How I Fell in Love with Spain

Abstract

How I Fell in Love with Spain Laurence de Looze (bio) When I was in seventh grade in Chicago, a girl in my class who had moved to the US from Spain, Paloma Larramendi, stood up one day and gave her full name. Maybe we all had to do it—I don't really remember. I just remember her doing it. What she recited was: "My name is Paloma María Eugenia Gabriela González de Fernández de Mutis de Larramendi." In my memory I hear these names rolling out with rolled Rs and rounded vowels for something like several minutes. I'm sure it did not take Paloma nearly that long to say her name, but as an American kid I was used to people having just a first, middle, and last name, and that was all. I had never heard of anything more than three names, except in very rare cases when someone had a second middle name because of a dead grandparent. As Paloma recited this long name, which was more of a poem than a name, I felt as though I were being lifted and transported into some mysterious world in which the air was different and unknown forces moved people about in ways unknown to me. I was dumbfounded, and I remember that I looked around the room to see if any of my comrades were stunned the way I was. But I saw no sign of surprise on their faces. Mark Cleary, who did not even have a middle name, was sitting at his desk, blasé as always and probably wondering if any of this would be on a test later. And Harold Steinman was too busy passing notes to Edward Fuller to have even heard her. Not even Emily Gardiner, usually the most sensitive among us and given to writing poetry, seemed to have taken much notice. When Paloma finished, she seemed quite satisfied with herself, and before she sat down again at her desk she smiled as though she were in communication with something that none of us could quite understand. Paloma's act of rolling out her complete name was evidently a powerful moment for her. In the way of Americans, the kids in my class tended to shun anyone who was different or foreign, and Paloma was both of those things. She had a foreign accent, her clothes were old-fashioned, and she was clumsy at all sports. That was enough in any American junior high at that time to make her an outcast. Not every country is this way, incidentally. A Brazilian family I know did an exchange with a North American one: the son of the American family was treated as a wonderful, exotic apparition in Rio de Janeiro, and on his first day at school all of the girls came up and kissed him. When the Brazilian family sent their [End Page 167] daughter north the following year, they were surprised that she could not make friends because, as one student told her, she was "weird." I was no better than any of my fellow students. I would love to be able to say that I befriended Paloma, but I did not. In fact, it is probably just as well that I did not know that "paloma" meant "dove" in Spanish, because I might have teased her about it. After Paloma's one brief, glowing moment I never really noticed her again. She may have been in the same high school choir as I, but if she was, I have absolutely no memory of her at rehearsals or concerts. In fact, I thought of her again only when I sat down to write this essay. I Googled her name and discovered that there is indeed a Paloma Larramendi Wilson in the Chicago area, so I assumed that she must have found love and marriage in some fashion, most likely followed by children as well. Indeed, Spain and all things Spanish pretty much disappeared from my consciousness. I fell in love with France and things French. France was the land of grand culture and refinement (somehow I had this idea despite knowing almost nothing about...