Spanish views from a small town

A verdict has been handed down in the case of the group of five men that gang raped an eighteen-year-old woman in the entrance of an apartment building two years ago during Pamplona's San Fermín festival. Each of the five of La Manada , as they called themselves, was sentenced to nine years imprisonment and compensate the victim with €10,000. The judge declared them guilty of sexual abuse, not sexual aggression, therefore they are not guilty of rape. The reason given is that there was no intimidation nor violence.  Outside the courthouse, howls went up upon hearing the sentence. The bare facts are these: a young girl who had drunk too much found herself with a group of five men who led her into the open entryway of an apartment building. There, they took her clothes off and proceded to rape her, vaginally, anally, and orally, while filming the ordeal with their phones. When they were done with her, they let her go. She was found later on a park bench by a couple, in a state of sh

Through a link, I reached an  article in the Kentucky Kernel, which seems to be the online newspaper of the University of Kentucky. It's short, and written by a student who studied abroad in Spain a couple of summers, once in Barcelona and once in Sevilla, then returned for an internship in Madrid. In it, the young woman listed five things she loved about Spain after her short experience here. Two of those I agree with, mostly. Most cities and towns are walkable. It's not much of a feat to walk a few blocks, and there is much to involve the senses. The other thing is the food. It is quite varied from one region to another, and the tapas are good, in general. Yes, there are some places that aren't worth blackening the threshold with one's shadow, but other bars and restaurants are sublime. However, I take umbrage with the other three reasons to love Spain. They prove that the young lady hasn't really bothered to dive more profoundly into the country and its quir

I don't have a couch. Our house is too small. We do have a couple of comfortable director's chairs in my study, though. So, I'm a director's chair potato. For some unfathomable reason, nature has seen fit to regale me with interests that are best enjoyed sitting or standing quietly. Show me a pair of gym shorts and I'll put them on; but to escape the summer heat in my study.  Unfortunately, my body was gifted with a looooong metabolism. So long that the few calories I ingest act upon my body as if I had sat down to a five course banquet at every meal. The sedentary interests and my body don't go well together.  Once upon a few years ago, I walked a few days every week, for about an hour. That was the time I lost some weight, though I never made it back down to where I was when I got married. Those fifty-two kilos, roughly a hundred fifteen pounds, were the product of well over a year of eating better and moving my body. But, at twenty, the body is more elast

As promised, spring has finally shown its face. And it's done it much like I had envisioned; with a bang. This past week the rains stopped, the sun came out, and the air from Africa brought temperatures worthy of late May or early June. Suddenly, trees remembered they had leaves waiting to come out, and blossoms shook off their winter coats. It suddenly became much more pleasant to be outside than to sit inside the still-cool house. Windows have been propped open to let the air in, and the wood stove has only been lit late in the evening to warm the house (kitchen) for the night, but only for a few hours. Finally, I've started to wear short sleeves, though it's not quite shorts-warm. Yesterday and the day before I've already been walking, to the village and back. Before this week, walking was a question of running out to the car, and back to the door before getting very wet.  I think it was Thursday night, I stepped outside and was surprised by a sound. At first, I

One of the sights of Boston in the spring, apart from the reappearance of the swan boats in the Public Gardens, or the blooming of the ancient trees on the Common, is the recurrent potholes. The truth is, though, they never really go away. So, you will find potholes of all sizes in all weathers and seasons. Or, at least, in the Boston I remember of almost thirty years ago. It is also a permanent state of being of roads here in Galicia. Whether you drive a national road, or a local lane, or a highway that cuts across wide swathes of country, you will inevitably find the pothole.  There are all kinds. There's the troublesome where the upper layer of special asphalt to prevent skids has worn off, and jars the car enough to make you look for a different spot to lay your wheels. Then there's the little hole that is unnoticeable at first, but after a few rain showers, the hole grows ever so slightly bigger, until it's big enough to swallow a tire. And then there's the meg

I always knew my complaint would reach no safe port. When my tire got blasted by the object lying in the middle of the lane on the tollway, I knew I was on my own. Now, five months after it happened, my certainty has been confirmed. The insurance called me yesterday at midday to tell me my claim against the tollway AP-9, run by Audasa, an affiliate of Grupo Itínere, which in itself belongs to Citigroup (we're talking big, big money, and big, big money always wins), was deemed unfounded. They are calling me a liar.  They claim there was no object lying in the lane, and that no call was made that day to complain of one. They say I have no proof of anything happening. Yet, I called the central offices on their direct SOS line from a booth on the highway, which records all the calls. I distinctly remember the person on the other side saying that, yes, there had been a complaint about the object earlier. The maintenance crew did come and change the tire for me. Yet now they are sayi

When one can wander from one language to another, one finds gems that are perfectly understood, but can't be put into a concrete word in another language. Sometimes, a word will make you stop. You understand perfectly the feelings the word pulls up, but there is no other word in your vocabulary which can substitute it. It just sits there, in glory and solitude, transmitting its intense feeling, hitting the language barriers all around it. Galician has quite a few such words. The one which is the most difficult isn't even Galician, but Portuguese. Saudade is a Portuguese word which was incorporated into Galician many moons ago. There simply is no way to translate it. Two of the examples in which I have found it come to mind. One is seeing it engraved in tombstones in a Portuguese cemetery. The other is in a song by Andrés do Barro, a Galician songwriter, "Teño saudade, saudade teño de ti. Teño saudade de ti, meu Deus, teño saudade de ti." (The singer is missing some

A family spat is all it is, but a family spat should remain inside the walls of the home unless criminal behavior is involved. Every family has them, especially between the in-laws. In every culture the mother-in-law is a maligned creature. I suppose it's because a mother wants to remain in her child's life forever, even after that child has formed his own family.  I have had differences with my mother-in-law, but I have never (I hope) brought them into the public eye. It's normal to have them. I do respect her, however, for the hard-working person she is, because she is essentially a good person, and for the fact that she is my husband's mother and my daughter's grandmother. Any differences are to be discussed in private.   That should be explained to our Queen Letizia. I understand that in this age of ubiquitous cameras, she should want to control her daughters' images and who takes photos of her, and to what end. That explains a heated argument she once h

So many things are happening outside, in this whirling world that is never still, in which there is no justice, and the poor always lose. Carles Puigdemont arrested in Germany, awaiting extradition; growing civil unrest in Catalunya; Cristina Cifuentes, president of the region of Madrid caught falsifying a master's degree, and the university helping in the cover-up; the March for Our Lives in Washington and across the world, in favor of decent gun control in the U.S.; the continuing massacre in Syria; the indecent shooting in the back of peaceful Palestinian protestors in Gaza; the Francisco Franco Foundation celebrating the Nationalist victory in 1939. I could go on.  My head is refusing to think about any of it, lately. There's only so much anger and indignation one can take. While that anger can be used to help change things, such as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas students have done, to create a movement to change how gun ownership and control is regulated, sometimes there&#

I was in luck. Yesterday the sun decided to peep from behind the clouds just a little bit, lightening up our souls. So, despite the work awaiting him preparing the firewood for the chopper this summer, my husband suggested going for a trip. He had been told by friends that Viana do Castelo in Portugal was pretty, so he wanted to see for himself.  We discovered pretty soon that most people on our side of the border had decided to go to that side of the border. On the road to Viana after getting off the tollway, we went into stop-and-slowly-go mode before Vilanova de Cerveira. Normally, the road is quick, but not yesterday. It seemed there were more cars with Spanish license plates on the other side of the Miño than on this side. I think some of the local Portuguese are also lamenting the tourist boom. After we left behind the coastal road, and embarked on the highway into Viana, traffic had become fluid again. We even found a place to park a small walk away from the center without