Slowing down in Spain

Goat therapy for busy digital nomads

The bells in the church tower in the Spanish village of Benarrabá chime the hour twice: once on the hour, and again at two minutes past the hour. It like an alarm clock with a snooze button to give people a bit more time to sleep. Some visitors joke that the first gong is international time and the second is Spanish time.

The church bells in Benarrabá striking 10 at 10.02 p.m.

The issue of time management has become a bit of a sore point for some of the women on the EU entrepreneurship programme that has brought me here for a month. Events almost always start and end later than scheduled. At a welcome party for the more than 300 women fellows in Madrid, the speeches and photographs dragged on until almost nine in the evening. Most of us had not eaten much since breakfast time and when the finger food finally arrived, we descended on the plates like locusts, polishing off mountains of tapas and paella in minutes. But after two weeks in Spain, I have adjusted to the tradition of eating much later than usual. And I have finally started to embrace the slower pace of life.

Co-working with a view

In the first week, I followed my usual pattern of trying to cram as much as possible into every day, sitting in the beautiful co-working space in the day and then spending the afternoons exploring the village and the hiking trails around it. The evenings were busy getting to know the locals and other women on the fellowship, usually over a glass of chilled wine and olives in the bar. On my hikes through the groves of cork trees, I still felt like I was in a hurry to get to the top of the hill.

Mindful weaving

Something shifted this week. We were invited to join the older women of the village in a basket weaving class. We took thin, dampened strips of bamboo to make a central axis and gradually threaded thinner pieces round them to build up a basket. Most of the visiting fellows were in a rush to master this new skill, or to get back to their computers to finish their work for the day. Meanwhile, the local ladies took their time. It turns out that “more haste, less speed” is a good motto for making baskets. Several of us had to unravel our weaving because we had not been careful enough to pull the threads tight, leaving our baskets full of holes that the instructor said would allow “all the beans to fall out”. But once we got the hang of it, slowly weaving the bamboo thread round and round became quite relaxing. It took most of us two hours to complete a simple basket about the size of a straw hat.

The teacher asked us to consider how much we thought our baskets were worth given this investment of time, and to remember the exercise next time we see artisans selling their work. The workshop was certainly priceless in terms of the meditative effects of weaving and the satisfaction of creating something useful and beautiful. The final results were surprisingly varied: our different temperaments of perfectionism, openness, impatience were all given basket form.

The next day was another opportunity to shift down a gear. We spent several hours on a small organic farm where vultures circle on thermals above the cliffs. We tried our hand at milking a goat, got to cuddle a two-week old kid and made fresh cheese using traditional methods. Finally, we were asked to savour wedges of cheese and quince jelly with all our senses. Despite my fierce hunger by this point, I managed to restrict myself to just three pieces and learnt that the point of a triangle of cheese indeed tastes milder than the outer edge due to the different levels of oxygenation and salt.

Along with lots of hard work on our own businesses and a community project, we also sampled “forest bathing” – the mindful practice of walking and sitting in nature. After some basic breathing exercise, our facilitator Tomas asked us to sit for five minutes and find three items in the square metre around us that aroused our senses of smell, hearing and touch. I chose a fragrant leaf, two pieces of shiny slate to tap together and a bumpy seed pod.

With just one more week left working in the village, I am still trying to do too much every day but I hope I will manage to have at least one siesta. I want to maintain this slower pace when I return to Berlin. I might even start a basket-making workshop for anyone interested, but I won’t be adopting a goat, cute as they are as babies.