Conditioning Her Air

Summers in Andalucía tend to be hotter than the winters are cold, and this is reflected in the design of the older towns. Alleyways were built narrow whenever possible, so as to provide shade. The famed “white towns” are white for a reason: white lime keeps things cooler than, say, brown mud would.

A more recent design element is the persiana. Mounted on the outside of a window and managed on the inside with a pulley system, persianas are good at shutting out the searing summer sun. In fact they are good at turning your home into a kind of cave. Here’s a picture taken inside a Puente Genil flat at about noon, with the persianas engaged:

The white strips are bands of sunlight, the day breaking in where it can. Now, here’s the same flat a moment later, with the persianas raised:

A big difference — and an important one, especially in summer, seeing as air conditioning is still considered a luxury in Puente Genil. Here where summer temperatures routinely top 100 degrees, more people live without AC than with it. An American raised in Extreme Air Conditioning, accustomed to packing a light sweater for a trip to the grocery store in mid-July, will likely find himself asking advice of locals.

You must sleep on the floor. Or on the roof.

Sleep on the roof?

It is cooler than the bed in summer.

and:

Keep your windows shut.

Shut? Why?

To keep the heat out. It is a beast trying to get in. Keep the windows shut.

and:

Just don’t move.

All summer?

Yes. You just don’t move.

In summer months a visitor comes to understand that the Spanish fan is not just a prop used by variety-show performers to impress tourists. When an Andalusian woman pulls a fan from her décolletage, flips it open with a sharp snap, and starts fanning herself, she’s not putting on a show for you: she’s conditioning her air. If ever there was a photo op, this is it…except that really it’s too hot to bother with something so strenuous as pulling out the camera.

All this said, it is in fact possible to survive a summer in Andalucía without AC. People have been doing it for a long time, now. You won’t just up and die in the summer because you don’t have air conditioning. It’s true you might not get a whole lot done, seeing as getting-a-whole-lot-done requires actually moving…but maybe there’s something to be said for not getting a whole lot done once in a while.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.