American in Spain

About a year ago, I became a fan of a Facebook page about Colindres, the town where I live. With the exception of one brief spat in which I suggested that perhaps the town hall shouldn’t be sponsoring a bunch of crackpot UFOlogists to come to town and vend their wares, where a few people got offended by my suggestion that extraterrestrials have probably not travelled light years to come visit the Earth and not leave any evidence that psychology cannot explain, the experience has been very interesting. No new meatspace friendships have come out of it, but I can stay up to date with festival schedules and things.

One of the things I enjoy most about following this particular Facebook page are the photos that are posted fairly regularly, taken by a gentleman named Raúl Gonzalez. He has an eye for capturing his town’s beauty. Earlier this week, I was looking up some census data for Colindres on Wikipedia and discovered this gorgeous photograph of the two bridges with a rainbow, taken by none other than Raúl.
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In my local cured meat and cheese shop, they have this bottle of water that is very intriguing. It’s meant to be a souvenir of Colindres, the town where I live, showing the Virgen del Carmen, the statue of this version of the Virgin Mary (more or less a goddess of fishermen) that they parade around town once a year. In the photo, she’s seen in front of the town church. What’s cool about the bottle is the exceedingly clever 3D visual effect it presents. Watch the video first, and then I’ll explain it.
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This past weekend my town, Colindres, celebrated its Second Annual Beer Festival. We went only one day last year, but this year we went all four days. I had a total of 3.5 liters of beer in seven half-liter (±1 pint) mugs. They also had liter steins, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy one. Plus, I subscribe to the “smaller servings is better” beer philosophy of my adopted country.
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The following is a document written by my father, Paul Rasmussen, about my parents’ March 2011 visit to my home in Colindres, Spain.

Betsy and I are old hands at traveling to Bilbao, Spain. When possible, as it was on March 19, we fly overnight from Charlotte to Germany (in this case, Munich), and then on to Bilbao after an hour or two lay-over. Betsy is always able to catch a few winks, and now that I have totally given up trying to sleep on these flights, I get by nicely watching movies and reading books. To my surprise, the Lufthansa flight from Charlotte to Munich allowed me to access the movie screen on the back of the seat in front of me from the moment we boarded the plane. I watched almost half of True Grit before we ever left the ground, but the pilot cut a few corners and caught back up to his schedule before we landed. There were no movies on the two hour flight from Munich to Bilbao, but I kept busy reading the book, A Course Called Ireland, I needed to finish so I could leave it with Erik.
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Living in a fishing village has its perks. When the fishing seasons change, suddenly everyone knows someone that has some fish to get rid of. Mackerel season just started, and I’ve heard lots of people around town saying, “Hey, you want some mackerel? I’ve got some extra.” It’s unclear to me exactly why this happens. My best guess is that they overfish, either intentionally or by accident, especially at the beginning of the season when the fishing’s good, and they can only sell a certain amount of it legally in the market, so they give away the rest to friends, and the friends give it to their friends, and eventually the fish trickle down to all the dinner tables in town.

I don’t regularly interact with many of the fishermen, but the other day Bruno, my neighbor and local butcher, knocked on my door and offered me some. I threw it in the fridge and, the next day, asked him how I should prepare it. What follows is the incredibly simple recipe he gave me.
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A few weeks ago, we received a letter from Nora’s daycare that read something like this:

On Friday, March 4, we will celebrate Carnival and go on a parade around town with all the other daycares and schools. This year the children will be dressed up as demons (very appropriate) and the educators and parents and grandparents will be dressed up as little angels (which is what we are).

When I commented to the daycare boss how much I appreciated her sense of humor, she thanked me and said that she’d actually received one complaint from some schmuck about calling her daughter a demon. Jeez.

A few days ago, we’d been given Nora’s demon tail to be sewed onto a pair of trousers, and been instructed that she wear the darkest clothes she has. Here-in lies the problem with celebrating Carnival in the northern hemisphere: it’s bloody cold in February and early March! So either you wear your coat over your costume and no one can see your costume, or you are cold. One of the many things that was well done about the way our daycare organized things, was that the costumes were made of plastic and designed to be worn on the outside of your coat.
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Taboos are fascinating. My life has never been the same since August 8, 2006, when I read an article about examining what we don’t dare say aloud, and how the amount of trouble one can get in for saying certain things is positively correlated with the likelihood that they are true. Today I stumbled upon a TED Talk by a married couple, Rufus Griscom and Alisa Volkman, who run a website about parenting. Their topic was parenting taboos, that is, what you can’t say about parenting.
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Today I became aware that the little fishing village where I live has a town hymn, an anthem to celebrate what it means to be from Colindres. Both to ensure that I understand it fully, and to share it with my non-hispanophone audience, I have translated it into English. It really is quite beautiful. I hope to one day hear or see or record a performance of it, as it would be nice to hear the music and voices booming with pride.
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For a week now I’ve been seeing signs around town advertising the “I Festival de Cerveza de Colindres“, but none of the signs said exactly what or where it was, just the dates, June 17 – 20 and the bars that were sponsoring the event. I sort of assumed that it was going to be some discount on beers in those bars or something, but yesterday we ran into a friend that informed us that it was a big festival with bands in a tent near the town hall. Unfortunately, it has been cold and rainy all week, but today, on the last day of the festival, we went to check it out. This is what we found…
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Last Friday during my morning walk with Nora around town, we went down to the fishing port. The port was as busy as I’ve ever seen it: people mending fishing nets, loading nets onto boats, and unloading fish by the metric ton. It was very interesting, but also something I didn’t want to be in the middle of with a baby for too long. Below are some photos I took of the fishing port followed by some others I took on the rest of the walk.
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