Spanish views from a small town

If two weeks ago it seemed high summer had come, this week it seems April has returned. The sun is warm, but the wind is not. I'm wearing long pants again, and I think of getting a sweater in the evenings. I may have asked for cooler weather last week, but not this cool. Isn't there a middle ground, somewhere? I read in the newspaper that a transport institution may have disappeared. At the beginning of the lockdown, many rail lines were suspended. As we start opening up, some are returning, but there is at least one that might not come back, ever. It's the night train from A Coruña and Vigo to Barcelona and back.  Back in the 1920's, it had been an idea that various rail companies were trying to implement. Work started during the Republic, but everything was derailed by the Civil War. Afterward, with mostly slave labor from Franco's prisoners, it was completed, and in 1949, the first train cars made the trip. Almost from the start, it was baptized with the ni...

Last week, a train left Santander to arrive at 23:15 at Madrid. That was what the passengers expected and had paid f or. What they got was a bus ride from Osorn o to Madrid at eleven thirty.  The train left Santander fif teen minutes late. The en gineer had only rested a half hour o f the obligatory forty-five minutes .  He called the station at Osorno ahead of time to ask for a rep lacement to await the train as soon as he reac hed it. When the train arrived, a t around nine o'clock, the replacem ent was no where around . The eng ineer turned off the engines and quit the train. His work time of five and a half hours was o ver. I f he continued to Madr id, it would be against regulations. If anything happened to the tr ain or the passengers, he would be the one respo nsible for having exceeded the ma ximum amount of time he could drive. Given the accident a few days before, in which four peo ple died in Porriño, he decided to call it quits. He had called ahead for a repl...

After one of the coolest and rainiest months of May in many years (I haven't worn short sleeves even once!), today the sun has risen without almost any clouds and it's starting to warm up. Just in time to usher in June, a few days of good weather are predicted for Galicia. That, and the beautifully long days, have given me wanderlust. At the end of June I have one week all to myself. On one day of that week I intend to make one of my traditional day trips. I am starting to think about where I can go. I set a goal of a maximum of three hours driving to get to the place. Unfortunately, that limits the places I can visit outside Galicia that are still in Spain. Portugal is closer; the border is just a little over an hour away. But I would prefer to visit there in September, so for next month I'm scratching my head and wondering just how fast I can drive. Should I visit somewhere I've already been? Last year I went to Las Médulas in León province and wandered through Po...