Spanish views from a small town

The year is ending, history continues. When one looks back, one can see just how far we've come. And how far we have yet to go. Our society, which seems so much more egalitarian and modern than a hundred years ago, is really not so different. We have the same griefs with the same forces of government and money, just in different ways. Now, we still protest the overreaching of government, and the abuse of those with money. A hundred years ago, people were protesting it and dying for it. In 1909, the powers of Church and State were aligned. Both ruled equally. In Oseira, Ourense, there is a magnificent monastery with its church, which serves as the parish church. That year, the bishop decided to sell a stone canopy which stood over a tomb. (If an entire stone church can be moved stone by stone, so can a stone canopy.) The baldaquin, stone canopy, or ciborium, was the pride of the parishioners, who had been dismayed as the bishop had begun selling off other valuables from the church...

Traditions come and go. For many years, it was a tradition that our daughter be the first one up on Christmas morning. She would go downstairs, bring up all the presents under the tree, and open hers while we opened ours, if we had any. Then, along the morning, our bed would have to be emptied of wrapping paper, bows, and useful boxes. Now, she's a grown-up, so she comes down late in the morning and opens them in the kitchen with us. The wonder in her eyes when she was a child was great to see. Now, it's the expectation of seeing if we could buy her what she asked for, almost always books. I began the tradition of Christmas morning gifts when she was a little girl. The traditional day for gift-giving in Spain is Epiphany, 6 January, which is when the Magi were supposed to have brought their gifts to the infant Jesus. Our daughter was one of the very few in those years who received something from Santa Claus as well as the Magi, or Reyes Magos . Now, just about every kid recei...

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and it's the night everyone gets together for supper. It's the day for family reunions, much like Thanksgiving in the United States. Already last night on the news, they ran a story on arrivals and reunions at the airport in Madrid. Just about every family has relatives living elsewhere. The luckiest come home for Christmas.  Tonight's supper, in this crazy, commercialized world, would be late by any Anglo-Saxon standard. It's normal to start eating past ten at night. This year, doubly so, because stores are open today, and some will close at eight. The employees will probably get to go home at eight-thirty or nine. Supper will be even later in those families.  For the past few weeks, people have been stocking up for this special supper. First and foremost is the seafood. And since everyone plans to serve at least one seafood dish, prices react accordingly. Crab at twenty euros a kilo, prawns at over a hundred. Let's not even get into t...

The bean stew is starting to bubble, the sun is shining warmly after a cool dawn in the upper thirties, and the children from the school of San Ildefonso are singing the Christmas lottery on television. I know I'm not going to win anything other than a possible reimbursement on a number, yet I don't care. My lower back has decided to hurt, but I don't care, either. It's a funny morning. It's a satisfied and happy morning. The cats are meowing all over the house, my husband and I are having our private jokes, and we await our daughter's arrival this evening for Christmas break. There is no real reason for being happy, yet I am. Happiness is a state of mind that the little things foment. Who cares about winning the lottery? With every passing year becoming monetarily rich is the least of my ambitions. I am already rich.  The only thing I wish for is a little more money every month to meet my every need, and a couple of extras, like being able to save up for an...

Fake news. Biased news. It's what we hear about whenever we pick up or enter a newspaper or watch a news program. It's supposed to be news with such a bias that it makes you believe the opposite of what is true, or what is convenient for a certain group. We hear that Russia has meddled in our newsfeeds, creating news stories that aren't true, or extremely biased, picking over facts which help further a cause they support, such as the election of Trump in the U.S., Brexit in Europe, and the Catalan fiasco in Spain, all in the name of creating instability.  There's nothing new under the sun, as mentioned in a wise book, "The thing that hath been, is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." (For those of you who have a current copy, I prefer the King James version; the language is much more beautiful.) The only new thing about fake news is its title. Biased news has existed since the firs...

The United States is an imperfect republic disguised as a democracy. The democratic aspect appears in that, at elections, you vote for a person to represent you according to their platform, broadly based according to the political party the person belongs to. Sometimes it's a choice between good and evil, sometimes it's a choice between the best of two devils. But, once elected, you have the possibility of getting in contact with that representative, whether through emails, regular mail, or telephone. They may ignore you, but you can keep flooding them with attempts at contact. There is that custom of getting in touch with your representative so that they know what their constituents want. Spain has been proud to declare itself a democracy since the first elections after Franco's death. Spain is not a democracy. It is a parliamentary and constitutional monarchy. You vote for a political party. The ballot has a list of names of people who may become your representatives, d...

Today is a typical winter's day in this area. The rain is pouring, the skies are dark, and one has the feeling of a perpetual twilight. It feels like one should be getting ready for supper rather than getting lunch ready. There's a brewing storm offshore forecast for today, an explosive cyclogenesis, that is going to bring much needed rain, albeit in not too subtle a way. Already the tree tops are bending, and the winds are raising their voices in strong gusts that will approach hurricane force this afternoon. The rain is whipping into everything sideways, running from the clouds, trying to burrow into the ground as if to make up for more than a year of drought. There is nothing strange about this storm except its lateness. The first storms of fall generally come at the beginning of October, end of September. This year it's come at the middle of December. Climate change, working its insidious way into our present.  Meteorologists say we'll need about twelve storms l...

These days, thanks to the broken rib, my husband is at home. He likes to read, but he also likes to watch television. However, the offerings of the altar to miscommunication during the afternoon are even more abysmal than during the evening. So my husband ends up watching cartoons because they're much more intelligent than the programs for adults.  One of his (and my) beefs, are all the paparazzi shows that even stretch into the evening, making prime time appear on some channel at close to eleven at night. They also get strange names: Sálveme Deluxe, Sálvame Naranja, Sálvame Limón (Who and what wants to be "saved", aside from the public? All these on just one channel, the title depends on the day, I think), Socialité, Cazamariposas, Qué me Dices, Corazón, Dónde Estás Corazón , etc. Some of them might not even be aired any more, but their names stuck with me. All of them have round table discussions on stories concerning if the wife of so-and-so is going to invite the ex...

Yesterday, my husband and I went for a visit to Santiago. There's always something to see or revisit in that city of stone. This time, we went to the Monastery and Seminary of San Martiño Pinario, right next to the cathedral. It dates in reality back to the tenth century, but there's nothing left from that time except a chapel that is now annexed to the cathedral. The present building was rebuilt and reformed from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and is a mixture of baroque and neoclassical architecture. It was the richest monastery in all of Galicia, with many priories that depended on it. Now it houses a museum, the seminary, a guest house, and a specialty store. There's also a university department in it, I believe, and the archive of the archdiocese of Santiago. It's big enough.   The museum has some treasures from its time of greatness, including a couple of halls dedicated to explaining the role of the monasteries in primitive medicine and pharmacopeia...

Today is a holiday in Spain. We celebrate the adoption of the Constitution of 1978. The day after tomorrow, is another holiday. It's the day of the Immaculate Conception. That leaves one workday in between, which many try to take off and create an uninterrupted five day weekend, which is every kid's dream. Celebrating the Constitution, I can understand. It's the cornerstone upon which our country is presently constructed, flawed though it may be. That same Constitution, however, declares Spain a lay country, with no official religion. So, why celebrate a very Catholic holiday just two days later? Why celebrate any religious holidays in any country that recognizes no official religion? More than anything, because religion is still very much a part of the culture. It can also move millions in money, such as Christmas, Easter, and All Saints' Day. Only observant Catholics celebrate December 8th by going to Mass. Everyone else could care less. Not so, for example, Christm...

I read that a study came out some time ago that proved that taking notes during university lectures on a laptop did not help final comprehension of the subject as much as taking them the old-fashioned way, by hand. I could have told them that. It's true that typing on a keyboard let's you write faster than by hand. Yet, when I write on the computer, sometimes I forget what I wrote earlier, and have to go back and check. When I write by hand, which is becoming rarer, I tend to remember better. Some will argue that taking a laptop to class and using it for notes allows you to write down more, and more quickly. I will counter argue, and say that you can also write down more by hand; just learn to listen and discern which are the important points of a lecture and write fast. With practice, you can get it all down. Trust me, I learned to practically transcribe an entire class in high school.  It was a Latin class, where we had to translate passages of Cicero or Virgil for homewo...

Taxes. They are so hated and feared, that they were incorporated into the saying, "The only certainties in life are death and taxes." Lately we have been hearing on the news, even here in Spain, on how the Republicans in the United States are revamping the tax code to give more money to themselves and their friends, while the rest of the population can starve to death, for all they care. It seems the Spanish code is also similarly constructed. While deductions are almost non-existent for the earner of the lowest incomes, it seems we have to declare every centime that comes into every household, even the winnings of small Christmas sweepstakes. I'm not against paying taxes in return for services, but sometimes what is considered taxable income is ridiculous. It's a Christmas tradition in Spain for small associations, bars, companies, etc., to organize a Christmas sweepstakes. For the price of a raffle, you opt for a prize mostly of food: cured ham, wines, liquors, ma...

Last Saturday was the day against gender violence. There were marches and protests in at least fifty Spanish cities and towns. My mother-in-law, my daughter, and I joined the protest in Santiago that night. It was large, composed of mostly young women, with a few scattered men, generally younger, and a few older couples with their children. But we were all united in denouncing the violence that centuries of patriarchy have imposed on women in just about all the world. Forty-eight women and eight children have been killed so far this year by the men they most loved. While that may not seem like many women out of a total population of over forty million, it's still too many. And that number only represents forty-eight cases of abuse and humiliation that have ended in death. Many hundreds or thousands more women suffer violence of one kind or another from their husbands, boy friends, or partners. Some go to the police; too many stay quiet, hoping not to trigger another bout of slaps...