Spanish views from a small town

This coming Tuesday the seventeenth is the Día das Letras Galegas . (Day of Galician Literature) Each year a Galician writer is showcased. This year it's the poet Manuel María, who died in 2004. Only writers in Galician are showcased. For example, the Nobel winner Camilo José Cela will not be celebrated on this day because, though he was born in Iria Flavia just north of Padrón, he only wrote in Castilian. Trying to find authors who wrote in Galician each year must also be quite an effort. Which is why some years the author the Real Academia Galega (the guardian of the language) chooses, is some obscure person whom nobody seems to recognize. A book or a poem is then cheaply distributed by some sponsors to help the public recognize his or her writing. Some years I think they just come up with a name out of desperation. Even if the person wrote in Galician, the reason they are not known is because the quality of the writing is second-rate. Or because he was a speci alist writer, wr...

As a preschool child I watched Sesame Street and The Electric Company . They were fun to watch, and I loved to watch Bert and Ernie arguing. They helped me as they helped a lot of other preschool kids with numbers, letters, etc. They also gave me an unintended boost. They helped me understand English. At home we spoke in galego (Galician), my parents' mother tongue and the language spoken in Galicia, where we were born. It's similar enough to Castilian so that if you understand Galician, you understand Castilian and can usually speak it. It's also similar to Portuguese, but the enunciation changes enough to not ensure understanding spoken Portuguese if you speak Galician. Since at home the only exposure was to Galician, watching those two programs on television made sure I at least understood English. When I began kindergarten I didn't have many problems understanding. Others, however, had problems understanding me, especially at first. A classmate, years later, tol...