When Adversity Becomes Opportunity in the Spanish Mountains

If you are going to leave someone at the altar, preferrably that altar isn't a remote town in the Spanish mountains where no one speaks English.

For some deserved context, I met up with a very good friend of mine, Laura, at the beginning of the month in Madrid. The two of us intended to travel across Spain before retiring to a prearranged retreat in the mountains where we would exchange our labor for room and board. However, when we arrived in town, Graus as it's called, which is about four hours into the mountains from Barcelona, we were without communication from our host as to where to continue, and our attempts to make contact went unanswered.

To our credit, we did not panic. We calmly retired to one of the two locations with wifi access with some tapas and weighed our options. I'm actually quite proud of our ability to find a logical conclusion is such a foreign place, and we walked out of that bar feeling slightly more adult in our lives. So, the decision is thus: go to Granada, which wasn't on the agenda at first, and then Laura would head back to the states early, and I would head back to England to stay with another friend until my own flight back home.

It is sad that our volunteer arrangement did pan out, however, I choose to look at our current situation as a blessing in disguise.

For one, we were able to return to Barcelona for more time in the city. This may not sound as exciting as I took the opportunity to be, but before having a second opportunity to experience the city, I hadn't quite figured Barcelona out yet.

Barcelona is a city of dizzying highs and dark lows. In one day I felt quite literally on top of the world when I stood at the apex of Gaudi's playland, aka Park Guell, and yet when finding my way down back into the city, I came face to face with child prostitutes who were no more than 14 years old. Such a contrast had put me off-balance and unable to decide if Barcelona was a city I could support.

However, being in a country when it wins its first ever World Cup and catching a sunset on a Barcelona beach makes it hard to not like the city. I won't pretend to know how a World Cup win could unite the regionally divided Spain or even just help its citizens forget its economic disaster and 20 percent unemployment. For that, I would recommend this fantastic CNN article: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/football/07/12/spain.world.cup.unity/index.html?hpt=C2&fbid=es_EGrttm2L

All I can comment on is what I saw, and what I saw was a bar full of red and yellow clad Spain supporters erupt when Andres Iniesta scored in overtime, and a horizon of fireworks and shed tears when Spain's victory was official.

A second blessing of our predicament-turned-opportunity is the chance to visit Granada. I write this post having only spent about eight hours in this small city at the base of the Alpujarra, but the scent of teas and spices and the sound of flamenco guitar wafting into my room is intoxicating.