Spanish views from a small town

If the United States can go overboard, it will. If the rest of the world can copy it, it will, too. Not only does the rest of the world copy the clothes, it also copies the foods. Fast foods of all kinds, with all different kind of flavors, have appeared all over the world. Fast food franchises, from McDonald's to KFC, to even Dunkin' Donuts, have opened up in a great number of foreign cities.  When a craze appears in the U.S., it spreads everywhere, and touches everything. I have read that pumpkin flavored foods are in every supermarket once September hits. Some of the foods thus flavored are too weird to even think about. Pumpkin pie cheesecake ice cream? Greek pumpkin pie yoghurt? Pumpkin spice English muffins? Pumpkin spice coffee creamer? Pumpkin spice liqueur? Pumpkin spice cream cheese spread? Pumpkin wine?? Mexican chile pumpkin mole?? Pumpkin spice Kahlua?? Pumpkin pie spice butter spread?? Pumpkin spice puffed corn???? Have we gone insane with the pumpkin?  Well,...

Beer is going the way of the dodo bird.  I'm sure that sounds like the ultimate catastrophe to many. That foamy beer after work, with friends, on a sultry summer's afternoon, will become a luxury item until it disappears altogether. Nooo! Well, yes. It's really an idea that has been around for a few years. A few days ago a study came out showing it is true. The quantity of hops and barley will wither thanks to climate change. When one stops to think about it, it's really very simple and predictable. The hotter temperatures don't only affect us, with simmering heat waves and increased storms, they also affect our crops. So, climate change affects us in more ways than one. It also affects our stomachs and our taste buds. In 2009, it was estimated that crops were moving north about a quarter of a mile a year. That means that the ideal growing zones for a specific crop were changing. Soy and corn crops were moving north into areas previously planted with barley, a...

Rain is a primal part of Galicia from late September onwards. My husband tells stories of winters that began in the middle of September and let up only when June arrived. Winters of days that awoke in rain, and went to bed in rain. Winters of only a few days when the sun could be seen. Winters of water. The weather is now changing, and in these past years, October has been an oasis of summer. Perhaps that is also changing our mindset, and we have begun to assume that the rains of winter won't arrive until much later. Which is why, when a cold front with its associated rain and wind passed by last week, we were surprised.  We were mostly surprised because we were caught off guard. The morning after the intense rainfall, I went out and saw many people cleaning the debris from gutters that had overflowed, and saw where rain and mud had crossed the road because of stuffed up ditches. Most of the small floodings that happened were due to ditches and gutters that had filled up with t...

Rodrigo Rato, one of our home-grown political criminals, has just had his jail sentence of four and a half years confirmed, and he will have to start serving his time soon. He was found guilty of swindling over €90,000 from Bankia through the use of "black" credit cards. Those were credit cards issued to several high-ranking members of the bank's direction illegally. When those cards were used (for just about everything but official bank business), the funds tapped were the actual funds of the bank's deposits.  Rato is going to jail for that particular crime, but he was also involved in schemes to bilk people of their money by having them invest in "preferentes" , funds that invested money in the actual bank, but could not be touched for more than a hundred years. But that was in the small print and in absolute legalese that most small investors (overwhelmingly retired people) could not read or understand. How the mighty are fallen; from ex-director of the...

It's a sad day for many American women, and it's a sad day for American justice. Brett Kavanaugh has joined the Supreme Court. The blatant disregard by sad, white men of the people they are said to represent is infuriating and frustrating. But it isn't just that they follow their own agenda, it is that they decided to keep most of Kavanaugh's files secret, and not even let their fellow senators look at it. It is also that they used the FBI to mount a sham investigation, limiting it by telling the agents what they could and could not look into. Their actions, in favor of a narcissistic president, will mark the beginning of the end of the American experiment in representational democracy. Much has been made of Kavanaugh's disrespect of women as a drunken teenager and college student. That's bad enough. Much has also been made of his disagreement on abortion, and his antagonism towards Roe vs. Wade . That is also bad, but at the moment, there is no docketed case ...

No one likes to take the blame for anything, especially in Spain. That is because when something big goes entirely wrong, the people in charge always step away, clean as the driven snow. The one that ends up paying is the small fry with no one to speak up for them, generally the lowest worker on the chain, to whom the buck is passed. Which is why, when calling a government office, you better pray the person in charge of what you're calling about is there. Otherwise, you are probably better off making a couple of physical visits to that office. There is a campaign in our township to have every dog equipped with a microchip. Residents had from the middle of last week to tomorrow, Friday, to sign up for a visit from a vet sent by the town hall. The vet is supposed to make the rounds of those that signed up, and insert a microchip in each dog, which costs thirty euros. After the vets go around, the local police will start making the rounds, and check every dog they see for a chip. If...

The objective of our educational system in the foreign language department, is to have all students acquire at least a B1 or B2 level of English by the time they graduate high school. If they continue to university, students have to pass at least a B1 level exam to get their degree, even if they major in something like Spanish Language and Literature. B1 covers lower intermediate and intermediate comprehensions of English. At the lower intermediate level, students should have the ability to read this paragraph from an adapted reading and understand it: That evening I sat in my room again. The candles were lit and I looked at the pictures in an old book. My door was open and the door to Madam Crowl's room was open. And then I heard her voice for the first time. It sounded like a small bird or animal. I couldn't understand what she said. Then I heard my aunt's voice.   Suffice it to say that too many kids who reach this level by the end of their obligatory schooling, at ...