American in Spain

Today we had some wonderful weather, and I grabbed my camera as we were leaving for our usual afternoon walk around town. In May, seven o’clock in the afternoon is well before Golden Hour, but the visibility was good and I managed to capture a few good shutter clicks. A few of them just begged to be tilt-shifted, to highlight the subject of the photo. When Photoshop beckons, I go running…
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The town in which I live is situated at the mouth of the river Asón, which begins way high up in the mountains and flows down into the tidal basin estuary you see in the current header image of this blog. Occasionally I have noticed a fog hanging over the river in the mornings. The fog yesterday, however, seemed more dynamic. I could see it churning with my naked eye. I’ve always been a big fan of churning and flowing clouds in timelapse videos, and the visibility above the clouds was fantastic, so I raced to set up my tripod, camera and intervalometer before leaving to walk my daughter to school.
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Last weekend, I attended the 18th annual Sauga Folk festival, held each year in my town of Colindres. The festival focuses on local, Cantabrian music and dance, as well as celtic music in general. Each year we get some pretty famous (as the celtic music scene goes) acts from Ireland and sometimes Scotland traveling here to perform. Due to collisions with August summer vacations, this is only the second year that I have been able to attend.
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The town where I live is celebrating its annual San Juan festival this week. Most Spanish towns have a town saint, and for many of them, that role is filled by Saint John The Baptist. There are several things that I love about this festival. It amuses me that it’s really just a thinly veiled version of the pagan bonfire solstice festivals held across Europe (the bonfire is to shoo away the witches, in case you didn’t know).

Riffing off the Valencian falles tradition of building elaborate, yet explosive, parade floats to burn, the townspeople of Colindres also make little miniature floats, usually the size of small cars, which are wheeled, by hand, around town before finding their way to the designated place to be judged, doused in gasoline, and ignited.
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This morning, the children at the local school were having some sort of play day outside with events and competitions (those were the best days of school, weren’t they?), and there was some pop music playing. When I was coming home with the daily groceries, there was a song playing by a group called El Sueño de Morfeo (the dream of Morpheus). The song playing was their most catchy, breakout song, Nunca Volverá. I found myself humming it as I put away the groceries, and I thought about how nice it was to see them, by complete chance, for the first time back in 2006.
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After surviving the more or less nonstop rain for all of April, we are starting to see some sun again in May, however we are suffering from some icy northeasterly (I love words that are their own opposites) gusts that will chill you to the bone if you’re not wearing a good sweater, the same sweater that will make you unbearably hot the moment the wind stops. As a result, it’s really not comfortable to be outside, no matter what you are wearing. On Sunday, however, we braved the elements to take a walk up to Colindres de Arriba, an older part of town, which I’ve mentioned before. I love being a short fifteen minute walk away from the green ovine-speckled countryside. Here are some photos from our walk.
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One of my favorite local dilapidated mansions has met the sharp blade of Progress this month. I’ve mentioned it before, highlighting both the flora and fauna around it. I have long been curious to try to enter and look around, but my better judgement, more for safety than legal reasons, always prevented me.
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Today was the big Carnival parade, sort of a “Halloween meets Mardi Gras” thing that is very typical for children in Spanish culture. Apparently I did such a fine job last year that my presence was simply assumed as The Official Daycare Photographer. Perhaps in honor of that job, I was also given a leading role in this year’s costume theme. About a month ago, I was told by Adela, the daycare owner, that this year for Carnival the kids would be dressed up as dwarves, the daycare employees would all be dressed as Snow White, Adela herself would be the Evil Stepmother, and I, the only parent with a themed costume, would be dressed as none other than Prince Charming.
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On Kings Day, my family woke up excited to see what presents the Magi had brought us. We looked out our sixth story window and saw fog. But there was something strange about the fog; it was moving very quickly and…billowing. Smoke! One of the old houses that our bedroom window overlooks was billowing white smoke, and a fireman was perched on a cherry picker spraying water down into the interior of the house. It’s three hours later as I write this and they are still spraying even more water and more smoke is billowing out. I took some photos.
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Today Nora’s daycare had a special Christmas party in which one of the activities is dressing like shepherds and making the 200 meter trek from daycare to the town church where they have an amazing nativity scene set up, called a belén, which also means Bethlehem and is the name of my sister-in-law. I finally understand the enormous banner they put outside the church every Christmas saying “¡Tu belén está aquí!” (Your Bethlehem is here!). It was amazing!
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