De Perdidos al Río

En el HOY

El río y todo lo que corre con él. El Tajo, sus afluentes y el arte prehistórico que lo salpica. La tercera de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada por el HOY.
The river and all that runs with it. The Tagus, its affluents and the prehistoric art that is splattered around it. The third in my six-part series on travel throughout the province of Caceres published by el HOY.

La Tradicíon de lo Nuevo

 

Recorrido por los pueblos de la Sierra de Gata, Las Hurdes y el Valle del Alagón. La segunda de mi serie de seis partes sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres publicada para el HOY.

A trip through the Sierra de Gata, Las Hurdes and the Valle del Alagon in the second of my six-part series of travel pieces for el HOY in Spain. 

Don't Be Afraid of the ... Light!

Scared of the dark nuthin'!

It's regression therapy in this week's Camino a Ítaca. An age-old fear has returned as our pockets are being openly picked. Click over to read the original article in Spanish or read the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

As a young boy on the vast stretches of the northern Canadian prairies, I remember being afraid of the dark. As my mother tucked me into bed at night, I would insist on having a nightlight reassuringly glowing somewhere in the room to keep the howling coyotes at bay, both real and imagined. If I felt my mother was feeling particularly generous, I would even ask her to leave a light on in the hallway. These were during the long winter nights of northern Canada when the sun sunk below the horizon from its lazy arc around four o’clock in the afternoon and didn’t return again until I had already been in school for an hour or two the next day. It’s a fear that eventually disappeared as I grew older but has recently come back to haunt me.

Age regression occurs when someone reverts to a younger state of mind. This retreat may be only a few years younger than the person’s physical age but in my case it seems to jumped several decades, and in the process seems to have become warped and somewhat inverse.

My fear is no longer turning the lights off, it’s turning them on.

I now question almost every mundane household task and chore. It might be when I’m about to turn on the kettle to boil some water, throw some clothes into the wash or try and figure out exactly is the best time to turn on the dishwasher so that my family has enough plates for dinner. It’s an ongoing neurosis that has become like a tense taxi ride in a foreign country where you are trying not to be too conspicuous as you watch the meter tick out of the corner of your eye, hoping it hasn’t been rigged.

At first I tried to adapt to the puente, valle andllano system, surely to the dismay of my neighbors as the spin cycle accompanied them in their dreams. But now, the ongoing energy crisis has even seen this system become obsolete with increasing violent fluctuations that no longer always coincide with the traffic light system that had been introduced with so much fanfare. Thus forcing the consumer to have to consult the webpage of the Red Eléctrica Española every day if they want to know exactly when the electricity that powers their lives will be cheapest.

Imagine that you walk into a bar at midday and have a caña (little beer). Satisfied with the service and the tapa of Spanish omlette you receive, you return the next day to that very same bar and order the same thing. When you finish, you lay your money out on the bar only to have the barman tell you that the price has doubled. In your astonishment you remind him that you had been there yesterday and paid half and he tells you, "That was yesterday, today is today." You then reach for the menu and see that the price listed doesn’t even coincide with what you had paid the day before and again ask the barman and he tells you, "That was the price when they printed the menu." 

That was then, this is now. 

Las Puertas del Oeste

Las Puertas del Oeste en el Hoy

Un viaje por el Campo Arañuelo y el Geoparque de las Villuercas mientras las aguas del Tajo están tan bajas (ehem, gracias Iberdrola). Mi primera doble página en un periódico español. El primero de una serie de seis artículos sobre viajes por la provincia de Cáceres.

A journey through the Campo Arañuelo and the Villuercas Geopark while the waters of the Tagus are so low. My first double page spread in a Spanish newspaper. The first in a six-part travel series around the province of Caceres in Extremadura, Spain.

Live and Let Live (a Halloween Tale)

It's the Halloween special here on the Camino a Ítaca. My latest looks at the false rage at a harmless 'tradition'. Click over to read the original in Spanish or have a look at the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo).

Sacrilege comes in many forms, though I’m not sure that putting pineapple on pizza can be categorized as such. True, it may not be your favorite type of pizza, it may even make your stomach turn somewhat, but is it really worth losing sleep over?

In today’s social media world, where people relate with each other in their echoing online bubbles, the smallest things get blown up way beyond their origins. The easily offended suddenly proclaim themselves victims and words lose their meanings overnight.

The quickly triggered choose the strangest things to get upset about. For some, and here I’m not including Neapolitans, putting pineapple on pizza is the moral equivalent of poisoning an entire city’s water system. The sin of admitting that the Vikings had reached North America half a century before Columbus is akin for some here in Spain to setting the Spanish flag on fire. Not to mention the sight of two persons of the same sex touching lips, or acknowledge the mere fact that some might desire to, become harbingers of the coming of the apocalypse for some. These subjects can provoke without warning, either by flaring up suddenly or forming part of the cyclical moaning calendar we all suffer (next comes the so-called 'War on Xmas').

One of the most perplexing of these comes up every year around about this time; Halloween or as I have seen it delightfully spelt phonetically here in Spain, Jalogüín. A day on the calendar that sparks anger in certain circles. What’s even more curious about all of the false rage that surrounds All Saints Eve is that it drives the quickly offended on both extremes of the political spectrum equally mad.

The standard bearers of the progressive leftist moral compass vigorously protest that this age-old Celtic tradition is actually an imperialist American imposition led by the CIA, specifically designed to wipe out Sephardic buñelos and the roasting of chestnuts. It is true that most of this hashtag activism takes place on their iPhones over Twitter, Facebook or Google before having a hamburger while watching their favorite American series on Amazon Prime or Netflix and then falling asleep to their favorite British rock band. I’m sure that deep down they mean what they say.

Those on the right deeply fret over the unreligious symbolism of some of the costumes depicting heaven and hell and more importantly, yet at the same time somewhat ironically, fervently maintain that the dead cannot come back to life. It’s true, a quick look at the most popular Halloween costumes of the past few years lists witches as the most popular costume but these are closely followed by morally tainting dinosaurs, fairies, cowboys and clowns, not to mention those morally reprehensible bunny rabbits. It makes you wonder if the inhabitants of the peninsula complained with the same vigour when the church coopted Saturnalia.

Both sides seem to forget that culture and cultures are not permanent, fixed states. People learn from one another. Ideas travel. Jazz may have been born in America, but it would be absurd to say it can’t be played elsewhere by non-Americans.

But really, if someone has a serious problem with kids dressing up in costumes and eating candy on a special day of the year, there truly are monsters to worry about.