Spanish views from a small town

Just when you think most people are okay, and that they will learn to get together in a jiffy to help one another, there comes along an exception that makes you despair of the human race.  The setting. Across the road from our house is a woodland property that belongs to a cousin. He's never paid attention to it except to cut down the trees and sell them a few years back. He has never criticized or complained to us for stacking our firewood there prior to cutting it up and storing it. So, there is a nice pyramid of cut-up logs standing there, visible from the curve to all who approach, with no house next to it nor fencing surrounding it. The strange occurrence. Yesterday afternoon, while a student was in my study, I notice a car pull up in front of our house. Not expecting anyone just yet, I went to look from the kitchen window, to know who was about to knock on my door. A man stepped out of the driver's seat, went around and opened the trunk. A woman came out of the pass...

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, ...