Spanish views from a small town

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 my month. I am on vacation, with no classes. Yesterday, since my husband wasn't coming home for lunch, I went for a drive. I decided to go to Vigo along the old national road, the N550. It passes through countless towns and the city of Pontevedra before reaching Vigo and melting into its urban streets. As I was driving, however, I automatically made a right turn into the entrance to the tollway that runs north to south from Ferrol to Tui. My automatic pilot was on, so I turned it off and took the first exit, to Caldas, where I finally incorporated onto the N550.  As I drove south from Caldas, I remembered an old disco, A Condesa, where I had gone once with friends, well over twenty years ago. Now, large modern factory buildings dominate the area, and the disco is long gone. Lone gone, too is what used to be the cheapest gas station in the area, buildings in ruins, spray painted logos on them, weeds adoring the tarmac. Further on, to the left, is the park Ría de Bar...