Matrimonial relations

Las Alpujarras

There’s a man in one of the high mountain villages who lives with a cow and spends much of his time studying the cloud formations. By all accounts he can predict the weather for months, even years ahead with some accuracy, a skill passed down from father to son. For several months now, however, the clouds have consistently baffled and amazed him. Nothing like them, apparently, has been seen either in his lifetime or his father’s. If pressed to stick his neck out, his prediction for the coming year or two is tragedy, miracles, and meteorological cataclysm.

On Saturday I joined a protest in the town square of the local equivalent of the county town, a hippie-infested place lower down the mountains (my ears popped on the way), about the water shortage. Free buses ferried in protesters from all over the region to raise their voices about the removal of yet more water from their rivers to supply the golf courses and greenhouses down on the coast.