Poolside austerity

Intermittent cannonballs and the occasional toe-pointed human cruise missile rained down upon the water like the daily death that falls from the skies in Gaza - precision or haphazard depending on your news source and whether you prefer your televised genocide with somber music or patriotic narration. With each splash, the growing knot in my stomach tightened, just that extra bit more, like it knew something my brain was too polite to say out loud.

I was neck-deep in the cool water, eyes level with the surface like a trench soldier bracing for the next artillery round. The river here cuts deep into the bedrock, a natural swimming pool carved by eons of erosion and polished by local lore, wrapped in trees and cooled by the faint illusion of wilderness that reigns in the Sierra. It might have been peaceful, if not for the barrage of airborne adults - thick-thighed, tattooed, as they launched themselves with the desperate joy of middle-aged people trying to fight their creeping irrelevance and feel something again.

Behind me, the rocks jutted like vertebrae - what was left after forever's worth of sculpting by the river. They jabbed my back and made for difficult footing every time I tried to lean out of the blast radius. Across the water, where the bombs were falling, I imagined a jagged underwater graveyard just waiting to kiss someone's tailbone. But no one seemed troubled by that possibility. This was summer. This was Spain. And pain, like shade, was something to be negotiated with loud voices and beer. Si Dios Quiere, like its cousin inshallah, holds equal sway here with the practicing, the lapsed, and the drunk.

It's a reality that would feel borderline anarchic in most other countries. That sadly disappearing Spanish assumption that people can handle freedom and be responsible for their actions. Not everything needs to be policed and forbidden, just in case. The signs against diving were dutifully posted, likely for liability more than safety, and just as dutifully ignored, like crosswalk lights on an empty street.

The sublimely civilised scene was one that you can find repeated almost anywhere across the country. A clean, beautiful place, conditioned and maintained by the local administration that remains public and open to all. The opposite would seem inconceivable to a local. How could something so obvious, so right, not be possible? It's taken for granted - until, like the public health system, the Cruella Devilles in charge find a way to sell it off by the square metre to their cousin's hedge fund and call it 'modernisation'.

But for the time being these places remain public in that very Spanish sense of the word. They belong to everyone and no one. The beaches may have their areas that are cordoned off for those who can afford the parasols and tumbonas, but public access still exists. For now, there still are institutions like the incredible network of public swimming pools in almost every town and village, miraculous little socialist oases where you can swim for the price of a coffee.

The question isn't if, it's when. If there's profit in your grandmother's terminal cancer, how long before they slap a barcode on the river and start charging for shade?