Spanish views from a small town

Broken down, that's how I feel. And that's how my house feels, as well. This month has been the month of the repairman. The first was my husband's car. Okay, so it's fifteen years old, there's still no reason the transmission had to fail. It had already been changed two years ago. Then, the driver's door wouldn't open from the outside. My husband cannibilized an old car we're waiting to take to the junkyard for the necessary pieces. Then the washing machine decided not to expell water. I don't know how many times I had to remove the hose and empty water into a pail before it finally got going. I even had my husband clean out the bottom filter, which turned out to be pretty clean. Yes, it's fourteen years old, but it's the best damn washing machine we've had so far. It's lasted longer than any other we've had. Please, give me another five years, at least! Then, the door to our storeroom wouldn't open. Somehow the latch had ...

Tourists there have always been and always will be. Having grown up in Boston, tourist town par excellence, I've been used to seeing lost people wandering around with maps in their hands. Here, every summer I've gotten used to cars with license plates from Madrid or Barcelona crawling along the roads, completely lost. I've had tourists stop their cars and ask me how to get to a town a hundred kilometers from here. How do some of these people even manage to leave their houses if they have no idea of where they're going? There are lost tourists and then there are lost tourists. There are tourists who come prepared. They've studied the terrain and know more or less what to expect. The absence of a street sign, however, will make them doubt and maybe take a wrong turn. These are the people who have come to Santiago to see the cathedral and know that they can't make a two hour side trip to Ourense to visit the thermal springs because it's just too far away. The...

Rotaries are a unique driving experience in Europe. If you know how to use them, they'll get you to where you're going quickly and efficiently in most countries. If, on the other hand, you hesitate as you approach one, or you're driving in Spain, they become a problem. About twenty years ago, at intersections all over the country, round islands began to appear in the middle of the roads. Instead of maintaining speed or checking the traffic lights, people had to slow down and drive around those islands. People on the main roads were not happy at having to slow down. People from cross roads were not happy because they didn't know how to break into the traffic from the main road slowing around the rotary. And since at night all cats are black, the traffic islands were almost invisible. Through habit, some drivers went straight through them, including my father-in-law. At that time the rotaries were still being settled in, so they were only a mound of earth in the middle ...

A housewife who hates housework - that's me. No, I am not a housewife by choice, but by accidents of life. I would never have chosen this job. I'm looking at the kitchen walls and realize I should wash the tiles. After all, there is dust gathering on them. Yes, dust gathers on vertical surfaces in my house. But the day is gray and there isn't much light to see by. Turn on the kitchen lights? But then it feels like night and night is a time to wind down and do my own things. They don't include cleaning the kitchen tiles. If it were sunny and if the sun lighted up the kitchen then I would think about it. I would think about it because I would also want to go out and enjoy the sun. Most women in Spain have spotless houses. At my sister-in-law's house I think you could actually eat off the floor. There isn't a flyspeck anywhere on any glass surface. Not a drop of grease in the kitchen. Dust is as foreign an object in her house as desert sand is in the street. She sp...

Reading is not a highly practiced exercise here. I have memories of travelling on the subway and buses and seeing fellow passengers reading the latest bestseller or a dog-eared favorite, taking advantage of the dead time of the commute. Here, when people are waiting, they're either playing with their phone, gossipping with their acquaintances, or staring into space. My father has a monthly appointment with his doctor because of a medication he takes that has to be controlled. Every time we show up in the waiting room, I'm the only one with a book. It's almost as if people were allergic to them. Some of the kids I help with English do not read for pleasure. The only book they'll crack open is the book they have to read for school. I remember when I was a teenager the only books I didn't want to read were the ones for school. If I'd had my way I would only have read books for pleasure. Asking some of my English students, I found that all those who get good grad...

When Americans think about Carnival, they think about New Orleans and Mardi Gras. At the most, Rio de Janeiro. A wild day of floats, parades, and weird costumes. And most probably they have no idea where it comes from. The most immediate past of Carnival is in the Middle Ages. During Lent eating meat was forbidden, so all the meat from the butchering of the previous fall needed to be eaten. After Easter, the weather would get warmer and the meat would go bad. But its oldest history dates back to pagan times. It has evolved over the centuries into a festival of excesses. Costumes to hide a person's true identity helped individuals do things no one would have condoned otherwise, such as pulling up women's skirts, kissing a strange woman or running and hitting someone with a stick. A costume would also designate someone as the "devil" and a person to be avoided, as that person would run through the crowd doing mischief. During Carnival the "devil" would run a...

By law Spaniards have a month's vacation during a calendar year. By law. On paper, some benefits look like they've been written in invisible ink because you just can't see them. Generally, the bigger companies comply, though they tend to scatter the vacation throughout the year. Few companies shut down an entire month, mostly in August, and then mostly manufacturers. But my husband's company is a father and son business with less than ten employees. The only concession to vacation is made during the one or two days of festival in the parish where it's located and half a week during the festival of our town, in September. As a result, we've never taken a vacation together anywhere since we were married. We would go for an all-day drive around Galicia to see someplace new or revisit favorite areas, such as the Costa da Morte where so many ships have foundered on treacherous rocks and shoals. But we would leave in the early morning and be back by early evening. T...

Sometimes, when I walk through a weekly market, I miss seeing something very typical of my childhood. It was a symbol, to me, of my childhood vacations in Spain. Old ladies in black. An old lady with the traditional headscarf. I can't think about any trip I made here in my childhood and teen years without visualizing an old woman wearing a black scarf, black blouse, black skirt, black stockings and black shoes. It was something you would see everywhere. Mostly in the villages, because cities everywhere tend to be more modern and universal. But the villages have always held old traditions much longer, including that of dressing in mourning when a loved one has died. And the cultural rites of mourning lasted long; three years for a mother, two for a father, at least one for a child, a sister or a brother, and the rest of your life for a spouse. Therefore some women would start wearing black in their forties and would never take it off again. I remember asking once why my grandm...