Spanish views from a small town

December 31st and the year is at an end. These are days for reflection on what has gone before and awaiting what will come in the next year. When I was growing up in Boston my parents and I watched the news on WCVB. There was a Lifestyle commentator and critic who, every December 31st had a tradition. His spot on that evening would always consist of him saying, very fast, brand names of things that had been fashionable the previous year. It lasted less than a minute, and toward the end he would begin to slow down and would end at a normal speed. There were no sentences, simply names. That is the memory I have. A compilation of the year in our daily lives. But this is an artificial ending. Every day is the end of a year. December 31st is simply the end of the calendar year. And it's only wherever the Gregorian calendar is followed. Yes, it's now a civil calendar and used internationally so that everyone knows what day the other is talking about. Still, there are broad areas in...

Ever since last week, we have had rain, wind, and warm temperatures in our corner. The rest of northern Spain has had wind and out-of-season temperatures. And so, there have been forest fires.  Normally, in northern Spain there aren't many wildfires; Galicia is the exception. Other regions along the Bay of Biscay tend to administer better their forests and mountains, keeping them cleaner, cutting, and replanting. Therefore wildfires are unusual. But this is an unusual fall and winter. By now the first snowfall in the mountains would have fallen. Ski resorts would have opened and down by the sea the grey fogs would have kept everything green and wet. No one could have lit a serious fire, whether by praying to God or to Vulcan. But not this year.  Farmers tend to clean off pastures and fields in the winter. Everything they cut or prune they stack together and set fire to around this time of year to slowly smoulder and gradually burn down. But this year some of these fires ha...

Ever since last winter, my husband abandons me on early Sunday mornings. Weather permitting, he will get up at four thirty or a little later, eat breakfast, get his gear ready, and leave to join his friends. The three of them go to little nooks along the coast where they are sheltered from the wind. Where they go depends upon where the wind is blowing from. They have places where they are sheltered from the north wind, and places sheltered from the southerly winds. Generally, they are up on rocky cliffs, occasionally down on the beach. There they fish to their hearts' content.  Slowly, since last year, my husband has accumulated the necessary equipment. Some of it is new, other pieces are second-hand, found after much scrolling through websites. Some evenings my husband will sit and search the internet, checking new equipment and fishing articles. I have learned new vocabulary, mostly in English but it could be in Thai for all I understand. Jigging, spinning, casting, surfcasting...

I went shopping with my daughter this morning for New Year's Eve clothes. Thanks to the weather, there weren't that many people, so the episode was relatively stressless. And it did give a chance to observe different shoppers, including some men who were accompanying women. Up to a point, things have changed from the days when the woman went into a shop and the man waited outside with the bags. Now the man tends to enter with the woman, but he doesn't always show much interest. My husband went with our daughter the other day and he says he loves to go shopping with her because they think alike. Both tend to know exactly what they want and go directly to where it should be with blinders on. And while he and I are different in our approach, he has no problem going shopping with me, either. Today there were men helping the women make a selection. There was a whole family of mother, father, aunt, younger son, and late adolescent son finding nice party clothes for the youngste...

Leftovers and trash. That's what the day after Christmas is all about. Leftover seafood, leftover meat, leftover sweets. How many recipes for leftover food can there be? It doesn't matter that you try to buy so that you finish the food in one sitting. There will always be moments of, "Well, everybody loves this dish, so of this I had better buy a little extra for seconds." Those seconds turn into thirds that leave something else uneaten. And, of course, after gobbling down three dishes of seafood, and one enormous dish of meat, the sweets are ignored. So you nibble on them whenever you visit the pantry. Which is often. The day after Christmas you look at the exultant refrigerator, you look at the pants that shrank, you look at your thinned wallet, you think of all those in the world who are starving, and you swear that next year you will buy less. And next year comes and you do the same thing all over again.  Trash is another story. I remember the trash day after Ch...

Tonight is Christmas Eve, tomorrow Christmas Day. After having endured elections this past Sunday and lottery disappointment on Tuesday, between yesterday and today many have endured Christmas travel. Airports are filled with greetings, shouts, tears and laughter as people arrive home from wherever life has taken them. Roads are filled with drivers criscrossing the country, and sometimes various countries, to get home in time for Christmas Eve dinner. 'Tis the season for reunions. Spain, and particularly our region of Galicia, is a country of emigrants. History has always been brutal with the lowest classes, which have always had to find a way up by leaving their homes. In the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth, most went across the ocean to North and South America. From the 60's onwards, people began to migrate to the rest of western Europe. And now you can find a Spanish emigrant in almost every country of the world. Except at Christmas. Because a few...

It's just two days before Christmas and I have things to do and buy before tomorrow evening, but my mind and my body don't feel like moving, thinking, or dealing with what needs to be done. It's a dark, pearly gray outside. It seems as if the world has shut me in my house, which has shut me in my mind. In the morning the darkness does not let me wake up until almost lunchtime. It doesn't matter that I'm out of bed. I am waiting for the daylight to reach me, but it doesn't. In the afternoon I will probably set out as early as possible, but most shops won't open until four or five in the afternoon. And by then night will be falling, and the gray light will simply get darker until night enshrouds all. I envy those who like days like today. People who seem cozy with the dim light, the eternal moisture, and the early darkness. I may ask for a day like this one once every eleven months. No more. I am more of a sunlight freak. On days like this whenever I notic...

The lottery chant has just begun at a little past nine o'clock. A few minutes into it, hopes began to be dashed as the second prize, with a million and a half euros, came out. Every year there is the same illusion, and every year it gets dashed. Some years a little of it remains with the small prizes.  It's not a rich lottery. Most people buy a tenth of an entire ticket worth twenty euros. The first prize is 400,000 euros to the tenth, or décimo . That is not enough to retire upon and buy a house in the Caribbean. But to those who are unemployed or who have a slave-wage job it is a life buoy that will help lift them out of debt. And to those who have a boss they wish they could throw a jackhammer at, it lets them do so and gain time to find a nicer boss. It's not easy to win the first prize. There are 99,999 numbers. The chances of winning the top prize has been compared to a drop in five liters of water. Still, it is Christmas, the time of year when illusion runs riot an...