The rain in Spain...

When we first arrived in Bilbao in October of 1997, it was after a very long
night of flying and day of going through all the immigration channels in Madrid.
The visit to the police station, complete with the guardia civil officer armed
with a machine-gun and the finger-printing of all six of us, was rather
daunting. But the weather was fair, that is, until we drove into the mountains
of the Basque Country. As we soon learned from the meteorologist on ETV, the sun
can often be seen in every region of Spain, yet reserve his shyness for the
Basques. Indeed, the Costa Verde, or Green Coast, has its name for its lush
green mountains, and also from its year-round wet climate.

For this reason, it was no surprise that one of the first words we learned, not
from our language class although it was used there frequently enough, but from
meeting and talking with other folks from out apartment complex. The word that
was on everyone's lips during our first three years in Spain--until we left the
Basque Country--was Zirimiri, pronounced "Seedy-meedy". In English, we would
call it drizzle. We thought it was a typically Spanish word, and used it almost
daily like everyone else. But after we moved to Malaga on the southern,
Mediterranean coast and used the word, we got that look from people that we
often received when we spoke English. It turned out that it was a Basque word
from the Euskera language, and wasn't needed very much in the South anyway.

There, the weather was different. While the winter and springtime could have
their rainy periods, they were much more like downpours and would last for days,
but would then end. However, the region surrounding Sevilla has a drought season
from early June through the end of September during which time every green thing
that grows on the ground (without irrigation!) turns brown and crackly dry.
Temperatures also soar to 45 degrees C. It is no wonder that Northern Europe
winters along the southern coast of "sunny Spain", and even the Basques come
down for a bit of sun in the summertime.

Our play on the line that Henry Higgins made famous through his torment of Eliza
Dolittle went a little more like this: "The rain in Spain falls mainly in
Bilbao."


-Donna Hanchett