My best friend is pregnant (not with my baby), and thus has been looking to move into a new apartment here in Sitges. Because my work schedule has slowed down for a while, I've been helping her look. As a result, I've had the opportunity to see 30-40 fairly upscale apart- ments in the Sitges area in the last few weeks.
And you know what every one of them had, and every single real estate agent pointed out as a "perk" for the apart- ment and thus an enticement to rent it? A safe. Some sort of wall safe or hidden-in-the-floorboards safe. And although the real estate agents always point out that the safe is "fireproof," as if the reason you'd want to keep valuables hidden away in it is in case of fire, as far as I can tell this is always said with a knowing "wink wink nudge nudge know-what-I-mean" inflection. In Spain, after 40 years of Franco, the reason you would want a safe on your property is that you don't fully trust the banks. You want to keep a handy stash of cash and jewels and other valuables so that if the banks go bust or the world goes to hell in a handbasket, you don't. And y'know...I find that a fairly healthy attitude. I've been watching the UK tourists in Sitges panicking lately and making desperate phone calls from cafes to move their money from British banks to Irish ones. The reason? As far as I can tell from overhearing conversations, savings in British banks are not necessarily insured if the bank goes bust. These tourists are worried because all of their money is in a bank somewhere in Britain. The Spanish, on the other hand, never put all of their money *anywhere*. Even the younger generations, who never knew Franco and the joys of living under a Fascist dic- tatorship, seem to have "inherited" this quality from their parents, who did. They keep a certain reserve in cash or other negotiables, too...just in case. Spain is similarly skittish with regard to credit. When you open a bank account here, you don't get checks with that account. You can't. Almost all transactions here between individuals and the other companies or individuals with whom they do business are handled electronically. The reason is that, under Franco, checks became viewed as worth less than the paper they were printed on. In the same vein, you rarely see credit cards, the way that they work in the US. Almost everyone uses debit cards, which means that -- other than a small 'overdraft' amount, limited to a few hundred Euros -- they have to have the money in the bank for anything they purchase on the card. There ARE exceptions, of course, and like most other EU nations some Spanish have been being lured into insupportable personal debt in recent years. But for the most part, theirs seems to be a largely cash economy. And again, I can't help but see this as a Good Thing. If the shit comes down over this recent financial meltdown, my Spanish neighbors (and me, because I've lived this way for decades now) will, I think, be in a somewhat better position than, say, the Irish, who are now officially the highest personal debtholders in the EU. (And the Brits want to move their money to *Irish* banks...go figure!) I thought of this, and decided to share it with you no matter how inane it might be, because I just had to add some capital to my personal safe. It's not built into the wall; it's out in the garden, in a secure, locked-down spot known only to me, a few trusted friends, and my attorney. And it may be illusion that makes me think that I'm somehow safer by keeping some of my assets there, but yes...I definitely do feel safer.
