Spanish views from a small town

Someone I know posted a video on Facebook. It's not his; he found it on another page, but seemed to have sympathized with it. It is a man on a beach criticizing the intention to remove Franco from his mausoleum to a more humble cemetery in Madrid where his wife is buried. It was uploaded back in November, but its sentiments still echo now.  In the video, the man asks what it will benefit toward our well-being and our bank accounts moving the bones from their current resting place to anywhere else. He asks if it will allow the thousands of us who struggle financially, to pay our bills on time, or give us more general financial well-being. He goes on to ask if protesting over bulls, or LGBTQ rights will put food on our table. He wonders why we don't protest over the 60 million euro loan the banking community received and that it won't pay back.  He misses the point. The protests over rights, or animal cruelty, or the end of hero worship of a dead dictator aren't desig...

There have been gypsies in Spain since at least the early fifteenth century. They first entered the country as pilgrims. As pilgrims they were awarded a safe conduct, allowing them to travel in Spain with the protection of the King. They travelled in groups, as they had ever since they had left northwestern India, probably around fifteen hundred years ago. In Europe they settled mostly in modern-day Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovakia, and Hungary. But groups did reach all the other western European countries.  The local population looked favorably on them at first, and there is genetic evidence that they intermarried in those first years. But then the Catholic Monarchs defeated the last Moorish kingdom of Granada, and they set out to homogenize Spain as much as possible. That included the expulsion of the Jews and later of the remaining Moors who wouldn't convert to Catholicism. And the obligation of the Gypsy nomads to settle down in one spot, work in a profession, and serve th...

Some years ago whenever you visited some houses in the surrounding villages, as soon as you walked up to the gate you would be greeted by the intense, deep-toned, frenzied barking of a dog large enough to eat you. Alarmed, you would look around before entering and you would be relieved to see the dog was chained up. Inside the yard, you would see that the dog would be on a long chain, have a couple of old pots nearby with food and water and a place where it could sleep sheltered from the weather. And it would transcend, as the owner talked about what a great watch-dog it was, that the dog lived all its life in that corner of the yard, fed only left-overs or bones. And that was considered normal among villagers that had practicality on their minds. Something similar occurred with cats. They have long been considered working animals and even easier to take care of than dogs. Because cats were free-roaming, living in barns and fields, living off the mice and rats they would hunt. But th...