#14 Divide and Conquer …

Valiantly, Boris trots beside me as I leisurely stroll through Christmas-decorated streets, keeping an eye on Boris, who, time and again. interrupts his trotting when he encounters a scent worth sniffing on a facade. Time and again, I patiently wait until he’s done sniffing and makes a clumsy attempt to lift a paw.

A few weeks ago, Heidi and I found the little fellow in the mountains east of the Andalusian town of Antequera, where we have lived since last August, barely any life left in him. We estimated him to be about four to six weeks old. He recovered, and despite the long walks we take him on and the time we spend playing with him, he tears through the house like mad until he drops down, sleeps for fifteen minutes, and resumes tearing through the house. Today, I’m taking him on his first trip into town, and for the first time in his life, he is wearing a collar, trotting on a leash. Everything he sees, hears, or smells seems to amaze him, and as we enter a bank—our first destination today—I think of the mouse walking on a bridge with an elephant, saying, “Quite a rumble we make, don’t we?”

The bank employee who opened an account for Heidi and me looks up from the screen he's staring at. He points a finger at Boris, raises that finger, and wags it. When I sit down on one of the two chairs in front of his desk, he says, “Dogs aren’t allowed in here.”

“No pasa nada don’t worry,” I say, crossing my legs. “Heidi y yo no lo identificamos como perro Heidi and I don’t identify him as a dog,” and to my surprise, Boris sits when I tell him to do so. The bank employee raises his eyes to the ceiling, purses his lips, and shakes his head, and I guess he’s thinking of how I slammed his desk when he opened that account for us some months ago.

Bank after bank we visited just after we first arrived in Antequera, regretting having closed our Catalan bank account—we lived in Catalonia before moving to Antequera. To open that Catalan bank account, we had been required to take out supplementary health insurance through the bank. Heidi and I never claim healthcare, but when Heidi unexpectedly ended up in a hospital for a night, we discovered that our supplementary health insurance did not provide care beyond our regular insurance. To avoid being burdened by that supplementary health insurance any longer, we closed our bank account before leaving Catalonia. But banks in Andalusia also require us to take out similar insurance in order to open an account, and when we finally found a bank where we could open an account without too much hassle, an employee demanded that our NIE number—European foreigners in Spain are required to have one—be handed to her in the form of a plastic ID card, not recited by us from memory.

Heidi and I—we assumed that was the crux of the NIE hiccup—applied for our NIE numbers back when NIE numbers were still printed on a piece of paper. But the officer addressing us at the immigration desk in Antequera’s police station, where NIE numbers are issued and where we inquired, was adamant: “El NIE emitido como tarjeta de identidad no existe a NIE number issued as an ID card doesn’t exist!”

An older officer stopped us as, somewhat bewildered, we walked out of the police station.

“Eres Nikko Norte you’re Nikko Norte, no?” he kindly asked.

“Si lo es yes he is,” Heidi replied before I could come up with a cheeky remark. The officer then explained that his colleague—the one who had just addressed us—was not having her day and that she should have clarified that NIE numbers are still printed on a piece of paper, but that nowadays, there is also a TIE number for foreigners. TIE numbers are issued as ID cards and must be applied for by foreigners whose residency application has been approved. Many agencies, the officer continued, confuse NIE and TIE numbers. After I had told him why we needed a NIE number issued as an ID card, the officer referred us not only to the bank Boris and I just entered, but also to the employee opposite me, who is his cuñado, his brother-in-law, and an aficionado of the corrida, which in our case, the officer added with a wink, would likely be an advantage.

In many countries I lived in previous lives known as banana republics, civil service functioned better than it does in the current EU, but admittedly, opening a bank account was no problema at this bank. The officer who had stopped us at the police station had let his cuñado know we might report at his desk, and we were given preferential treatment—or so it felt. Yet, no problema seemed to be put on hold when, while entering our details into his computer, friend Cuñado looked up from his screen and asked about our political affiliation. That question alone would not necessarily have put no problema on hold, but friend Cuñado added that stating our political affiliation would have no consequences. I slammed his desk and said, “No me digas tonterías don’t tell me nonsense.”

“Pero but ...” he stammered, startled.

“If there were no consequences, the question wouldn’t be asked. Anyone who tries to esfu… difu… dissimilar hide that truth es un payaso is a clown y …” “PSOE!” Heidi interrupted me.

“And what,” she then asked in Dutch, “is voting in Spanish?”

“Votar,” I replied in surprise, upon which Heidi said to friend Cuñado: “No podemos votar en España we’re not allowed to vote in Spain, pero somos aficionados del PSOE but we are fans of the PSOE.”

Contently, friend Cuñado looked back at his screen, and I mumbled to Heidi: “Partidarios.”

“Huh…?”

“Partidarios, not aficionados. And the PSOE is a socialist party, for which I certainly don’t feel any …” “Stop your antics, Nik,” Heidi interrupted me again. “It’s hard enough to survive within the EU since you refuse to publicly shut up about what’s happening in the world. We need a bank account, and as long as we’re in this bank, we’re socialists. We’re vaccinated against everything that could cause a runny nose, we hate Putin, and we’re aware of the impact we have on the climate.”

Heidi was right, back then, and … “Como te puedo ayudar how can I help you?” friend Cuñado asks, and I see his eyes widen. I follow his gaze and see a little white-and-brown dog dashing through the bank. Some people queuing for tellers scream, others laugh. As I get up, I tell friend Cuñado that I’m here because our account has been frozen. I put my bank card on his desk and walk to the middle of the bank, glad that Boris—in less than a second—wriggled his head out of his collar here, not on the street. I don’t know what is wrong with him, but every now and then, he has an episode like this. Like a cartoon character, he dashes around, and like Neo from The Matrix, he runs sideways across walls, furniture, or trees. Nothing, normally, can stop him until he has exhausted himself, and to my surprise, he dashes my way when I call his name and lies down at my feet. I pick him up from the floor, tell him he’s a good dog, and sit back in the chair I just got up from, Boris on my lap.

“Your passports have expired,” friend Cuñado remarks. “I’ve reactivated your account, but until you have new passports, the computer can freeze your account again at any time.”

“But for now, everything’s working, right?” I ask, just to be sure, as I try to adjust Boris’s collar while he bites my fingers with his sharp teeth.

“De momento está todo funcionando everything’s working for now.”

I stand up, shake friend Cuñado’s hand, say, “Adelante por la izquierda onward with the left y Feliz Navidad and Merry Christmas,” and walk out of the bank with Boris in my arms.

It’s raining but not heavily. I put Boris on the ground, withdraw twenty euros from the ATM next to the bank’s entrance, and head for Antequera’s plaza de toros. Friday, December 20, 2024. For the second time today, I realize I’m leisurely strolling through Antequera’s streets …

Ever since Heidi and I moved to Antequera, people bump into me when I walk its streets. I quickly made it a habit to always walk on the right-hand side of the right-hand sidewalk along streets, my right shoulder against the facades of houses and shops, my eyes focused on the pavement. It makes the walking somewhat easier, but not much. Every so often, someone bumps into me and then tries to get into an argument. To avoid physical collisions and arguments, I have to move along sidewalks as if I were a ballerina, darting from right to left and vice versa, which is just a little too much. If I walk into town with Heidi, I’m relatively safe, collision-wise, assuming she is walking in front of me. If I walk in front of Heidi or if we walk side by side, things quickly go south, and luckily, Heidi has seen it happen so often that she doesn’t accuse me of jumping at shadows.

Perhaps it’s far-fetched, but I think my experiences on Antequera’s streets have something to do with the Spanish mainstream media’s insistence on male aggression, which, according to them, needs to end yesterday. The theme is everywhere, constantly, and it feels as if the recently introduced, unwritten law that prohibits me from responding aggressively to provocations encourages people to provoke me. Walking the streets or supermarket aisles or standing in line at a shop’s checkout, people bump into me as if I’m not there, and I’ve come to learn that being a male dwarf, life has taken a wondrous turn for me in Antequera.

A Dutch acquaintance with whom I cautiously discussed my daily experiences in Antequera’s streets told me that the media warning against male aggression is logical because femicide is more common in Spain than in other countries. I eh… I had some trouble following my acquaintance’s logic—and had never heard the word femicide before. The words domestic violence would probably better cover what supposedly is more common in Spain than in other countries, and using those words prevents almost one hundred percent of half the population of a country from being innocently backed into a corner. Then, my acquaintance overlooked that, not so long ago, domestic violence increased in most countries where the thought reigned that covid would annihilate the world’s population, and that it increased slightly more in Spain because Spaniards allowed their government to confine them to their homes for fifty-two consecutive days—which didn’t make Spanish covid data differ from countries where the population was not yet docile enough to allow their government to confine them to their homes for a prolonged period.

Soon after Boris and I had left home this morning and headed into town, I began to notice that Boris makes walking Antequera’s streets—strolling now the better word—pleasurable. No one wants to trample him, and as a result, no one bumps into me. Valiantly, we trot and stroll past the plaza de toros. I find the stall I’m looking for, buy a Christmas tree—though not before withdrawing more money from an ATM because I misjudged the price of Christmas trees—and feel forced to display some aggression when the Christmas tree vendor refuses to yield to my gentle attempts to stop him from sliding my Christmas tree through a machine that wraps a plastic net around it. Tons of plastic in the environment, year after year, to make transporting our Christmas trees easier. I eh... I’d rather have no part in it, hoist our Christmas tree onto my shoulder, wish the startled Christmas tree vendor a Merry Christmas, and give Boris’s leash a slight tug.

Through Antequera’s busy main street, we head toward Antequera’s castle, high on a hilltop. Despite the sense of security Boris gives me, my right shoulder brushes the facades of houses and shops, our Christmas tree on my left shoulder, my eyes focused on the pavement. The Christmas lights above Antequera’s main street are on. In the evening, the sight of those lights is spectacular, but even now—I glance up occasionally—I’m in awe. The shops we pass that aren’t empty house cafés, banks, real estate agencyies, pharmacies, opticians, nail salons, hair salons, and Chinese-run junk stores. Vehicles that pass us are mainly vans from parcel services and from Nacex, a company that supplies pharmacies, and the regular cars I see, I suddenly realize, are enormous. Almost every car resembles a 4x4—which the mainstream media until recently instructed me to view as a type of car owned by people suffering from an antisocial personality disorder—and nostalgia hits me as I imagine colorful 2CVs, Seat 600s, Renault 4s, Goggomobils, Trabants, and NSUs chugging up and down Antequera’s main street. NSUs—who remembers them?—with a modern engine! Fifty kilometers to a liter of diesel? More? But the mere thought of driving a small car makes us identify as unhappy people, and eh... man, what a pity that is! And my political affiliation? Franco would have my vote. He would have restricted people’s freedom less than the EU currently does. Fifty years of democracy and the EU have brought Spain to the brink of the abyss. The mainstream media are ignoring it, but the country is on fire and if the EU-demolished Spanish economy collapses—which will inevitably happen if the EU cuts the subsidies it provides Spain—the country will be out for the count.

Heidi and I had promised ourselves to live in Antequera for a year at most. Before the end of that year, we would have found a piece of land in a remote area of Andalusia where we would peacefully live our hermit life. A tiny house and the two studios we need to film the videos supporting my book The Caveman Code. The time we wouldn’t be writing or filming, we would spend hoeing our small field and tending to our chickens and goats. Soon after arriving in Antequera, we discovered the absurdity of our plan. Andalusia’s groundwater storage is depleted, and hoeing without groundwater is wasted energy. All Andalusia’s groundwater, over the course of the last thirty years, has been used to irrigate the millions of olive trees Andalusians have planted in the Andalusian wilderness in exchange for EU subsidies. The life of a subsidized olive farmer is a good life, especially since after receiving the subsidy, there is no reason—nor any possibility—to harvest the olives, and only recently, Heidi and I discovered the truth behind that olive-tree-subsidy scam.

Andalusia, in existing plans—and let’s pray we’ve misunderstood—is an energy hub, largely covered with solar panels and wind turbines. If companies like Iberdrola had set out to acquire the necessary land for their solar panels and wind turbines thirty years ago, the price of land would have skyrocketed. Once the EU cuts its subsidies on olive trees, Iberdrola will acquire the land it needs for next to nothing. For the past three decades, Northern Europeans haven’t financed subsidies for the olive trade but have indirectly financed Iberdrola. Living on a piece of land in a remote area of Andalusia, considering our new insights into what the future has in store for the region, is less enjoyable than it seemed when we moved to Antequera. It is what it is, but deciding where to go next is not so easy.

Lost in thought, I let Boris lead me to the left side of the sidewalk, where, at the base of a lamppost, there’s a scent worth sniffing. Patiently, I wait until he’s done sniffing as a young, obese woman, talking into a phone and pushing a shopping cart—until recently used exclusively by the elderly—leaves the phone-accessories store in front of which Boris is still sniffing. The woman glances at the dark sky, looks back down, and a fraction of a second too late to avoid eye contact, I look back at Boris. A moment later, from under my eyelids, I see the shopping cart go for my legs like a bull in a plaza de toros. Two sets of three wheels on either side of that cart, and without understanding why I realize it now, I realize that those sets of wheels make it possible to drag the cart up a flight of stairs. And as a chorus of voices in my head screams that I must not succumb to the senseless violence I’m confronted with, I gracefully step out of the path of the charging cart and the hundred kilos that give it its forward motion. I feel a blush of shame rise to my cheeks but feel it fade as I tell myself why I succumbed to that senseless violence.

Senseless violence usually triggers aggression in me. And even though he has nothing to do with it, I don’t want to expose Boris to that aggression, which means that my new friend gets away with her madness. But to avoid tangling myself in Boris’s leash, I half-turn, and the scream my new friend lets out when the Christmas tree on my shoulder—which I had forgotten about—hits her evokes the reaction in Boris I had wished to avoid. Three or four people suddenly surround me, and phones are aimed at me as my new friend turns into what I know is called a Karen these days. I lower the Christmas tree to the ground—to free my hands in case people feel brave and more violence is aimed at me—see that Boris recovers from his initial shock and resumes his olfactory exploits, and notice a depressing feeling taking hold of me as it dawns on me that most of humanity now plays a role in Squid Game. A small group of people—the owners of Iberdrola included—watch in amusement as we allow ourselves to be pitted against each other …

The people around me lower their phones when, I think, it hits them I’m unlikely to give in to TikTok-worthy behavior. They move on, and shaking off that depressing feeling, I grin inwardly as I see Karen, still ranting and raving, pushing her shopping cart down the at least six-meter-wide sidewalk toward a zebra crossing. She clearly has given up the idea of crossing Antequera’s main street where she seemed determined to cross it only a minute ago—and where, given traffic, only a ballerina not hampered by a shopping cart would be able to cross it—and I feel strengthened in the thought that I wasn’t jumping at shadows when stepping out of the path of senseless violence.

Wet, Boris is even smaller than when dry. Funny little fellow! Finally done sniffing, he makes a clumsy attempt to lift a paw. Pretty wet myself, I give Boris’s leash a slight tug, and we continue our journey, Christmas tree over my left shoulder, my right shoulder against the facades of houses and shops, my eyes focused on the pavement. I'm not looking forward to the last climb to our house under Antequera’s castle—narrow sidewalk—but I'm surely looking forward to coffee and decorating our Christmas tree …

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