Conflict and mediation

A quarrel has a course, and Spanish has a word for each stage of it. El desencuentro is not a quarrel yet, only two people missing each other; el enconamiento is the point at which it has stopped being about the matter in hand; el avenimiento is the agreement nobody thought was still possible. The last entry on the list is the one English cannot match. La convivencia is what people have when they live alongside one another and it works — neighbours, colleagues, two halves of a family. « Coexistence » exists but sounds like a treaty between states; « living together » is about a flat; « getting along » has the right tone and the wrong weight. Spanish has one ordinary noun for it, so a mediation can be said to aim at la convivencia posible without sounding either legal or sentimental.