Paul Read Cheap in Madrid

Expat Interview: Paul Read

Paul Read Cheap in MadridExpat Interview: Paul Read

Paul Read, a.k.a. the Gazpacho Monk, is a British expat who has been living in Spain for nearly 20 years. He has just launched a podcast series about Spain which you can download from his website. He also recently published a book about Spain called “Inside the Tortilla” which he says is a “travel story with a Taoist slant.”

CiM: How did podcast project come about?
Paul: I’ve spent most of my life as a t’ai chi instructor under the online identity Teapot Monk, and I’ve just completed a year of podcasts on t’ai chi. So now I’ve shifted that idea into podcasting about Spain. The podcast project is an attempt to do two things. The first is to promote the ideas I have about adaptation, integration and living in Spain. The second is to act as a vehicle for a group we set up here 5 years ago, the “Asociación de AngloParlantes de Loja,” [their Facebook page] which is a nonprofit association that organizes lots of projects around promoting exhibitions, international food events, tapas days, intercambios, and language classes. We bring together people of different nationalities. Even though Loja is a small town we have 300 members, with 12 different nationalities and 10 different languages represented. Now I’d like to promote that success outside the boundaries of my town. That’s where the podcast comes in. Taking those ideas we’ve learnt and expanding them more widely across Spain, in the hope that other people will hear about them, pick them up and maybe think about using them where they are.

CiM: What will your Spain podcasts be about?
Paul: This project is very experimental. I’m hoping to go out on the road at some point and start to connect with people who are doing interesting things around the country. It will go on throughout the year. So if people are interested in talking about what they’re doing, then I would love to feature them on the podcasts at some point, in some way.

CiM: Tell us about the trilogy you’re writing.
Paul: “Inside the Tortilla” is the first in a trilogy, so I’m working on the second one of those now. This largely came out of writing the 3 books on t’ai chi. The truth is, I started writing about Spain in 1995. I ended up in Toledo, where I wrote 2 guidebooks on Toledo with my partner. They didn’t sell very well, but that fueled my need to write about Spain again. A few years later, I was living on the coast, and I started writing regularly for magazines in English about living in Spain. Eventually, I moved here to Loja and used some of that experience to compile a book which I believe applies the ideas I came up with in teaching t’ai chi to language learning and cultural adaptation. So it really deals with how do we adapt, and how do we adjust, and how do we integrate—without getting too obsessed about grammar and “being Spanish.” How do we keep our identity, and yet still absorb something of another nationality? And those are the issues we deal with in t’ai chi as well, so it’s a sort of crossover.

CiM: In terms of language learning, you’ve said you don’t think “acquiring an accent indistinguishable from a local shepherd” should be a priority.
Paul: I don’t feel learning a language is about trying to be fluent. It’s more about understanding the culture in which we live. Language is one of the tools that can help us understand the culture better. But obsessing about punctuation, grammar, pronunciation, verb conjugations… sometimes inhibits rather than helps language students. Really, language is about a lot of other things to do with body posture, to do with reading what’s going on visually, as well as listening to what’s happening around. This comes again out of t’ai chi, which is a silent practice, but we learn to use our bodies to listen, absorb and understand, without relying on words. So I’m trying to bring some of that into my English classes which is proving very interesting.

CiM: Do you have any advice for people thinking of moving to Spain?
Paul: I think there are probably a lot of people who are better capable than me to give advice. I mean… Why do people want to move here? I lived for 7 years on the coast and a lot of people would come down literally in their hundreds every month looking for a better life, and within 6 months they would be back in the UK, because they had come with unreal expectations about what it was going to be like. The language would be something they would absorb like the smell of coffee in their skin. It would require no effort whatsoever. Local Spaniards would want to hang around with them merely because they’re foreign and have tremendous relationships with them. And of course everything would be extremely cheap, and everything would go very well. So what expectations have you got? If I was to say anything to anybody: Be clear about what you’re looking for. I don’t know what that is, but you need to know it yourself. And don’t be too fixed. Come out and rent something and see what’s going on, meet people, enjoy it, and absorb something. Don’t come out with too rigid ideas. That’s the only advice I’ve got.

CiM: Tell us about “Shadows and Silhouettes” your free photo ebook on Spain?
Paul: I’m exploring the idea of visual messages, using photography and minimum text, to explore different ideas. I’m hoping to do a series of those throughout the year to give away, sometimes using just words, other times images. I might put sound in the next one because it’s a way of communicating that we didn’t have 5 years ago. We now have the ability to produce interesting documents and distribute them freely throughout the Net. And that’s a nice thing to do. I enjoy creating and distributing. I’m trying to promote the whole concept of Spain, a vision of Spain: What it is as a country from different perspectives as opposed to this land of sea and sun and sangria.

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