«Mi novio de Albacete»: the provinces, the capital and why clichés make me laugh

There's a joke in Madrid that never fails. Someone says where their partner is from, and if it's anywhere other than Madrid, Barcelona or some capital with a beach, someone at the table smiles a little crookedly. They don't say anything. They just smile. That smile holds centuries of clichés about the capital and the provinces, and I know it very well, because sometimes I've been the one wearing it.

That's why I love the title «Mi novio de Albacete» (My boyfriend from Albacete) so much. It's got that smile inside it.

What a town's name does

If I'd said "my boyfriend from the provinces", it would sound like a nineteenth-century novel. If I'd said "my boyfriend from the village", it would sound like an advert for cured sausage. Albacete is something else. It's a real city, with its famous fair, its reputation for knives, and people who live there and are probably sick to death of Madrid using them as a punchline. That's the risk, and the fun of it too. A proper name commits you. You're no longer talking about an idea; you're talking about a place with streets.

I'm not going to tell you what happens in the song. I'll tell you what the title suggests to me, which is what it suggests to almost everyone: someone who lives in the capital is showing off, or apologising, or simply announcing that their boyfriend comes from somewhere else. And a whole theatre fits into that phrase. The pride of the person saying it. The friends' glances. The boyfriend, who may well be sitting right there rolling his eyes.

Here's my theory, which isn't very scientific. Clichés about villages and small cities say less about those places than about the people repeating them. The Madrileño laughing at Albacete is mainly saying he needs to feel at the centre of something. And that's very funny, because hardly anyone in Madrid is from Madrid. Half the city came from somewhere else, or their parents did, or their grandparents. The capital is one big village of villages that has forgotten where it came from.

When I write from that cliché, I'm not laughing at the boyfriend. I'm laughing at the one introducing him. At the one who says "from Albacete" in a special tone, like someone showing off an antique he picked up at a flea market. That character really does interest me. He's a snob and he's tender at the same time, because if he mentions it so often, it's because he's proud.

Outside Spain, Albacete exists too

I write with Spain and Latin America in mind, and I've been tickled to find that the joke travels well. Every country has its Albacete. That in-between city that's neither the capital nor exotic, that everyone knows by name and nobody visits on purpose. Change the name and the crooked smile is exactly the same.

That tells me the cliché isn't about geography. It's about hierarchies. About the centre and the edges. About the one who thinks he's modern because he's got three metro lines near home. And about the person who arrives from outside and, the moment he opens his mouth, clearly isn't from round here.

For a gay lad, that story has one more layer. For a long time the narrative was that you couldn't be yourself in the village and you could in the capital. That you had to pack your bags. There was a lot of truth in that, and in many places there still is. But it has also bred a small contempt, that of the one who left for the one who stayed. As if staying were a defeat. It isn't. Some people stayed, are free, and on top of that have a house with a patio that in Madrid would cost you a kidney.

Why humour and not an essay

I could have written a serious piece about "empty Spain", the depopulated interior, or about internal migration. Some people do that very well. What comes out of me is something else. The boyfriend comes out. The dinner with friends. The detail of someone saying "from Albacete" and everyone laughing, and after the laugh, if you're paying attention, noticing the joke had a slightly sad bottom to it.

PLANETA GAYFOLK humour almost always works like that. I put a cliché on the table, blow it up until you can see how ridiculous it is, and then leave it there for each person to decide. I don't like explaining the joke. If you explain it, it stops being funny, and you turn into the man who explains jokes at dinner parties, which is worse than the man who laughs at Albacete.

A crooked love letter

What I like most about the title is that, under the joke, there's a declaration. "My boyfriend". Possessive and all. Said out loud, in front of other people. For a lot of people that's still hard to say in public. Saying it naturally, tacking his city on the end the way you'd add a surname, seems to me almost more important than the joke.

So yes, clichés make me laugh. They make me laugh because they're a very quick way to sketch a character and because, if you look at them closely, they fall apart on their own. The smug Madrileño. The boyfriend who comes in on the train. The city that puts up with the joke patiently. Everyone comes out a little ruffled and nobody gets hurt. Or that's what I aim for.

If anyone from Albacete reads this, know that the joke is on us, the people from the capital. You get to do the laughing.

The song is at mikesaintlouis.com, with its full lyrics and its music video.