Spanish views from a small town

School begins tomorrow for me. I hope it can continue without unexpected interruptions till June. But I don't know. Two children at one of the primary schools in town got infected. Those are almost over the virus. But another one has just been infected at the same school. Secondary school began last week. At the moment, in our township, there are no infections in it. But in the next township, there are two, one in each secondary school there. I suspect it's only a matter of time. Yesterday, our township had 27 infected. The next town, 26. These two towns are the ones with the most sick and quarantined in the area. I fear that one of my students might bring the virus with him, eventually.  I have discovered my air purifier doesn't like cooking smells nor woodsmoke. It's going to be a noisy winter. At least the kids will wear masks, I'll spray everything with alcohol, and I'll find a mask more comfortable to wear in winter, and that will let me talk. I hope. M...

These days, being a tax cheat is in the news a lot. In general, in the United States, it's not seen as a good thing. Oh, many people might fudge a figure or two, but anything beyond that, and it's just not the done thing. It angers people. Someone with a lot of money that hides things so they pay less than someone working two jobs just to make ends meet, brings out the Dr. Hyde in a lot of people. In Spain, it also brings out the monster, but, instead of denouncing the rich tax cheat, it incentivizes regular people to cheat, themselves. If Amancio Ortega can get away with paying very few, taxes, then I'll find a way to do so, too, whatever the law says.  Now that declared incomes are well known to the tax office, the only way to do so is to acquire irregular income. Many people do that by working odd hours on the weekends, clandestinely. They neither declare that income, nor does the person who hires them pay value added tax. No, there's no way to claim damages if the t...

Yesterday was a very blue day, and when eight o'clock rolled around, I still had no idea what to write, except the refrain going through my head. The news about contagion was also depressing, and nothing new. And that wasn't at all interesting. So, I left it for today. An article this morning, in the blog  Thoughts from Galicia, Spain, on the British scions of the sherry trade in southern Spain kicked off a memory. The article mentioned a mix of sherry, egg yolk, and sugar that was given to children once, a long time ago, in the area of southwestern Andalucía, in the area where sherry is produced. It was (and still is) called candié , a corruption of the English candied egg . But this brew goes back quite a ways.  It was mentioned in a dictionary from 1729 as a way to season meat. But sixty years later, it was no longer mentioned as a seasoner, and simply a delicious drink. What is its possible origin is that it was thought up as a way to use left over egg yolks from sherry m...

Today, it's been a dull, grey day, with drizzle just about all day. It's not been cold, but cool enough that I had to put on socks. Summer is definitely over. It was a decent enough summer in this little corner, at least after the rainy and cool month of June ended. There were some hot days, but we were lucky in that they didn't stretch out into obnoxious heat waves.  I've always preferred late spring and early summer. The days are at their longest, and the promise of summer can be tasted in the honey air. The weather is warm, sometimes too much, but mostly just warm. Everything is flowering or has buds.  I prefer these seasons here in Galicia to the same ones in Boston. They were my favorite then, too, but too short. Spring didn't properly appear until May, and then, rain often marred the growing days. After the middle of June, summer kicked in. The worst part of summer in Boston was when WCVB's Dick Albert announced the three H's in his forecast. When I sa...

As a consequence of an elevated number of infections, several working class neighborhoods of the city of Madrid, as well as several townships just to the south of the city, were put under lockdown. The only reasons to leave are the usual: work, school, doctor. To control who can leave and who can't, residents venturing outside have to take a printed document stating where they are going and why. It has been pointed out that the restrictions don't mean anything except that people can only go to work and then head home to stay there until the following day.  Yesterday, there were protests all over Madrid against the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, calling for increasing the number of primary care physicians, who are overwhelmed, and against the unfair lockdown. Police were called in, and after slamming into protestors, arrested three of them, and six were hurt. Police just started in with their batons, slapping them back and forth, pushing into people as if the protestors ...

Last March, police broke into a house in Louisville, Kentucky, using a no-knock warrant looking for the boyfriend of the woman who lived there, because he had been dealing in drugs. During the melée, Breonna Taylor, an EMT, was shot and subsequently died. A police officer was also shot in the leg, by the current boyfriend of Breonna, who had no ties whatsoever to drugs, and was licensed to carry a gun.  Now, one of the officers involved has been charged by a grand jury with wanton endangerment. But only because he fired blindly into the apartment and might have hit a neighbor. No one was charged with Breonna's death. That's it. The police keep saying that they called out that they were at the door, and to open up. Breonna's boyfriend said they were sleeping and they didn't hear anything until they heard someone start banging at the door to break it in. Fearing it was her old boyfriend, he took up his gun, and shot at who was breaking into their home. The police say that...

I have internet problems where I live. However, they may finally have a solution. To get internet, I had to contract wifi for my home, with a limit of 60 gigabytes a month. After that, internet walks slower than a turtle.  About a year ago, Telefónica, the company that held the telephone monopoly for ever so many years, installed a fiber cable along our road. But when I went to some different phone companies, asking if I finally had the possibility of getting decent broadband service, some told me I had no problem, but others told me my area still didn't have coverage. Just in case, I sat still. Last week, I went and asked again, and was told that, yes, I could get broadband internet now. Now, I just have to scout for the best offer.  And hope that what happened to a Welsh town doesn't happen to me. In the town of Aberhosan, every morning, promptly at seven, the entire town would lose its broadband internet connection. Calls, complaints, and probably threats, made the engineer...

So, I broke down and got an air purifier. I hate the idea of more gadgets in the house, especially those whose benefits don't seem so absolutely necessary. (There's a juicer next door that might have seen action during the first month of its existence in the house.) But, reading different articles on closed spaces and the devil virus, I realized that during the winter I wasn't about to keep my study window open while I gave class. Yet that is what is recommended to keep the air circulating, and the devil virus at bay. That, or an air purifier with a HEPA filter. So, I looked for one. They're not cheap, either. I've seen them at over six hundred euros. Then, I checked Amazon, to see what companies sold there. I discovered some cheap ones that started at around thirty euros. The reviews were raving. Then, I checked the one star reviews, the ones that are so far down, no one ever bothers to scroll until they reach them. The old adage, you get what you pay for was spell...

Things seem to be getting out of hand with the virus. Locally, there are two children at the primary school in town who are infected, with their respective classes in quarantine. Two people we know have tested positive. Overall, in our region infection rates seem to be starting to go down, but some of those infections are getting too close to home. In the region of Madrid, chaos has ensued. It turns out that it is the region in all of Europe with the fastest growing caseload. Specifically, in certain townships to the south of the city of Madrid, most of them working class. So, lockdown has been proclaimed for those townships. The only acceptable reasons for leaving the house and the township are: doctor's appointments, visiting the banks, pharmacies or the supermarkets, going to school, or going to work. Most of those who live there work elsewhere, including in many of the richer neighborhoods and townships that have lower infection rates and don't have to stay home. People are...

Yesterday, my husband and I took a mental health day and went for a drive to the Costa da Morte, the wild and tempestuous northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula. From Cabo Vilán and its tall lighthouse, we drove eastward along the dirt road on the edge of the ocean. Thanks to its being September, and the devil virus, there were fewer people than otherwise. I only wore my mask when we stopped at a market, and when we entered a supermarket to pick up ingredients for a picnic lunch. It was easy to avoid getting close to people yesterday, even at spots that had a few observers, such as the town of Laxe and the lighthouse at Punta do Roncudo. We stopped from time to time to look out at the aquamarine waves breaking into white foam on the rocks and untouched beaches. There were some people along the coast, walking over the rocks; others were fishing. But it was peaceful. At the Cemiterio dos Ingleses (the English Cemetery), where the crew from the HMS Serpent are buried, the waves broke o...

Last night, a group of young people were drinking in town, glasses and bottles spread out around them. The police, who were doing a check to make sure bars and cafés were closing at one in the morning, noticed them. The two patrolmen went up to the young people and, after ordering them to stop drinking and go home, started asking for identification. One of them got all hussy, argued with the police, refused to do what they asked, smashed a glass on the ground, and set off. When the officers finally caught up to him, he wouldn't calm down, but tried to hit them. That was when twenty-five of the guy's friends showed up to help him.  The officers called for backup, but they were forced to use their batons and pepper sprays to defend themselves. The guy who originally stood up to them was cuffed and sent to the local jail cell, while two others were charged with offences under the Law of Citizen Protection. The others are being identified in other ways, but they'll be found.  O...

A low pressure area just off the Iberian peninsula to the west came closer today, acting more like a tropical depression, and actually trying to form into one. Yellow warnings are out for rain this afternoon and evening, possibly reaching 15 liters per square meter in one hour. Until the clouds started getting thicker this afternoon, it was actually a hazy, warm, and dry day. The barn cats were lazing out in the garden, wrapped up in round balls, sleeping on the grass. Then, the day got darker, and, as the storms started approaching from the south, thunder start to rumble softly. One low growl of thunder, louder than the rest, startled the cats. They got up, and looked out to the hills behind the house. One of the young cats born this spring came running in from the garden, her tail a bottle brush, and created her own lightning bolt as she streaked to the barn.  It's understandable. The young cats born this spring have never heard thunder. For some reason, we haven't had any th...

This morning I went to the Wednesday market in our town. If the festival of Guadalupe hadn't been cancelled, today's market wouldn't have been held. That was the first thing out of kilter. The second thing was that everyone was wearing masks. I haven't been to market since last winter, I think. It now seems smaller, with fewer people, and some are a bit unrecognizable until they recognize you and say hello.  The third thing was what almost every vendor was selling. Masks. Normally, on market day you can see the fashion most people will be wearing this or the coming season. And, now, the fashion most will be wearing is masks. There were all kinds of designs, colors, and even sizes. A woman was asking if a mask was a large size. Right now, masks are the fashion accessory everyone is buying to match their outfits. So much for bags, shoes, belts, brooches, or necklaces.  Once upon a time, I used to haunt markets. I knew that on Monday there were none nearby, on Tuesdays in ...

Today, a law has been drafted to replace the Law of Historical Memory passed in 2007. This new law would go much farther than that other one. Whether or not it will be watered down, or even pass a parliament with a vocal extreme right wing, is another thing. But the draft sounds like something that should have been approved at least thirty years ago. It starts by having the State pay for the exhumations of every mass grave created during and after the Civil War (and there are many - after Cambodia, Spain has the largest amount of  mass graves in the world). A national DNA bank would be set up, to be able to identify as many remains as possible, and return them to their families. A record would be created with the names of all those killed and persecuted during and after the Civil War. It continues with making all court sentences based on political ideologies legally void. All records of those condemned to jail or death would be cleaned, because there would be no base in legality fo...

It's time to change the heading again, I think. Fall is arriving, and we seem to be falling back into a second wave. The "new normal" has let us down, more than anything because of those who insisted on it being as similar as possible to the "old normal." People are trying to live it up, setting up private parties, or opening up discos in cities under night time lockdown. Or, like the girl in Germany that worked in a hotel for American servicemen, having symptoms, getting a PCR, but going out on the town to party before knowing if she's fine. (She wasn't, and infected at least twenty people.) She is being charged with committing negligent harm.  The numbers of infected keep going up in Spain, day after day. 27,404 new cases have been registered since last Friday, almost half of them in the region and city of Madrid. Some areas are going back into local lockdowns, and the newly opened schools have seen teachers and students go into quarantine, some of the...

Yesterday I failed to write because I felt like I was melting. Yesterday (and today) will vie with the few truly hot days we had back in July; right before the temperatures fall into the low twenties (60'sF) next week, and the rain comes in. Yesterday, the high temperature in our neck of the woods must have been 34ºC/93ªF. Unfortunately, I couldn't spend the afternoon in our relatively cool house, but had to do the weekly shopping. There was not a breeze of any kind, nor does every supermarket around here have air conditioning, and the combination of heat and mask created a bomb in me. When I got home I had a throbbing headache. I had to take my pain medication laced with codeine, and drink almost a bottle of water. Toward late evening, the headache wore off, things were mostly back to normal, and the codeine helped me sleep. Today is the high feast day of our local festival of Guadalupe. On a normal year, there would be Masses all morning at the chapel, overlooking the entranc...

This morning, I set off for Santiago, to visit a couple of bookstores that carry English books. Almost ten minutes into my trip, I realized I hadn't picked up any money. My pockets were empty. At the next exit, I turned around and went back home. By the time I got there, it was almost ten thirty, and I decided it was too late to set out again. Change of plans. I decided to drive up to the lookout on Monte Muralla. I figured that at that hour in the morning, there wouldn't be anyone there.  I was right. As I approached the base of the dirt lane leading up, there were no cars parked on the shoulders. I drove up. Surely the lane would be okay for my trusty little car.  A little while ahead, another lane began to the left and went up. I turned onto it, another dirt lane. At first I had no problem. And then I reached a spot where it seemed I was about to head into waves straight on. There was a series of potholes crossing the lane that created valleys and hills with no way to go ar...