A crackling was in the air — electric, discordant — the energy of ex-pat friends making decisions:  should we stay or should we go?  The family from Ireland was leaving and so was the one from New Zealand.  The Australians were staying on.  An American couple had bought a carmen in Sacramonte!!  Pete was still commuting to work in St. Paul, Minnesota every few months, and was going to keep on doing so while he and his wife and kid spent the next few years in the Albayzin, at least through elementary school!  The Californians were all going home. 

Why?  Why go home?  Why not find a way to stay?  Stay forever and walk everywhere and drink café con leche in the morning and cervezas in the afternoon and vino tinto in the evening….Let your kids stay up until eleven or twelve at night, running in the streets with their schoolmates….Bump into friends spontaneously in Plaza Larga and hang out for hours at a time just because…..

Some of the other ex-pats from England and from the U.S.A., who had married Spaniards and had already made Spain their home for years and years, resented us dilettantes.  Here for only a bit of time, not committed to a life in Spain, capable of leaving whenever we chose.  We didn’t know anything about living a day to day life in Spain.  To them, we were mere tourists, able to escape the stifling bureaucracy and extreme underemployment and high cost of living on a Spanish salary.

We took pains to distinguish ourselves from the hordes of other tourists, actual tourists, who tramped through the Alhambra and through the Albayzin with their tour guides and guide books and their mouths agape.  We had kids in the local public schools and had negotiated the customs bureau and the oficina de ayuntamiento.  We had figured out how to acquire the prized and essential NIE -the Número de Identidad de Extranjero — that would assure our stay in Spain for up to a year.  We knew how to take the C-2 bus and which restaurants offered the best tapas and where to go for pizza secreta in the hills of Sacromonte.

But now we were leaving and it was time to say good-bye.

Zsa Zsa waves good-bye. She was the first to leave.

We arranged to send suitcases back to the States ahead of us, so we wouldn’t have too much to carry on our way.  When we sent them, we acknowledged that home was some place other than where we were living our daily life.

Our daily life was walking through the Albayzin…

…School projects…

…Upside down birthdays….

…Spying the Alhambra from afar…

…Upright birthdays….

…Buying pipas at Hay de Todo….

…An occasional midday drink…

…Goofing after school…

…Playing for Rayo Eneas…

…Riding the C2…

…Kicking it around Huerto de Carlos…

….Café con leche with pan tostado at Café Cuatro Gatos…

…Classmates and friends…

…Friends and school chums…

We started our good-byes.

Good-bye to San Miguel Alto.

Good-bye to school mates.

Good-bye to beautiful flowers.

Good-bye to Patio de los Leones.

Good-bye to abandoned buildings.

Good-bye to Anya’s wonderful oboe instructor, Paloma.

Good-bye to the Sierra Nevada.

Good-bye to street art.

Good-bye.

The ex-pats decided to throw a big, enormous, gigantic party in the woods surrounding San Miguel Alto.  We brought in food, beer, sangria, music and invited all the Spaniards who had been so generous to us throughout the year.  We called it Guirifest 2016, in honor of the derogatory term “guiri”applied by Spaniards to mostly Anglophone tourists.  We wore it with honor.

We had to say good-bye to Jonah’s soccer team, Rayo Eneas, the coaches and the players and the parents and siblings.  Jonah had made the team, no easy feat for an American, and they were sad to see him go.  The team organized a small Despedida to say good-bye to the end of the fútbol season and  then a big Despedida to say good-bye to Jonah at Terrazas del Albayzin, the cafe and bar run by Rai, who assured us that Jonah was destined for fútbol greatness and so wanted to take his picture as a memento for things to come.

The good-byes went on and on and on.  It included the pub crawl with Ladies Night Out, our ex-pat women’s group that allowed our straight women friends to drink while their husbands looked after the kids, and for which Diana and I always had to hire a babysitter.  We managed to fit in Bar Poë (at La Paz and Calle Verónica de la Magdalena), Taberna Gastronómica Chantarela (a short stumble toward Calle Aguila), Ávila Tapas II (easy to find once you cross Calle Recogidas) and some bar in the Realejo whose name we can’t recall due to overconsumption.

We said good-bye quite a few times to our landlord, Ricardo, and to Estefania, our friend from Gómez Moreno.  We packed up the rental car and said good-bye to the Albayzin and to Granada.

We say good-bye to Ricardo.

We say good-bye to Faní.

We say good-bye to the Albayzin.

We say good-bye to Ricardo again.

He takes our photograph.

We load up the car.

It’s time to go.

We go.

Not a bad idea after all.