Spanish views from a small town

It's another dreary wet Sunday. Yesterday, at least we could see the sun between showers. But today, another front is going by, after Justine yesterday left monster waves along the north coast, and the dark mist has converged upon us, leaving us even more isolated. Too many times, the weather colors the mood, and today isn't much of an exception. Today marks a year since the very first case of Covid was detected in Spain, and the contagion in our township has gone up again, to 50 infected. Portugal has closed its border with Spain. The admittance to ICU's in all of Spain has gone up exponentially, as has other hospital admittance for Covid. The vaccination has slowed down, and numerous stories of people who know people getting shots ahead of time, abound. Pandemic fatigue is beginning to show, with people either going paranoid about getting sick, or giving up, or denying a pandemic even exists.  Regional politicians play petty games, too, at the cost of the population. Cata...

My journey to change to fiber optic internet service should have finished yesterday. The technician had an appointment at twelve in the afternoon to hook us up. So, I should now be on broadband, footloose and fancy free, right? No.  The technician came and looked at the installation. He said he couldn't see a hook-up box on the posts next to my house, and that he would go walking along the road until he could find it. I waited as he walked. He kept walking. He reached the end of the road and came back. There was no hook-up box. And, as far as he could tell, there was no fiber optic cable. AAARRRGGGHHH! I pointed out that I have a copy of a permission my husband signed, back in the summer of 2018, giving Telefónica/Movistar permission to place fiber optic cable on the telephone wire posts that were in my property limits. I remember perfectly, a week or two after signing, that technicians came by and went stringing up the new cable from house to house, coming from the direction of th...

Memory. It consists of remembering things that happened, things that were, whether we remember them rosily, or in their crudeness. It consists of having the past in our consciousness, and understanding that we are our past. Yesterday was the liberation of Auschwitz. Seventy-six years ago, Soviet troops arrived at the sprawling complex, and liberated the few skeletal survivors that were still there. Thousands others had been taken into Germany on a death march, which would kill many of them. Among those who survived the march, only to die later, were Anne and Margot Frank.  A hundred and two years ago, the Spanish flu was ravaging the world in its most deadly wave. Many who had escaped the illness earlier, were now struck down. Some pooh-poohed the danger, and refused to take precautions. The tragedy of that flu was that it tended to kill the young, the middle-aged, and the healthy. 2021, and we have another pandemic, and the threats of a rising wave of intolerance like the hatred t...

Today was one of those days with some meat in the fridge, a few vegetables, and no idea of what to make for lunch. So, I faced the bookshelves with the cookbooks, and drew out an old friend.  The American Woman's Cookbook , first published in 1938, has been with me since I was a teenager. My edition is from 1948, and has several color plates, besides black and white photos. In Boston, we owned a triple decker and rented out two of the apartments. One tenant, who moved out, left behind a box for the trash man with old magazines and a couple of books, among them the cookbook. I rescued it, and loved to read the recipes, and all the curious, to me, information about entertaining guests, setting tables, making menus, and information about food that time had passed by, such as buying canned food by numbered cans and even how to pasteurize milk at home. I have made some of the recipes in it over the years, such as Beef Miroton, or Fillet of Flounder au Gratin, or Chocolate Chip Cookies, ...

It's happened. Yesterday afternoon, new restrictions in our region of Galicia were announced, that will be in effect until, at least, 17 February. All hostelry is to be closed down. Non-essential businesses close at 6PM. No one is allowed to reunite with anyone they do not live with. All cultural offers are to be closed; no movie theatres, no auditoriums, no libraries, no museums. Gyms are closed; sport shall be outside, individual, and masked, even if you're all alone in the park, street, or road (that last one makes no sense).  This goes into effect at midnight tonight, so I have to scramble and tell everyone I'm going onto Whatsapp video calls. But, only after I get my fiber installed this week, which, hopefully, will happen as promised. Otherwise, I will finish all the data on my wifi connection in two days. I'll be on Whatsapp until I figure out another free way to get together online without a time or person limit and on something I can figure out easily.  A local...

Today is a grey, wet, dark day. A typical winter's day here in Galicia. Every once in a while, a day like this isn't such a bad idea. The best scenario would be a day with little to do, and nowhere to go, with a couple of good, interesting books awaiting. The only downside would be waking up after finishing the books and realizing that now, there's nothing interesting to do, and the sun could try to come out a bit, if only to cheer the place up. Of course, it depends on what the reading matter is. When I was a little girl, one winter's day when I was home, perhaps with a fever, or during February or Christmas vacation, I was alone with my mother. My mother was in the kitchen, I was in the living room. I had a high school literature book of American short stories in my hands, which still had some tales I hadn't read earlier. My father's workmate had given him lately another box of old books that had belonged to his grown-up kids, for me. As my mother tinkered in ...

There's no running away from news of the virus. We are nearing the peak (I hope) of the third wave, and there is much lamenting. Hospitals are overwhelmed. Doctors are calling for another confinement. Some are beating their chests over lax Christmas rules. In the meantime, people are getting sick, and too many are dying. One that stood out this past week, was a 46 year old man that died rather quickly after begin admitted to the hospital, despite having no pathology of any kind. Our township, despite having had its borders closed for a month, is lucky. Today, we have 41 positives, the most have been 55. We've been down to 35, but have come back up again; still, out of a population of just a thread over 11,000, that's a manageable number at this point. The news is out, too, that this year, because of masks and keeping apart, there have been almost no flu cases. Even some contagious illnesses that parents don't like to vaccinate their children for, such as whooping cough,...

The night before, we were hit by another storm off the Atlantic with a name, this time it was Hortense, named by the French weather bureau. It didn't leave as much damage as the famous storm by the same name that trammeled us over thirty years ago, but it left a few hours of very intense winds. I went to bed late that night, and between bouts of pounding rain, and the howling wind that wouldn't cease, it felt like I was going to bed in the middle of a hurricane. This morning, we have the passage of Ignacio, and it is a windy, wet, grey, dark morning, indeed. I hope that the forecast is correct, and that by afternoon we get peeks of the sun. On the American front, Joe Biden has signed various executive orders overturning some of Trump's more extreme disdain of different people, and the environment. Of course, the Trumpists in the Senate and Congress are trying to do all they can to hinder the changing of the guard. One, a Q Anon believer, even wants to introduce articles of ...

My internet odyssey might be coming to an end, but not the way I had planned it.  Yesterday morning, I went to the bank to pick up a paper that certified my account was mine. That was the easy part. Since it was such a wet, miserable morning, there was only one other person inside, so I just stepped in and was attended fast. I thought that it might all go smoothly, after all. My thoughts were stopped in my tracks at the computer store. The shop assistant, on the phone with the technician from the company R, began expressing concern in his monosyllabic answers. After about fifteen minutes, he explained the situation to me. It seemed that my house not being "normalized" was more of a problem than anticipated. To "normalize" it, a petition would have to be sent to the central office. Because I live where I live, the response would most likely take at least a month. After that, I might have to wait another month or two to be hooked up.  So, the only thing to do was to c...

Yesterday was a happy day. Finally, the orange man left the White House, and power went to the person who had been chosen by the majority of people to govern them. I watched some of the Inauguration online, and let my English students watch. If there hadn't been a pandemic, it would have been on a par with the first Inauguration of Barack Obama.  What a stark contrast to four years ago! Two women singers, one of whom called out part of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish, one famous country singer, a young Black poet laureate, and the swearing in of the first woman Vice-President by a woman Justice of the Supreme Court. It was so good to listen to the President call out for unity, It was so good to hear the President speak in full, intelligent sentences. It was so good to hear a President talk to everybody instead of simply his sycophants. The four years of obstruction, of stoking hatreds, of using the public as if it were the private, are over. But it's not over. The forces th...

My internet connection via wifi is just getting worse and worse. Today, I went to a computer shop in town where they offer different services, to sign up with another company for fiber, now that Telefónica/Movistar put through a cable down my road. Things are not so simple. The only company that offers only internet (or at least at that office) is R, previously a regional Galician company that has since been bought by Euskaltel, a Basque company. It has an obligatory permanence of at least a year, after which, I was warned, they would probably hike prices. Fine. I still settled for it because I have few other choices.  First problem was checking my street number. It turns out that I do have access to fiber, but my house has not been "normalized." The reason for that seems to be that it has never had a landline nor any other telephone connection by wire. So, I waited for close to an hour as the person who was trying to insert my information on the company web page explained th...

Yesterday, various regions announced curfews that would begin at eight in the evening. But, the central government warned them that the declaration of alarm only considered a maximum curfew from ten in the evening to six in the morning. Many regions are asking to have that changed. Here, in Galicia, curfew is now at ten, but our regional president has declared that, if necessary, he would advance it to eight or six in the evening. How possible that could be is iffy, because though it would mean having stores close much earlier, there are other workers that end their work day at around seven, such as some construction workers. There are also factories that have three shifts. Those companies, I suppose, would have to give each worker a certificate showing their work hours, in case they are stopped. Those that can't, because they illegally have their workers doing much longer than eight hour days, will probably cut out the lunch hour, and have their employees work continuously, with a...

It seems that contagion is getting worse and worse. Hospitals in Galicia have stopped all unnecessary surgeries. Hospital administrators are expecting to fill even more beds with Covid patients. No relief is seen until the end of February, or later and many are saying that we are now in a worse situation than we were back when we went into lockdown in March. There are calls for another general lockdown. Some are calling for a hard one, like in the first two weeks of last April, when only essential workers were allowed to work, and everyone else stayed put at home. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea. I would lose money because I wouldn't be able to give classes, but it would mean that contagion might be brought down earlier rather than later, and we could save lives and get out of this faster.  On other fronts, there is malaise toward the local and regional governments of Madrid for not having marshalled snow plows and salt when the snowstorm started. The mayor of Madrid,...

My internet connection is driving me nuts. Today, I called about changing to fiber. It turns out that the company that hung the cable along our road is the old monopolistic Telefónica. I was advised to take the offer by their lower-priced company, O2, which includes 300mb and a cell phone line. That way, they would come faster, (instead of the wait of up to a month with another company) and I would then have the hook-up to later change to another company that would be cheaper.  Um, no. That sounds a lot like extorsion. I have always said that I would never make a contract with any branch of Telefónica precisely because of things like that. Besides, there is little cell phone coverage around here by them. The only infrastructure they have updated is the fiber cable they strung up. Ever since over fifteen years ago, when we bought our first cell phone, they have been affirming that they were updating their coverage. It's never been done. The person I was talking to said that the lack...

This will be short because I have to write it on my phone, since internet isn't going on my computer. And I have no idea when I will be able to change internet providers. There are negstionists. Generally, they do not inspire confidence, especially when what they negate is something that had been duly certified by science and experience. The pandemic, for instance. Even after a year there are people with their heads buried in some sand dune that claim it doesn't exist. Then there are those who never heard of Columbus, and still deny the Earth is round. But the latest type of negationist is the one who denies it snowed in Madrid this weekend.  Some bright soul took a snowball and tried to light it with the flame from a lighter. The snow didn't turn to water; it turned black where the flame had touched it, and it smelled of plastic. That person, who supposedly had taken an obligatory physics class in high school, claimed that that was proof that a large conspiracy, led by Bil...

Last night on the news cast, it seemed the only news was the snow in Madrid. The truth is, that it snowed from the middle of the country to the east, on the Mediterranean. Storm Filomena also dumped snow along the north, and it deluged in the south. We alone, here in the northwest, had mostly clear skies. The only spots that got some snow in Galicia were areas in Lugo and Ourense. We just continued to suffer the cold, along with a wind chill factor yesterday and today. But, oh, what a storm! It looked like memories of snowstorms in Boston, including abandoned cars on the highways. A good quantity of snow had been forescast, and by Friday's evening rush hour, enough had fallen that cars were stuck. The airport at Madrid-Barajas closed Friday evening, and it will remain closed until at least this afternoon. All trains, of any kind, into and from the capital, were cancelled; today they are re-starting, slowly. Roads are just beginning to be opened, after all day yesterday cleaning, an...

After the debacle on Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook have finally shut up Trump. They took their sweet time about it. Unfortunately, Twitter has let him use his trigger-happy thumbs again. He's already tweeted out to his followers. Several people have resigned from the outgoing administration, possibly thinking that if they leave now they can still salvage their political careers. There are rumors that Trump is going stark raving mad. In my opinion, he's been that for ages.  His followers probably won't stop there. But it will depend on whether or not Trump or some other crony of his stokes their fires. He's been stoking them for too long, and we got Wednesday as the culmination of the barage of hatred that has been spewing from him for the last five years or so. His message today, calling them patriots, and saying their day will come, is not very pacifying. The reaction in Spain depended on whom it came from. The parties that lean left decried the attempted coup. The p...

Forty years ago next month, there was a session of the Congreso to choose the Prime Minister of Spain. The background was not boding well. Ever since Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish Armed Forces had not been content. Separatist ETA had been killing people. The unemployment statistics were high, and so was inflation. The legalization of the Communist Party was the ultimate straw for many of them, and they began plotting. At the afternoon vote on the 23 rd of February, Lieutenant-Colonel Tejero of the Guardia Civil led 200 Civil Guards into the chambers of the Congreso , crying out, “Quieto todo el mundo!” (Nobody move!). After a brief scuffle with an Army General who refused to comply, Tejero fired a shot into the air. That was followed by a machine gun burst, also into the air, by one of his followers. For the following 18 hours, the Congreso was held hostage, all that was happening going on the air because the radio station, SER, kept its mics open up in the press galler...

Yesterday, I had problems with my wifi internet. Neither of the two routers worked on the computers, yet they went just fine on the phones. This morning, both worked well until I just sat down to write. It's taken forever to pull up this page, and I wonder just when I can finish it. My intention had been to go to Boiro this month, when the year-long contract on one of them ends, and change to fiber. Telefónica passed its fiber cable along our road a couple of years ago, and now it seems it provides service. Other companies rent out the cable, and I've been told I can now contract internet by cable. But the office where I went to ask is in Boiro; there is no telecom office of any kind in Rianxo. So, now I have to wait for both townships to open. I fear I might spend a few weeks without internet of any kind. Perhaps the problem is due to the freezing temperatures we've been having these past nights. This morning, when my husband got up, he lit the fire in the wood stove in th...