Family, community

So one of the coolest things about Spanish culture is that everyone does everything together. Whether you're 8 or 95, if there's a party, chances are you're out with the entire family, dancing and singing and making a bit of mayhem. I have experienced this many times with my host family - in Valencia, where we all (host parents, 11 and 14year old sisters, older family friends, cousins) stayed out together until well after 3 am, and again last night in a fiesta del pueblo, which is basically a big party that they throw during the summer even in the smallest little towns.
Initially we didn't even know it was going on, but while we were eating dinner at around 11:30, we heard music, and decided that we should go check it out. So off we went - me, Patricia, Carlos, and his friend Miguel - looking for the source of the music. We finally found it on a little street in the middle of the pueblo where there was a ginormous stage set up and a band singing tangos and paso dobles and merengues. Miguel, as usual, headed directly to the bar, and Patricia and I started dancing. She taught me paso doble and I taught her to waltz. The whole thing was just awesome though - there were tiny kids running around, old couples dancing how they were taught to in the forties, college kids dancing like they were never taught, and middle aged guys belting it out, copa or drink in hand. There was alcohol, there was dancing, there was great music, but there wasn't the separation between groups that we experience so often in the States.

Here there is a very different philosophy about family and community. It's not something you do once a week on "family game night", or on Sunday in church. You live with your family, and you live with your community - and that includes both when you work and when you play. People in Spain don't tend to move much - they stay put, because where they were born is where their friends and family are. Why would they need to move? Everything they need is right here. And this makes it so that even in a town like Salamanca, with 150,000 people, everyone knows EVERYONE. As a matter of fact, it's more than likely that you buy your produce from your neighbor and work for your cousin's wife's father. Later, when you go out de fiesta, you'll see a bunch of people you work with, so you'll stop and go for tapas and maybe hit a few bars with them. The next day in the morning you have to stop by your brother's house to pick up some files for work, but since you're going in that direction, you might as well stop by your parent's house for lunch since it's on the same street anyway. And this is just a normal day.
Here they don't sacrifice relationships for work or success. Living with your friends and with your family isn't something that takes effort. It's just part of life, and a really wonderful part, that so many of us in America don't experience in the same way. There may be a lot about Spain that I just don't get - but the most important things they do better than anyone.