Spanish views from a small town

It's been a rainy midwinter, so far. It hasn't been cold, except yesterday morning, and only because the night before had been so clear that valley fogs formed. It has been a strange vacation, though, because our daughter has taken a job so that she can help pay for the next few months she has left of her vocational course. That means she's not home except for the holidays themselves, since the job is in Santiago, so she stays at a friend's apartment. The job is in a bookstore. Her main job is to package presents and help out customers. Her coworkers are nice people, but she is amazed at the amount of customers that could very well be labelled "karens." Sometimes because they're rude, other times because they act entitled, others because they treat the store clerks like lackeys. She's surprised at how few people are actually empathetic towards her and the others.  She's also surprised at how badly children read. Our daughter has always been a reade...

I have not been writing at all, lately. I have curled into myself, and begun a hibernation of sorts. I still go over the book I have written, detecting holes and trying to plug them, while I despair of it ever becoming something anybody wants to read. I have a painting that is sitting, waiting for the final touches that never seem to come. My thoughts refuse to leave my head. Partially, it's because the world is so messed up, so wrong, so much worse, that a small despair has crept in, that, no matter how much I, or anybody, cry out against it, nothing will change. I feel we are like ants that can do nothing about the anthill we live in because we have no say in anything that goes on. We merely continue plodding forward, building our anthill further out, ignoring the tunnels that are caving in as a consequence. So, I turn to nature, and take my walks whenever I can. Of late, that is not too often because of the weather. And the few days that are good, I have errands to run or work t...

All Hallow's Eve approaches, with its mythical creatures ready to roam the night, banging on doors and demanding their ration of sugar. A night that was once believed to herald a new year, and on which the veil between the dead and the living was thought to be spider web thin, is now a horrendous commercial holiday meant to sell candy, everything pumpkin spice, and costumes of all kinds, including witch costumes with their pointy hat and misshapen broom. Fellow blogger Donnalane Nelson mentioned the witches of history in her blog, The Expat Writer , talking about how they had been treated, and how many are now being exonerated from the crimes they had been excecuted for. She mentioned that Scotland was the country that holds the record for those hunted down and killed. I assume part of the reason for such zealous hunts was the arrival of Protestantism in the form of strict Scottish Presbyterianism, that would tolerate no religious rival, especially Catholicism. We had our own witch...

I had heard of Ruth Matilda Anderson, and had seen some of her photographs, but had never really paid attention to her work, despite knowing she had travelled these lands in the 1920's. Apart from photographer, she was also an ethnographer, and observed and wrote about life in 1920's rural Spain. Yesterday, we went to an exhibit with some of her work at the Museo Provincial de Pontevedra.  The exhibit was set up with some of her photographs on loan from the Hispanic Society of New York, including a painting by Joaquín Sorolla, master of light and shadow. The curators had set up scenes mimicking some of the photographs, dressing up mannequins and using props. The exhibit went through the different means of living, and daily life, to the clothes in use at the time, ending with the scene Sorolla painted in Vilagarcía, of simple people eating a picnic on market day.  From the start, my mind went to my mother. She had been born in 1929, three years after the most recent photographs...

September is here, and summer is mostly over. With September has come the rains after two months of drought, compounded by a drier than usual spring and winter. There are cities and towns that have already started to ration water. Arqueological sites and ancient villages are appearing from under the receding waters of reservoirs. The earth is bone dry and grasses and shrubs, that normally stay green all year, are turning yellow and dying.  It has been a bit of a boring summer, at least in the month of July. I did go on the maritime procession to celebrate the Virgin Mary on the 16th. It was the first time I had ever gone, and I loved it. I will try to go again next year. I have left Catholicism far behind, but the procession was wonderful. Other than that, I didn't do anything interesting all month, except give classes. Even those were diminished this summer, partly because now there are no recuperation exams in September for those who fail in June, and partly because my regular st...

This is one of the weekends with the most festas , feiras , concerts, gatherings, and processions of the year. Today is the day of the Assumption of the Virigin Mary, and it has always been duly noted in such a Catholic country as Spain. Even though Mass attendance and the number of Spanish Catholics that are practicing continue plummetting, the celebrations around this day are still going strong.  But there are differences between the religious and the profane, though the two are inextricably intertwined. While the root celebration is the Assumption, (around the 15th of August, at least) it tends to be forgotten. So, a festa is not quite the same as a feira . And a concert might have its roots in a religious rite. Whatever the event, here is some vocabulary. Festas.  That is the word in Galician. In Castilian, it's fiestas . These are the actual religious celebrations. They tend to be parochial affairs to celebrate one of the patron saints (or the only one) of the parish. S...

They're baaaack! You can see them moving in hordes down the streets of old Santiago de Compostela, hell-bent on reaching the cathedral. Or gathered in flocks at the terrace bars of my home town. The tourists are here. Last year was the real Jacobean Holy Year, when the feast day of Saint James, whose casket is in the cathedral at Santiago (says the legend), fell on a Sunday. But, the Pope graciously allowed us to milk the tomb for all its worth this year as well, since last year was a washout thanks to the pandemic. So, we're on the second Holy Year in this year of two thousand twenty-two of Our Lord. Lord help us. We never did learn anything from the pandemic about making our cities gracious servants of its inhabitants rather than of the rapacious tourist industry, so we're back where we were before the virus interrupted the money-making schemes of so many. Trooping down the streets of Santiago in the early morning, pilgrims singing rousing religious songs, getting neighb...

The Courel in Lugo is burning. The heart and lungs of this, our green Galicia, are being devoured by ferocious flames licking up ancient hills that, until now, were verdant and fresh. Entire villages, forgotten by most of their old neighbors, are now being erased completely, burned down to the bare stones. History, human and natural, is disappearing in the sparks of this hateful orange flower of flames. This fire, and another enormous one down near O Barco de Valdeorras, was sparked by lightning last week, during that freak thunderstorm that blew up over us thanks to the unusual heat we had. At least it wasn't started by a human piece of dung. But it was exacerbated by lackadaisical fire control and a lack of forest management that hasn't been in place ever since the way of life in the mountains started to disappear. Once, it was the people who subsisted in those villages who cut and trimmed and cleaned out deadwood. But, when they left for decent lives with decent jobs, no one...

July 4th was the celebration of Independence Day in the United States. It was a day to celebrate the founding of a nation based on certain basic freedoms. People usually have barbecues, watch fireworks, go to parades, and shoot at other people. It is so ironic that one of the amendments on the Constitution that helped to create that country, made sure that mass death could happen on the anniversary of its founding. Fireworks, parades, and guns. So American.  America as a free country is dead. I'm sorry if I anger some people, but that is my opinion, and that of many. Growing up, I had heard comments about how long strong countries, empires really, could last. Two hundred years, more or less, was the answer, at least as a world power. In name, they can last longer, but be a mere paper tiger. The United States was founded in 1776, almost two hundred fifty years ago. It is now headed to its death. Economically, militarily, it is still strong. But, morally, it is deader than a doornail...

Today is St. John's Day, and is a regional holiday. Last night, many bonfires lit the cloudy skies, and the sea was emptied of sardines to be roasted over the coals. Our daughter went to friends' in Santiago, but my husband and I roasted our own sardines and built our own little bonfire, over which we jumped three times to ward off the witches. This morning, we washed our faces in the traditional water steeped with fragrant herbs that sat out overnight, to catch the magic of midsummer night. Actually, midsummer was on the twenty-first, but the Church positioned the feast of St. John just three days away, so pagan celebrations were moved slightly. They're still pagan, just with a Christian patron.  The bonfire was a punctuation to a rather hectic day for me. It was the first day of my week's vacation, and I had errands to run. Since our daughter is working this summer, I haven't got a car. Yesterday, since I was free, I drove her to work, and then went to Santiago an...

A statue of the Apostle James has been removed from a prominent spot in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, dedicated to him. It has been deemed inapporpriate, because it represented the Apostle upon a white, rearing horse, with a sword in his hand, trampling on the infidels. It's a popular description from the Middle Ages and the Reconquest, when the Apostle apparently appeared in front of a Christian army just before the battle of Clavijo, which they went on to win. The legend was actually created years later, but was used to help make Santiago the patron saint of Spain, against the candidacy of Teresa of Avila. "Santiago y cierra España!" was a popular battle cry in the wars between Moors and Christians, and was picked up by nationalist groups in the nineteenth century. So, because the iconography can offend Muslims (the infidels under the horse's hooves), it shouldn't be prominantly displayed.  I can understand. But, that doesn't change history. That ...