Spanish views from a small town

I'm just about to sit down to a plate of sushi. When I first arrived here almost twenty-five years ago there was no way I could have said that. In Boston I had been accustomed to food from different parts of the world. Here there was only Spanish food and the ingredients for Spanish food only. My palate had just begun to emerge from a childhood of "I don't want that. I hate that. I don't even want to look at that!" to an appreciation of different foods. Though here you will find the freshest food you can throw at a plate, I felt like a castaway, condemned to the food of yore with no difference in sight. Gradually, though, it started to change. As Spain began to receive immigration from different parts of the world and people travelled, new things began appearing in supermarkets. Little things, like cole slaw. Only it's not called cole slaw, but ensalada americana (American salad). Once, looking at the usual refrigerated pizzas, etc, I noticed it but ignore...

This afternoon I decided to go up to the plateau formed by the hills that bisect our little peninsula. I haven't been up there in over a year and I had a yearning for a little solitude with the only sound of the wind and distant mooing of cows.  The road up goes through a lookout point that overlooks all the Ría de Arousa, the bay that reaches inland where I live. When I got to the top it was wall-to-wall cars. None were local. Okay, not here. I continued along the road until the asphalt ran out and it became dirt and gravel. If our cars could talk about all the places we've put them through, they would shame a four-wheel drive. But the road is still quite good for a ways into the plateau.  No dice. Solitude? In August? The tourists that weren't at the beach were all up there. Walking along the road. Hunkered in cars under pine trees. Throwing a frisbee to a dog next to a pristine stream. I decided to turn around and head home. Next month is my vacation month and I can ...

My memories of bread in Boston consist of Wonder bread sandwich bread, French loaves, and Italian loaves. Apart from the specialty breads, such as English muffins or bagels. But most were commercially made and indistinguishable from one another. If you had the luck to find an awesome bakery you could taste the difference. Otherwise, the difference was mostly in the shape and in the price. But bread wasn't really a daily part of life in Boston. It was mostly for sandwiches and special recipes. A meal was a meal even if there wasn't bread on the table. Not so here. Many people consider a meal incomplete if there isn't a piece of bread by their plate. It's as if a fork or glass were missing. It forms an intrinsic part of almost every meal. Even in the mornings it is common to eat bread dipped in cocoa milk for breakfast. Many houses have bread delivered every morning. Those that don't, go and buy a loaf. There are good bakers and routine bakers. An excellent baker wa...

"If you lived in the eighties and remember it, then you didn't live the eighties." That saying refers to the wild nights and days of that reactionary decade the way it was lived in Madrid and a few other cities, Vigo in Galicia included. The new constitution had been signed in 1978 and it was only then that people realized they had shaken off the effects of Franco, who had died in 1975. Censorship had been done with, people became aware of the world outside Spain, and the Church lost its total control of public morality.  It was much like the counter-culture of the sixties in other countries, minus the philosophy. Those who lived la movida , as it was called, weren't interested in changing the world. They were interested in having fun without anyone telling them it was a sin or forbidden. It started in Madrid, in the neighborhood of Malasaña, one of the oldest. That was the center of the movement, with different discos and music bars appearing like psychedelic mushr...

When we were married my husband and I travelled to Boston because I wanted to show him where I had grown up. He loved it all (except the food, but that's another story), especially the politeness of the people. He was amazed that wherever we went, people would smile, say "Hello!" or "Thank you!" and look like they really meant it. He wasn't accustomed to that.  Because if you go to an office, a bank, a store, etc., where someone will wait on you, friendliness is the last thing you notice. Yes, they'll smile, say "Hello" and possibly "Thank you" but they'll mostly look like they're waiting for the fly to leave. Especially in banks. There has been a revolution in banking due to the crisis, and banks have swallowed other banks and almost all cooperative banks (that didn't charge for everything) have disappeared into the whale's belly of large, impersonal banks that only look at the bottom line. So, if there used to be t...

The season isn't quite over. In August we tend to have the last celebrations. The first (and more numerous) are in June. No, not weddings, communions. Though they're almost like weddings here. The crisis has stopped some families from going overboard, but it's still too much. I remember my First Communion in Boston. It was in the month of May, and since the church had a school attached, very numerous. All the second-graders who attended the school, and practicing Catholics who didn't, made their communion en masse. No exceptions. I remember we occupied almost half the pews. After private pictures in front of the church, and a short stint at a photographer's studio, we went home, where my mother cooked for us and our guests, ten people total. There were two children invited with whom I played. Though it was May it was cold and we stayed indoors. (Around that date we had a late snowstorm.) That was a typical communion in Boston in those days. In these days here a ...

People think of Spain and flamenco dancers pop into their head. So do bull fights, or the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Maybe beaches. Youngsters in the north of Europe will think of Mallorca and the drunken revelries. But not one of these things is relevant to all of Spain. There is no one tradition that defines Spanish culture. Most likely that is true of just about every country in Europe. Southern France will have different customs from northern France. In fact, there are ethnic minorities in France few are aware of. There are German speakers in Alsace-Lorraine, Catalans and Basques near the Pyrenees, and Celtic Bretons in Brittany. Yet one could say France has been pretty much one country since Louis the Pious in the 800's. Not Spain. Even after the Reconquest and the capitulation of Granada in 1492, the kingdom of Spain was shaky. The Catholic Monarchs were monarchs of their own kingdoms within Spain over which the other had limited rights. Even after the consolidation o...