Spanish views from a small town

In every town there's a store that everyone has gone to at one time or another. It carries just about everything, and has reasonable prices. The owners are always to be seen attending to customers, even if there are other shop assistants. It's a place where you've been taken by your grandparents, and where you take your children. In our town, there's such a store. It's called Encarnita Moda. It had a long history. It was open since 1951 and closed just at the end of last November. The owners, Juan and Encarnita, were always there; it didn't matter that they had retired.  You could wander in naked, and wander out dressed from top to bottom. They sold underwear, shoes, socks, clothes both for adults and children, coats, jackets, hats, yarn for crochet and knitting, buttons, zippers, thread, patches, embroidery floss, elastic, ribbon, hooks and clasps, sheets, blankets, bed spreads, towels, sewing needles, knitting needles, and crochet needles. And probably muc...

When I was a teenager in Boston, I worked after school at Harvard Medical School in the old Physiology Department. I did menial work. I would run errands, do odd office work, or wash glassware in some laboratories. I came to know, in the head office, a true lady in the old sense of the word. She was the administrator to the head of the department and had plenty o f responsibility . The secretaries of the department office held her in awe and considered her a small ogre, however just, to be frightened of. They never understood how she and I got along so well. There was a sense of equality between us that always made me remember Anne of Green Gables and her "kindred spirits". After my work was done, generally after normal office hours, I would sometimes go into her office and we would talk. She was Egyptian. But she spoke French, was Catholic, and had a French given name. She could speak Arabic, which she spoke with some friends in her childhood and on the streets, but she coul...

There is really very little to say. The images shown on the news these nights of people escaping war and certain death make me ashamed. Ashamed of being a European in a country whose leaders, along with the leaders of other European countries, do nothing more than say something must be done. But nothing is done, except the erection of more fences, and more hot air expended in meetings that bring about nothing while thousands are searching for a dream of an existence they once had but have lost.  They have lost comfortable lives because of the intervention of the West in their countries. Because of our habits of colonialization. If not by taking over their countries, then by ignoring their customs and beliefs and insisting that our social systems become theirs. Because, of course, our systems are superior. Especially when those countries have resources vital to our systems. At all costs, our way of life must continue and we must have those resources to maintain it. And so we destr...

If you like to watch a rally, then you're in luck here. Rallies are common in some townships with the appropriate lanes. I am not a fan. I don't see the sport in it, nor the excitement of watching cars careening around curves, throwing up dirt in their wake. I would prefer to be driving, but it doesn't sound to me like something interesting to watch. However, rallies bring together hundreds, sometimes thousands of spectators, lined up along the lanes. Security has always tried to set up areas away from some of the dangerous curves, but sometimes security has had to be rethought after serious accidents. Like the one yesterday. There was a rally in the township of Carral, near A Coruña, yesterday. It had been discontinued, but this year it was reinstated after fourteen years. It was also the patron saint of the parish, so many people were celebrating. From photos that appear in newspapers, spectators were lined up quite close to the lane along a stretch of road. I suppose i...

Fireworks are beautiful. I've loved them since I was a child. To see a light explode in the night sky into streams of different colors, and to feel the boom resound right through me was the definition of summer and good weather. More than anything because I only saw fireworks on the Fourth of July. Here we see them at almost every festival. Only the very small parrochial festivals don't have them, like ours. Last Saturday, a week late because of the weather, Vilagarcía de Arousa had their Batalla Naval , the fireworks to celebrate the end of their festival. We are about a half hour drive away and we could hear the booming from our house. If we had driven to a high spot in the hills nearby, we would have seen them blossoming over the ría .  But all their beauty has a downside to it. For, to be able to see those fireworks break open in all their glory, many different ingredients have to be put together, including dangerous gun powder. Yesterday there was an explosion at a pyrot...