Spanish views from a small town

Galicia is in its last day of the state of alarm. Tomorrow, ahead of the rest of the country, it will enter the new normality . Which is not that much different from Phase 3. There still exists a health alarm, and people still have to be careful about getting infected. The rules are much the same, except the minimum distance between people is now 1.5 meters. People still have to wear masks in public, and will be fined €100 if they don't.  From what I've been noticing, the new normality and Phase 3 only mean that people can now start living their lives again as usual. People care very little that they can't be less than a meter and a half from others they don't live with. As for masks, if they don't feel like it, they don't wear one, period. Some don't even seem to have one on their person when they go out. I admit to lowering it to my neck on the street, but I also admit to swerving away from people who don't seem to care about bumping into me. The ...

These days, we have been hearing about statues getting beheaded, thrown into the sea, getting painted on, mutilated, etc. All because those statues represent certain people whose past was not glorious in the department of race relations. So, Christopher Columbus got beheaded in Boston, and Edward Colston got knocked into Bristol harbor.  Until now, we have worshipped men like these for all the advances they made to civilization. Our civilization. Europe. But our world no longer stops at the Atlantic Ocean and the Ural mountains. It's grown, and when we speak with our Chinese co-worker, our Ghanian neighbor, our Bolivian acquaintance, our Afghani doctor, we discover that they have a history just as rich as ours, and, more importantly, just as valid. History is not just stories of brave discoveries and conquests. History is a story of people competing for natural resources and the power and wealth they bring. That people which is victorious, for whatever reason, is the people tha...

I've been doing a few classes since the lockdown began. Before that, I had classes every afternoon from three to eight. Now, I have a few scattered phone classes along the week, the most are two in one day, and I even have a day without any. There's been talk that the future of learning will be online. In fact, some universities are only going to offer online classes next fall. It sounds interesting. It would mean studying would be cheaper because you could connect with someone a thousand miles away while still in your own home. It means you could, logistically speaking, sign up for classes from more than one school.  But is it better than sitting in a class? I don't think so. While it is very comfortable to just set up the phone or sit in front of the computer screen, it is not the same as sitting in a classroom, with the teacher explaining something or writing examples on the blackboard. The teacher may answer questions online, but there isn't the immediacy of tha...

My husband has finally been bested by the Scoville scale.  He loves hot, spicy food. Whenever I put some cayenne pepper into a stew or a sauce, he tastes it, and then goes to get the Tabasco. Sometimes, he so generously sprinkles it, I can smell the acrid odor of the vinegar from the little bottle. But he likes it. He also loves hot chourizos . Whenever he buys some, he asks for the hottest the butcher has. Only once has he ever said a chourizo was up to his level, and the small company where he bought them admitted they had committed an error by putting too much hot pepper in that batch. Whenever someone offers him a sample of the hottest chourizo on sale, he tries it and shakes his head. It's not that hot. So, the other day in Pontevedra, when I was visiting an American food shop, I stopped at the shelf with hot sauces and pepper flakes. The owner, upon seeing my interest, immediately came over to me. He explained that the sauce I was examining was made from the Carolina R...

How interesting. I checked my emails today on my phone, and looked into the spam folder, in case a legitimate one had gone missing. There was one there from PayPal. It was telling me my account had been limited due to suspicious activity, and to open an attachment.  Since I had made a payment with PayPal the previous day, my first reaction was that someone had somehow gotten into it. The next, that the payment was being stalled because the receiver seemed fishy. Once, some years ago, I bought something online with my credit card, and the bank called me to know if I had really done the transaction. They were holding it up until I replied because it seemed fishy to them. So, I thought that PayPal might be doing the same thing. But, since I don't like opening attachments on emails unless I ask for them, I looked at it more closely. The sender was simply PayPal Inc. and the message was in correct English. On the email they had sent me the day before, telling me the payment had succ...

I am late in writing today because I have been out and about. In part, because I wanted to ground myself for upcoming scenes I've been thinking about for my book. In another part because we are finally free to move around. Even though it's still only possible within the autonomous region. Long ago, I heard the saying, "a book whose sale's forbidden all men rush to see, and prohibition turns one reader into three." That is so true. Tell me I can't leave my house, and I want to leave my house. Tell me I can't leave my province, and I want to leave my province. It doesn't matter if the reason for the prohibition is good, prohibition of something makes you want it. So, I've been aching to go out, to see where I'm going to place my characters, and to change my own vistas. After leaving lunch ready for my husband, I went down to Pontevedra, first. It doesn't seem to have changed much. Some businesses are still closed, I don't know if for...

If two weeks ago it seemed high summer had come, this week it seems April has returned. The sun is warm, but the wind is not. I'm wearing long pants again, and I think of getting a sweater in the evenings. I may have asked for cooler weather last week, but not this cool. Isn't there a middle ground, somewhere? I read in the newspaper that a transport institution may have disappeared. At the beginning of the lockdown, many rail lines were suspended. As we start opening up, some are returning, but there is at least one that might not come back, ever. It's the night train from A Coruña and Vigo to Barcelona and back.  Back in the 1920's, it had been an idea that various rail companies were trying to implement. Work started during the Republic, but everything was derailed by the Civil War. Afterward, with mostly slave labor from Franco's prisoners, it was completed, and in 1949, the first train cars made the trip. Almost from the start, it was baptized with the ni...