Spanish Logic

The other night we had slight incident in our piso (apartment). It was about 11:20 pm. The Spanish girls were sitting at the dining table laughing and eating. I was in Alyssa’s room where we were looking at pictures of puppies on facebook. Suddenly we heard a crash. Then the Spanish girls were shrieking with laughter. I went out to ask what happened. Tamara fell of her chair and they were hysterical. Understandable. That is truly funny. The laughing went on for literally 3 minutes.

Then they quieted down.

Then the door bell rang multiple times. The Spanish girls answered it. It was our neighbor. She was furious. She claimed that we were making an excessive amount of noise while she was trying to sleep. She had had enough and was going to call the police. Maria said “Fine. Call the police. We didn’t do anything wrong.” She did not call the police. She just wanted to scare us.

This led to a discussion at lunch the following day about Spanish Law. It is apparently illegal to make excessive amounts of noise after midnight. This means no loud music, yelling, or playing of musical instruments. I said that this can’t possibly be true because I hear so much noise at night. Maria informs me that this law applies only to apartment buildings and houses.

Let’s think about this: So you can’t make a lot of noise in your apartment or house after midnight. Good rule. Makes sense; It’s rude to disturb your neighbors.
But this means that you can make all the noise you want in the calle (street). And thus, you are not only disturbing your neighbors but the whole street. I point out that this makes no sense. Maria says “pues, es la calle.”(Well, it’s the street) I take this to mean that it is understood that you can make as much noise as you want in the street. It’s perfectly acceptable and no one can do anything about it. This explains why I often hear young people screaming, shouting, signing, and playing loud music in the street at 2 am. It usually disturbs my sleep. But I can do nothing about it because the neighbors are quiet.