The Case of the Crowing Rooster
Tourism in Spain is growing by leaps and bounds. Now that our cities are chock-a-block with tourists gawking at the locals, small towns and villages are getting into the action, promoting "rural tourism," and setting up small hotels and apartments in out-of-the-way hamlets. It's been going on for some years, but of late, it seems to be growing exponentially, as city people want to escape to the countryside.
Well, the countryside is full of people who have small farms with livestock for their own use. Many village houses have strutting, clucking chickens in farmyards, some still have grunting pigs, a very few have cud-chewing cows. Contrary to the expectation of the city-dweller, the countryside is not silent. Not even in the middle of the woods, five kilometers from civilization, is it silent. Animals live there. It's a different kind of noise from the Paseo de la Castellana at six in the afternoon, but it's still noise.
Apparently, some guests of a rural hotel in Soto de Cangas, had complained to their host about the noise of chickens and roosters in a farmyard near the hotel. It seems the feathered livestock interrupted the beauty sleep of some of them at an infernally early hour. Soto de Cangas is an eminently rural small town high up in the Asturian mountains, on the outskirts of the natural park, Picos de Europa, near Covadonga. There is livestock. Livestock tends to react to sunlight, waking up at dawn. Dawn this time of year happens around six o'clock in the morning; or at least the graying of the light. Roosters generally greet the day with a good, lung-clearing cock-a-doodle-dooooo. Did these people think they were going to spend their vacation in a soundless capsule?
So, the owner of the hotel complained to the town council. The council shrugged it off. But the owner didn't. He finally got a judge to order the neighbor to shut down the chicken coop and get rid of the chickens. Apparently, the decibels reached 72.4 between the hours of ten at night and eight in the morning, when the maximum permitted is 45 decibels.
Let's get this straight. A family has to get rid of its chickens because they create too much noise early in the morning, and don't let the tourists of a nearby hotel sleep. Tourists who decided to spend some days in the countryside and couldn't sleep because of a rooster's song and the chickens' clucks, and complained to the hotel owner.
Just a generation ago, more people lived in the countryside than in the cities. Those that lived in the cities had relatives they visited in the countryside. People knew that the countryside can be noisy, especially around dawn. Now, I am reminded of a child who thinks milk originates in the supermarket because he's never seen a cow. City dwellers nowadays seem to have forgotten the raison d'être of the countryside. It's not so city dwellers can sleep late into the morning; it's so that the people who live there can feed themselves as they have always done.
A pastor (of sheep, not people) who uploads YouTube videos regularly, uploaded a complaint about the sentence. The news passed as a small blurb; the video turned viral and everyone has been sharing it so much, it's made the national nightly news. The pastor, Nel Cañedo, complains about the hotel owner, the tourists, and the judge. With his words tinged by the Bable still spoken in high mountain areas of Asturias, he explains what the countryside is, and how very wrong perceptions of it are in the cities. He goes on to complain that the intempestuous hours mentioned in the sentence are more normal than the intempestuous hour of three in the morning when he has heard tourists in the garden of the hotel with loud music. He also explains that if a tourist visits a large city, he would be wrong to complain about the garbage truck making noise during the early morning hours. What he should complain about there is that the owner of the hotel hasn't made the rooms soundproof, which is what the judge should have ordered in the first place in the Soto de Cangas case. I will put an abreviated version of the video, with some subtitles in Spanish at the end, here.
And now, I will go make lunch with a good, home-grown chicken that has clucked its last at dawn. Nobody has complained. Yet.
Well, the countryside is full of people who have small farms with livestock for their own use. Many village houses have strutting, clucking chickens in farmyards, some still have grunting pigs, a very few have cud-chewing cows. Contrary to the expectation of the city-dweller, the countryside is not silent. Not even in the middle of the woods, five kilometers from civilization, is it silent. Animals live there. It's a different kind of noise from the Paseo de la Castellana at six in the afternoon, but it's still noise. Apparently, some guests of a rural hotel in Soto de Cangas, had complained to their host about the noise of chickens and roosters in a farmyard near the hotel. It seems the feathered livestock interrupted the beauty sleep of some of them at an infernally early hour. Soto de Cangas is an eminently rural small town high up in the Asturian mountains, on the outskirts of the natural park, Picos de Europa, near Covadonga. There is livestock. Livestock tends to react to sunlight, waking up at dawn. Dawn this time of year happens around six o'clock in the morning; or at least the graying of the light. Roosters generally greet the day with a good, lung-clearing cock-a-doodle-dooooo. Did these people think they were going to spend their vacation in a soundless capsule?
So, the owner of the hotel complained to the town council. The council shrugged it off. But the owner didn't. He finally got a judge to order the neighbor to shut down the chicken coop and get rid of the chickens. Apparently, the decibels reached 72.4 between the hours of ten at night and eight in the morning, when the maximum permitted is 45 decibels.
Let's get this straight. A family has to get rid of its chickens because they create too much noise early in the morning, and don't let the tourists of a nearby hotel sleep. Tourists who decided to spend some days in the countryside and couldn't sleep because of a rooster's song and the chickens' clucks, and complained to the hotel owner.
Just a generation ago, more people lived in the countryside than in the cities. Those that lived in the cities had relatives they visited in the countryside. People knew that the countryside can be noisy, especially around dawn. Now, I am reminded of a child who thinks milk originates in the supermarket because he's never seen a cow. City dwellers nowadays seem to have forgotten the raison d'être of the countryside. It's not so city dwellers can sleep late into the morning; it's so that the people who live there can feed themselves as they have always done.
A pastor (of sheep, not people) who uploads YouTube videos regularly, uploaded a complaint about the sentence. The news passed as a small blurb; the video turned viral and everyone has been sharing it so much, it's made the national nightly news. The pastor, Nel Cañedo, complains about the hotel owner, the tourists, and the judge. With his words tinged by the Bable still spoken in high mountain areas of Asturias, he explains what the countryside is, and how very wrong perceptions of it are in the cities. He goes on to complain that the intempestuous hours mentioned in the sentence are more normal than the intempestuous hour of three in the morning when he has heard tourists in the garden of the hotel with loud music. He also explains that if a tourist visits a large city, he would be wrong to complain about the garbage truck making noise during the early morning hours. What he should complain about there is that the owner of the hotel hasn't made the rooms soundproof, which is what the judge should have ordered in the first place in the Soto de Cangas case. I will put an abreviated version of the video, with some subtitles in Spanish at the end, here.
And now, I will go make lunch with a good, home-grown chicken that has clucked its last at dawn. Nobody has complained. Yet.
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