Spanish views from a small town

In the U.S. when people feel chilly at home, they turn up the thermostat and the heat comes up through radiators, or other heating appliances. Generally it is created by burning heating oil in a boiler in the basement, which heats water and forces the hot steam through radiators. At least, that's how we used to heat our home in Boston. At that time, though, some homes already used natural gas instead of heating oil. And I assume that since then, many more have made the switch to electricity, with some extremely few using renewable energies, such as geothermal or solar energy. Not so in rural Galicia. Here, the original source of heat has always been firewood. And farm animals. Until the general introduction of electricity to even the remotest villages in the mountains, houses were made so that the cows and other animals lived on the lower floor, and the family slept on the upper floor. The house entrance on the lower floor gave on to the kitchen, where there was a large lareira ,...

The nights are getting cooler, so last night I decided to light the wood stove to keep the temperature in the house nice as long as possible. I was alone at the time but didn't think I would have a problem. There was some paper-based trash already in the stove, waiting to be burnt, so I put some thin sticks on it and set a match to it.  From there on in things got on a downhill roller coaster. Some smoke started coming out of the rings on top of the stove. I opened the door to the ashtray wider, hoping for an updraft. I could hope all night because I wasn't getting one. The smoke, dense and dark grey, got worse. The paper was burning just fine, but the chimney didn't want any part of this.  I unscrewed the lower door that led to the chimney and tried to create an updraft burning newspaper just inside it. Not with all the smoke pouring out of there. The newspaper burned, but that was it. I looked around and all I could see was a thick London fog. I looked back at the sto...