Spanish views from a small town

Saturday night was yet another edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. As was more or less predictable, Ukraine won by popular vote. Their song was not one of my favorites, but I think people judged more on the situation than on musical merits.  Which is really ironic, because this contest is supposed to be apolitical. In the past twenty years, Ukraine has had its wrist slapped repeatedly for introducing politics with its Russian neighbor into their songs. This year, when they ended their song, they called out for people to support Mariupol and help out those trapped in the Azovstal works. But, this year was different from previous ones, and it was ignored by the judges. The song itself, ostensibly about the singer's mother, could as easily be extrapolated to the Motherland of Ukraine. In other words, nothing on this earth is apolitical; music, especially. The festival itself began with staged people singing Give Peace a Chance in Turin, where the festival was held. Spain, amazin...

Contagion just keeps going up, especially among the young people. In less than a month, Spain has become one of the European countries with the most spread of Covid. Luckily, we are also vaccinating quickly, now, and there are fewer hospitalizations. Still, this means that we are not going to have a freer summer.  Thinking about some of the things I have written about, and that have caught my eye, I realize that my political views have always been left of center. Even when I was a child, I was obsessed with justice. "That's not fair!" was an exclamation that always made me mad. It wasn't fair that if one kid did something wrong, the whole class should be punished. It wasn't fair that a bully would take away a kid's cookies. It wasn't fair! As I grew, and watched the evening news with my parents, I became aware that the world wasn't fair, either. There were wars, people killed other people, people lived in poverty, people went hungry next to others sipp...

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...

This week, another issue of El Jueves came out, and the camp over at extreme right Vox went berserk.  To begin, I will explain that El Jueves is much like the American Mad magazine. It is a satirical comic, which lampoons everything that walks on two legs. It doesn't matter who it is, if someone says or does something that catches the public eye, they will be satirized by this magazine. This week, it was Vox's turn. The magazine published a series of fake baseball cards, with different, disgusting characters lampooning actual members of the extremist organization. The artists made them look like the Garbage Pail Kids cards, from the 1980's. The images are a little too disgusting, perhaps, but the lampooning messages are the usual.  On the official Twitter account of Vox, someone, probably the leader, Santiago Abascal, posted: "Se llama Ricardo Rodrigo Amar y es presidente de RBA, grupo que edita El Jueves. Su revista difunde odio contra millones de españoles a diari...

I fear for our society. Last week, a young man in A Coruña was beaten to death. He was with a friend who was holding a video call with someone else, outside a recently opened night club and music bars. A brute and his girlfriend, thinking she was filming them, got belligerent and started shouting to her to stop filming them. The young man, Samuel, tried to explain it was merely a video call. The brute simply replied, "o paras de grabar, o te mato, maricón de mierda,"   (either you stop filming or I kill you, fucking fagot) and started punching Samuel.  After having the fight broken up by a passer-by, the brute and his girlfriend left. But, while Samuel was sitting, with lacerations on his face, and his friend helping him look for his phone, which had fallen, the brute returned with twelve friends. They beat Samuel until he was unconscious, calling him, "maricón de mierda."   (fucking fagot) After they had left, the friend, who couldn't do anything to stop them, ...

Plenty of protest has gone up among the conservative politicians of a possible pardon of those condemned for the Catalan independence referendum. They were condemned to prison for sedition for going ahead with the independence referendum a few years ago, even after the central government (in the hands of the conservative Partido Popular, then) had nixed the idea. The present Socialist coalition government would like to pardon these Catalan leaders to try to weaken the independence cause, and start talking with the Catalans. It's the first step toward bringing them back into the national fold.  But the conservative parties see this as anathema, and are raising their voices in holy anger, claiming that Prime Minister Sánchez is bowing to the independents' attempts to destroy Spain. Even the Supreme Court has recommended that the Catalan leaders not be pardoned.  How quickly we forget things. Back in 1981, on the 23rd of February, Lieutenant Colonel of the Guardia Civil, Antonio ...

Yesterday was a damp, dull, grey day, with incessant rain from morning to night. Today has some clouds and showers hanging about, but the cloud canopy is higher, with smidgens of blue, and an occasional ray of sun. Tomorrow is a regional holiday, Día das Letras Galegas, Day of Galician Literature. So, between today and tomorrow, two Sundays. Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the 15-M movement. In Spain, we have the custom to label a day to remember in the contemporary history books, with the number and the first letter of the month. So, 9/11 in the US is 11-S here. And 15-M was the 15th of May of 2011, when grassroots movements converged on Madrid. There were protests and marches across all of Spain that day, against the austerity imposed in the wake of the crisis of 2008, and the surprise camp-outs imposed themselves on dozens of Spanish cities. But the two cities where it transcended beyond a mere protest were Barcelona and, memorably, Madrid.   The protests came about ...

It was a Monday afternoon in April. It had been market day, and many people from surrounding villages were in town, some buying, others selling. The animal market was doing good business, with cattle, sheep, and smaller animals being traded. New potatoes were for sale, along with plantlings for kitchen gardens. Around four thirty, the market had been wrapping up, people dispersing, when the church bells began to ring.  People looked up, wondering if there was a fire. From the west, the sound of motors could be heard, and the first planes appeared. With the dull, ripping sound of the first bomb falling, people began screaming, pushing, and running for the nearest air shelters they could find, some of those still under construction, and without ventilation systems. Others started running for the roads out of town, as the bombs cris-crossed the town of Gernika, over and over again. As the fires from the incendiary bombs raged, those that could, ran for the hills outside town. As some ...

Snap regional elections are going to be held in May in Madrid. President Ayuso, of the conservative Partido Popular, convoked them, more than anything, for political reasons. Another political party she was in coalition with, Ciudadanos, committed political hara-kiri, so she wanted to finish pushing in the hilt, and wind up with a majority, and no need of alliances.  Not so fast. It seems she may still need an alliance to govern, because polls are not giving her a majority. One of the parties with a similar political bent, is Vox. She has been trying to present herself as radical as they are, to win over votes that would have gone to them. She ends up sounding like a parody of herself. One of her slogans is "Communism or liberty." Another thing she said is, "When they call you fascist, you know you're doing things right." She continued on, saying that meant she was "on the right side of history." Either she's been taking lessons in ambiguity and la...

Last fall, the regional president of Madrid, Isabel Ayuso, ordered the construction of a hospital specifically for Covid patients. She argued that Madrid needed a hospital that specialized in pandemics and other large emergencies, such as plane crashes. So, at a cost of 135 million euros (a tad more than the original 50 million that it was supposed to have cost), a warehouse was built. Because that is what it is, a warehouse. It has different sections that are compartmentalized, but most of them are open to the roof, high up in the distance. There are no operating theaters, no laundry, no kitchen. If a Covid patient needs emergency surgery for anything else, they have to be sent elsewhere. Laundry and food come from outside, private contractors, chosen by Ayuso, rather than picking the best offer. There have been complaints about food, with patients uploading to Twitter pictures of dishes that even my cats would turn their noses up at; strange looking broth, a tired tortilla on a bed o...

Thankfully, my cousin is now conscious. Hopefully, the worst is past. But there are many out there who have been infected, and the numbers are growing. Santiago de Compostela has been shut down, again. So has the nearby small city of Ribeira, one of the places I've been doing the weekly shopping since Boiro shut down. At the rate we're going, it won't matter if our town shuts down or not; if the towns surrounding us are closed, we don't have many places we can go. Christmas is looking complicated. We had already decided to eat alone weeks ago, instead of going to my in-laws'. According to the rules, we could still go because we would be two households with a maximum of six adults. But the recommendations are to have a large table to be able to sit at least a meter and a half apart, wear masks except for when we are eating, and either eat outside or have all the windows open. Heck, no. We'll do a video call, just like we tend to do with a brother-in-law who's...

Greece's Golden Dawn has turned overcast today.  Golden Dawn is a Greek extreme right political party that appeared in the 1980's as a nostalgic attempt to take Greece back to the right wing policies of the colonels, which ran the country in the late 60's and early 70's, after routing the monarch, and created a short-lived dictatorship until 1974, when democracy was restored. Golden Dawn became a political party in the early 1990's, and its goal was to create a "Greater Greece", by occupying parts of adjoining countries, including the European section of Turkey and the city of Istanbul. It also wanted to hellenize those areas, by casting out minorities, especially Muslims. In this century, however, it went after refugees and immigrants of all kinds. It also raised its voice in criticism of the harsh impositions by the European Union during the recession, which led to winning followers, and seats in the Greek parliament, where they became the third most pow...

It doesn't matter where you are, politics will always bring out an argument. In this, our year of angst, 2020, it creates enemies as embittered as Leonidas and Xerxes, Napoleon and Admiral Nelson, Caesar and Vercingetorix, or Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. Mention Trump, or Biden, or Pence, or Obama (or, heaven forbid, Clinton), and you have a rabid believer (of either side) pulling aside his mask (assuming he's wearing one) and spewing in your face, calling you either a fascist or a communist. For the record, I lean left. Farther left than merely left of center, but I don't reach the outer edges. On Facebook most of my befriended people have similar views to mine. A few, are on the opposite extreme. One of those is a person I follow for other reasons. From time to time, they publish posts declaring their admiration for Trump. Those posts attract comments from here to tomorrow. Some agree with her, others, like me, disagree. Most are respectful, a few are borderline rude with e...

Last night, perusing Facebook, I was surprised to see an acquaintance change their profile picture to one of them in Santiago, standing with the leader of Vox. My thumb was arrested in its scrolling, and I slowly groaned, "nooooo." The acquaintance in question is young, around my daughter's age. They are a blue-collar worker, when they have the luck to have a job, and is married and has a child. They are intelligent, but did not attend higher schooling beyond high school, and I believe reading is not their forte. When I checked their page, I found other nudges suggesting what their politics are, but I had never paid much mind to them, and the change in profile picture caught me by surprise.  I noticed who had responded with a heart, followed the fake name, and found the person's sibling. They, too, attended the meeting and basked in the light of the true believers of Vox. And so did their progenitor, from a picture the sibling posted. Heartbreak. I would underst...

My classes are, most likely, effectively over for the school year. The Ministry of Education is talking about not opening schools again until September. And then, halving the number of students in each class, by combining regular classes with online ones. How they will do that, I have no idea.  But smaller classes are a good idea. After the Great Recession, one way to cut back on educational spending, was to increase student/teacher ratios and therefore spend less on payroll. Now, it turns out that smaller classes are a good idea, if not pedagogically, epidemialogically. But I don't think the online bit is really in the best interests of the students, nor the teachers. How will the teachers deal with both a classroom and kids on a screen? Who will decide which kids stay home and which go to school? What about the kids who can't socialize with their friends on the school grounds? Or who are separated from their best friend? The Minister said this situation would be ideal unt...

So, the elections are over and done with. And PSOE's Pedro Sánchez didn't get what he wanted when he forced them. I'm sure he was thinking that, since he had risen in April, and since he had been forceful about not bending to leftist Podemos to form a coalition government during the summer, he was going to get more seats in the Cortes . The best-laid plans tend to backfire. He got three seats less. Podemos got seven seats less. Centrist-leaning-to-the-far-right-or-left-according-to-expediency Ciudadanos lost over forty seats. The conservative PP went up, but the winner of the night was undoubtedly far-right-Franco-loving Vox.  They garnered fifty-two seats, up from twenty-four in the last election. They have become the third force in the Cortes , behind PSOE and PP. They now get a seat on different committees, and, more importantly, will be able to contest laws in the courts. Which is most assuredly what they will do. They will contest the Law of Historic Memory, and ...

There was a general debate the other night, between the candidates of the parties with the most representation in the Congreso. The leaders of the PSOE (Socialists), PP (conservatives), Ciudadanos (conservatives), UP (leftist), and Vox (ultra-right nationalists), faced off on stage. All spent more time talking about one or two things they thought would sway undecided voters. UP also spoke about policies they would implement in general, and Vox used the air time to extend their xenophobic, nationalist agenda. This last candidate spewed much rhetoric and few truths. Just about all the data he used to "prove" his points was false. Yet no one called him out on it. He went on and on about illegal immigrants and that: 1. They were the cause of just about all delinquency. 2. They were the perpetrators of almost all gang rapes. 3. They were the ones who battered their wives. 4. They were costing the state millions in healthcare.  He also condemned the semi-federal state we now ha...