Spanish views from a small town

Today is St. John's Day, and is a regional holiday. Last night, many bonfires lit the cloudy skies, and the sea was emptied of sardines to be roasted over the coals. Our daughter went to friends' in Santiago, but my husband and I roasted our own sardines and built our own little bonfire, over which we jumped three times to ward off the witches. This morning, we washed our faces in the traditional water steeped with fragrant herbs that sat out overnight, to catch the magic of midsummer night. Actually, midsummer was on the twenty-first, but the Church positioned the feast of St. John just three days away, so pagan celebrations were moved slightly. They're still pagan, just with a Christian patron.  The bonfire was a punctuation to a rather hectic day for me. It was the first day of my week's vacation, and I had errands to run. Since our daughter is working this summer, I haven't got a car. Yesterday, since I was free, I drove her to work, and then went to Santiago an...

Memories have a way of jumping and punching you in the face sometimes. Perusing Facebook tonight, a black and white photo of an old North End street in Boston stopped me. I recognized the corner store at once. Polcari's Coffee. Into my nostrils immediately came the mixture of coffee, spices, and all the dark brown, heady smells of the store. I found myself a little girl again, waiting inside a store with alluring sacks wide open with all sorts of coffee beans and legumes, while my mother bought some mundane thing. An old set of scales on the wooden counter was in continuous use. The shelves behind the counter were filled with merchandise. On the window sills and along a shelf in the window, too, boxes and bottles of different things. On the counter a container filled with candied fruit and orange peel. Chocolate and candy umbrellas, too, beckoned to me with their bright colored wrappings. If I was very good, my mother would buy me one, or a piece of candied orange peel. At Christma...

The other night I was taken back in time. I found myself watching a Spanish program of old murders in the area of Zaragoza, told by the (now) retired police officers who ran the investigations, and actors who did a reenactment. The actual program wasn't very interesting. What was interesting was the trip back in time to those years in which I was a teenager. Seeing how some of the actors were dressed reminded me of those halcyon days. 1987, the year I turned eighteen. The Cold War was still going strong, yet it seemed to be cracking open with Gorbachev's perestroika , or restructuring, which later turned into the openness of glasnost . It seemed at the time the Soviets had heard Sting's song, Russians , especially the stanza, "We share the same biology, regardless of ideology./Believe me when I say to you,/I hope the Russians love their children, too."  In Spain, the Socialists were finishing their construction of the Estado de Bienestar , or Welfare State, th...

There are news stories that will always stay with you. Then there are things you have witnessed that cling to you, as well. They aren't always bad, though some are. The funny thing is, you always remember them when you pass by the scene where they happened. Otherwise, you don't think of them at all. Every time we take our daughter up to Santiago, we try to avoid the tollway and go by the crowded road. Just after Padrón is Iria Flavia. I remember that Camilo José Cela is buried in the churchyard there. He won the Nobel Prize back in the 80's for The Family of Pascual Duarte . It's a very dark book that should be read on a bright sunny day. It's also the only thing he ever wrote that's worthwhile. In his latter years he was under a cloud of accused plagiarism, and I wouldn't be surprised if he turned out not to be the legitimate author of the book. His Foundation and Library are also there, in front of the church, right on the road. I remember that his young...

My earliest memories of cooling off during summer heat, are of wading in Frog Pond in a red and blue swimsuit with white trim. And of my mother not letting me get in the water when a redhead older than me was in, topless. From those memories of Boston Common, which was not too far from our apartment on Hanover Avenue in the North End, my head jumps to Castle Island and South Boston. By then my father had gotten his license and we had a grey Toyota Corolla with a red interior. We had also bought a house and moved to Jamaica Plain, where we had two immense maple trees in the back yard. They helped to make the back porch livable in the summer months. Our cooling-off plan every Sunday that was sunny and hot, involved a lot of heat in the morning. My mother, like every good Galician woman, would cook up a gargantuan meal. In the early years, she also prepared meat to put in the cooler and later grill on the hibachi we also lugged with us. Toward midday, we would pack the car: folding t...

It's past the middle of September and the grapes are already ripe. People have been picking them these past couple of weeks to make their own wine at home. We could hear our neighbors under their grape arbor this past weekend, talking and laughing as they picked the grapes. Though the grapes aren't for them, since they don't make wine. A relative has taken them. The big wineries have almost finished by now, but the local families are still starting to make their wine. We don't make wine any more. My father is the only one who used to drink it, and now he can't drink more than a glass every other day. If a brother-in-law doesn't come to pick the grapes, the birds and the wasps will take care of them. Our variety doesn't make the best wine. It's called catalan , and I assume that's because after the philoxera decimated the local varieties at the begining of the twentieth century that variety was brought from Catalunya because it was resistent. We hav...

Anyone who has had a childhood blessed with books will always remember a few with nostalgia. They will become touchstones with the past, in which when we conjure up the story, we will remember our surroundings at the time we read it, though we won't remember most likely how old we were or what year it was. We will remember every detail about the book, even where there were stains, or a blurb from the jacket if it had one. But the frustration will be in the titles. There are a few I remember from childhood, but I don't remember any of the titles except for one or two. I remember there was one about a Nebraska girl who lives on the Oregon Trail with her aunt and uncle. Her parents have left her there with them for some reason before continuing the Trail. They promised her they would send for her at a future date. The girl is desperate and tries to join a wagon train once or twice as a stowaway. She is caught and returned. The last time she runs away she is found, but accepted a...