Spanish views from a small town

It had seemed we were going into the final stretch of the pandemic, with vaccination going up, and infection going down. So much for wishful thinking. Right now, though vaccination is now coming along smartly, at least in Galicia, contagion is also going up strongly. The fact is that contagion is going up among young people in two age groups, from 12 to 19, and from 20 to 29. Until the end of the month, the second group wasn't going to start being called up for their shots. Between that, and all the end of school parties, especially those in Mallorca, and the binge-drinking get-togethers that act like magnets for over a hundred young people a night, and people are starting to get sick. The good thing is that, so far, hospitalizations seem to be holding. The youngest are the healthiest in general, so they aren't being admitted to the hospital in droves, like their grandparents were. Still, there are some older people that haven't received their shots, yet, for many different...

Last Saturday the temperature rose to 44ºC/111ºF in the region of Murcia. That afternoon, a man was brought to the health clinic in a small town in a van, from which he was apparently let fall out. He soon fell unconscious. Shortly thereafter, he died of a heat stroke, and the medicalized ambulance that arrived couldn't do anything.  The 42 year old man was Nicaraguan, and here illegally. He came to Spain to escape death threats, and tried to find work not only to eat, but also to send money back home, where he left a wife and children, including a newborn he still hadn't met. He had been recruited that day by a man, who was later arrested, to go work in a field picking watermelons. Given the expected temperatures, these workers were supposed to be told to work only until midday, instead of stopping at midday and continuing in the afternoon. But this man and his companions were not told to do that.  Conditions at different farms are now being looked into. Workers are gener...

Another neighbor from our parish died from Covid-19. He was seventy, and both he and his wife got infected when they went on an Imserso trip back in early March.  Imserso is an acronym for Instituto de Mayores y Servicios Sociales (Institute for Elderly and Social Services). It was created in 1978 and is like a frills package for those who need social services provided by the Seguridad Social . They provide all kind of care and administrative issues for elderly and special needs people. The most famous of which are the vacation packages for, mostly, retired people.  Those packages are intended for those who don't have large incomes to be able to travel around Spain, and to bring some custom to touristy areas off-season. Many people take advantage of their offers, and sign up for trips. I have neighbors that go almost every year. But, this year, it was a poison pill for many. The elderly that first got sick here in Galicia, brought the virus from Lloret del Mar and Benidor...

There is a scene in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in which Tom, Huck, and Joe Harper (a sometime partner in crime) are presumed drowned and the village holds a funeral service. In the meantime, the three boys, who had been holed up on Jackson's Island the whole time, are in the gallery listening and then make an entrance the current POTUS would envy.  I am sure that sometimes, some of us wonder what our own funeral would be like. Generally, those thoughts creep up on us when we're at someone else's funeral. We see the deceased in his or her coffin, comment on how life-like they look, whisper and wonder what the family was dreaming of when they chose the clothes, and count how many wreaths are stacked in the refrigerated room around the coffin.  Well, a woman who died last week in Guitiriz, Lugo, must have had the same idea, only she acted upon her musings. Ever since her husband died some twenty years ago, she had been preparing for her own demise. Those around her insis...

It was described as the second weirdest festival by The Guardian in 2008, right after the mud festival at Boryeong in South Korea. To those who are not Catholic (and even quite a few Catholics), visiting Santa Marta de Ribarteme on its feast day, July 29th, is a sight to make you think you've fallen through Alice's looking glass.  Normally, when someone asks a saint for a favor, they then go to the festival of that saint carrying a votive candle, as a way of thanking the saint for having answered their prayers. But Santa Marta is special. She was the sister of Lazarus and Mary Magdalen, and is now the patron saint of those about to die. In the New Testament, there are a couple of stories about her. When Jesus visited their house once, Mary sat by Jesus and listened to him talk. Martha bustled about in the kitchen and was put out that her sister didn't help. Another time, when Lazarus had died and Jesus asked to be taken to his tomb, Martha declared that it was now too lat...

One of my (few) first cousins has died early this morning. I still don't know what to think. It would begin to happen one day, but it still seems too early. When one is young, death is something that happens to grandparents or great-grandparents, or other old people. As we grow, we realize that the next to go are our parents, whether we love them or not. And they start to go. But that is within the scheme of things. You always knew they were going to die someday, even though you thought they might last forever during your childhood. The strangest moment is when death first touches your generation. I like to think I'm not that old. Even though my birthday was a couple of days ago, I'm still on the right side of fifty. The one time I feel old is when I get out of bed and my back complains. Our daughter is grown up, but she is still very much within the fold, since she is at university and still comes home on weekends and vacations. I only know of one within my circle a year...

Talk about history. In the city of Zaragoza there is a Catholic brotherhood that came into being back in the thirteenth century. It's the Hermandad de la Sangre de Cristo . (The Brotherhood of the Blood of Christ.) Apart from praying and interceding for those who request it, they have a very special job. Almost from the inception of the brotherhood, these men were charged with attending those about to receive the death penalty and afterward interring their bodies; as well as picking up bodies of those who died a violent or unnatural death.  Throughout almost eight hundred years, that is what they've done, without being paid. And that's what they still do. The only thing that the city pays the brotherhood is the vans they need, the salaries of a few helpers, supplies, and classes to acquire the knowledge they now need when dealing with a crime scene, and to lessen any biohazard they may encounter. That's quite a tradition. And evolution. They have evolved from selfless...

Forty years ago today, Spain changed. It began with a death. The death that was announced on black and white national television by the teary-eyed Prime Minister, Carlos Arias Navarro. "Franco ha muerto." The fascist dictator of Spain for almost forty desolate years was eighty-two years old. He had been in and out of the hospital for the past year. One could say he died of old age and the complications of Parkinson's disease. But before he died, in September he signed the last death sentences for five men. They were the last to be executed in Spain before the death penalty was abolished in 1978. Franco was ornery to the last.  He was buried in the mausoleum built by Republican prisoners of war under conditions Hitler would have approved of. This mausoleum, the Valle de los Caídos , has an enormous white cross. It actually occupies a small mountain that was hollowed out to create it. Driving northwest on the A-6 out of Madrid, you can see it to the left as you approach...

Tigresa was anything but a tiger. If a stranger came to the house, she was the first up the stairs and under a bed. The other cats would sometimes fight her and put her in her place. She got that name because ten years ago, when she was a kitten, in her coloring some stripes were visible, so my daughter named her Tigresa.  She considered me her primary friend. She would always come to me to ask for food and cuddles. But she wasn't a lap cat. When I picked her up, she preferred to be held like a baby and for me to squeeze and cuddle her, scratch her under her chin and at her breastbone. And she would purr and stretch and close her paws as if she were kneading. At night her favorite place to sleep until about two years ago was me. I would wake up, feel a weight on my legs, and there she would be, lying in the hollow between my two legs, all stretched out, head on paws, sleeping. And then I wouldn't be able to move most of the night. I was her favorite person; she would tole...

If you ever visit Galicia and you decide to take a midnight stroll along a dimly lit lane that leads to a dark forest path, where the black shadows of the trees play hide and seek with the stars, take a small cross with you. And if you hear chants or a bell or smell wax, or if between the trees you see luminous shapes approach with someone bearing a cross in front of them, hide. If the person offers you the cross, simply say, "I already have one," and show him the one you are carrying. If one of the luminous shapes offers you a candle, do not accept it, but rather pray and start running. You will have been approached by the Santa Compaña . The Santa Compaña is a legend that is slowly dying out as the people who profess to have seen it become older and die. In the mountainous areas of Galicia and Asturias there are still people who claim to have seen it maybe thirty years ago, but the introduction of street lights have banished ghosts and legends. The Compaña (or Güestia o...