Spanish views from a small town

This week has suddenly clouded over, but until today we've had summer weather practically since May, heatwave included. Beautiful weather with the typical blue skies, puffy white clouds some days, sun, tepid breezes. I am lucky this year, and the past few years. When I was younger, I couldn't have enjoyed this. I would have been sneezing in a corner, surrounded by tissues and sporting a red, puffy nose, and streaming eyes. I have allergies. While living in Boston, I would get the streaming eyes and nose in May and again in September. Working at a children's hospital, I would ask one of the doctors I secretaried for, for a prescription for one of the new-generation antihistamines. Why go through the bother of getting an appointment somewhere else and missing work for a piece of paper I could get at work? My insurance wouldn't have covered the cost of the drug, anyway. So I got by for a couple of years.  Once here, though, the prescription disappeared. Worse, I discov...

I was finally able to drag my husband down to Portugal, specifically to Porto, my favorite foreign city. He had been under the impression, generated by dumb stereotypes, that Portugal was a poor country with no initiative, which produced cheap goods. He still had the images from boyhood of people who would go down to northern Portugal to the feiras , the open air markets, to buy cheap linens and housewares that were badly made and inexpensive. That was because from the oil crisis of the mid seventies, to around ten years later, the years of my husband's boyhood, Portugal confronted an economic downturn. Since the mid eighties till this last world recession, Portugal has grown exponentially. Now, it is beginning to recover, as well, much better than Spain, which still pursues the austerity delusion.  As a result, Porto is now being recuperated. Old gems of buildings are being reconstructed or recuperated. The first time I visited, in March, 2013, it seemed a sad city. Beautiful st...

There is a small stretch of road just below my house that seems to be haunted. The haunting is caused either by bad spirits, bad vibes, or bad drivers. With yesterday's accident, there's been three or four in the past five or seven years.  If you count in the curve upon which our house sits, the number of accidents in the last thirty years goes up. Accidents on the curve are understandable. In the years we've been living here, we've had two cars try to park under our vineyards. In both cases, the haunting was a case of bad drivers. The curve we're sitting on is about a seventy degree curve, though it has been softened by cutting into the inside of the curve in the last thirty years, and not to be taken at over eighty kilometers an hour. You wouldn't know that from some of the rockets that fly by. Sometimes, I hear a whistling sound coming from the left. Suddenly, there's a roar and an unidentified flying object flashes past, leaving a trail of debris danci...

My earliest memories of cooling off during summer heat, are of wading in Frog Pond in a red and blue swimsuit with white trim. And of my mother not letting me get in the water when a redhead older than me was in, topless. From those memories of Boston Common, which was not too far from our apartment on Hanover Avenue in the North End, my head jumps to Castle Island and South Boston. By then my father had gotten his license and we had a grey Toyota Corolla with a red interior. We had also bought a house and moved to Jamaica Plain, where we had two immense maple trees in the back yard. They helped to make the back porch livable in the summer months. Our cooling-off plan every Sunday that was sunny and hot, involved a lot of heat in the morning. My mother, like every good Galician woman, would cook up a gargantuan meal. In the early years, she also prepared meat to put in the cooler and later grill on the hibachi we also lugged with us. Toward midday, we would pack the car: folding t...

Most of Spain has been in an intense heatwave this week. Today, it just started to touch us here. Temperatures of well above 100ºF/38ºC have created one of the earliest heatwaves in recent memory. Normally, the first heatwave hits around the end of June, but this year it decided to show up early to the party. As a result, school is still in session. The last day is still a week away, on the 23rd of the month. Children are having a hard time of it in school.  They're having a hard time because the powers that be have decided schools do not need air conditioning. The regional head of health services in Madrid, when asked about the lack of air conditioning, and how students should fight the heat, answered that air conditioning was not a solution for everything, and that the children should use hand-held fans to cool off, suggesting making them from paper as an "important occupational therapy."  This after giving advice on combating the heat. Yes, the man is a doctor.  Th...

It's June, and on everyone's mind is on the coming summer and vacation. Those who have children think about it. Those who have to take care of a relative's child think about it. Those who work with children think about it. But the only ones who are truly going to enjoy a long vacation are the children.  Ah, but it doesn't have to be like that. Not according to just about every commercial on television. Publicity for websites, like Booking, Kayak, TripAdvisor, Rumbo, and others, tell you how easy it can be to book the cheapest trip possible, and show tantalizing pictures of five star hotel rooms in the most emblematic tourist spots. You know when you see them that the cheapest night there is still way above your budget, though, and they never show you just what you can afford, a tiny, cramped hotel room with a window facing an air well.  Then there are the beer commercials. Yes, champagne commercials usher in the Christmas season, and beer commercials usher in summer...

I admit that driving under the influence is not funny in itself. Too many lives have been lost because someone was feelin' jus' fine to drive after having swilled five beers, two whiskies, three gin tonics, and a little celebratory bubbly. Granted that there are those who aren't fit to drive after just one beer, such as my husband. But then, he doesn't drink because he doesn't like the taste of alcohol. Still, when the only damages are only to inanimate things, some situations can get very strange, and elicit a couple of guffaws. About a couple of weeks ago, a film appeared on the news of a drunk driver in a pedestrian square in Seville at around six in the morning. A guy was trying to drive his car up some steps into a square. When he realized he couldn't, he got down, looked around at the situation, and went and sat behind the wheel again, trying to back down the stairs. He hit trees behind him, the wall by the stairs, and stopped again. By this time, the po...

My daughter was lent a book to read last week. It's Fariña , by Nacho Carretero. Fariña means flour in Galician, and is also the slang word for cocaine. The book tells of how narcs operated in Galicia, connections with the Medellín cartel and the "great" narc families of Galicia. It also talks about how drug smuggling came about.  There has been a tradition since before the civil war of goods transporting themselves across the border between Portugal and Galicia. Not so long ago, the border crossings were patrolled by the Policía Nacional on the Spanish side, and the Guarda Republicana on the Portuguese. Merchandise was controlled, and people had to show their passports. Now, thanks to the European Union, it's just a matter of keeping on the road you're on. The only things that change are the language, the road signs, and a little bit of the architecture.  During the civil war and just after, Spain was plunged into misery and need. Portugal at that time was...

If you ever come on a fishing trip to the mountains of northwestern Spain, be aware that the spot on the stream you have staked out, with only the trees, the water, and the mountains for company, just might have been staked out before your arrival. That is what a fisherman discovered last Sunday while fishing on the river Navia, in eastern Lugo, near the border with neighboring Asturias. At around eight in the morning, he felt a presence. He looked up and saw a brown bear looking at him. As is understandable, the fisherman wanted to immediately transport himself elsewhere, but wasn't exactly sure how. While he was thinking out the spiny problem, of run howling or stay absolutely still , he was actually staying absolutely still. The bear decided to leave in the interim, crossed the river, and was lost to sight on the other bank. The article I read didn't state, but I imagine the fisherman decided to decamp and look for fish somewhere else. Immediately. That isn't the fi...

Leaving Madrid on the A6 heading northeast, a few kilometers before reaching the Sierra de Guadarrama, you can see to the left topping a small hill, a large white cross. If you take the next exit and get on the road to the Escorial, you will pass a road leading up to a gated entrance, beneath that cross. That is the Valle de los Caídos. It is a mausoleum, created and built by Franco. His intention was to commemorate the founder of the Falange Española, the Spanish fascist party, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was re-interred here, and the Nationalist soldiers that died in the Civil War. When the time came, Franco was also interred here.  I remember on a trip to Madrid, on the way back my daughter and I went to the Monastery of the Escorial, and saw the entrance leading up. I thought to visit and pointed the car up the hill. Until I saw the sign by the gate, that had the prices for visitors on foot and visitors by car. I decided not to go, so as not to further help pay for the ...

There has been a growing trend among the young and socially conscious, of occupying abandoned buildings to use as social centers. Centers where classes are held, small concerts, symposiums, book presentations, food and clothing collection for the needy, and other events that serve to intellectually uphold the community. Of course, those empty buildings still have owners. Most of those owners keep those buildings empty until they can sell them at a better price than they bought them, or to simply tear them down and build an expensive abomination on the site. The building is used simply as part of the real estate speculation that brought about the real estate bubble in the first place. There is such a building in the historic center of Santiago de Compostela. This can't be torn down without express permission and much planning and approval of blueprints, because the city is a World Heritage Site and the center is very much protected. But it can be resold at a much higher price. So,...

Lunch had been finished. My husband and I were still sitting at the table. I was thinking of getting up and washing the dishes to get ready for my afternoon classes. From time to time we expressed disbelief at the news on television about the corruption that seems to seep out from the government every day. My husband's phone rang. Short, quick words. It was his mother. A car was starting to burn and there might be someone inside, she wasn't sure. My husband drops the phone, picks up the extinguisher we have and runs out to his car. I run back, turn off the television, and pick up the keys to my car. On the way, I call the Spanish emergency number, 112. I'm put on hold. Three times on the tiny drive into the village, I am told the operators are busy. I hang up. I call the regional number, 061 and I am answered almost immediately. But they inform me they already know and firefighters and ambulance are on the way. I park in front of my in-laws' house. The road is filling...