Spanish views from a small town

It was bound to happen sooner or later.  Very early yesterday morning, when a group of young men in Vilagarcía were deciding on which last bar to hit before retiring for the morning, they encountered another group of young men, but, from Madrid. Probably the locals recognized the others from their accent. Or perhaps they had already seen them around and knew where they were from. At any rate, the locals recriminated the outsiders, telling them to go back to Madrid and stop bringing the virus here. Things got a little heated, perhaps someone mentioned someone's mother, and a fight erupted. So much for social distancing. In the end, eleven were detained, and the group of madrileños are filing charges for harrassment. Yes, the general perception here is that the presence of the virus is due to outsiders bringing it in. The first known case back in March was a man who had travelled to A Coruña from Madrid. The others who were mostly affected, were senior citizens who had become ...

Since yesterday, I didn't finish getting everything I needed, and even added to the list, I will go out this afternoon. Yes, I'm feeling masochistic, going out in summery afternoon weather with a mask. They are going to make wearing a mask obligatory in closed public spaces and in open spaces if two feet cannot be kept between people. So, as soon as you set foot on the sidewalk, you'll need to wear a mask now. Yes, I will probably forego leaving the house a lot this summer. Not even to buy clothes.  These two months have widened my girth, which is very slowly declining again through walking. So, I have t-shirts that don't fit me, and t-shirts that have acquired strange stains after having been folded and not touched during the winter. Perhaps I will have faith in my walking ability, not bother to replace the stained ones, and just make do this year. If I'm not going to go out much, it won't matter. While I am not a beach bunny, there are summer days when s...

Landscape etiquette for tourists: Do not enter a wooded area to pick up what you think is abandoned firewood. That applies to all of Galicia. I understand that on the wide moors of northern Castile if a property isn't surrounded by barbed wire or a fence of any kind, whatever is on it might not be of interest to the owner. Might. I wouldn't assume it, either. But in Galicia, where people have been killed over property markers, whatever wood you might find in a pile has a name on it, and the owner of the name and the wood is not far away. This morning, I woke up groggily, nursing one of my morning headaches. While I tried to finish waking up in my kitchen with the blinds still closed, I heard a clop, clop, clop and my dog started to bark. At first I assumed it was one of my neighbors doing whatever, and that my dog had become overexcited, like he often does. But then the noise continued, and I became curious (sometimes I am very village-minded).  I opened the front door, ...

Yesterday, I went on another of my little, by-myself trips. It was probably the last one until spring vacation. Again, I revisited Porto, which is fast becoming my favorite Portuguese city. It wears a different face every time I visit. Yeterday, it felt alive and resilient. It seemed to be simply tolerating the hordes of tourists, stubbornly continuing life as it has always been, while making allowance for visitors. The waterfront used to be the mainstay of the local economy, with port wine once being bottled and shipped by boat from the sheltered riverside docks of Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto itself. Matosinhos, north of Porto, is now the working port with containers from all over the world stacked, awaiting transport. Now, replicas of the old cask-carrying boats transport tourists up and down the river, up from the vineyards, and out to the mouth of the Douro.  But that's one of the few concessions Porto has made to tourists. Elsewhere, houses with broken tiles, ancient windows...

We're almost at the middle of August, vacation month par excellence. It's obvious every time we go into town, or over to another town to do shopping, or to the beach, or wherever we step, almost. Thanks to the terrorist threat in Tunisia, random terrorist attacks in other European countries, and the complete uncertainty of Turkey, people are either staying in Spain, or coming here for sun and fun.  The beaches, normally already crowded this month, have become impossible. They look like the bank of Boston's Charles River during the Fourth of July Pops concert. To find one square meter of unoccupied sand is mission impossible on some shores. Even here, in Galicia, which has never been massified in the summer, we're noticing the upturn in tourism.  This upturn translates into vanished parking spaces, longer lines at the supermarket, crowded sidewalks, crowded beaches, and sometimes uncivil or criminal behavior. In Pamplona four men have recently been arraigned for rapi...

Produce markets here are commonplace. I remember in Boston when I was a little girl that Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market still sold some produce and meats. After it was gentrified, though, the only market was the Haymarket on Fridays and Saturdays. Now I believe there's another new, indoor, market, but from what little I've read or seen about it, it's much too upscale and rich for the general public looking for daily or weekly fresh produce at a price that won't break the bank.  Here, there's the weekly market with local, national, and imported produce (along with everything else under the sun sometimes). And there are the indoor markets where every morning except Sundays and Mondays for fish, you can buy fresh food. Almost every town has one, bigger or smaller. But they've run into tough times. There are lots of closed stalls, especially in cities like Santiago. While you can buy generally good food at the market, it can be slightly more expensive than at...

This afternoon I decided to go up to the plateau formed by the hills that bisect our little peninsula. I haven't been up there in over a year and I had a yearning for a little solitude with the only sound of the wind and distant mooing of cows.  The road up goes through a lookout point that overlooks all the Ría de Arousa, the bay that reaches inland where I live. When I got to the top it was wall-to-wall cars. None were local. Okay, not here. I continued along the road until the asphalt ran out and it became dirt and gravel. If our cars could talk about all the places we've put them through, they would shame a four-wheel drive. But the road is still quite good for a ways into the plateau.  No dice. Solitude? In August? The tourists that weren't at the beach were all up there. Walking along the road. Hunkered in cars under pine trees. Throwing a frisbee to a dog next to a pristine stream. I decided to turn around and head home. Next month is my vacation month and I can ...