Maybe marriage in north eastern spain is more tranquil than that in the UK. Ive not seen many men in spanish pubs wearing wife-beaters and guzzling pints of bitter, but this is not the reason for my speculations. Tonight, in a tranquil square in Girona, I was attempting a less than accessible menu and a nice merlot. The restaurant next door with the cheap and easy menu was full, mostly due to an engorged gathering of black clad ladies, celebrating the impending marriage of a lady dressed as a clown who they worshipped as Maria.
This was one of four hen parties I saw tonight, and it was passed by an apparently unrelated stag party. Although this was throwing out and throwing up time in the UK, the stag party was both impecably dressed and well behaved as they punted by on their foot scooters. No police were involved, no scantily clad punters were carted off, and there was no bawdy chanting. Quite unlike any single sex pre-wedding party I´ve ever observed before.
Perhaps it´s the spanish attitude to booze, or perhaps this is the careful plotting of a safe and virtuous marriage. The spanish booze scene is completely opposite to the english one whose motto might be little and often. In Spain, it is muchos and seldom. The restaurants seek to make money from food and sell liver-wrenchingly cheap wine, whereas the bars don´t count on a huge volume of trade. The bars seem to rely on the occasional purchase of heavily loaded cocktails, which they can then charge a king´s ransom for.
The hen and stag parties I saw seemed neither to plump for volume or potency in their drinks, preferring to blow whistles and enact strange rituals to the array of costumed characters instead of getting blottoed. Still it´s early hours yet. Maybe the depravity starts in a few hours time and I´ll get to use my dive computer and digital camera after all.