Spanish views from a small town

Tonight is Christmas Eve, and it's the night everyone gets together for supper. It's the day for family reunions, much like Thanksgiving in the United States. Already last night on the news, they ran a story on arrivals and reunions at the airport in Madrid. Just about every family has relatives living elsewhere. The luckiest come home for Christmas.  Tonight's supper, in this crazy, commercialized world, would be late by any Anglo-Saxon standard. It's normal to start eating past ten at night. This year, doubly so, because stores are open today, and some will close at eight. The employees will probably get to go home at eight-thirty or nine. Supper will be even later in those families.  For the past few weeks, people have been stocking up for this special supper. First and foremost is the seafood. And since everyone plans to serve at least one seafood dish, prices react accordingly. Crab at twenty euros a kilo, prawns at over a hundred. Let's not even get into t...

Tonight is Christmas Eve, tomorrow Christmas Day. After having endured elections this past Sunday and lottery disappointment on Tuesday, between yesterday and today many have endured Christmas travel. Airports are filled with greetings, shouts, tears and laughter as people arrive home from wherever life has taken them. Roads are filled with drivers criscrossing the country, and sometimes various countries, to get home in time for Christmas Eve dinner. 'Tis the season for reunions. Spain, and particularly our region of Galicia, is a country of emigrants. History has always been brutal with the lowest classes, which have always had to find a way up by leaving their homes. In the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth, most went across the ocean to North and South America. From the 60's onwards, people began to migrate to the rest of western Europe. And now you can find a Spanish emigrant in almost every country of the world. Except at Christmas. Because a few...