Friday, February 19 2010

A few weeks ago, en route to work, I decided to do the uncharacteristic, that is, stop for breakfast at a café. I normally have breakfast at home, but that morning I’d left at an hour ungodlier than usual, in a chill more wicked than usual, so I figured a cup of hot coffee and a toasted croissant were my ticket to mental agility as well as my much needed anti-freeze.

I opted for a space at the counter of the tiny café — service is often faster at the counter, than at a table in Spain. True enough, in a couple of minutes the waiter brought me my heated croissant with a side of butter and a side of peach marmalade and an even steamier, wonderfully aromatic espresso. This was the life I concluded, as I reached for the butter knife.

I was poised to dip into the butter and jam when I was blown away or so it seemed. Before I could say, “Buen provecho,” (bon appétit), I found myself engulfed in a sudden cloud of cigarette smoke. No longer could I detect the perfect perfume of warm bread and coffee. Mr Marlboro or Mr Winston ruled the air.

I, once a smoker, lost my appetite instantaneously. I wondered if I had ever been as inconsiderate as the woman who was puffing furiously in the corner of the bar. I hoped I had not.

I gave up on breakfast and instead gave her a small Trini steups. She would get the meaning I thought as nothing could express one’s disgust as a steups. She looked somewhat startled by the sound, but continued drawing on the cigarette nevertheless.

I now remembered why I never set foot in Spanish bars. Spain was a country of serious smokers. Men and women alike. Sure enough Spain had introduced tougher anti-smoking rules in 2006. Smoking had been forbidden in all places of work and all public buildings.

Restaurants, discos and bars over 100m2 were now obliged to provide a separate area for smokers, a place that was equipped with signs and divided from the main area with its own ventilation system. The smoking enclosure could not be larger than 300 metres. Any large establishments unable to provide smoking areas were obliged to prohibit smoking altogether.

But the truth was that the 2006 prohibitions had not brought the breath of fresh air they promised. Owners of bars, cafes and restaurants under 100m2 could decide whether or not to allow smoking on the premises. Only approximately 40,000 of Spain's more than 350,000 leisure establishments had created smoking areas or banned smoking. You were hard pressed as a non smoker to find a smoke free place to lime.

The argument from many bar owners was: non-smokers did not come in for drinks. Non-smokers were non-drinkers. Whether there was empirical evidence to support such a statement was uncertain. It could alternatively be argued that non-smokers did not enter bars because they could not stand or withstand the smoke. Small bars, such as the café into which I had ventured for breakfast, suffered from a lack of ventilation and one cigarette was all it took to poison the atmosphere, to make the non-smoker choke on his drink or his meal.

And just when non-smokers thought they could soon breathe easy with new laws, the anti-smoking legislation was up in the air. Debate on the legislation which should have been law before June 2010 had been delayed because of vociferous protest by bar owners. Their argument was economically timely: 200,000 jobs would be in peril if the PSOE government banned smoking altogether as was planned.

Spain, with its once inexpensive credit and its over worked real estate sector was in worse crisis than many of its European counterparts. With an unemployment rate of 20 plus percent, it simply could not afford further job loss. The government´s position it seemed was as politically expedient as any administration’s — it was thinking short and not long term, probably calculating that it would lose more votes from bar owners and workers than from non-inhalers.

Its stance meant that for now, until the economic climate changed, non- smokers would simply have to avoid most bars and cafes and assuming they drank, which the bar owners said they did not, have their drinks at home. Or they could suffer the smoke in ashy silence.

As for me, I determined though I might not ever be able to have breakfast in bed, I sure would have it at home. That was until the Spanish government prohibited smoking everywhere, which would be music to my air.