WHAT LIGHT THROUGH YONDER WINDOW BREAKS.

I’ve often suspected that Spaniards are part-vampire. Why? Because they go out of their ways to avoid sunshine. And nowhere is this more true than in the home.

If you don’t believe me, then take a midday stroll down any residential street in Madrid or Barcelona and look up. You’ll notice that the windows of most people’s homes and apartments are hermetically-sealed with heavy curtains or aluminum persiana blinds. God forbid that a sliver of sunlight should be permitted foreplay with the long-suffering ficus in that fourth floor apartment on Calle Goya!

I must admit that this practice of compulsive sun-avoidance has puzzled me since the moment I arrived in Spain. After all, if you loathe the sun, then why live in a country that averages 364.67 cloudless days per year? I’m sure that an enthusiastic partner to a house-swap could be found by selecting any name at random from the Seattle or Edinburgh phone books.

But I don’t just find this behavior puzzling. It strikes me as a bit cheeky, as well. There is—you might be interested to know—a psychological illness called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that strikes many people who live in countries with good beer. People suffering from SAD experience mild to severe depression during times of the year when the weather is especially dreary. The most common treatment for SAD is to sit in front of a “Lightbox”—i.e., a box emitting a bright light that boosts the spirits by acting as a surrogate sun.

How ironic, then, that Spain—a country that, for all intents and purposes, is a 1,000 kilometer-long Lightbox—has a population that maintains their living rooms under conditions suitable for film development. It’s a bit like the Wall Street business executive who rakes in millions, then moans about the amount of income taxes that he must pay. SAD. Very SAD indeed.

Anyway…after nearly six years of bewilderment, I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. I thus decided to seek answers by undertaking a scientifically-rigorous survey of every Spaniard I know—or, at least, those who were still speaking to me at the time.

And after grilling those two Spaniards, a startling trend emerged. Their responses were nearly identical—and presumably not just because they were married. Here is the transcript of our interview:

Sal: “Why do keep your curtains closed during the day?”

Spaniard: “So that the house doesn’t get hot.”

Sal: “Why don’t you just open a window?”

Spaniard: “Because the curtains are closed.”

There you have it! The greatest puzzle since Fermat’s Last Theorem has been solved! Sure, I might’ve preferred a more scholarly conclusion—like, for example, that living in light-deprived dwellings is a carry-over from Spain’s agricultural era when midday siestas were a necessity rather than a luxury—but facts are facts. Besides, the simplest answers are often the most incisive…and such is the enormity of my finding that I’ve personally spoken with well-placed people in Oslo—but, regrettably, they inform that nobody has ever won a Nobel Prize through the use of circular reasoning.

Then what, you may ask, has become of my vampire theory? Well, I’ve discarded it due to a fundamental flaw that I discovered during last night’s dinner: Vampires can’t exist in country that uses so much garlic in its cooking.