Sometimes, you just need a bahn mi. One evening, starving after some event—maybe a Spanish class or a meetup with a friend—I popped into a tiny, new café which I had noticed a few days earlier. I addressed the man behind the bar (who was wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball cap) in Spanish, but he, apparently recognizing my Americanness replied to me in English. So, okay, English. Half a dozen twenty-somethings sat at the bar playing cards. They were all speaking English. A sign behind the bar said We Welcome English Speakers. I wasn’t seeking an English-speaking oasis since I’m still committed to trying to speak Spanish in all my daily encounters, but if the occasion presents itself, I’m ready to relax into English. I ordered a bahn mi to go. I took a seat at the bar and while I waited, the man behind the bar did what you would expect a friendly barman to do—he engaged in congenial conversation with me, a particular strength of his as I would find out. When he handed me my bahn mi, I felt as if it were accompanied by a new friend.

Immigrants make up almost half of the population of Málaga province, the largest group being British at 56,000. Chinese at 8,000 make up the largest group of Asians. Maybe that’s why, anyone who looks Asian is thought to be Chinese. I’ve been asked if I’m Chinese. As someone who is part Filipino, I also carry Chinese DNA but it’s not my ethnic or cultural identity. Nor do I think I look Chinese.

Cao Mac, an American of Vietnamese descent from Chicago, and the owner of la señora Banh Mi, has experienced the same thing, as have his children. He’s quite sanguine about it, taking it all in stride. Cao explained matter-of-factly that those who don’t know him regard him as chino. Those who know him realize he’s American. What’s important is that he has felt part of a community in Málaga. Though his children were born in Chicago, they have for the most part grown up here. His son’s nickname on his village football team is Chino. That wouldn’t fly in the United States. But this is Spain.

Latin Americans here are relatively easily distinguished by their accents since Argentinian Spanish is discernible from Venezuelan Spanish, for instance. But because there are fewer Asians, we are one big category: Chinese. And if you’re mixed like me, a Filipina Mexican American, the designation seems doubly wrong. But at least I’m not living in a country where a vice-president envisions a more white ruling-class society, the unelected Nazi billionaire envisions a cheap or even pro bono (essentially slave) labor force, and a president willy-nilly signs unconstitutional executive orders to make it all happen. But back to Asians in Málaga.

Cao formerly worked as the chief information officer for the third-largest school district in Illinois. Prior to that, he served the North Shore in Evanston and Oak Park before that. His work enabled all students throughout the district access to computers, which helped boost test scores across grades.

He’s been in Málaga for twenty-six years for at least part of the year. The first time was for a friend’s wedding which is where he met his partner, a malagueña who was a university student at the time. They made the move completely in 2011 after their children were born, though trips back to Chicago were frequent. Now teenagers and fluent in Andaluz, the dialect of castellano spoken here, the children consider themselves malagueños. They refer to Cao’s Spanish as “broken.” Unfazed, Cao says, “I get by.”  Cao’s goal is to communicate, which he does well in English and Spanish.

His bar/café is already drawing regulars and more people are discovering it every day, its location in the center of the Centro Histórico making it accessible to foreigners, tourists, expats, and locals alike. His original plan was to sell Vietnamese coffee along with regular coffee from Malaga as well as beer. But in the few months that he’s been open, he has added bahn mi and pho to the menu due to demand.

He laughed when I asked him where he acquired his culinary skills. “Pandemic,” he answered, “and YouTube.” He was stuck in Chicago during the pandemic and had so much free time he started cooking. Of course, having grown up with parents who cooked a lot imbued him with an intuitive palate for the distinctive harmonies of Vietnamese food.

And yet, Chicago pizza and Chicago hot dogs are what he misses about his city of origin. Overriding that is his favorite thing about his life in Spain. “Everybody says hi, everybody is outside enjoying life.”

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A few days after I wandered into Cao’s café, my Scottish friend Jan, a writer, traveler, and great lover of cats, took me to the recently opened Paws for a Moment cat café and co-working space and introduced me to Misha the owner. Misha is Michael Buenaventura, originally from the Philippines and residing in Málaga. Years of long hours and intense work in information technology led him to this new endeavor, which combines his love of animals with his tech and business background. It also provides a slower-paced, more relaxing, and ultimately more emotionally rewarding life. It’s where his heart and soul reside, he says.

He came to Málaga about eight years ago for vacation since Spain has always been one of his favorite places to travel. He feels a connection to Spain through his grandmother in the Philippines who spoke only Spanish. “She didn’t even speak Pilipino,” he said. With his Filipino nationality, and his two years of residency in Spain, he is eligible for Spanish citizenship like all citizens of former colonies of Spain. He is studying to pass the language and culture tests.

He feels very welcomed in Spain and has already made friends among Spaniards, receiving invitations to their homes, family events, and celebrations. He attributes it to the friendly nature of Filipinos. When I asked what he missed about his country of origin, he replied just his brother and some friends. If he finds himself missing someone or something too much, he’s fortunate to have the means to travel and visit. But for now, the café is his focus.

The café opened in late October at a rather inauspicious time during the rains. He said rather punily, “Those first two weeks were a wash.” But word has gotten out and the local paper featured him in a story.

The café is the forever home for twenty cats. The multi-room café, which includes a terrace, provides plenty of space to roam, climb, and curl up— a perfect abode in which to be cared for by staff and receive additional attention and affection from café customers.

Misha’s goal in creating a co-working space in a cat café is to offer a place where once a person closes their laptop, they can get up and play with a cat or interact with other customers playing with cats so that a community begins to build.

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Speaking of community, last week I came across a post in one of the expat social media groups in Málaga that began “Join Our New Book Club in Málaga!” As someone dedicated to reading, of course, it caught my eye. I read on, only to be irked by this sentence:

I’m hoping to create a small community of like-minded people, ideally in their 40s and 50s, but absolutely everyone is welcome!

I could feel the tension created by the last two parts of that sentence, each fighting for supremacy. Absolutely (which means without limitation) everyone is welcome, though if you’re in your 40s and 50s, you are ideal, and apparently more welcome. Which means everyone is not equally welcome if they do not fit the ideal, though they are absolutely welcome. There is little or no logic here. The words ideally and absolutely strain on opposite sides of a tug-of-war rope.

I asked myself how that specification of people in their 40s and 50s as an ideal segment of the population is any different from someone else saying,

ideally white, but absolutely everyone is welcome!

ideally Christian, but absolutely everyone is welcome!

ideally straight, but absolutely everyone is welcome!

If, indeed, everyone is welcome, that’s all that has to be said. No qualifiers. Period.

It’s likely that the author of the post did not have negative intentions. So why did I not just scroll on and ignore this post? Why was I so affected by it? Because I’m seventy-one and felt the pang of not being ideal? Because I’m a writer and words matter? Because I’ve become hyper-aware of how language can be used to exclude, demean, blame, and provoke by the likes of Musk, Vance, Trump, and their followers.

Whatever. I caved to my emotions, however overwrought, and posted a comment, pointing out the incongruity within the message. It received no response. Meanwhile, the post was racking up likes and responses of interest that received likes in return from the author of the post while my comment sat ignored.

Eventually, the author of the post responded that “absolutely everyone was welcome” and indicated that I would receive a message on how to join the group. When I returned the message, it was to decline the invitation to join the book club though I extended my wishes for its success and voiced my support for anything book-related. But darn it, I really did want to explain my reaction to the wording of the original post so I gave an abbreviated version of my explanation of how it wasn’t absolutely welcoming to all, given the qualifier of an ideal age group.

This was the response.

Bam! And she blocked me. So it goes.

But let’s end with the joy and color of Carnaval happening this week.