It happens in August. You arrive in Spain, see your family, eat well, it’s hot, and everything seems perfect for the first few days. And then something minor happens: a queue where nobody sticks to the order. An office that closes at midday and doesn’t reopen until five. The doctor who doesn’t have an appointment available for another three weeks. A conversation at eleven o’clock at night as if it were the afternoon. And without meaning to, you catch yourself thinking: ‘This wouldn’t happen in Switzerland.’ And then you feel a bit ashamed for having thought it.
It’s not that Switzerland is better. It’s just that you’ve got used to the way things work there. The train that arrives on time. The letter that arrives when it’s sent. The appointment that starts and finishes on time. When you’ve been used to that rhythm for years, Spain can feel a bit overwhelming. And the funny thing is that ten years ago, you were one of those people who said Switzerland was boring.
What nobody tells you when you emigrate is that there’s no such thing as a perfect return. After a while here, you’re no longer exactly from there. But you’re not quite from here either. Your children say ‘home’ and think of the flat in Bern or Lausanne, even though they were born in Murcia. You switch between the Spanish spoken here and there without realising it, and there are expressions that no longer come out quite the same or that people back home no longer use. Life in your home town has carried on whilst you’ve missed out on ten years of everyday conversations, and they haven’t kept up with yours either. There’s a gap that never quite closes.
It’s a strange place to live. It doesn’t have a name on the map. But in this group, you recognise it straight away when someone mentions it.