Spanish views from a small town

Today, a law has been drafted to replace the Law of Historical Memory passed in 2007. This new law would go much farther than that other one. Whether or not it will be watered down, or even pass a parliament with a vocal extreme right wing, is another thing. But the draft sounds like something that should have been approved at least thirty years ago. It starts by having the State pay for the exhumations of every mass grave created during and after the Civil War (and there are many - after Cambodia, Spain has the largest amount of  mass graves in the world). A national DNA bank would be set up, to be able to identify as many remains as possible, and return them to their families. A record would be created with the names of all those killed and persecuted during and after the Civil War. It continues with making all court sentences based on political ideologies legally void. All records of those condemned to jail or death would be cleaned, because there would be no base in legality fo...

Sometimes, the correction of history arrives too late. Other times, it arrives just before it's too late, and one wonders why it took so long. This coming Saturday, one of the Spanish vice presidents is going to Ay, in France, to give in hand a declaration of personal reparation to the last Spanish survivor of Mauthausen, Juan Romero, who is only 101.  Shipped out to Mauthausen with the complicity of Franco, when the war was over, he couldn't return to his native Córdoba, and found a home in Ay, along with around twenty other Spanish survivors. With the change to a democratic state, however, Spain turned its back on those who landed in concentration camps in occupied Germany. The reason they ended up in France is that they couldn't come back, and any homage would have meant admitting that Franco's state would have had them killed. That jibed with the blanket forgiveness of Franco's regime adopted by the new, democratic government. So, one by one, the survivors died ...

There are days my memory seems fluid as water. That old saw about walking into a room and immediately forgetting what I was going there for, describes me perfectly some weeks. My head is talking to itself, rehashing ideas and opinions, stray words and images weaving their way through, reminding me of some things, making me forget others. If James Joyce had been able to see my stream of consciousness, he would never have written Ulysses. Too chaotic. Best stick to a regular plot line, stream of consciousness aside. I had left a pastel painting for framing last week. On Friday they called and said it was ready. I decided to go pick it up Monday morning. Monday morning I woke up and thought about what I had to do that morning. Nothing stood out. I thought I had made plans, but I had no idea what they were. So I spent the morning at home. That evening, something reminded me I should have gone pick up the framed painting. So I went on Tuesday. This week I promised my daughter that as so...