Anyone who has been to Spain in the spring and summer will attest to seeing locals sitting out in the afternoon and early evening. It is an enchanting sight and as you pass by, with perspiration running down your back, you only wish you knew how to join them.
Now Algar, a town in Cádiz province in Andalusia and home to 1,400 people, has applied to have the centuries-old custom recognised by the United Nations as a cultural treasure.
The Mayor of Algar, José Carlos Sánchez, wants to protect the custom from today’s world of social media.
“My mother is 82 and sits on her street every day,” said Mr Sánchez, who announced the idea on the local government’s Facebook page on 28 July. “There are days when I pass by after work, sit down and we catch up. It’s the most beautiful moment of the day.”
Algar’s Sol street is steeply inclined and has 124 steps. Thirty years ago, José Ibáñez, 81, counted them to see how many neighbours would fit on them.
“Every afternoon, the steps would be filled with families chatting, playing bingo and having dinner. We had a great time,” he says.
Rarely have he or his wife, Francisca Sánchez, or his neighbour Catalina Sánchez missed a summer evening chat.
“We are already out as the sun is setting,” says Ibáñez, relaxing in his plastic chair. “We stay until dinner, go inside for that, and then we come out again until midnight.”
He knows that it is a dying tradition. The week before, only they and four young people were observing it.
Alfresco conversations began before the advent of televisions in the fifties and probably derived from people needing to escape the suffocating heat in the summer. It happens throughout the Mediterranean.
Mr Sánchez’s bit to see alfresco conversations recognised by the United Nations is serious, but apart from publicity, what will it achieve?
There’s Dry July – why not go Social Media-Free in November?
