Spanish views from a small town

We continue along in the pandemic. Today the central government decides which areas and provinces continue into Phase Three. Our region of Galicia is moving into it. In this Phase, the regional governments get more leeway on regulating mobility and gatherings, and our regional government will let people in the four provinces of Lugo, Ourense, A Coruña, and Pontevedra move from one to another, though no one can leave Galicia nor enter it without good reason. My husband will be glad he'll be allowed to cross the bridge to the green grocer's he favors, across the river in the province of Pontevedra. Madrid will also be passing to Phase Two. This means that some museums will open, among them, the Prado. They have reorganized the museum, and closed off many halls. A trail has been set up for visitors, taking them before some of the more iconic paintings in the permanent exposition, such as Las Meninas , and both Goya's and Ruben's Saturn Devouring his Children and Saturn ...

In the neighboring town of Lousame, up in the hills, there is an old mine. About fifteen years ago, my husband and I went to its abandoned headquarters to check out the ruins. It was a decaying fly caught in the flypaper of time. Some of the buildings were falling apart, the roofs caving in. Many of them were surrounded by briars and impossible weeds. There was a building with compressors, another with unidentifiable machinery, a well head, offices, what seemed to be workers' barracks, and a few other buildings and The low building to the left is the office. houses, one of which was occupied. It was strange, being able to squirrel into some of the buildings, such as the workers' barracks. They were attached, simple, two-story homes. In one that we could enter, the occupants had left some things in the kitchen, and in a room there were old schoolbooks from the 1970's. In the offices there was a little window where we assumed the workers collected their pay. There were ma...