspired by my experience of parenthood. It also included some poems of a particularly Spanish flavour, including one about our move abroad. Somehow, these poems seemed to sit well beside others about DIY work, changing nappies, doing the laundry and watching my daughter learn to walk.
Maybe it was a change in my writing process that did it.
I took to swimming in the morning and writing poetry on a beach towel within a few yards of the Mediterranean. Before that, I’d always been a solitary writer scribbling away in my room.
Looking out to the sea somehow opened things up.
A lot of the Spaniards I’ve met think of Ireland as a beautiful country dominated by Catholicism. When I point out that our beautiful green carpets of grass are funded by generous downpours of rain, they seem to appreciate that beauty a bit less.
I also tell them I have no religious beliefs and that Catholicism doesn’t seem to be such a strong force in Irish culture these days. That surprises them.
In Spain, by contrast, Catholicism seems to be going strong. Crucifixes are quite common. Church bells, too. Maybe my perception is skewed by lavish Easter parades traipsing through the streets of Tarragona. They’re hard to ignore, passing by my balcony window with pounding drums, masks and ceramic replicas of the Virgin Mary.
Tarragona is an interesting city. It was the Roman capital of the Iberian Peninsula 2,000 years ago. Lots of ancient Roman architecture is visible around the city, including an amphitheatre.
The big news in Spain is the tourist problem in Barcelona. When I visited there recently, I had to dodge left and right around slow, half-lost gawkers with phones held at arm’s length (in a way that reminded me of Shakespeare’s “Alas, poor Yorick” speech).
My experience attests to the fact that there are too many tourists there. However, the hostility of some locals to tourists seems excessive. Protesting is fair enough; firing water at people is a step too far.
Meanwhile, the push for Catalan independence isn’t prominent news any more, but it’ll rise up again. I can hear it bubbling behind the minds of locals whenever we talk about Spain or politics.
It was difficult to get a sense of Spain (and Catalonia) back when we arrived. Amid the myriad of things to organise, I was trying to deal with a busy work schedule. As a freelance proofreader/editor of poetry, fiction and academic texts, my work schedule is erratic.
What might seem like a quiet week ahead can quickly become a hectic period of early starts and late evenings at the office (ie, a corner of my room). I felt like life in Spain was passing me by. Time has changed that. I’ve slowed my pace. My Spanish has improved, and our daughter speaks Spanish and Catalan.
Now that the romance of Spain has faded, what are we left with?
Well, the good weather is pretty consistent for about 10 months of the year. That’s worth a lot when you’ve been raised on overcast skies. It promotes a greater appreciation of the outside world, beyond the home.
All the while, we’ve been forging ahead with life as a new family.
The experiences – good and bad – have influenced me. I feel I’m more relaxed, as a writer and a father, than I’d be if I was living in Ireland.
I think about this every morning when I finish a line of poetry and swim towards the sun.
- Trevor Conway is a writer, freelance proofreader and editor based in Tarragona in Spain. His first collection of poems, Evidence of Freewheeling, was published in 2015; his second, Breeding Monsters, in 2018; followed by No Small Thing in 2023. His non-fiction book, Nurturing the Creative Child: A Guide to Writing Poetry, will be available soon.
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