Spanish views from a small town

This morning, I had to take my daughter to a doctor's appointment for a physical for her new job. Because of the devil virus, I couldn't wait in the waiting room with her and had to wander outside on the streets.  As I started wandering around, I decided to go to the insurance office where our cars have their insurance policies. I just wanted to assure myself that there would be no problem with our daughter taking the car to work every day, since she has just gotten her license. I went in, explained, asked if she was covered under our policies, and the woman looked at me and said, No. Uh oh. But, if she was a household driver, like my husband and I, surely it didn't matter if she drove the car. Would it? Yes, it mattered. It mattered to the insurance company. Because she is a novel driver, we have to pay a supplement for her. I sighed. How much? From five hundred on up. My jaw dropped. I think our yearly policies on each of our two cars barely reach three hundred. The woman...

Some people consider driving a privilege, others a necessity, still others a right. However one considers it, a license is necessary. It can sometimes be a difficult skill to learn. Ask my daughter; she tried during most of last winter to learn how to manage a car without causing a seven-car pile-up, and has decided to save us from disaster until she can fully coordinate mind and body. Sometimes, though, it's quite easy, the only problem is the bureaucracy surrounding the license. One man found out after losing all his points and going to exam to recuperate them. Spain has a system of points to keep a license going. We all start out with a maximum of twelve. If we don't lose any during a certain amount of time, we are given three more. But points are easily lost. Almost any fine comes with a loss in points. If you are indiscreet enough to have Tráfico cops stop you often and present you with love letters, you can lose all of them. At that point your license turns into wet to...

Just when it seemed most drivers were getting the hang of not plowing into other cars inside a rotary, new rules have been put into practice at some rotaries. The intention is to facilitate entrances and exits, so that no lane changing is necessary within the rotary. Hah! In a normal rotary with two lanes, the right lane is always used to exit. The left lane is generally used to make a u-turn, or when the intended exit is the third or fourth. Approaching the exit, the driver should change to the right lane to take it. Most drivers don't follow those rules. Generally, when two lanes lead into a rotary, the drivers stay in their lanes, and exit from either of them. Eagle eyes are activated by drivers exiting from the left lane to make sure the driver next to them in the right lane won't cut them off by continuing around the rotary. After fifteen or twenty years of practice, drivers have gotten the hang of avoiding accidents. Usually. In the new turbo rotaries, you must enter ...

There is something common to both Spanish and American roads and streets. Potholes. Back in Boston they're caused by the continuous freezing and thawing of water on the blacktop and the weight of passing traffic. After winter they blossom like daffodils. Here they're caused by the continuous rain. This month it is now being helped by frosty nights. And they become perpetual. There are potholes and then there are potholes. There are the cracks in the blacktop that make your car wobble as you cruise over them. Those are little embryos, simple bumps in the road that are almost unnoticeable. Then there are regular holes that are simple, that you notice with a slight bump. Unless you find them on the highway. Simple holes there become a driver's nightmare. There you are, cruising with the rest of the cars, keeping to the right-hand lane. Of course, you're not keeping to the speed limit because you have a good car and the day is fine and dandy. All of a sudden you hear ...

After years of driving, you tend to accumulate anecdotes. Generally, those anecdotes are created as a new driver and, when you're old enough, they seem funny and you seem stupid. But you've learned to laugh at yourself, so the mortification has been left behind with your numbskull youth. I got to thinking about my driving history from an article in the newspaper about a driver who was absolved of drunk driving charges, even though he had had a blood test and the result was over one gram of blood alcohol content. He had been brought to the cops' attention when, some months ago, he drove to a rural health clinic and asked for a doctor to attend to a deer he had run over. Said deer was outside, in the car. The personnel went, hmmmmm, and called the traffic cops. They took his BAC, but the judge decided that by then it had no relation to the moment he was behind the wheel. That at that moment it could have been within legal limits, only to mushroom later because of the time e...

We have a rule in our house. Though we are not able to get away for extended vacations (last year's trip to France was an exception), at least during Holy Week or the week of the Guadelupe festival in Rianxo, my husband and I go for a day-long ride through some area of Galicia. Over the years we've visited almost every point of its geography, from the Roman camp of Bande in Ourense, mostly buried under a reservoir except in years of little rain, to the English Cemetery on the Costa da Morte in A Coruña, where the crew of The Serpent was buried after the ship broke apart on the ship-hungry rocks nearby over a hundred years ago. Thankfully, the clouds gave a respite yesterday and we went up to Ortigueira and the coast along to Viveiro, one of the few places we haven't been yet.  Ortigueira is a tranquil little town on the northern coast in the province of A Coruña with around six thousand souls living there year-round. Ortigueira is also famous for its folk festival in the ...