Sweet Pea the Pilgrim

 

Sweet Pea has come a long way from how she was when I first adopted her in early June. At that time, she didn’t seem to me to be frightened; she didn’t shake or cower, she ate, she pooped, she liked to be petted, she seemed normal. But when you adopt a dog whose history you know nothing about, and one who has just spent a month in a shelter, you don’t really know what normal is.

Normal began to manifest itself after a couple of months. That is when she would meet me at the door when I came in, jumping like a mad person. It was the same when it was time for a walk and I went to change my shoes – something I could hardly do because she was jumping up and down and running all around, and I couldn’t get my laces tied. And all of a sudden she just had a lot more energy. She walked faster and could go farther.

What took longer was to see her begin to enjoy walking out in the fields. One of my greatest pleasures with Cupcake was to go walking out in the fields, or the woods, or at the beach. He enjoyed it as much as I did, if not more. So it was disappointing when Sweet Pea didn’t seem to like it. I had no idea if it was too hot, or if she was afraid, or if she was urban dog who had never been in that kind of environment where there were no buildings or sidewalks, new smells, and she could walk without a leash. Maybe she felt uncomfortable being untethered?

But now, finally, she has joined the doggy walking hall of fame. Today, for the second time, she did the whole circular route – about an hour’s walk, in the fields by Vilabertran. She did it at a good clip, looking like she was collecting data to add to her lift list and enjoying herself.

The path we take around the fields is one short section of the Camino de Santiago. For any pilgrim, the Camino begins at his door. Over the centuries, many routes were established. Now, there are 281 Caminos listed, encompassing more than 51,500 miles of routes through 29 different countries. Forty-nine of them are in Spain, and these cover almost 9,940 miles. One of those connects the Monastery of Santa Maria in Vilabertran with the Sant Pere church in Figueres.

Although I just go out there to enjoy walking with no cars around, breathe the fresh air, and observe the changing crops and Pyrenees Mountains in the distance, I am aware that for many, the Camino is a religious observation and I always feel that when I walk on that path, I am taking part in an historical activity.

In the early Middle Ages, Santiago de Compostela became the third most important pilgrimage destination after Jerusalem and Rome. Making a pilgrimage was one of the most important things you could do to save your immortal soul in those days. By the 13^th century 500,000 pilgrims would be walking the Camino each year. Walking the Camino has made a comeback in modern times and whereas in 1985, about 800 people walked enough sections of the Camino to be counted, in 2019 that number jumped to 350,000. They came from 190 countries. In addition to the land routes, there are maritime routes. The longest of these is the Antarctic Route (Camino Antártico) that begins at the Spanish research base, Gabriel de Castilla on Deception Island, 8745 miles from Santiago.

Sweet Pea and I are not being counted. We have not signed up for our Camino Passport and we do not wear scallop shells, although we do see the shell symbol on posted signs that we pass and in the pavement near the monastery. We don’t do the walk for religious reasons and we are not headed for Santiago, but walking out there is good for your soul whether you are religious or not.

1 October

 

How could it be possible in any democracy that voting would be a crime?

1 October 2023, marked six years since the Catalans voted on a referendum to decide whether or not they wanted to remain part of Spain. The Spanish state did everything it could to stop the vote. They deemed it illegal, they hunted down anyone who might be printing the ballots, or making any other kinds of preparations, and when it looked like all their efforts to find the millions of printed ballots had failed, they sent in 20,000 troops and housed them on large ships in Barcelona harbor, ships that had Tweety and other cartoon characters painted on the sides. At first it made them look like fools, but on the day, they looked like fascists.

On 1 October 2017, these troops donned their riot gear and dressed in black they went out and beat up hundreds of unarmed citizens who had gone to polling places to vote. Young, old, it didn’t matter. Catalans were the enemy. The images of police in riot gear bludgeoning unarmed people, some elderly, others with children in tow, were captured on countless photos and videos and were shown on pretty much every news media around the world, although it isn’t clear if they saw any of it on Spanish television.

Afterwards, the New York Times repeatedly reported on the “botched” referendum, as if the failure had been because of some sort of incompetence of the Catalans, and always added that it had been illegal.

The Charter of the United Nations states that all peoples have a right to self-determination. That is what the referendum was about. The question it was asking was Voleu que Catalunya sigui un estat independent en forma de república? Do you want Catalonia to be an independent state in the form of a republic? (Note that Spain is not a republic, it is a monarchy.) People could vote yes or no. Since there had been no agreement with the Spanish government, the referendum was not binding, so that it was really only a measure of what Catalan citizens wanted. But even that was enough to frighten Spaniards.

Over two and a quarter million people turned out to vote that day, that is, 43 percent of registered voters turned out in spite of government threats. Slightly more than 92 percent of them voted Yes; and less than 8 percent voted No.

It seemed to me that all those intellectuals who read The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Times, the EU, and all the rest of them, would stop to ask themselves how it could be in a democracy that voting on a referendum would be illegal? And how could they buy it that peaceful, unarmed people who were going to drop ballots could be violently attacked by riot police (they had seen the videos) and then be called terrorists by the Spanish media and the Spanish government.

There were 1066 reported cases of victims of police violence on the day of voting – that is, people who showed up at clinics and hospitals to be treated for wounds. One man lost an eye when he was hit in the face with a rubber bullet. Rubber bullets are illegal in Catalonia and Catalan police cannot use them, but Spanish police are a law unto themselves. To watch them on the television that day was to see a reincarnation of the German Nazi bullies who enjoyed hurting people who had no way of defending themselves.

One thousand four hundred and thirty-two people have been investigated for criminal acts connected to the referendum. Not all of them have come to trial, but each one has had to find legal help and live through the nightmare that criminal investigation engenders. Although when I looked it up on the internet, I was told that in Spain, jury trial “is deeply embedded in its constitutional evolution,” I have lived in Spain for over twenty years and don’t remember ever hearing of even one jury trial in the country. As in all trials, the so-called Catalan terrorists and traitors have been tried by judges. And judges are all appointed by the government in power, whether that is the Popular Party or the Socialist Party, both of which are vehemently anti-independence. They have to be because you can’t win a general Spanish election if you support Catalonia, much less Catalan independence.

Back to the New York Times. It was Rafael Minder, their former correspondent from Madrid who continuously wrote that the referendum was botched – a loaded word. He has since left the NY Times, hopefully they got rid of him because of his botched work as a supposedly unbiased and knowledgeable journalist (I can say that because I am not a journalist, I am a blogger) but maybe he went on to the greener pastures of the Financial Times under a bright sun.

When you think that with 20,000 additional police (many of them paramilitary) sent to prevent a peaceful civilian mobilization of citizens from voting, and yet two and a quarter million people did vote (on printed ballots that all the Spanish police never could find ahead of time), the Catalan referendum was not really botched at all. It was a great success. Sadly for the Catalans, independence is still off somewhere, beyond the horizon, but I hope that at some point Americans and others begin to give them some support. After all, wasn’t it in 1776 that we Americans won our own independence? It’s not such a new concept.

Two Visits

Whereas I usually get maybe one visit during a year, this year I had a visit in February, another in April, and in the last week I’ve had two. All these visits are special for me because they are always old friends coming from the U.S. So these last two were of course both special, but the first even more so because he is an ex-husband, and you don’t tend to get many of those. Never mind that I have three. Joe was my second husband and we hadn’t had any contact for at least twenty-five years until he emailed me about two months ago to say he was coming to Spain and would I like to meet up.

It wasn’t as hard as it might have been to pick him out of the crowd when I picked him up at the AVE train station. I hadn’t seen any recent photo, but Joe is six feet tall and there aren’t many of those here either. So I just had to look at the tall men and see if I could find one that was in any way recognizable. When I saw him, I thought “maybe,” but when he recognized me, the question was answered. I think we had both changed considerably in those twenty-five years, and I never would have known him if we had just been passing on the street.

It’s odd to be with someone who you were very close to years ago but who now is a stranger. And yet, for the most part, people don’t change much and that began to be apparent after a short while. Joe is in construction and I knew he would be interested in buildings and architecture, so our sightseeing was based around that: the beautiful medieval village of Besalú, of course, and the medieval monastery of Santa Maria at Vilabertran. This ensemble is one of the best-preserved examples of Romanesque architecture in Catalonia. The church is the oldest part of the complex; inaugurated in 1100. The cloister and remaining buildings date from the 12^th century. But this visit had more to do with talking than with sightseeing.

The bridge at Besalú

Santa Maria de Vilabertran

Next to come was Srul with his wife Ora. I never met Ora before, but I’ve known Srul most of my life, even if we haven’t lived in the same place for most of it. I was his counselor in a youth organization we both belonged to in Los Angeles; I knew his parents and I know his brother. We hadn’t seen each other for probably something like thirty years, but in the last few years we have stayed in touch via Facebook so at least I knew what he looked like when I picked them up at the train. It was easy: the tall, slender guy wearing that cloth hat that he wears for every photo opportunity. When I saw the hat I knew I had found my man.

For Srul and Ora, I think the highlight of our sightseeing, since both of them do ceramics, was La Bisbal d’Empordà, the ceramics capital of Catalonia, where we visited the Terracotta Ceramics Museum. I love ceramics: I collect a little, I eat off of interesting plates and bowls, I visit La Bisbal from time to time and pick up a piece or two, and I had ceramic pieces from several workshops including two from La Bisbal in my shop, when I had a shop. But I had never been to the museum.

Housed in a former ceramics factory built in 1922, the museum has some of the old kilns, chimneys, machinery, and many examples of old and new, functional and decorative ceramics. Since the beginning of the 20^th century, ceramics has been one of the main drivers of the local economy, the clay and forests nearby making that possible. All of us, both the potters and the collector, found the museum fascinating. The only thing missing was a good museum shop where we could spend some money! But that deficiency was taken care of the next day in Besalú where, in addition to that splendid medieval bridge, there is one of the best gift shops in the area.

I now have a month to plan the itinerary for my next visitors. This will have been a bumper year.

Romp Around the U.S.

 

Tony James Slater is a funny guy who writes funny books. I’ve heard say he’s a Brit, and I’ve also heard that he’s from Australia. Not being satisfied with either, he is both. He is also one eccentric guy who likes to travel, and if you want to take an eccentric trip while lying on your couch with your dog or cat, then this is the book for you.

Tony says he’s clueless, yet he manages to see past the surface to the core and the humor of things, because things are only really funny when they’re true. Tony sees the U.S. through the eyes of a foreigner, and that means he doesn’t take it all for granted and will point out things you’ve known all your life but never noticed.

A lot cheaper than taking a cross-country trip and paying for the gas yourself, you are invited to join Tony on his.

It's called Alligators Eat Marshmallows (And Other Things I Learned on my 10,000 Mile Road Trip Around The USA!) and is available in print or ebook on Amazon.

Holy Mother of God

Today is the 15^th of August. It’s a holiday here: Mare de Déu d'Agost, also known as Assumpció de la Mare de Déu (Mary’s ascension into heaven) or simply called l’Assumpció.

I’m not Catholic and when I first came to live in Catalonia I was confused by all the Mares de Déu. As far as I knew, there was only one Virgin Mary. Holy Moley! How could they celebrate so many?

They are scattered throughout the year: Mare de Déu de la Mercè, Mother of God of Mercy, in Barcelona in September; Mare de Déu del Carme, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the patron saint of seafaring communities, celebrated in July up and down the Catalan coast. Then there is Mare del Déu de Setembre, better known as Immaculada. That’s when the holy virgin Maria was born. That’s celebrated on the 8^th of September. There are others, but I don’t remember them all. In fact, none of my Catalan friends could name them all.

In addition to the holidays, there are the statues. These are referred to en masse as “les maresdedeu trobades” (the found mothers of God). These are antique statues that, legend says, were hidden during the time of the Muslim rule. They would be found by a farmer in the woods or in a field and taken to the local church. Sometimes it would subsequently disappear and be found again where it was found the first time. In some cases this happened several times.

The statues are from the 13^th century, the Romanesque period. They are made of painted wood and have the Virgin seated, with the baby Jesus on her right knee often with a ball with a cross in her left hand. Sometimes in her right hand she will be holding a fruit or a bird.

These Mares de Déu would be named for the place where they were found, so there is the Mare de Déu de Núria, Mare de Déu de Queralt, Mare de Déu de Meritxell (not a place name) in Andorra, and the most famous and celebrated in Catalonia, Mare de Déu de Montserrat. There are at least a dozen others just in Catalonia, near me is the Mare de Déu de Mont, and more in other parts of Spain.

These statues are considered to have been born (again) when they were found, and so are celebrated on the same day as the birth of Mary, l’Immaculada.

So many Marys, so many holidays, and it’s so quiet outside. Everyone has their own way of celebrating but it’s August, all the shops are closed, it’s very hot, and everyone is probably at the beach or up in the mountains. I doubt that many of them are thinking about holy virgins.

Fire, Wind, and War in Portbou

Photo: Emporda Info

Wildfires terrify me. Unfortunately I have always lived in places prone to them. First there was southern California, then northern California, and now Catalonia. These are places that are relatively dry and that get hot in the summer. California gets the hot Santa Ana desert wind usually for a week or two in September. But the tramuntana blows on and off throughout the summer and the rest of the year. That makes summer fire season especially dangerous.

Tramontane is a classical name for a northern wind. The word comes from the Latin for beyond or across the mountains and it referred to the Alps. The word is also used to refer to someone who comes from beyond the mountains or anyone who is foreign or strange. More or less the same word is used throughout the Mediterranean. In Croatia it is called tramontana, in France it is tramontane, and in Catalonia it is tramuntana. There is a saying in Catalan culture (especially in the Empordà) that refers to a person as touched by tramuntana (tocat per la tramuntana) when they behave oddly or seemly lost their marbles. Salvador Dalí was often referred to as someone tocat per la tramuntana in his native Empordà.

I moved to Figueres, in the Empordà, in June 2012. Two weeks later in July, there was a huge fire that started in La Jonquera, the last inland town along the major highway before the French border and not far north of here. I could smell it before I knew there was a wildfire. I had my windows closed even before the authorities told us to, making it very hot at home. I was making plans in my head for how to evacuate with my two cats, but in the end it wasn’t necessary.

Yesterday in the late afternoon a fire started near Portbou, the last village on the coast before you cross the border into France. So far it has burned over 575 hectares and caused the highway and railroad to be closed. This means that people who live or are vacationing in either Portbou or neighboring Colera and Llança haven’t been able to enter or leave since yesterday evening. They also have no electricity, water or phone. Those who have been evacuated from their homes or camping sites are being lodged at the civic center, attended to by the Catalan government and the Red Cross. Over 200 Catalan and French firefighters are fighting the fire, but helicopters and airplanes that would drop water can’t fly when the wind blows at over 70 miles an hour, so containment has been difficult.

Portbou is a small village with a big history. Now it serves as a summer holiday spot, but historically it was important during two wars.

During the Spanish Civil War between 200,000 and half a million Spaniards (the number depends on your source) fled Spain within weeks of Franco’s troops taking Barcelona in late January 1939. Called La Retirada (The Retreat), many of them crossed the Pyrenees at Portbou.

Photo: Robert Capra

On 26 September 1940, during World War II and the German occupation of France, Walter Benjamin, a Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, and essayist, committed suicide by morphine overdose in Portbou. Benjamin had been living in France since 1933 and was fleeing the Nazis who the Vichy authorities were cooperating with. Having been helped by the virtually unknown American rescue worker Varian Fry, he had arrived in Portbou by climbing the mountains to cross the border with great difficulty, burdened by a briefcase containing his precious writings that he refused to leave behind. But Franco had suddenly cancelled all transfer visas so once in Spain, the Spanish police detained him and the small group he was traveling with. They were to be sent back to France the next day. Benjamin killed himself that night rather than go back and be handed over to the Nazis. The next day the procedure changed again and his two traveling companions were allowed to pass through Spain into Portugal from where they could sail. The manuscript that Benjamin had been carrying at such cost was never found. There is now a memorial to Walter Benjamin at Portbou by the Israeli artist Dani Karavanhe that sits on a clifftop by the Portbou municipal cemetery.

Photo: Vikipeida

Sweet Pea

Meet Sweet Pea. I adopted her on Sunday the 11^th of June from a shelter in Argentona. Argentona is over 100 kilometers away, about one and a half hours driving and not far from Barcelona. I had never been there. It turned out that my GPS had never been there either. But I found the town in spite of the GPS, pulled up to the cemetery (which I figured, when they asked where are you, would be a better landmark than saying “I have no idea.” The distance and the GPS were not the only difficulties, but where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Of course I didn’t know her at that first meeting but the adoption papers required a name for the chip. Since she was tiny and seemed a sweet soul, I called her Sweet Pea. Catalans can’t seem to say Sweet Pea any more than they could say Cupcake and any more than I can say ocells.

They told me at the shelter she was ten. When I signed the adoption papers they didn’t charge me an adoption fee because she’s a senior. When I took her to my vet two days later he said she was at least 16. He thought they should have paid me to take her.

Sweet Pea has an enlarged heart three times normal size. Her back legs are crooked and she walks funny probably because of a fall many years ago that wasn’t taken care of. She has no teeth and no upper or lower jaw bone probably because of some long ago infection. And because she has no jaw bones, her tongue is usually hanging out. But other than that, she’s in great shape and she’s awfully cute!

I don’t mind her age. Her photo told me she was obviously a senior and clearly not a viable candidate to survive for long in a cage at a shelter. I was lonely after losing Cupcake in early May, and she needed to be rescued. This is what I call win-win.

She was sweet and quiet from the beginning, and little by little her personality has begun to come through and she has blossomed. She has more energy than at first and can go on longer walks. She seemed not to ever have gone up or down staircases before. She would go down slowly, tentatively, and when we came home I would carry her back up, afraid that, in this heat, the effort would be bad for her heart. Two days ago, without thinking, I did the automatic movement I used to do with Cupcake, I took off her leash at the bottom of the stairs. She just flew up all three flights. When it’s time to go out, she becomes rambunctious and starts to dance around like a crazy person, jumps on me, wags her tail so hard I’m afraid it will fly off or knock her over. She had been at the shelter for over a month. I think she has recovered from her trauma.

Yesterday I ran into an acquaintance at the fruit and veg shop. I met her through her husband who was one of the dog park people. I had told them the last time I ran into them that Cupcake had died. Yesterday I told her that I had adopted another dog – a sixteen-year-old Chihuahua. Sixteen! she said. But she won’t last long. As if she were a used car. Some people just don’t get it. They may have a dog, but they are not dog-lovers.

Since she came, we haven't done much becausse of the heat. I don’t know if she has weeks, months, or years ahead of her. But whatever time we have together, we will make the most of it and be grateful.

Happy Trails Sweet Cupcake

 

Cupcake was a little black dog with some tan highlights, a Tibetan Spaniel who weighed seven quilos and who changed my life.

When I came to live in Figueres with Minnie and Felix, I didn’t know a soul. I adopted Cupcake after I had been here for two years and he changed all that. After about two weeks, I took him to the dog park so he could socialize and within a short time we both had a group of friends. Eight years later, some of them are still friends.

I had wanted a dog all my adult life, but there had been reasons why I didn’t feel I could responsibly adopt one. Finally, I owned my own apartment, I had no disapproving husband, and I was free to do what I wanted.

What I wanted was an older dog. For one thing, I was older and didn’t see myself running around, coping with the energy of a puppy. I also didn’t want it to be likely that my dog would outlive me. If so, who would take care of him? Animal groups say that most people want puppies or young dogs and the seniors – the ones who have the hardest time living in an animal shelter and need adoption the most – get left behind. Well not by me. I would take in one of those seniors and make a comfortable home for him or her. As the saying goes, “Saving one dog will not change the world, but surely for that one dog, the world will change forever.”

Canae was the rescue group that contacted me; they had a senior seven years old that needed fostering. My vet later said he was more likely nine years old when they brought him, on the 15^th of January 2015, the day of his surgery. He was at a shelter, it was winter, and the group didn’t want him to have to recover in a cage.

We called it fostering, but I knew that if he and the cats would tolerate each other, he would stay. Felix had chronic health problems and the vet thought introducing a dog to the household would be stressful for him and bad for his health. Felix, a gregarious cat, took to him immediately and made a nuisance of himself. Minnie, a bit aloof, didn’t really give a damn and mainly ignored him. Cupcake wasn't a cat fan, but he gave them space and didn’t seem frightened of them. He stayed.

Cupcake was a stoic dog. They had told me that he was a Pekingese mix, but one look at the breed chart at the vet and it was clear that he was a Tibetan Spaniel. No one seems to know that breed here; I don’t think I’ve ever seen another one. Tibetan Spaniels were bred to guard Buddhist temples. They are Zen. Cupcake was Zen.

For the first few weeks he was here, he never made a peep of any kind. I began to wonder if his vocal chords were damaged. But then one day he let loose one bark at a dog that was annoying him. So he wasn’t damaged, he was just very quiet. And he was no patsy.

Our first day at the dog park someone recognized him from the photo the rescue group had posted. Cupcake was famous!

The dog park (pipican, as they call it) became a daily thing. Morning was to the fountain, where he liked to poop on the grass, evening was to the pipican where he sniffed around and ran with the other dogs. Seeing this short little dog running circles around the park with all kinds of dogs including a couple of greyhounds was a sight to behold.

It was at the dog park that I met what became most of my friends. The dog park crowd and the people I met around town while I walked my dog and they walked theirs, are the people who became my community – some became friends, others acquaintences to chat with on the street.

Cupcake loved the dogpark. After a while he ran less and sniffed more. It didn’t take long before he discovered that some of the owners brought treats with them. So he began to hang out more at the benches where the treats were. Eventually he only hung out at the benches. When new people started to come with big dogs, some of whom were aggressive, we stopped going.

When I first moved to Figueres I looked for where I could take a walk from my home into the countryside without having to use my car, and I found a path that went from Figueres to the nearby village of Vilabertran. From home it was about an hour’s walk to the village. I did that walk by myself from time to time. Soon after I adopted Cupcake I took him. He was a small dog and a senior, so I wasn’t sure if he could do it, but he had no problem. Two hours of walking and he didn’t want to come home. He loved it.

Soon after we started walking that path, I was invited to join two of the men from the dog park. They regularly did that walk with their dogs. The six of us soon became a regular thing. Josep and Keti the border collie, Jaume and Pluto the schnauzer, and me and Cupcake the Buddhist monk. We would do the walk together three times a week, and Cupcake and I would do it on our own a fourth time on the weekend. They were the ones who convinced me that I could let Cupcake off his leash. He might explore a little bit, but he wasn’t going to go anywhere, Josep said. The first time off leash he was off into the fields. I almost had a heart attack. I called and called, I was frantic. But he came back after a few minutes and I never had another problem. I guess he was just celebrating his good luck.

Eventually our little walking group fell apart, but Cupcake and I continued. He couldn’t do the walk in the summer when it was too hot, but we did it the rest of the year and as he got older and walking was more difficult, I would drive to a closer starting point so we could cut out the city part and just enjoy the country path where he could go off leash.

Cupcake was unique in several ways, not least of them his being the only Tibetan Spaniel in town. With the few exceptions when some other dog wouldn’t remove his nose from you-know-where, he never barked. He also didn’t wag his tail very often. He didn’t give kisses, but he snorted like a horse; that was his way of showing pleasure.

Cupcake’s greatest pleasures were walking, especially off leash in the country, going to the beach, and eating treats. He didn’t like the car, but he came to understand that it was necessary in order to get to what he did like. He hesitated, but he never complained.

In 2019, when he was about 13, he started to have noticeable back, shoulder, and joint pain. Medication helped, but there are side effects to pain killers and I didn’t want to rely on that long term. My friend Marc suggested acupuncture. There was a vet in Girona who specialized in acupuncture for dogs and cats, so he drove us to see her.

Once again Cupcake’s stoicism won the day. He would sit calmly while Laia applied the needles and continued to calmly wait (more or less) until it was over. The monthly acupuncture sessions helped a lot. Homeopathic medicines also helped so that although he still had some pain, it wasn’t acute and I judged that his quality of life was good.

Except during summers, during his last two years we kept doing abbreviated walks where he could go off leash: along the Muga River, visits to the beach, and most often, the Vilabertran walks. That path is one branch of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. Cupcake loved walking out there; he was my little pilgrim.

Although summer heat limited activity, we could go to a park and poke around in the evening shade – a change of pace from our evening walks in town which had become boring because he couldn’t go far. I would drive us to one of three close-by parks and let him sniff all he wanted and socialize with other dogs if he felt like it.

Cupcake developed congenital heart disease, dementia, and the ongoing back and joint pain, but he never complained. But from the way he walked, I could tell he was having a hard time. Towards the end the acupuncture no longer seemed to make much difference and neither did those homeopathic medicines. He was still eating and enjoying treats, he still wanted to go out, but once out, he had a hard time and no longer even sniffed much as he walked, as if he needed to concentrate just on putting one foot in front of the other. I live on the second floor (would be the third in the U.S.) and there is no elevator. Stairs had become difficult for him, but I was no longer in condition to carry him up and down.

Cupcake’s acupuncturist had given me a canine quality of life form that I used for measuring his quality of life, and this time it came out poor. He wasn’t ill. I knew he could still go on, but at what price? I had made a promise to myself that when the time came I would let him go. I had learned from other pets the mistake of holding on for too long for my own sake. 

We were together for eight years. He brought me more joy than I can say. He was the most beautiful dog. I never got tired of looking at him. I took thousands of photos; we took thousands of walks. He was my best pal. He was the perfect dog for me.

I had Cupcake put to sleep on 8 May 2023.  I held him in my arms as he fell asleep and then as he passed away.  He didn't feel a thing, but I suffered one of the greatest pains of my life.  And yet it wasn't that hard a decision.  I knew the time that I had been dreading had come. 

I buried some of his ashes near the Vilabertran path that he loved; the rest I have here at home with me together with the ashes of Minnie and Felix. I imagine his spirit is out there somewhere taking lovely walks and being quiet, calm, and happy. 

Catalonia Today review of No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia

At the age of fifty-two, I took my cat and flew off from the San Francisco Bay Area to a new life in Barcelona. I had gone salsa dancing, met and married a Catalan, and we were going to live in his hometown.

The adventures began before we even left, with the purchase, sight unseen, of an apartment in the Barri Gotic, and subsequent horrible discovery in a guidebook of what went on in that street. Then there was the shock of the deed arriving in the mail with a different price – a much lower price – than what we had paid.

Once there, things didn’t work out as planned and that set off an even greater adventure than I had bargained for. Things that should be normal weren’t: buying bedding, keeping drunks from peeing under our balcony, buying Chanukah candles in a country where there have been essentially no Jews since 1492.

"Autobiography is a notoriously difficult genre, whose authors often slide into rampant egocentrism or report details that may have mattered very much to them but are of no interest whatsoever to anyone else. Happily, Dvora Treisman has avoided such pitfalls and has produced an entertaining if sometimes melancholy memoir about her life in Catalonia, full of episodes which might appear trivial at first but in fact deftly push the narrative forward so that the reader is, more often then not, left wanting to find out what happens next."  From the review by Matthew Tree, in the June issue of Catalonia Today. You can find the review here.

You can purchase the book on all the Amazon sites, Barnes & Noble, Casa del Llibre, Come In Bookshop in Barcelona, and most brick and mortar bookshops in the U.S. and Britain.

Patience

The garbage strike started last Friday – over a week ago. The garbage collectors don’t work for the city; they work for a subcontractor. I don’t know what difference that makes, but it seems they are not happy with their working conditions or salary. The end result is that the city seems to be stymied in getting the strike settled and garbage has been collecting on the streets. The piles are huge; wherever the containers are located (about every other block all through the city) the garbage started spilling over after the first day and now it takes up the whole sidewalk so that you can’t walk past. It’s obviously not sanitary. People say there are rats.

People also say “Paciència,” patience. That’s the Spanish way. I’ve tried, but it’s hard to get it to work when you don’t have it.

Just now, coming back from walking the dog, I saw signs of life in the world of garbage (no, it wasn’t rats). The street had been closed off, there was a huge backup of cars, police, two huge trucks, and a crew of men dressed in white jumpsuits with dayglow stripes carrying shovels. Finally. They mean business. Patience or not, it’s finally over.

I may not have much patience, but I know of someone who does: King Charles III. He’s 73. How long has he been waiting to become king?

I watched part of the Coronation ceremony and then the procession back to Buckingham Palace and I have to say I was very moved. I kept looking at him during the ceremony in Westminister Abbey and thinking, my goodness, you’ve waited a very long time for this.

The whole thing was a great spectacle. It wasn’t a legal proceeding. Charles became king when his mother died. It was a spectacle that carried meaning. It followed a historical script with some modern additions and changes. It is long-standing British heritage and we have nothing like it. It’s not gold-plated bathrooms.

Many Americans I know are opposed to monarchy and proclaim for democracy. But Britain seems to me to be as much a democracy as the U.S. They have a constitution, a parliament, and their voting system is not some obscure electoral college where you can win with a minority of votes. And if they want a monarch as their head of state (instead of, say, a Donald Trump), that’s their business.

One thing you have to say for the new king is that he looks like he takes his responsibilities seriously. You could see it in his face. Much of the ceremony talked about duty and responsibility. And service. The priviledge of power and the duty of service. Now there’s a notion some of our political leaders could ponder.

Inés

When I moved to Figueres in 2012, the first neighbor I met was a little old lady called Inés. She was petite, kind of cute, had short silver hair not unlike my own, spent considerable time on a public bench in front of the building, and was very talkative, except that I could hardly understand a word. It wasn’t only that she spoke no Catalan, in spite of having been married to a Catalan for over 40 years and having lived in Catalonia for over 60.  It was because in addition to being from Andalusia, where they have a strong accent, she spoke Andalus Castilian as if she had marbles in her mouth. But she was friendly, the only person so far to say hello, and so I made an effort to understand what she was saying. It turned out to be terrifying.

Inés told me that the former owners of my apartment had sold because some of the kids in the building were breaking in through the window that gives onto the interior air shaft where we all have a small balcony that houses our washing machines. These were Moroccan kids, she said, little delinquents, and there was nothing you could do.

Well, I know something about that Spanish idea that there is nothing you can do, but even so, I was upset. I had come up to Figueres to spend one day looking for apartments, at the end of which I decided which one to buy. I had little time and little money. Had I made a bad choice? I was not only upset but also a bit frightened.

So the next day I headed over to the gestoria – the management company that services our building. I spoke with Catarina and told her what I had heard. Who told you that? she asked. Inés. Oh, well, don’t give it another thought. Inés is always coming up with stories, always blaming people for things. She’s difficult, “complicated” is the word they use. Ignore her. There was never any break in.

When I got to know her better it became worse. Inés really did make up stories, all of them nasty. She blamed all of us around her – even those who actually tried to help her when she needed it. She complained to the police that kids were throwing rocks up at her window from that bench of hers, so the city removed the bench even though there were no kids, no broken glass, and no rocks down there to throw. So her story resulted in her losing her bench.

On the other hand, she used to throw urine out her window onto the street. She did it for years. She denied it but it always landed right under her window and some of the neighbors said they had seen her do it. Apparently she collected it in a bucket and then dumped it out. Why? Who knows.

She complained constantly that neighbors were trying to break into her apartment, that they were trying to get her out. She accused her neighbors next door and others. She would stand in the stairway in front of her door and accost anyone going up or down with a tirade. They can’t drive her out of her home, she would yell. And if anyone tried to engage her and tell her that no one was trying to get her out of her home, she would argue and yell. You could hear it throughout the building. When I heard those arguments I would try to delay my going out so I could avoid running into her. I got to where even when it was quiet I would look out my peephole first to make sure that going out was safe and I wasn’t going to be hassled.

At one point I went to the social services office to see if they knew about her. It seemed to me she wasn’t really capable of taking decent care of herself and could use some help. I gave them her details – name, address, etc. and that was the last I heard of it although some time later I would see someone who seemed to be a social worker going in or out of her apartment every now and then.

Once, on the stairway, when she was totally out of it, telling me something about how she felt she was dying, I called the emergency medical number. Police and an ambulance came. Two people went into her apartment with her, stayed for about half an hour, and then left. After that Inés told anyone she could find, even strangers on the street, that I had sent the police to get her. I decided that from then on I would just mind my own business.

I thought her problem had to do with old age, dementia maybe, but people who knew Inés from 50 years ago told me she’d always been like this. Mala llet, they said. (Spoiled milk.)

Whatever the cause of her problem, it only became worse and finally, shortly after the Covid pandemic began, her sister had her taken to a nursing home. That was about three years ago. And last week word came that Inés had died.

Word came via a notice that had been taped on the front door of our building by the funeral home. This is the common practice. When someone dies, the funeral home tapes a notice of the death and announcement of the funeral service, held at their facility across from the cemetery, on the door of every building in the immediate neighborhood where that person used to live. The notice gives the person’s name, civil status, age at death, family survivors, and the day and time of the funeral service – usually the next day because the Spanish do not wait around. You’re dead one day and disposed of the next.

When I first came to live in Figueres, from my apartment I heard, for the first time, church bells tolling. I hadn’t noticed that in Barcelona. This wasn’t the usual ringing that told the time or announced a mass. It was slow, lugubrious tolling, and it went on and on. The sound was so mournful that it didn’t take much imagination to figure out that someone must have died.

In the Catholic Church, bells represent the voice of God and are meant to remind people of the existence of heaven. Historically, bells were used as a clock (you might not be able to see a clock, but you could hear the bells telling you it was lunch time); to announce mass, baptisms, weddings, funerals, other religious holidays; and to warn of fires and floods. For each purpose there was a specific way of ringing the bells and everyone understood.

When someone in the community died, they would ring a death knoll. Three rings three times for a man (nine total), three rings two times for a woman (six total). Some professions also had special markers. Then the bells would toll, one strike for each year of the deceased’s life. Thus people would have a good idea of who had died.

I don’t know if any bells tolled for Inés. If they had, they would have rung 91 times, a good long time.

If you like this post, you might like my book: No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia, available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Book Depository, and brick and mortar bookshops, etc.

Link to Amazon.com

Books, Roses, and Lies

 

I thought it would be a good idea to promote my book, No Regrets: A Life in Catalonia, by coupling it with the holiday of Sant Jordi. Saint George is the patron saint of Catalonia and his holiday, celebrated on 23 April, is the Day of the Book and the Rose.

It started out as a normal saint day and was celebrated with men giving women a red rose. That symbolized the red rose that grew where the dragon’s blood fell. If you are not fully versed on Catholic saints, it was George, a Roman soldier who was martyred for refusing to denounce his Christian faith and, more important to this story, who slew the dragon and saved the princess.

The idea of books came up hundreds of years later. In the 1920s, a book seller in Barcelona thought it would be a good idea to publicize and take advantage of the fact that both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day – 23 April and thus promote reading and book sales.

This evolved to books becoming part of the Sant Jordi celebration. Now, each year on 23 April, every Catalan city, town, and village hauls out dozens, if not hundreds of stands full of books and roses.

Taking the cue from Catalonia, in 1995, UNESCO declared 23 April World Book Day. This has caught on pretty well in England where George is also the patron saint, and perhaps less so in other places. It seems to me that to promote this holiday in the U.S. would be a good thing, and of course it would be a good thing if any bookshop would highlight my book on that holiday, especially since one of the sections is devoted to explaining Sant Jordi.

In preparing my promotional letter to several Berkeley bookstores, I intended to include a link to the Wikipedia page on World Book Day. But to my horror, when I went to look at it, it cited Lisbon, Portugal as the place where the holiday originated. It said that George was Lisbon’s patron saint, which is not true. None of it was true.

So I contacted my friend Matthew Tree, a British/Catalan journalist (we’ve never actually met but we’ve been in contact for some years) thinking he would know how to correct the entry. I also contacted the Catalan Office of Foreign Affairs and one of the pro-independence political parties. Although Matthew didn’t correct the entry, someone did, he and I were left with suspicions. I had probably consulted that page sometime before. After all, I’ve written about Sant Jordi several times on my blog and in my book, and I know I looked for sources of information. So who would go in and make such a ridiculous change?

Today Matthew’s article in a Catalan newspaper appeared, informing Catalans of the misinformation that had appeared on Wikipedia. In it he says that I had contacted him about it a couple of weeks ago. He points out how in that article the Catalan origin of the UNESCO World Book Day holiday was erased from history. Lisbon has two patron saints, Vicente de Zaragoza and Santo Antonio de Lisboa, but no George. The holiday was never celebrated in Portugal until last year after the Catalan government proposed doing so to the Portuguese. He also says that he knows first hand that in London and many other places, booksellers refer to April 23 as “Saint Jordi’s Day.”

When I saw that article in February, I noticed that the last revision had been done in January. Matthew wonders (as do I), who could have had the time and desire to place that false information on the internet? He recalls a 2010 article by Màrius Serra in which he explained that someone had entered Google Translator only to get “I’m from Catalonia” translated as “I’m from Spain.”

Who? Why? Someone loaded with prejudice, intent on misrepresenting Catalan reality.

To see Matthew’s article in El Punt Avui (in Catalan) click here.

Yes, We Have No Vaccine

I recently went to meet with my doctor – my new doctor. We were to go over the results of my routine lab tests and I had a list of questions. Among those questions was one I had put to my former doctor but he had never come up with an answer.

The question was: Is it possible to get a shingles vaccine through the health service? And if not, is the vaccine approved in Spain so that I could go and pay and get it from a private clinic?

My new doctor knew I had that question pending and had an answer ready. A very weird answer at that.

A vaccine had just recently been approved. It was approved for people 69 and 80 years old. OK, fine. I fall within that span. No, it’s not a span. The department of health has approved the shingles vaccine for people aged 69 and for people aged 80. Those younger, older, or inbetween are not eligible.

Really.

“Of course that is absurd,” he told me. He figured someone in some office must have made a mistake and surely soon someone in authority would figure it out and it would be fixed. He suggested I come back at the beginning of March.

Kings

The holidays are over and I’m a little bit sad. It’s not that I do so much celebrating. I don’t go to any parties or dinners; I exchange very few gifts and those are through the mail, and some of those gifts, even when mailed a month ahead, don’t arrive until the holidays are over ... or never arrive at all. The Spanish postal system isn’t particularly efficient, but Spanish customs is a either corrupt or completely incompetent.

But all that isn’t what makes me sad. It’s the ending of the street lights that gets me down. My evening walk with the dog is far more joyful for the six weeks or so that the streets are lit up with lights and decorations. The day after Kings, all that is over. Finished. Zip. Dark.

Speaking of Kings, January 6 is as special here as Christmas, maybe more so, especially for children. Because it isn’t Santa Claus that brings them gifts, it’s the Three Kings. And not only that, but the Kings arrive in town (whatever city, town, or village you live in) the night before, on the 5^th, and there is a big parade and they throw candy and stuff.

During the week before their arrival, the Kings’ pages set up encampments where they receive the children and their letters. Kids can also deliver their letters to the post office – the same service that Santa gets in other places. Hopefully those letters get delivered in time, unlike my Christmas presents.

In some towns, especially along the coast where is a sandy beach, and a healthy city budget to pay for it, the Kings might arrive by camel. In other towns along the coast they sometimes arrive by boat, as in Barcelona and Tarragona. In some they come by train and in others by helicopter. But whatever transportation method they use, once there they have a big parade with lots of floats, street performers, marching drum bands, very loud music and through it all they throw candy and confetti.

Figueres made animal welfare a feature of their Calvalcada de Reis a few years ago so there are no longer any of the live camels, horses, or donkeys that used to parade down the street. I suppose that’s good for the animals, although I didn’t think the horses or donkeys were having a hard time of it. Cynical me, I wonder if it isn’t that their clean-up crews didn’t want to have to deal with the aftermath of large, live animals parading up and down the streets and standing in front of the city hall. If it was the loud music that bothered the animals, well hey, it bothers some of the people too and they could just as well have turned down the volume and kept the animals away from that drum band.

There isn’t much that will get me out to stand still for almost an hour on a cold, dark, winter night. Figueres city government has managed to get rid of the starlings that used to do their magnificent ballets in the winter sky at dusk, so now all that is left is the one evening of the Calvalcada de Reis.

On the morning of the 6^th children get their presents and adults tuck in to the tortell de reis and cava (Catalan sparkling wine). The tortell is a semi-dry pastry decorated with candied fruit that is traditionally filled with marzipan but can also be found stuffed with whipped or pastry cream. Somewhere in the filling will be two little items: one is a figure of a king and the other a fava bean. Whoever finds the king in his slice gets to wear the crown and whoever finds the bean gets to pay for the pastry.