Spanish views from a small town

No, there isn't much on television these days. Despite the rise in the number of channels since the begining of digital terrestial television (TDT here in Spain) the same garbage is being shown on all of them, more or less. There are only a couple of shows I definitely watch, aside from the daily news. Otherwise, the television is off while I'm alone in the house. So what's the problem? The problem is our location. Just as it is nefarious for internet and cell phone coverage, it's equally nefarious for television reception. At the beginning of last winter we lost five channels. They just disappeared, including the channel that had the most objective news program. However many times I retuned the television to try to find them, they haven't reappeared. And now at certain hours for the last few days, the rest of the channels disappear, to reappear an hour or two later. So I can be watching the news and it disappears, leaving me blinking at an empty black screen. Or ...

At ten o'clock in the morning the temperature was already up to seventy degrees. The prediction here is that it will reach ninety degrees. But in the interior of Galicia, near Castilla-León, it's supposed to reach over a hundred. It's a heatwave that is touching us after broiling the rest of the country over the weekend. But, while in the interior it will last through tomorrow, here on the coast we're going to get a seabreeze and sea fog this evening. We're always on the edge, never in the thick of things. Don't get me wrong, I can't stand temperatures of over a hundred. But it seems we have a different microclimate on this westernmost coast that denies us the extremes of summer or winter. While I don't want days of extreme heat, one every year would be enough to say that summer has touched us. On the contrary, we also almost never get snow. Winter is not winter without snow. But the national television stations don't seem to take our microclimate ...

The Roman Empire was created by engineers. Forget the consuls, the generals, the emperors. If it weren't for the engineers, there wouldn't have been an empire. Instead of reguarding Caesar and his campaigns as ingenious, we should remember the unknown engineers that made his success possible. To begin with, the empire needed gold. Gold can easily be found on the surface in only a few areas. But if you dig you can find more. When the Roman legions made their way into Hispania, they found an area in the northwest where the indigenous Celts easily found gold. The Romans then said, "Ah hah! This is where we dig." Then they called in the engineer to find out the best way.  The engineer looked at the area, scratched his head, made a few measurements and then said, "Okay, I've got it figured out. We'll do it this way." Then he went on to enumerate the precise way to create a ruina montium or how best to take a mountain and destroy it in the search for ...

This evening is St. John's Eve, or Midsummer's Eve. This is the night the summer solstice was originally celebrated the width and breadth of old Europe, before Christianity appeared to regulate everything according t0 the saints. Tonight there will be bonfires all over Spain, but they will no longer be lit to frighten away evil spirits from the sun. Tonight they will be lit first for the spectacle of an enormous bonfire reflecting light from the fading sky, and then when it dies down, to roast the traditional sardines (or not-as-expensive spare ribs and sausages). Later on, when most people's throats have been dampened by wine, merry-goers will jump over the glowing coals three times, ensuring that witches don't bother them during the following year. Of course, the clinics and ER's will see a few visits from burn victims, who thought the wine they showered their stomachs with would protect them from a stronger element. Some groups of young people have been prepari...

Today is the first day of my vacation. Yesterday classes ended and so did mine. But only until the first of July. Then, my summer classes begin until September, my true vacation month. So now I am free for a week and a half. Summer vacation! Whooping, running, jumping for summer joy as we would leave primary school on the last day. A summer of doing whatever you want, almost, with the exception of parental rules. Getting up at twelve if you wanted, staying out until dark, playing if you felt like it, reading if you didn't. Just lying on the porch, looking up at the leaves dancing in the breeze, watching the cloud formations and imagining until you fell asleep. I feel the expectation of such a summer right now, but it's only a childhood memory. Vacation as an adult is not so carefree. It only means I don't have to work. I still have all the chores to do and all the things associated with living as an adult. I'll truly be free for only one day, when I plan to go out for...

This weekend in Lugo they're celebrating Arde Lvcvs. It's one of those festivals where people dress up according to a historical period. In Lugo the most important historical period was the Roman, when the Romans founded the city by first building a castrum, to defend themselves against the surrounding Celts. From that military fort the city grew and became one of the most important cities of Roman-occupied Hispania. Lucus Augusti had a wall protecting it built in the third century. That wall, though modified and reconstructed in areas, still exists. In fact, Lugo is the only city in the world to still have a complete wall built by the Romans surrounding it. That is one of the reasons it was declared a World Heritage Site in the year 2000. Unfortunately, little else remains from those times. Most of it is in the provincial museum, which we visited in January.  The declaration of the wall as a Heritage Site, though, prompted people to start a celebration of Roman and Celti...

I have three director's chairs in my study which are comfortable and practical. If I don't need one I simply fold it and put it away. Unfortunately, the seat fabric on one of them has torn. So today I went searching for another replacement chair.  How difficult can it be to find a folding director's chair? More difficult than you can imagine. I went to the place where I had bought the ones I have. They didn't have any more, just a folding lawn chair that cost too much and regular wooden or metal folding chairs. So from there I went to the local Leroy Merlin and searched. Now if I had wanted to pay seventy euros for a teak wooden garden chair I was fine. No dice. From there to a furniture store that advertised auxiliary furniture. By that they meant hall tables and bookcases. No folding chairs. At my wits end I went to the two major Chinese bazaars in the area. I walked down endless aisles, passing every imaginable household item till I found folding chairs. More than ...

Walmart's in the U.S. has really mushroomed since I've been living here. I've only been in one of their stores once. I can understand their attraction. Most things are cheap. But there is no Walmart's here. There is no one large franchise with hundreds of stores dotting the landscape, filled with cheap, Chinese-produced goods. But there are hundreds of stores dotting the landscape and filled with cheap, Chinese-produced goods. These are the Chinese Bazaars. Each one independently owned by a family, with employees paid normal retail wages (unlike Walmart's, though still low). El Corte Chino, Euro China, MerkAsia, these names and many more tell the shopper that here they can find almost anything they need for their home at a small price. Do you need a plastic box? A leash? A wrench? A notebook? Socks? You can even find small items of furniture, such as tables, folding chairs, hall tables, coat racks, free-standing cabinets, and shelves. The only thing they don'...

As I looked out of the window this afternoon I saw a dark brown transparent cloud go by beneath the regular grey and white ones peppering the sky. There was another forest fire, though not close by. Funny, the fire bugs are starting late this year. Every spring and summer, when there's a period of warm, dry weather, the forests light up like torches. Forest fires have become a plague all over Spain. Understandable are the ones in the middle of extreme heat and drought when a dry lightning storm is passing through. Understandable (though not excusable) are those that begin by the side of a road, most likely because of some thoughtless nicotine addict throwing out the butt rather than smothering it in his ashtray. But not understandable are those that appear in a woods near houses or urbanizations or in areas only approachable by four wheel drive where people do not usually go. Or a fire that starts in four different spots, one right after the other. The why of those fires is a rec...

There are safety regulations in every job, even an office job. Most of those regulations have been defined and put into practice by the European Union. That's good for Spanish workers, because otherwise there'd be more accidents on the job than there already are. In 2008 there were almost nine hundred thousand accidents with a total of almost sixteen million workers. By 2013 the numbers had come down - almost five hundred thousand accidents with thirteen and a half million workers. Those are the official numbers. Then there are the clandestine workers who aren't declared and who suffer accidents. If they're lucky, the accidents aren't mortal. But those accidents that need medical attention are declared as having occurred at home or somewhere no job inspector goes. I know. I have neighbors who have had that happen to them. One neighbor, on unemployment, would sometimes do odd jobs and not declare the earnings. At one job he fell and thought he had broken his arm, t...

In this digital age one would think paper has been relegated to a marginal position, barely used except for very official forms (passport, license, ID). We even get bills by email. So why, when applying for anything, do we have to sign in triplicate? We're still told to keep all receipts for five years. Well, I keep mine forever. The problem is, I'm running out of space. I used to put them in boxes, which have taken up a back wall in my storage room. Now I've been putting them in office file folders. A corner of my study is now being taken over, and the room isn't very large to begin with. I'm not the only one who is careful. A woman whose child was already an adult was served with a bill for two years of school lunches which apparently her child had not been eligible for. The good thing was that the woman never threw anything away and still had the forms which granted her child free lunch, over fifteen years earlier. I've developed a phobia for throwing away ...

Last Thursday was Corpus Christi. That is a Catholic feast celebrating the Eucharist, or the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine at Mass. (Don't worry, I grew up a Catholic but I still had to look that one up.) On that day there are processions in every parish, though in most parishes the processions are celebrated on the following Sunday (ours is an exception, we celebrate it this year on the twentieth of June). To honor the Eucharist, here they make sure that wherever it is taken it is surrounded only by beauty. So, the night before, dedicated parishioners decorate the route with flower petals and colored sand. Over the years it has become an art in most towns.  Ponteareas is one of those towns in Galicia. Its floral carpets are known all over Spain and they get a lot of tourists just to look at them for a few hours, until the procession led by the priest holding the Eucharist and followed by the First Communion children destroys them, leaving only ...

All it takes is one high-pitched whining buzz and an itch. That's how you know you have a mosquito in your bedroom. That's how you start dreaming about drones and planes, shrieking, diving at you to deliver destruction. Destruction of your precious sleep and peace of mind. One very important thing about Boston that I miss is window screens. In Boston all we had to do was be careful with screen doors and windows and the little buggers would bump against the wire with all their frustration and we could laugh at them. I think most of the mosquitos in Boston migrated to Spain, knowing about our lack of screens. Because screens are non-existant here. Whenever I mention them, people screw up their face in thought and say, "You mean you have wire over your windows in America? How strange." There are only two ways to avoid mosquitos in summer. The first is to keep your windows closed all day and all night and suffocate in your sleep. The second is to use a bottle of insect ...

It's the day my daughter has been waiting for ever since a possible European tour was announced. We are finally in Madrid, about to attend the concert of her dreams. She has been worried for a couple of years that the band would be too old to return on tour. Those worries had been dispelled the moment she held the tickets in her hand. (For which she showed up at the store where they were to be sold at six in the morning the day they went on sale.) She said she was prepared to go anywhere in Spain to see them. Of course, the logistics are up to me. We arrive a day early and the morning finds us wandering through the Rastro, the famous Sunday flea market in Madrid. The sun is starting to warm up, even though it's only ten in the morning. On the off chance, I decide to buy a couple of hats. Just in case we have to wait in the sun. I should also have bought a good, opaque umbrella and sunscreen. Especially the sunscreen. It's two o'clock. We've eaten and made a coup...

Saturday morning my daughter and I travelled to Madrid by train. She is an absolute fan of AC/DC and they were giving a concert in Madrid on Sunday night. Since her friend's parents consider them an inappropriate venue for a seventeen-year-old, I'm accompanying her. I hadn't taken a long distance train ride since I was nine years old over thirty years ago. That time my parents and I took the train to Madrid because Iberia Airlines had gone on strike and we had to fly with them to Madrid, from where we would fly to New York on TWA. To avoid last-minute headaches, my parents decided to leave a couple of days earlier for Madrid by train. Trains were totally different back then. While there has been controversy over whether high-speed service should be expanded to Galicia (yes, please!), it's still faster than what it was before. I remember it must have been around ten o'clock when we were standing on the platform in Santiago. It was the month of September and it wa...