Episode 8: Driving me to insanity

Coming to Spain and driving on the wrong side of the road wasn’t as difficult as people seem to think it would be for me. When I first met José, he couldn’t drive, so on our trips over here, I took us everywhere we wanted to go. Then, when he did drive, he didn’t want to drive over here as he was used to civilised driving in the UK on the correct side of the road, so I drove. Then when he became more confident and wanted to drive, I didn’t want to let him as he scared me and we couldn’t afford all the wing mirrors. So I drove. There’s a pattern emerging here. The point is I’m so used to it that I coped well. My one problem was a repetitive injury to the back of my left hand, when I forgot which side the gear stick was on and hit the driver’s door. It does sting after six or seven times in quick succession.

A Spaniard, asking the driver of the
other car to please move out of the way

No longer do I undertake the calm, sedate pootle to the office in a morning with the promise of the same on the way back home at the end of the day (albeit in a line of waiting traffic at the bottom of Harrow Lane). That has been replaced with el road rage. Never has the word rage been used so effectively than when it is applied to driving here in Spain. On further consideration of my daily bouts of anger and frustration, I decided to put together a little information pack to foreigners who wish to come to Spain and drive on these roads. There are certain rules that one should stick to in order to stay as sane and safe as possible.

RULE 1: Lights are just for Christmas

No Spaniard likes to use their indicator lights. Males, females, transvestites, they all drive the same, although there are more feathers and glitter involved with the latter. They just put their foot down, point the car in the right direction and go. If you want to turn right, just do it. Don’t worry about letting anyone else know as they’ve no right being in your way in the first place. FACT: Instruction manuals for Spanish cars do not have a section on the indicators, as they are never used.

RULE 2: There are no such things as dents in a car – these are badges of honour

Rather as a fisherman would say, “you should see the one that got away”, a Spaniard will proudly take you round his car and point out all the dings and scratches he can find, going through each one in minute detail (“Si, si Manuel, this one was when I very nearly hit a pedestrian. Missed the bugger so went for the bloody lamppost instead”) One doesn’t start what one can’t finish!

RULE 3: It’s never too soon to toot

When sitting at a traffic light, be sure to move off in something faster than 0.235 of a second, otherwise the car behind you will sound their horn and remind you that you’re slower than George ‘Dubya’ Bush Jr.  Anything between 0.235 and 0.418 of a second will get the car behind them tooting and if you’re up to a whole second before you move off, the whole line of cars will honk in a deafening cacophony, with any waiting pedestrians waving their umbrellas at you in a threatening way, just for good measure

RULE 4: Weaving is not always done on a loom

When faced with an empty road, make the
most of it and zig-zag down the middle!

When you find yourself in a busy three lane road into the centre of your local town, don’t worry about what lane you’re in and what lane you need to come off. Just pick a lane and meander left and right until you come upon your turning. If, when you need to go left, you actually find yourself in the left hand lane, then good for you. You’re in luck. If, on the other hand, you find yourself in the right hand lane, you have two choices open to you:

Choice 1 – just turn the steering wheel hard left and cut in front of all the other cars that are in the left hand land. No-one will toot you as you’re not at traffic lights, so you’ll be fine. 

Choice 2 – get to the junction and pull horizontally in front of the stop line. This will position you across the car at the front of the queue and will have the added bonus of stopping that car from going anywhere whilst ensuring that you are first out of the trap (as it were) once you have the ability to move off. (The ability to move off means that there is a gap of no less than 2 inches between cars, which is more than big enough to squeeze that Mercedes into)

The meandering rule above should also apply when you’re stuck behind slow drivers or any woman driver. Women shouldn’t be driving. They should be at home preparing the bread winner’s meals and keeping herself fresh for whenever the hubby fancies a little ‘afternoon delight’.

RULE 5: You don’t need to be able to distinguish between red and green to pass your driving test

Spanish Traffic Lights

Here in Spain, they have red lights, but when talking to other Spaniards about this, the response to that statement is usually an astonished “do they?” The Spanish Highway Code (El Highwayo Codeo!) says that you should stop at a red light, but in reality, this isn’t always necessary. In fact, you can tell the foreigners in Spain as they are the only people who do stop at red lights. That said, when we do stop at red lights, there’s no guarantee that the people behind will also stop. On several occasions, I’ve had people pull out from behind me and go through the red light, because they didn’t want to wait. These people are known colloquially as twats.

RULE 6: Numbers are for bingo

There are speed limits, but no-one knows what they are. The general feeling is that you go slow-ish in a built-up area, medium-ish on a ring road or a clear country road and fast-as-you-bloody-like on a motorway. To be honest, I have some sympathy with the Spaniards here. There are places where the number 60 appears, to be followed 3 yards later by a sign with the number 80 and then 10 yards later by another number 60. These numbers are more akin to my vital statistics rather than being of any use on the side of a road. I’ve adopted the Spanish way of doing things and drive at a slow-ish to medium-ish speed on my way to school each morning. I find that the safest bet.

These are not the ACTUAL signs of course!  The real ones are in Spanish

RULE 7: You don’t have to actually see the road to be able to drive on it.

When Spaniards get old and broken, there’s no reason for them to hand in their licence and stop driving. All that happens is that you should drive a little slower and listen more acutely for the screaming of either;

      a.       The passengers in the car with you, or

      b.      The pedestrians on the outside of the car whose lives you are endangering on a daily basis

This can be disconcerting when following lone drivers. When they have a carful of people, the screeching of petrified relatives is a comforting sound to me as the driver of the car behind, but lone drivers have no such points of reference. The tendency for these drivers is to turn the wheel a little to the left and with all things being equal, oversteer and turn swiftly to the right in an attempt to stay somewhere in between the lines on their side of the road. The result is a zig-zagging journey of cartoon proportions, with me too scared to look. Last week, the man in front of us was doing exactly this and very nearly went down the six foot ravine to the right of the road. I’d already decided I would be driving straight past him if that were to be the outcome. That shirt was brand new and I wasn’t getting it dirty to rescue some nonagenarian from a ditch. At that age, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry; he could damn well wait until I went home to change.

RULE 8: Moaning, not waving

In the UK, should you be facing a kind driver who lets you out in front of them, the rule is that you wave your thanks to that person. Should that person be particularly kind back, they will wave too in reciprocation of your thanks. Should that person be very kind indeed, they will invite you back to their house where they will ply you with tonic wine, cover you in honey and proceed to flagellate you for three hours with a length of inner tube whilst Nana Mouskouri sings “The White Rose of Athens” from the stereo speakers in the background.........but it was only the one time and it was his birthday!

I still can't change a bike
tyre without wincing!

Here in Spain, if you let someone out in front of you, they think you have mental health problems. You will receive a gesture from the person you have let into the queue, but it’s usually the one with the index finger whirring round and round to the side of your temple, as mentioned in my previous blog. Other gestures which may need some translation are as follows:

     a.       Shrugging of shoulders which means I’ve no idea where to find the Spanish equivalent of Terry Wogan on this radio, but I’ll listen to the Spanish equivalent of Gloria Hunniford instead until I get home and I’ll blame the wife for changing the station

     b.      Waving arms frantically which means “you bloody women drivers are all the bloody same, why don’t you go home and cook some bloody dinner instead where you can’t do anyone any injury”

     c.       Waving arms frantically and pointing just as frantically which means “you bloody women drivers are all the bloody same, why don’t you go home and cook some bloody dinner instead where you can’t do anyone any injury, but you’ve got a nice pair of boobies and can you jiggle them about a bit for me”

Women, as a rule, tend not to gesture. They are far too busy concentrating on the less important aspects of driving, like making sure they are in the right gear and suchlike.

After the driving comes the parking, for which there are also rules; in fact that should be in the singular as there is only one rule when it comes to parking your car over here........any space is fair game when it comes to parking. When I first arrived over here, I thought that double parking was actually the law! When trying to park, if you see a space, just head for it, get out of the car and go perform whatever function it is you’ve gone there for. It doesn’t matter where you’ve parked as no-one will mind or say anything. I’ve attached a few examples of the wonderful places and ways that people park here, including the car park cross zoner and the incredibly tricky manoeuvre – parallel zebra crossing parking. The man at the wheel of the car in the last picture was around 109 years old and had only just perfected this after 82 years of non-stop driving, and what a beautiful manoeuvre it turned out to be.

These are all real examples of actual parking here in La Coruña. I doubt I will ever be as good. I can get a tricky ruffle out of a blouse with a hot iron in thirty seconds flat, which may come in very handy if I ever step out with Pam Ayres, but this Spanish driving/parking lark has me beat. What it has done is expand my vocabulary when it comes to the riper side of the Spanish language, so if it’s all the same to you, I’m going to skip the Spanish lesson on this particular blog!

There is one final word. You wonder why Spaniards drive the way they do?? Check out the name of this driving school.............I may start using the bus!!