Spanish views from a small town

Publicity. You just can't get away from it. Some call it inevitable, a result of our modern living. That without it, our economic system would collapse. Heck, it might even get boring. I remember reading a book by the wife of an American student based on a diary she kept while her husband was doing research at Moscow University in the 1970's. She described how empty of light and color the city was. There was no publicity. No billboards, no colored lights. Granted, one of the attractions of New York City is Times Square with all its lights and advertisements that cover what would probably be prosaic buildings in a prosaic square. Still, that doesn't mean we like to be told to try Mentos or shop at H&M in our every waking minute, no matter where we are. A case in point. I have a Facebook account. Along the side are groups and posts the gods of Facebook suggest I might be interested in. I ignore them. From time to time, they slip onto my wall "suggested posts."...

A ten year old boy is asked by his mother to put breakfast on the table. He says no and continues listening to music and playing a game on his €800 phone. She insists, and he smashes the phone against the floor in her general direction. She slaps him. That same boy, a year later and now eleven, goes to the door, announcing he's leaving home. His mother grabs him by the neck, inadvertently scratching him. Who's in the wrong? The boy or the mother? According to strict interpretation of Spanish law, the mother. Which is why the boy's father (separated from the mother) and the boy decided to denounce the mother for abuse. What the state attorney was asking for against the mother was thirty-five days social jobs, a year and a half prohibited from owning or carrying firearms, and a restraining order of fifty meters from her son for six months. The judge, however, absolved her of all wrongdoing. According to him, the child, in his testimony, was cold and calculating, and showed ...

This past weekend was the International Festival of Celtic Music in Ortigueira, on the northern coast of the province of A Coruña. It began on the Thursday, and ended on Sunday night. While there is some pretty good music from all over the world (including a Japanese group this year - don't ask where the Celt comes in here), most young people go for the camping, the beach, and the camaraderie to be found.  My daughter, being twenty and young, also went this year. Fortunately or unfortunately, this month she has a temporary job, and her week ends at nine thirty on Fridays. This year, too, there was the threat of a general bus strike, which was called off at the last minute, and no buses to Ortigueira were programmed from Santiago. So, she was desperately searching for transportation from friends and acquaintances during the week before. She finally found someone to take her, her friend, and one more passenger. The bad part, that the guy driving was starting out at one in the morni...

Watching the French president and his wife greet the Trumps this week, and the completely irrelevant and insulting remarks Trump offered ("She's in such good physical shape." Really? Did you expect her to be flabby and sagging and fat just because she's closer in age to you than to Melania?), I thought about how different the consort of a leader is treated according to the country and the leader.  To begin, the only consort that seems to grab much media attention, internationally at least, is the American First Lady. Since Eleanor Roosevelt, if not earlier, each dedicates herself to one cause or another and becomes its most public advocate. I suppose that having seen Michelle Obama in such a public fight against childhood obesity, it is strange to see that Melania doesn't want to go public on anything. It was mentioned back in January or so that she would take up the cause against bullying. At least that's what I think she was supposed to espouse, though man...

Twenty years ago, the Basque terrorist group, ETA, began its downhill ride into oblivion. It kidnapped a councilor of the town of Ermua, Miguel Ángel Blanco, on 10 July, 1997. ETA sent out a message to the central government; send all prisoners of ETA from prisons all over Spain to the Basque country within forty-eight hours. Otherwise, they would kill Miguel Ángel. The government said no. The people said no. Protests all over Spain shot up and recriminated ETA, telling the terrorists people would not stand for their tactics any longer. ETA didn't listen, and, as the government didn't meet its demands, on 12 July, it shot Miguel Ángel in the back of the head and left him for dead on a path in the woods near San Sebastian. There, he was found and taken to the hospital, but he died the next day. His death marked the end of ETA and the beginning of peace attempts, which has since seemed to have come about. Yet, it was one more death of many murders which ETA committed over the y...

Ahh, the beach in summertime. When you're young, a towel, some sunscreen, a book at the most, and you're off, to lie in the sun with your friends. Someone might take a soccer ball. Someone else a couple of paddles and a ball. If it's windy, perhaps a windbreaker to set up on the sand and sit out of the wind. That's it. When you're still young but have that special relationship with that special person, you might spend the night together on the beach. When you're older and have children, the equipment grows. A small folding table, folding chairs, a pack of sandwiches and some water bottles. Toys of all kinds, small bodyboards for children, floating devices. But before you head for the beach, check out the prohibitions. There is one good thing on Spanish beaches; they're all public and free. Even if the private property of a millionnaire reaches to the shoreline, the beach is public. No small jewel of a sandy spot is off limits to anyone, even though you mig...

Whenever I go on one of my rambles, whether alone or with my husband or daughter, I study a map beforehand. I either buy a physical map of the area I am visiting, or I download and print a more detailed map from the internet. The key to me is to have it in paper form in my hand. I love to trace the green and red roads along the paper, see all the different roads they interlace with, and the different places along the way. When I start the drive, the maps are in the passenger seat, either lying there for me to check, or for the passenger to advise me. I have never had a GPS thingee, whatever they're called; Tom-Tom Go, Garmin, I don't care. I have never had my phone programmed to give me directions, either. I have used Google Maps on occasion, but like a physical map, for me to check under my own power. I have always preferred to find out by myself how to get to a spot. If my powers of reading a map are not good enough for a certain area, then I will stop and ask someone local...

When we think of a cow, in our mind's eye we see a cow in a pasture, behind a fence, or in a barn, looking at us with its soft brown eyes, boredom on its face, as it chews its cud. Yesterday, vacationers had a different experience. It was a hot day. Here, we got a sea breeze in the afternoon, and sea fog rolled in late in the evening. But the rest of Spain broiled, and those who could, went to the beach. Including a cow and its calf.  At Playa de Bolonia in Cádiz, beach goers were left speechless when a large cow and its trotting calf came down to the sands and stood beneath a beach umbrella set over two beach chairs, waiting for the bather who had stamped them there. Whether someone waved a stick at them, or shooed them out, they would not move. The mother even ended up plunking herself down in the shade of the umbrella. The fact is, the two visitors are part of herds that live in semi-liberty and that have always wandered down to the beach. It's the human beach goers th...

Today is Independence Day. It is the day my adopted country declared its independence from Britain's tyranny. The prime reason for it was economic, as always. Thanks to the money spent on the French and Indian War, Parliament imposed taxes upon the colonies without the colonies having any say in the matter. Things escalated, especially in troublesome Boston, and the end was the birth of a nation.  When I was a little girl, we celebrated the Bicentennial, in 1976. I don't remember much, except a patriotic coloring book I got that year, with scenes of American history to color. I suppose the simple lines describing the pictures prompted me to find out more, because by the time I studied U.S. history in fifth grade, I already knew most of what was in the textbook. Back then I was proud of my country, and thought it would last forever as a symbol of freedom.  Now, I think its heyday has gone. Every night we listen to the news and hear and see things that make me cringe. Whenev...

It's a sunny day in July. You have the afternoon free and it's warm and just right to head for the beach. You gather everything, towel, sunscreen, bathing suit (a bikini on me would scare off half the beach), that relaxing book you want to reread, get in the car and set its prow to the beach you've been going to for the last ten years because of its shady spots. As you drive down the curving lane that ends at a little spot of paradise, you start to notice cars parked along the ditches. You turn the last curve, and see wall-to-wall cars in every empty spot available, even under the pine trees. Your heart sinks. It's no longer a question of parking in a shady spot, it's a question of parking within half a kilometer. But you finally finagle a spot that would make an acrobat proud to park in and be able to open the door enough to wiggle out. You take your bag and go to find a shady spot. There isn't any. They've all been taken. There's almost no spot even in...

There are news stories that will always stay with you. Then there are things you have witnessed that cling to you, as well. They aren't always bad, though some are. The funny thing is, you always remember them when you pass by the scene where they happened. Otherwise, you don't think of them at all. Every time we take our daughter up to Santiago, we try to avoid the tollway and go by the crowded road. Just after Padrón is Iria Flavia. I remember that Camilo José Cela is buried in the churchyard there. He won the Nobel Prize back in the 80's for The Family of Pascual Duarte . It's a very dark book that should be read on a bright sunny day. It's also the only thing he ever wrote that's worthwhile. In his latter years he was under a cloud of accused plagiarism, and I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out not to be the legitimate author of the book. His Foundation and Library are also there, in front of the church, right on the road. I remember that his young...