Spanish views from a small town

Many, many years ago, about three years after getting married, my parents built this little house. Back then it was pretty much each house for itself in terms of services, so they had to dig their own well. They did so, a well about three meters deep, lined with the rock of the area, a soft sarsen which let the water through easily. There was no need to go deeper; in winter the well would spill over, and the water would run to the fields behind. In summer the water never disappeared. But water never disappeared anywhere in summer here. There is a reason we are a part of the "green Spain." Galicia is on the receiving end of North Atlantic storm systems, much like western Ireland. My husband says that during his childhood it would rain from September to May, with scattered showers in the remaining months. When we first arrived in 1991, we arrived to a year of drought. I remember well the advisories on the nightly news, especially affecting southern Spain, yet we also experien...

When one thinks of Galicia in the winter, images of rain soaked grass come up. Dark clouds scudding in the sky, and drizzle working its way into every crevasse it finds. Our weather is much like that on other western shores. Western Ireland and the Pacific Northwest have similar weather. My husband says that the rain would appear at the beginning of fall and last until late spring. Depressing, but that's what gives Galicia its verdure and temperate climate.  For the past few years, though, things have been changing. We have had dry winters and wet summers. Months when not a drop of rain has fallen. Our well has almost run dry a few times, and springs that were never known to not have at least a trickle of water have dried out. This past summer was extremely dry. There were no immediate alarms until towards the end, because it followed upon an abnormally wet spring. But now the dry weather has continued for too long. A dry summer led into a dry autumn, and now a dry winter has b...

This is an odd summer. Except for about three or four scattered days, we have had warm and sunny weather since the end of last month. These past few years we haven't had summery weather until a couple of weeks at the end of summer and scattered days in the middle. But, this year, the number of forest fires doesn't seem to be as high as other years, even with the sun and warm temperatures. And now, this is where I cross my fingers and knock on wood. Yesterday afternoon was an exception. Some time after seven, we heard a helicopter fly overhead. There are four types of helicopters in our local skies. One is the medicalized ambulance helicopter, another is the hated Tráfico machine with the radar gun, a third is the police helicopter, and the fourth is the yellow or red helicopter that is used by firefighters. The one we heard yesterday was the yellow one. We went out the back, and we could see dark puffs of smoke punctuating the blue sky above the hill. It was drifting up from...