Spanish views from a small town

I always knew my complaint would reach no safe port. When my tire got blasted by the object lying in the middle of the lane on the tollway, I knew I was on my own. Now, five months after it happened, my certainty has been confirmed. The insurance called me yesterday at midday to tell me my claim against the tollway AP-9, run by Audasa, an affiliate of Grupo Itínere, which in itself belongs to Citigroup (we're talking big, big money, and big, big money always wins), was deemed unfounded. They are calling me a liar.  They claim there was no object lying in the lane, and that no call was made that day to complain of one. They say I have no proof of anything happening. Yet, I called the central offices on their direct SOS line from a booth on the highway, which records all the calls. I distinctly remember the person on the other side saying that, yes, there had been a complaint about the object earlier. The maintenance crew did come and change the tire for me. Yet now they are sayi...

From here to Santiago, the fastest way to go is the tollway. Close to three euros will get you there in a little less than twenty minutes. It's supposed to be fast and safe. Being a private highway that charges for use and also gets some funding from the government, you would expect to see maintenance crews crawling all over the place, making sure everything is fine.  Not really. Only after the fires of 2006 practically shut it down in the area south of Pontevedra, did they start to cut small trees and brush from the embankments next to the highway. Even so, in August of last year, a fire just south of Santiago, in the area of Faramello, crossed the highway with a breath of roasting air and lung-wrenching smoke, yet traffic wasn't stopped and diverted, nor drivers warned of any danger until they ran through it. Money is practically never reimbursed, either, even when the high standards one expects from a tollway aren't met. I met with one of those drops in standards Sat...

It was a dark and stormy night, and I was driving on the highway home. The rain slashed at the car and the wind rocked it as I kept well below the speed limit. More than anything because I could only see black space around me. There were faint lines on the road, and reflectors along the guardrail reflected a memory of light. As I passed incorporations and exits, the tall streetlights might have been nonexistent, tall dark posts they were, not practicing the functions for which they had been placed there. In places, instead of wicking away the water, the asphalt simply let it lie there for the car before me to spit on my windshield, making me even blinder. And for the privilege of risking my life, when I left the highway after eighteen kilometers, I had to pay €2.25. This highway, the AP-9, is the busiest highway in Galicia. It connects Ferrol in the north, with Tui in the south. From Tui it crosses the river Miño into Portugal and connects with the Portuguese highway, A3-IP1, which g...