En Ruta! — everything that somehow works (or doesn’t) when you’re on the move in Spain

When you’re on the move in Spain, things happen that never feature in any driving lesson. Not because it’s chaotic, but because it’s human. A roundabout turns into a conversation. A pavement becomes a choice. A scooter becomes an emotion. An e-scooter can be a lifeline — or exactly the opposite. Maybe one day I’ll tell you about that week without a car. No drama. Just hassle. That story will come.

I was standing at a roundabout in Valencia the other day where nobody seemed sure who was supposed to go first. Not because there were no rules, but because everyone had their own logic. A man in a hatchback made a hand gesture that in the Netherlands would probably count as an official traffic instruction, but here felt more like a greeting. A woman on a scooter slowed down as if she was about to start an intimate conversation with the zebra crossing. Behind me, a bus driver steering with one hand and telling a whole story out of the window with the other — accompanied by a smile that offered more direction than any road sign ever could.

You either get it, or you don’t. ¿Pillas?

That’s normal here. It’s not a mistake, not a failure, not anarchy. It’s a system you don’t learn through theory, but by watching. You understand Spain on the move — or you don’t. There’s nothing in between.

Pavements are a good example. In the Netherlands, pavements are for walking. Here, they’re places where things happen. Conversations. Parking experiments. Dogs with opinions. Sometimes there’s a scooter parked that isn’t really parked — just resting for a moment. Sometimes you walk in the road because the pavement is full of tables, and that’s not dangerous but socially appropriate. You have to know where you belong, and sometimes that’s simply somewhere else. You could say the pavement makes a suggestion. Not everything is an instruction.

Google Blues

And then there’s Google Maps. In Spain, Google Maps is almost always right. But the road wins. Not because technology is wrong, but because one-way streets here have emotions. Sometimes Google sends you down a street that exists according to Google, but according to the street sign only starts existing next week.

Other times Google chooses a route that’s two minutes faster, but twelve minutes worse for your blood pressure. Sometimes the map is accurate and reality just breathes differently. It’s not that anyone is wrong — there are simply multiple realities side by side, and you have to decide which one you’re following.

Without a car

Then there was that one week without a car. Not heroic. No journey of discovery. Just inconvenient. I thought I could do everything easily on foot or with e-scooters. Which is true — until suddenly it isn’t. Until you’re standing at a bus stop where the bus arrives according to the timetable, but according to the driver only after he’s finished his bocadillo.

And then you find a scooter showing 22% battery, which feels more like it has 3% motivation left. You’ll get there. Or you won’t. Then another day comes along. Nobody dies. In a strange way, that’s reassuring.

Climate

Meanwhile, you notice how climate controls traffic. When it’s warmer, people take corners more gently. When it rains, everyone seems to be re-sitting their driving test. Not to fail, but to discover: does this car still work in water? Yes, usually. And if it doesn’t, within two minutes someone appears who knows how to lift a parked car as if it were a shopping bag. Nobody questions whether that makes sense. It just happens.

For a long time, I thought Spain was a puzzle. These days I think it’s more like a game whose instruction manual got lost. That doesn’t make it worse. Sometimes it makes it better. It forces you to pay attention, to tune in, to make contact. Not with words, but with one second of eye contact over a dashboard. That moment when you think “I’ll go” and the other thinks “go on then”, and suddenly traffic moves like a sentence without grammar — but everyone understands it.

Does it work, or doesn’t it?

Maybe that’s the core of being on the move here: it doesn’t work according to the rules, but it works for here. You don’t have to like it. Even if you think it’s ugly, all you have to do is recognise that it exists. And that it works — in a way you won’t learn anywhere else.

En Ruta! appears every other Tuesday. No tips. No instructions. I look around. You look along. That’s enough.