Words and Photos by Julius Dennis

Over the past 20 months, people have had their schedules of work and leisure disrupted and torn apart in a way most of us have never experienced. Loneliness has become the bi-product of being safe during a pandemic that sweeps the globe.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says “there are no universally-agreed upon definitions” for social isolation and loneliness, making it hard to track and pin down just how much of an effect they are having on our lives.

That said, we all know what it feels like to be lonely.

Even in states like Queensland where we have been relatively lockdown free, the pandemic reaches out and touches us by blocking us off from loved-ones and changing the way we operate in the world.

But there are moments — sometimes elongated, sometimes so short they might not have happened at all — where the pandemic fades, and precious normalcy resumes.

Not the new normal, that term we all swallow from the news and then spit out repeatedly in discussions of the future like a baby at dinner, but the old one. One that was built on time we knew, not predictions.

That normal means a lot to the people who attend the Spanish Centre in Brisbane’s industrial southern suburbia. It’s a place where Spanish is the first language to leave your lips and the ubiquitous English of the outside world is a clunky afterthought. A place to come to sing karaoke on Fridays, to talk and eat and drink in a way that encompasses culture and family, where people know each other and greet each other as such.

The Spanish Club was created by Father Antonio Portela Lombardia in the early ‘70’s as a meeting place for the surge of Spanish migrants who came to Australia in the late ‘60’s, 70’s and 80’s. These days it is more of a ‘Latin club,’ says José Nuevo, the Club President and a member of the core ‘six or seven’ volunteers who organise the club as it is today.

On the weekend he and his wife Angela, whose family was involved in initiating the club, seem to spend more time there than at home, organising drinks, food and anything else that needs doing. José says the club has changed with the shape of migration.

As fewer Spanairds have moved to Australia over the decades, other Spanish speaking migrants have found solace in what the club offers. As one El Salvadorian Australian said, if you’re interested in the Spanish Centre, ‘you’ve come to the wrong place — nobody here is Spanish.’

The crowd at the club is on the older side. The karaoke is mostly performed by aging men, their entire bodies covered in projected light of bootleg Youtube lyric videos. On a quiet Friday night the performances swing from foreground to background. The small crowd sit at round, white clothed tables, or congregate around the pool table.

Some performances engage the room, while others feel so introspective, so much for the singer alone, that it would be rude to look.

Sergio Galan, another volunteer who shares bar duties and has deep familial ties to the club, says the ebb of young members comes from the children ‘becoming more Australian than Spanish.’ Indeed, José says he struggles to get his own children to engage with the club. José moved to Australia when he was 12, it is his generation that coped with the rough edges of Australian assimilation in their youth — more Spanish than Australian.

The group that built this place are dropping in numbers: ‘We buried another one last week,’ says José. He keeps a list of all the members, current and past, a thick black line crossing out those who will never return to the club.

‘This is making me sad,’ he says from behind the bar, looking out across a slowly quieting crowd.

Still, aside from the volunteers, ‘The Seniors’ are the heart of the club. Many do not have much family in Australia, and when the lockdowns come, they are without the social lifeline the club provides.

Even before the pandemic, people over the age of 75 were the most likely to experience loneliness. Sergio says in such times he receives many calls from people ‘who just want to talk’.

In a time where restrictions are easing but caseloads to the south surge, there is still a sense of uneasiness hanging over events. For the end of the month Asada cook up, only around a third of the usual crowd numbers are in attendance. Angela dutifully makes sure everyone has scanned the QR code and checked in with The App. Perhaps that craved baseline normal has not quite fully returned.

Out the back of the club, where the food is being prepared, Antonio, a club regular, is on barbeque duty. The smell of smoking, charring meat engulfs the room.

Antonio’s is a story that echoes and reflects the club and the people who attend it. An Argentinian born Italian, he moved to Australia in 1969. A trained jeweller, his lack of English meant no one would employ him despite his skill. Soon, he was working as a concreter with his uncle, then as the main man in his own operation, laying huge slabs for gargantuan warehouses.

From a master of intricacy to a master of scale, Antonio, like so many other migrants of his generation, worked hard at what he could. Those types of stories are easy to come by at the club. In a new country, people went where they could to do what was needed.

"Even before the pandemic, people over the age of 75 were the most likely to experience loneliness.”

"The Spanish Centre, for all its history and tradition, is used to change."

Ramone, a Spanaird, worked in every capital city bar Perth, working on telephone lines. Less than a week after landing in Melbourne, he had a job in Mount Isa.

Sergio’s father worked on the Snowy Hydro. Many from the generation that initiated the club worked on that great arc of concrete and steel Brisbanites know as the Gateway Bridge.

Now, those of them that are left congregate at the Spanish Club, singing and talking, drinking tall glasses of bold red wine and sweet, cloudy anise.

People live in their own corners of the world. Some are forced to change and alter to that dreaded and persistent new normal, while others will do their best to stay the same. The Spanish Centre, for all its history and tradition, is used to change.

Less volunteers mean more work for the passionate. Less Spaniards and more Chileans, El Salvadorians, Bolivians and anyone else who can speak the language or simply enjoys the caramel-like moment when a piece of perfectly cooked Asada hits their tongue, means a further broadening of the club’s role.

That normal we all crave isn’t just about not having to worry, it’s about familiarity, something for a group of people in Brisbane, the Spanish Club does as best it can.

Words and Photos by Julius Dennis