Spanish views from a small town

Once upon a time there was a town that decided to bring tourists in through their stomachs. Since there was a local product that was of good quality, they decided to celebrate it. And so the first food festival was born. Actually, the first food festival was a wine festival that began in 1953 in Cambados. It celebrates the famous albariño wine of the area. From there the idea spread and has now touched almost every township in Galicia and most of Spain.  From the end of January to December you can take your pick of the food you want to try. Though most of the festivals take advantage of fine summer weather. That's when you can find most of the seafood festivals. From razor clams to barnacles, to sea urchins, to oysters, during the spring, summer, and Sailing out to A Illa de Arousa. fall you can find a celebration almost every week. Though the ones that take the cake are the seafood celebration in O Grove at the beginning of October this year and the one in A Illa that is cel...

Yesterday was Election Day for mayors all over Spain and for a few regional governments. I voted, like every elegible member of a community should, even if only to show discontent. There was about thirty-three percent abstention in our township, up a little since the last elections. Mostly because people say it doesn't matter, they're all thieves. In our town the regional separatist party, leftist, won. The Socialists and the conservative PP were punished by the appearance of another party, also leftist. I believe our town has not had a conservative government since the death of Franco in 1975. Call us Reds. But at least we've had different mayors. Some towns have had the same mayor forever. In Cuevas del Valle, Ávila, Licinio Prieto was mayor since 1954, when he was designated as mayor by the Civil Government of the province of Ávila, until he stepped down for health reasons in May of 2014 (he was over ninety years old, health reason enough). Except for two terms, he was...

Last night was the Eurovision Song Contest. I had never really heard of it until I moved here, twenty-five years ago. It was set in motion ten years after the Second World War, in 1955. It was seen as a way to promote unity in the incipient European Union. Since then it has grown outside the boundaries of the Union, and of Europe itself. Now it includes participation from countries such as Armenia, Azerbaizhan, Turkey, and Israel. And this year it had Australia as a special guest. There are so many countries now (originally seven) that there are two nights of semi-finals before the final, always on a Saturday night and always in May. This year the final tally was twenty-seven participants. The quality of the songs is debatable. This year to me they seemed weak. Other years they have had quality, and in still other years the Contest was used to poke fun at itself with entries that had no other description apart from freakier than freaky. Spain has won a few times, but over forty years...

The day before yesterday there were a lot of seagulls flying inland. One even confused my car with a landing pad. My daughter, walking by the cathedral in Santiago, saw many flying around its towers past midnight. Santiago is more than forty kilometers inland. When I mentioned these facts to my husband, he automatically said, " Gaivotas á terra, mariñeiros á merda. " Which translates as "Gulls in to land, sailors to hell." And, yes, yesterday the north wind was fiercely blowing, and it was no day to set out to sea. Some people prefer looking at the sky and checking where the wind is blowing from to watching the weather forecast on television. It's more reliable. My mother-in-law says that when " farrapos de lá " appear, the next day it's going to rain. She's almost always right, because those clouds that look like balls of cotton wool generally precede a weather front. Also, if at home we can hear our church bell chiming the hour, that means ...

Getting a cold is simply bad luck. It's a natural disaster to you, but to others it's just a little sniffle. You may feel like you're about to die, as your throat doesn't let you talk, the cough gets in the way of thinking, your nose feels like it's been anesthetized, and you really don't care what you eat because everything tastes the same. You may be eating the best brandade morue ever prepared, but it tastes like a cheap sandwich from the vending machine. Sleeping has become something only lucky, healthy people can indulge in. All night you awake from bad, repetitive dreams that only make you feel worse. You resolve to dream about something else and think of something that makes you feel good. No dice. The bad dream comes back like a bad penny. And, of course, the advice. From my husband, "Mix honey and lemon juice and drink it as hot as you can." The only way I'll eat honey is baked in a cake and I'll drink the lemon juice in lemonade - ...

It was my lot yesterday to accompany my father in the hospital. He just had to spend the night, but the chemical smell and the monotonous hallways took their toll on me in the first hour. The room door was open during most of the day and I could hear the television in other rooms and see people shuffle by and hear snippets of conversations. The nurses' trolleys clattered and rolled by from time to time, punctuating the hours. In the hospital, time is ruled by nurse visits and mealtimes. Just after eating lunch I found myself eagerly awaiting the afternoon merenda to take another trip out of the wards, down to the cafeteria. At times I would walk to the end of the hall, passing closed doors and open doors where I could see a microcosm of worry, hope, pain, relief, and despair. There are between two and three beds in each room. Two or three stories of illness and interrupted lives taking time off to dispell sickness. There are the better stories, like ours, where a brief interve...

Mayoral candidates are getting desperate. Apart from the cars with loudspeakers annoying the households on the roads, they've decided to go door to door. Yesterday afternoon I was aware someone was standing outside my door when the dog started barking and wouldn't stop (my doorbell doesn't work). So I opened the door and there are a bunch of people with flyers, pens, candy, and lighters, all with the logo of the PP, the conservative party. The leader was opening his mouth to speak when I shook my head and said, "Bye." They shrugged their shoulders and I closed the door.  They couldn't have known it, but if there's one thing I do not abide, it's someone showing up at my door and trying to convince me about something. From Jehovah's Witnesses to political candidates, to marketers of different phone companies, just the sight of them on my doorstep is enough to raise my hackles. I like to search for information on my own and make my own, unhurried d...