Category: spanish

harvest

I’ve mentioned before that there’s an old guy who keeps cerdos on the plot of land alongside the olivar. Just two pigs, each year: one for each of his daughters. I’ve started taking the windfalls across for them when I walk down to the village.

When the guy isn’t there, I leave the bag by the chair where he sits each day, morning and evening, watching the pigs get fat. Sometimes one of the other viejos del pueblo joins him and they put the world to rights while the old burro grazes patiently, tethered to an olive tree.
Continue reading “harvest”

good hunting

Up on top of Puerto del Pico, the pass that crosses the Gredo mountains on the road leading north from us to Ávila, there’s a sign:

Signpost: coto de cabra montés: prohibido espantar a los animales. Ley de Caza Art. 33, Apd. 17

It says that there are mountain goats in the area and that it’s prohibido espantar a los animales – Do not frighten the animals – which, at first sight, seems reasonable enough.
Continue reading “good hunting”

dogs, whistles and the dark ages

medieval fair with castle backdrop

I think Ávila always have some kind of Medieval Fair at this time of year, but it’s the first time our village has decided to do the same. So, for a couple of days the castle courtyard and carpark have been given over to tents and stalls and general activity that has about as little to do with the Middle Ages as is possible.
Continue reading “dogs, whistles and the dark ages”

positivity check

When I first moved to Spain, the country was suffering a drought.

shoe boxes left behind after a street market
I think that lasted for the first eight years that I lived in Madrid, and, understandably, I didn’t really appreciate how bad it was, as I had nothing to compare the weather to. Yes, it was sunny; yes it was hot; but wasn’t that what Spanish weather was meant to be like?

(We all have a tendency to fall back on stereotypes. When I tell people I live in Spain they assume I must live on one of those fictional costas where no one ever does any work but spends all day and all the long, hot night sitting at a terraza on the beach drinking iced beer or cheap vino tinto.)
Continue reading “positivity check”

stars and doves

I don’t have many more shooting stars poems to post on the blog, but there are other things being celebrated this weekend, as well as the perseids.

It’s been several years since I’ve spent August in Spain, as I’ve attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, both as participant and as course leader, since I first won a place some years ago.

Before that, though, I was living in Madrid, and August was important en mi barrio for la fiesta de la Paloma. This year, Monday 15th August will be a fiesta nacional (la Asunción de la Virgen), and in her honour I have dug out this old poem. It was first published in the New Entertainer, I think, when I was writing my Capital Letters column:
Continue reading “stars and doves”