Espinosa y Valladolid

It´s cliché but true—things slow down here after lunch. Yesterday afternoon, when everyone else in the house disappeared, I repaired to the living room to study my dictionary. The tv was on to Spain´s version of Survivor—a number of very attractive and minimally clothed beautiful people living and arguing on a beach. The Spanish program is a little different, though—slower, with no soundtrack (and apparently no “challenges”). Between desultory exchanges of personal remarks, the scene shifted to a man in a Speedo making a fish trap.

But soon after, when I paused from an intensive session with the verbs hacer and haber, I noticed that the program had changed to a studio talk show. I assumed Survivor had ended, but no, the people in the studio were commenting on the beach action. Then one of the men in the studio got up and sang a song while two busty young women wearing open front short overalls danced around him. Another woman, one of the talkers, got up and danced too, highlighting her exposed midsection.

In the evening I went for a walk out of the village and into the fields of wheat and barley. I walked to a hilltop, from where I could see the rolling green land stretching for miles in every direction. Pretty sweet. Dinner was ready when I got back (waiting for my return, I think, though they were much too polite to say anything). We ate a tortilla, which was excellent.

Afterwards the family settled into a living room scene of domestic bliss. Montse sat sewing something for baby Sara, Manolo worked on his sudokus, Sergio watched a soccer game on tv (two Spanish teams in the European Cup final), and Maite pushed the baby around the room in a carriage trying to get her to sleep. Well, “pushed” isn´t exactly the right word. It seems that Sara requires rigorous motion—think the baby carriage going down the steps in Battleship Potemkin.

This morning I joined Maite, Sergio, and Manolo on an hour drive south to the city of Valladolid. Sergio was scheduled to have his right eye operated on (an outpatient procedure); recently he had opened a bottle of tonic water and the top shot up and hit him in the eye, causing the retina to detach. On the drive we listened to a talky morning radio show. The DJs spoke much too fast for me, but I could sort of follow along. A young woman called in and they had her sing a song she´d written; then they made fun of her, then she cried, then they felt bad.

We went our separate ways in Valladolid, and I soon found myself attending a mass at the Iglesia de Santa Maria La Antigua, a gray stone giant from the 13th century. Only the lower reaches of the great stone vault were lit, and the colorlessness of the space was broken only by two tall, thin stained glass windows above the altar. I tried to follow the priest´s words….I thought he said “despicados” for sins but discovered later that the word is actually “pecados.” I like the first one better. The priest offered communion to the twenty or so congregants, and I considered having a little body and blood, but refrained.

Afterwards the priest disappeared through a side door. Slowly the people rose and left the church. Then the lights went off one by one, until I found myself alone in the near dark. Then I took the hint too.

I wandered around the sunny city, poking into a couple more churches, ambling about the parks, looking at the people. Spanish women are stylish, right up until about 65, then they aren´t but they are still very neat. Middle-aged women and their twenty-something daughters walk along together dressed nearly identically.

Manolo and I met at the train station to return to Espinosa. On the train two plainclothes policemen (Manolo used the word “paisanos”) asked to see identification. One took my passport and wrote the number down on a scrap of paper. Thus I enter another database. Manolo said he´d never been asked for his id on a train. Maybe the two of us together look like trouble.

I´d planned to leave Espinosa tomorrow and head for the start of the Camino. But now I´m pushing that back. Maybe Saturday; Monday at the latest. Life is good in Espinosa.