Jamie Fehr

This is probably one of the hardest things to explain to someone from North America who has never lived on a different continent. The concept isn’t entirely spanish, it exists in Morocco and other parts of Europe as well, and the basic premise is getting a message through without paying any money for doing so. You’d think us mennonites would be all over this already.

Toque (TOE-kay) means touch, as in a touch or un toque, and in reality all it is is a missed call. Here in Spain it only costs money to connect a call, not to dial, so what people do is dial the person they want to touch, let it ring once and then hang up. There you have it, you just got a message through without spending a single centimo.

But that was pretty weak message, even here, people aren’t always sure how to interpret a one ring call, especially if it’s a number you don’t recognize. Chances are though, if this person is in your phonebook, what it means is that this person really wants to talk to you but doesn’t have enough saldo (credit) to make the call, so you’re supposed to call back and use your saldo to talk.

Advanced Usage

In most cases you will have met with a friend beforehand and agreed that something is going to happen. For example, let’s pretend I am on skype with my not-so imaginary friend Kirsten and I ask if she wants to go to jovenes (youth) tonight (it’s Saturday in this not-so imaginary world). She says yes. We both live along the same bus line that will take us to the church except that I live further down the bus line and will have to catch a bus a lot earlier. So I tell Kirsten, I’ll give you a toque when I get on the bus.

Later on that evening, I go down to the bus stop and wait for 15 or 20 minutes for the bus to come by and when it finally does, I get on, pay my fair, whip out my cell phone, dial Kirsten, let it ring once and hang up. The message that Kirsten gets from this simple one ring is that; I am on my way to youth group and the bus already making it’s way up the hill to where she lives and that she only has about 7 minutes to get to the stop to make it to youth group on time.

And so, you’ll see that I saved her some time waiting for the bus, everybody is entirely up to speed on what’s happening as it happens and best of all: It was free!

The only downside to this style of communication is that it’s a very one way type of communication but it gets used extensively around here to kick off nearly any type of get-together. But remember, the whole point of this is to get a message through for free. So let me know if you have a better idea.