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Comment by melenaboija | Hacker News Reader

I’m from a small town in Spain, about 800 people small, and this is what everyone would do every night during the summer, each group hanging out in different spots with different gangs, lol. It was just a way to chat with your neighbors.

Sadly, this has mostly disappeared, but I think it’s a good example of how the sense of community in Spain differs from that in the U.S. And this feeling isn’t limited to small towns, you can find it in big cities too somehow.

Without knowing for sure, I’m almost certain that people in southern Italy and Greece do the exact same thing.

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Also used to be very common in Hungarian villages, basically houses would have benches in front of the fences facing the street and people would hang out there in the afternoon. As a kid I remember watching the cows get herded back from the field while sitting there, people biking and saying hi, on the way to and from the store etc.

Nowadays this is mostly dead even in villages. Old grannies watch daytime TV Turkish soap operas, younger folks are on their phones, they anyway work in the nearby towns etc.

>Sadly, this has mostly disappeared, but I think it’s a good example of how the sense of community in Spain differs from that in the U.S.

The first part of your sentence disagrees with the second

I remember seeing a documentary or a video clip of this being followed. I don't recall whether or not it was in Spain, but it was definitely a Spanish-speaking village. That clip came to my mind when I read this post.

I’m also from a small town in Spain, ~600 people.

And while it’s not as popular as before it’s still going strong in summer.

I’m Catalan so we call it “la fresca”, translates to “to the fresh air”.

In my street, ~5-10 people, my mother and some neighbours still do it.

The way towns are build in spain facilitate that, single houses but no garden. We live door by door.

So if you want to be outside you are by definition accesible.

Before TV people used to also be a lot in the balcony just chilling and chatting with people passing by.

This is my street in google mapa in case someone is interested:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/?link=https://www.google.com/maps/@4...

My town is also in Catalunya, 60 miles north of yours :)

This is random, but I’m wondering why if you’re both Spanish why use miles and not km?

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