Spanish views from a small town

The United States has changed a lot in fifty years. However, Spain has changed in leaps and bounds, especially the villages. While small towns and villages in the United States probably had a good standard of life in the 1960's, with central heating in most homes, fresh milk and bread delivered daily or available at the local supermarket, fresh fruit even in winter, running water in most homes, that wasn't the case in Spain. The other day, talking with my hostess at the pension in Santa Colomba de Somoza, she showed me the house (a typical Maragato farmhouse, restored and adapted), and she explained how they lived fifty years ago. She showed me what had been the original kitchen. The uneven stone floor was the original, including the hearth. The floor stone was slate, but the hearth consisted of a round stone resistant to heat, raised less than a hands breadth, where there were ashes from the last fire lit there. That was where meals were originally cooked. There was a beehiv...

In old times far away, each gender had its important role in society. Those who complied were accepted as a useful cog. Those who did not were considered outsiders and generally shunned as a possible blight on the rest of the group. A women had the role of being mother and wife. That was considered the role she should fulfill within society. Therefore, the woman who was not married and had no children was believed to be anti-natural. As well as the one who had problems assimilating into society. Nothing good could come of that woman, and popular culture turned her into a witch. And so our cultural representation of a witch as a hunchbacked, ugly old woman with no husband or child, whose closest friend is a farm animal or the handy cat that catches the pesky mice. Of course, we now understand that different walks of life are fine, and that each of us plays a necessary role in society even if we don't marry and have children. And that psychiatric problems are treatable and can ...