Spanish views from a small town

I am falling back into the old ways of writing every few days rather than every day. In part, it's because the newness of the pandemic, and the necessity of recording its ever-changing nature has disappeared. We have become more or less inured to the illness and the numbers that we are still barraged with every day. Those numbers are now going down, though certainly not through our actions. The beginning of the new school year has brought thousands of students together in university towns and cities. In Santiago, thousands have had to be hounded off the streets by riot police where they were binge drinking and keeping the neighbors awake with their revelry. In Barcelona in recent days, forty thousand were rousted from the largest plaza in the city. With these enormous get-togethers, with the flux of tourism this summer, and with our complacency, the numbers should have gone up. But vaccination is a wondrous thing. Over seventy percent of the total population in Spain is completely ...

I've had an internet problem these days. Fiber remains elusive, though another company tells me they're working on getting Movistar to install the damned connection box. I won't be holding my breath. My wifi router, after two weeks since its billing period began, reached the maximum of the gigas it offers me, and my connection slowed to a snail's crawl. I shopped around, found a mobile package with unlimited calls and 100 gigas, that works with the antenna of the only provider that has coverage around here. I contracted it, inserted the SIM card in an old phone, and now use it as a hotspot. The fine print said the company allows tethering, so there should be no problem. Why else would they offer so many gigas? Still, I'll wait a month or two, paying for both services, until I finally get rid of the old one, which only offers 40 gigas a month.  This week we have finally gotten summery weather. It's warm, and I'm not complaining. Yesterday, it reached around 3...

In our neck of the woods, this is becoming the year without a summer. Or, at least, with an anomalous summer.  We have had a few, perfect days, and even two days where the temperatures went well above 30ºC/86ºF. But the majority of them had temperatures with a maximum of 25ºC/77ºF and below, with a few days colder than normal. And the sun has found it hard to string three or four days together with few or no clouds. Meteorologists say that that is because air from the Arctic isn't allowing the Azores high pressure area to strengthen and touch us with more than just a tentacle. In the meantime, parts of Europe has baked in unusual heat, while other parts drowned in unusual floods. The western U.S. and Canada have also passed record high temperatures, which have resulted in enormous wildfires, the same as in Siberia (again), Turkey, Sicily, and other areas. On the southern half of the world, southern Brazil and northern Argentina have received unexpected snow.  Yet, could we be ...

When I began subtitling my blog at the beginning of the pandemic lockdown, my intention had been to do a day by day account of how things developed, hence the numbers after the first month. By now, it's been going on for so long, that life just gets in the way of reporting every day. Even when I write frequently, since there's little that's new, I don't tend to mention anything about Covid. I am getting the feeling, however, that this pandemic is going to stretch into the rest of the year, and possibly well into the next. Contagion is up in the clouds. On a national level, it's around 650 per hundred thousand. The numbers are driven by the young, where contagion is close to two thousand per hundred thousand in the 20-29 group. This group, precisely, is the one that is going to start getting vaccinated here, in Galicia, as of next week.  That said, without a state of alarm, it's up to the regional governments and their courts to install any kind of restrictions. ...

Saturday morning, we pulled up most of the potatoes. Those that are deeper still have to be dug out, though. It was a warm day, hot but not too hot, unlike the rest of Spain; areas in Andalucía and Extremadura had temperatures reach around 40ºC/104ºF, and spiked even higher on Sunday. Meanwhile, we reached 30ºC/86ºF and had a fine beach afternoon. Yesterday, our temperatures went down, and a small cold front passed through last night. Today we're having spring weather, with occasional showers, and summer will return along the week. There is, officially, a fifth wave of the pandemic strolling through Spain. It is attacking mostly young people, from 12 to 29 years old, though the twenty-somethings are the hardest hit. In our region of Galicia, the government has gone so far as to close beaches, parks, gardens, and plazas from 1 AM to 6 AM, so that binge-drinking parties can't take place. Also, in townships that are in middle level risk, to enter music bars and discos, proof of va...

It had seemed we were going into the final stretch of the pandemic, with vaccination going up, and infection going down. So much for wishful thinking. Right now, though vaccination is now coming along smartly, at least in Galicia, contagion is also going up strongly. The fact is that contagion is going up among young people in two age groups, from 12 to 19, and from 20 to 29. Until the end of the month, the second group wasn't going to start being called up for their shots. Between that, and all the end of school parties, especially those in Mallorca, and the binge-drinking get-togethers that act like magnets for over a hundred young people a night, and people are starting to get sick. The good thing is that, so far, hospitalizations seem to be holding. The youngest are the healthiest in general, so they aren't being admitted to the hospital in droves, like their grandparents were. Still, there are some older people that haven't received their shots, yet, for many different...

Niñatos . That is a Spanish term that, in one word, serves to describe privileged kids who have no sense of responsibility, and are selfish as hell. That word describes a great deal of the teenagers that went on end-of-school trips to Palma de Mallorca, where they cavorted to their hearts' content, and are now disseminating new cases of Covid all over the country. There are a few that realize they are responsible for their actions, but just a few. One, a Galician, interviewed by La Voz de Galicia, declared that they had been at fault for attending a macro concert in Palma's bull ring, and various other parties, knowing that the pandemic is still there. Unfortunately, those don't get much air time. The ones that do, are the ones that are angry that their trip has been interrupted. Over two hundred have been confined by the Govern Balear to a four star hotel on the city's ocean front. Of those, about sixty-two had tested positive by yesterday. These children and their par...

Almost a month ago, I subtitled my blog with Final Stretch , because it seemed we were in the final stretch of the pandemic; people were being vaccinated left and right, the number of contagion was falling steeply. The brakes just got pulled. The Delta variant, highly contagious, is starting to gain on the British variant, which was already more contagious than the original. Only those who have been vaccinated with their two shots are more likely to stave off Delta, the rest can easily get sick. And, thanks to end of school trips to Mallorca, around a thousand cases have been detected almost all over Spain among teenagers who let their hair down at the offered macro parties. Worse, still, it's not just the teenagers in some cases, but their parents and other family members, as well. Common sense, sentidiño as we say here, is brilliant in its absence.  Despite this, Spain has gone ahead with its new rules on masks. But, it turns out that the new rules are the ones I already abided ...

Instead of writing every day, it seems I'm slowing down and writing every two days. It's just another measure of how inured we have become to the pandemic, I think. It's become just another part of life. The national state of alarm ended this past Sunday. No more curfews, and no regions closed off, to our disgrace. Why? Because in many cities and large towns, it was as if people equaled the end of the state of alarm with the end of the pandemic. Crowds, and crowds, and crowds of young people, in general, out on the streets, all jumbled together, singing, laughing, shouting, drinking, and dancing. Scenes from Madrid, Barcelona, and even Salamanca looked like it was the local saint's day and a festivity. Fifth wave, here we come. Ayuso, who spoke so much of liberty, and keeping Madrid open, has turned her back on all the doctors, nurses, and health care workers who worked to extenuation to save every Covid patient that came (and still come) before them. Liberty to die fro...

Our television is second hand, and about seven or ten years old. That means it has no connection to internet, even though it is HD, and has a pretty good picture. About a year ago, something happened to its software. Every few times we turned it on, we then had to tune the television, waiting until it found every available channel. After a while, it got worse, and now we have to tune it every time we turn it on. That means there is no picture automatically, but we have to wait maybe five minutes or more for it to run through all the channels. This problem did help to show that we now have more channels than we did previously. However, in the years since we had lost them, the contents have become pure telegarbage, so, in the end, it doesn't matter if we can get those channels or not. To tune it, we have to choose language and country. Normally, we choose English, and Spain. But, yesterday our daughter made a mistake and chose Serbia. I found it strange that the hour was off, so I st...

I have changed the subheading, again. The tsunami of contagion within this pandemic seems over, though the level ground is gradually ascending, slowly but surely. Hopefully, vaccinations will get going, and the ascent will not be as steep as the tip of the tsunami wave in January was. Hopefully. This is the day of the let-down. The day before, the marvelous drive. Yesterday, life as usual. Today, Sunday. Easter Sunday, but still, Sunday. I'm a little bit at a loss today on what to focus. I've had various reminders, such as that today is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, when he went to rally striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee. Or that, a hundred fifty years ago, the commune of Paris was in full swing, guaranteeing workers a ten hour work day, separation of church and state, abolition of the death penalty, granting of pensions to widows and unmarried companions, and other socialist attempts at making life a little bit better for t...

It's been a year. A year since the first state of alarm that locked us inside our homes.  I remember the growing anxiety over the spreading contagion last March, but still couldn't believe one of my students when he said he had heard school would be closed within a week. There were few people in our region who had contracted Covid. Yet, the weekend after we had marched in the Women's Day protest in Santiago, we were all shut up inside our private enclosures. Those who lived in flats couldn't even go out on communal patios or roof terraces.  To prepare for the lockdown, people went shopping. And emptied supermarket aisles. Anyone seen with the last packet of toilet paper in the entire supermarket, was set upon, in good, WWE fashion. People who usually went shopping every other day, suddenly had two or three carts in the queue. Some, experts after having watched zombie movies and movies about the siege of Leningrad and Stalingrad enough times, knew to head for the canned ...

It seems we have reached the cusp of contagion. Fewer people are being reported as sick. However, the death curve is climbing. Very possibly, one of the explanations could be that so many hospitals are so saturated, that the stretched out personnel can't fight as hard and as well with so many patients. I don't know. In our township, with a population of just over 11,000, today's number is 34 infected. We hit a plateau in the past week, where the number always fluctuated in the 40's, and since Monday, the number has been going down. The surrounding townships are also slowly reducing their numbers of contagion, so, hopefully, restrictions will be lifted soon, and we can travel from here to there, and vice versa. Even if I can't get to Santiago for a while, yet, I would love to resume my regular weekly shopping routine. In the meantime, I hope with all my soul that on the 17th of this month, we are allowed to meet up with people other than those who live with us. That ...

Memory. It consists of remembering things that happened, things that were, whether we remember them rosily, or in their crudeness. It consists of having the past in our consciousness, and understanding that we are our past. Yesterday was the liberation of Auschwitz. Seventy-six years ago, Soviet troops arrived at the sprawling complex, and liberated the few skeletal survivors that were still there. Thousands others had been taken into Germany on a death march, which would kill many of them. Among those who survived the march, only to die later, were Anne and Margot Frank.  A hundred and two years ago, the Spanish flu was ravaging the world in its most deadly wave. Many who had escaped the illness earlier, were now struck down. Some pooh-poohed the danger, and refused to take precautions. The tragedy of that flu was that it tended to kill the young, the middle-aged, and the healthy. 2021, and we have another pandemic, and the threats of a rising wave of intolerance like the hatred t...

The year ends tonight. There is a palpable relief in the air, with the knowledge that the coming 2021 will be much better than the outgoing 2020, which, like a meme I recently used, seems written by Stephen King, and directed by Quentin Tarantino.  But will next year be so much better? It will definitely begin badly, at least in regards to the pandemic. In our little corner of the world, I have the feeling we will be isolated within our townships until well into the spring. It will be another lost spring. Already, Seville has cancelled its Feria de Abril, as well as its Holy Week processions. The concert we were going to go to last June was moved to this coming March. I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be pushed forward into the next winter, if not outright cancelled. This year was supposed to be a hallmark year. Twenty years already into the new century. Yes, there were the usual problems; the death knell of democracy in the U.S., the gradual dismemberment of the E.U. beginn...

Thoughts and observations on life during the pandemic.  After midnight last night, I turned off the television. I was the only one up in the house, aside from the cats, but the silence was eery. I slowly realized there were no cars going by, at all, due to the curfew. It was quieter even than during the worst days of lockdown in April.  This morning, while driving, everything seemed normal until I saw the first person walking by on the sidewalk. Mask. Masks everywhere. Some were patterned cloth. Many were surgical, as if the owner wanted to be able to throw it away as soon as the obligation to wear it was lifted, and keep no souvenir in the house of these troubled times.  After passing my car's inspection (finally!), I went into town to look for something. Every store I went into, I was reminded to use alcoholic gel on my hands. It didn't matter that I had already done it two minutes earlier, in another establishment, and hadn't touched anything. My hands were cleaner tha...

There are some very strange people out there. Or, people that are so happy-go-lucky that you wonder how they happen to survive in this crazy world. Our daughter has the morning shift this week, so this afternoon, after cleaning up and eating lunch, she went to the beach with a friend. This week, warm temperatures are back. There, they made the acquaintance of a woman who had simply decided to cool down from the heat by stopping by the beach. She had a large duffel bag with her, and explained that she was looking for the village of Abuín, and the beach As Cunchas. She had come all the way from somewhere near Durango, in Euskadi, just to surprise her daughter and her daughter's father.  My daughter explained how to get to Abuín, and the woman decided to chat with them a bit. She told the two friends that her trip had lasted two days, travelling by different buses and Blah-Blah cars. She had no idea exactly where her daughter lived, just the reference of the beach As Cunchas in Abuín....

Nearly o ne hundred years ago this month, one of the deadliest moments of modern history began. It would last well into the spring of the next year, and even now we don't have enough information about it. At Fort Riley, Kansas, the first documented cases of the Spanish flu were recorded.  Countless soldiers there were being readied for deployment overseas. The United States had entered World War I the year before. Soldiers had already gone to Europe, and more were waiting to cross the Atlantic. On March 11, a cook was the first to come down with the flu. A few days later, he was followed by hundreds of soldiers into the camp hospital. That was the first recording of a virulent illness that quickly spread from one person to the other.  In May, thousands became infected in Spain, including the king, Alfonso XIII. This flu virus, however, affected mainly the young and the strong. The king was only 32 years old, yet he became very ill. At this time, however, no more died from ...