 In her heyday, the Duchess of Alba was a celebrated beauty as well as the richest and most titled aristocrat in the world. If I was wrongfully burned as a witch, and then 500 years later someone named a street after me in a fit of remorse, would I feel the scales of justice had finally been balanced? Not even close. As paltry as the apology may be, I give Seville credit for joining other Spanish cities in re-naming public thoroughfares in honor of victims of the Inquisition. Sevillanos will soon be strolling on Isabel de Baena Street, María de Virues Street, and Francisca de Chaves Square, all named for women denounced, tortured, and executed for beliefs defined as unorthodox by Isabella I of Castile. (You may remember her as the queen who, on one of her better days, sent Columbus to the New World). Will the souls of the slain women rest a little easier now? That’s for future theologians to decide. Today, all we know for sure is that the decision is A) an effort to grapple with the abuse of women during one of the darkest chapters of the past and B) an opportunity to jump on a hot marketing trend in the hospitality sector: women’s history.  The Duchess of Alba had some unfortunate plastic surgeries over the years, but while she lost her looks she kept her high spirits. Here she is dancing at her third wedding, age 85. There are half a dozen new tours in town with titles such as “Seville: City of Queens, Nuns, Sex Work & Witches.” They'll introduce you to landmarks of “herstory” and tell tales of famous females who called this city home. My regular readers are familiar with many of them, including Doña Maria Coronel, who tangled so disastrously with Pedro the Cruel in the 14th century; the 19th century nun Saint Angela of the Cross, whose overly life-like remains are on permanent display; and the billionaire Duchess of Alba, whose flamboyant life kept us all agog until her passing in 2014. As the most titled aristocrat in the world, the Duchess had, among her countless other honors, hereditary right to ride a horse into the cathedral. Wisely, she never put this to the test (that I know of). But at the age of 85 she danced barefoot at her third wedding, surrounded by cheering Sevillanos.  I fell totally in love with the library in the Duchess's Seville palace. The Duchess’s home, Palacio de las Dueñas, is now a museum and one of my favorite places to send visitors. It’s magnificent yet so cozy I guarantee you’ll think, “Hey, I could live here!” The house was the brainchild of Catalina de Ribera, a very modern 15th century noblewoman who also built the Casa de Pilatos and the Hospital of the Five Wounds. No, you don’t need to have five wounds to go there, that’s a reference to Christ’s crucifixion, the sort of branding that made marketing sense back in Catalina’s day. The hospital was built to serve low-income residents and later sailors returning from the New World with exotic diseases. It closed in 1972 and the building now houses the Andalucían parliament. Ok, I know what you’re thinking. We’ve had queens, nuns, and witches; what about the sex workers mentioned in the title of that tour? Gosh, where to begin? There’s the 11th century slave girl Itimad, who married Moorish King Al-Mutamid the Poet. And let’s not forget Doña María de Padilla, favorite mistress of Pedro the Cruel. He installed her in the Alcázar palace and built an underground pool where, according to legend, she bathed in milk. Although he was married to a noblewoman, Pedro and his mistress are buried together in the cathedral’s Royal Chapel, something only a king could finagle . Throughout the city you’ll see images of two women holding the cathedral’s Giralda tower, often with pottery and a lion at their feet. These are sisters Justa and Rufina, 3rd century potters who converted to Christianity and ran afoul of the Romans. After Justa was tortured to death, Rufina was thrown to the lions, but they refused to attack, allegedly becoming docile as house cats. She was eventually executed, and both women were canonized. When an earthquake hit in 1755, the sisters were credited with preventing the Giralda from falling; now they’re always shown holding up the tower. I’ll admit some of the details in these stories may be sketchy. But I think we can all agree the city’s history is filled with extraordinary women. Actually, I believe that’s true of all cities, but here they tend to get more recognition. Why? One reason is that in Mediterranean culture, personal relationships are valued above professional success. This makes home the center point of life, enabling women to function as matriarchs. Where some cultures only really value women when they’re young, here middle aged and older women wield the real power in the extended family. These matriarchs are treated with respect at an age when, in many communities, they’d be ignored and marginalized. You can see why I love living here! The role of women in Seville got an additional boost in the 16th century, when some Protestant Reformers hinted that veneration of the Blessed Virgin had become excessive, possibly bordering on idolatry. Spain instantly doubled down, using devotion to Mary as a rallying cry to unify the country that had just come together again after Moorish occupation. Mary’s image appears everywhere — from mosaics in plazas to paintings in bars to the life-sized statues of Semana Santa (Holy Week).  How could anyone call this veneration of the Virgin of the Macarena excessive? One of the most famous of those statues is the Virgin of the Macarena, which has real human hair, wears real undergarments, and supposedly cries real tears. When I asked an agnostic Spanish friend about this, she snorted in derision. “What happened was this. Some drunk went in one night and pitched a bottle of wine at her. The wine ran down her cheeks, creating tracks that looked like tears. And everyone thought it was a miracle.” Be that as it may, the Virgin of the Macarena is one of the most famous among the dozens of Semana Santa Virgins, and you’ll see plenty of real tears on the cheeks of devotees watching her being carried through the streets. And yes, before you ask, it's true Seville gave the world the 1993 dance song “Macarena,” written by local duo Los del Río about a namesake of the Virgin of the Macarena. It instantly became a staple at weddings everywhere — you’ve probably danced to it yourself. In 2002 it was considered the #1 Greatest One-Hit Wonder of All Time. By 2017 it was such a cliché it was #2 on the Most Banned Wedding Songs list (second only to "The Chicken Dance"). Some say the song "Macarena" is just one more piece of its checkered past that the city needs to atone for.  Antonio Romero Monge and Rafael Ruiz Perdigones formed Los del Rio in 1962. They are still performing today. One of the true pleasures of spending time in an ancient city is finding the layers of history that infuse every part of the landscape with meaning. If one day you find yourself on Isabel de Baena Street, María de Virues Street, or Francisca de Chaves Square, be sure to pause and feel grateful that the Inquisition is over. It hung on for centuries and was only officially abolished in 1834. Today you are free to believe whatever you wish, including the tall tales told about queens, concubines, aristocrats, witches, saints, and the countless other women who continue to shape the colorful history of Seville.  During International Women's Day, 2018, this woman marched through Seville carrying signs that read, "I am woman. Hear my voice!" and "My 96-year-old grandmother is also a feminist!" FOR MORE LOONY STORIES ABOUT SEVILLE, CHECK OUT MY AMAZON BEST SELLERS
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 In Seville, meals often begin with communal servings of olives, nuts, ham, and other finger food. So I walked into the living room the other day and found Rich staring out the window at a pigeon. The bird — a lone male — was standing on the church roof just opposite, his feathers spread in full mating display, his head tilted to one side directing a come-hither look at my husband. “That is not going to happen,” Rich called out the window. “You two need a moment alone?” I asked. “Nope. We’re done,” he said. The rejected pigeon shook his ruffled feathers back into place and flew off, attempting to look nonchalant.  I blame the weather. Temperatures shot up a few degrees and our feathered friends became extremely frisky; at times there’s so much sex and fighting going on out there it’s like watching Game of Thrones. They mostly engage with one another, of course, but as I’ve now learned, there are always a few rebels who want to take a little walk on the wild side. Whoo! Steamy stuff! Although relations between my husband and the pigeon he rebuffed have been a bit strained lately, for the most part Rich is having a grand time pursuing his new hobby of bird watching. As my regular readers will recall, a few weeks ago he hung up a bird feeder in hopes of attracting the little local song birds. So far, no takers. Apparently this is common, and according to the Internet, we can address this by upping our game with a brush pile or hedge to give the birds a sense of protection, a sparkly water fountain to attract notice, and more alluring food presentation. Like what? Candlelight and good china? It doesn’t matter, because none of this is feasible on our narrow urban window ledge. I must say I’m glad I don’t have to work that hard to get my human friends to eat. I’ve had a lot of visitors lately, and thank heavens none of them needs a hedge or water feature to whet their appetite.  In fact, usually all I have to say is "Oh look, there's an empty table." But it is true that, like the birds, we humans do have certain rituals and routines that define our dining habits, and that goes double in Seville. Here are some ways Sevillanos treat everyday meals with the respect and appreciation they deserve. 1: Order drinks first. Having the warmest climate in continental Europe, Seville assumes you’re always in urgent need of an ice cold beverage. “Para beber?” (To drink?”) is inevitably the first question asked, and you’re expected to be ready with your answer. By far the most common response is “Cerveza” (beer). Not only is a crisp cold brew perfectly suited to the weather, but in a widely quoted study — conducted with Spanish college students — beer was shown to rehydrate better than water. That’s right, it’s science!  In Seville, beer is served very cold and often accompanied by atramuces, pickled lupin beans you're expected to peel with your teeth (which is easier than it sounds). 2. Don’t order your food until you have your drinks. Here, most servers will rush to get your drinks on the table, then give you time to slake your thirst and review the menu before they return to take your food order. For a major meal such as lunch or dinner, you’ll want to take plenty of time to consider your options and discuss them with everyone else at the table, in case you’ll be doing any sharing. 3. Expect to share food. Eating is a communal act in Spain, and a traditional plato (full portion) is scaled for dividing among many. Even a tapa may be passed around so everyone can sample the flavor. For the past two years, health concerns caused most of us to avoid sharing and order individually, and that’s still perfectly acceptable. Lately the preferred compromise seems to be ordering a few platos to put in the center for sharing plus one individual tapa per person.  Paella is always shared and is traditionally eaten only at lunch, so you can go home and have a siesta afterwards. 4. You own the table until you request the bill. Unlike the US, where your waitress may slap the bill on the table and shoot you a look that says, “Scram, kiddo, your time is up,” in Seville the table is yours until you’re ready to leave. You could nurse a single beverage for hours; I’ve seen it done and the staff always take it in stride. To settle up, you say, “La cuenta,” (the bill) and may reinforce the message by pantomiming the act of writing on your hand as if it were a pad of paper. When the staff is extremely busy, you may have to wait a while, as everyone knows rushing beers to the tables of thirsty newcomers has priority. 5. Tip in the local manner. Sevillanos tip very little, typically leaving behind a few small coins; for a big meal with a group, they might leave a euro per person. This often drives our American friends crazy, and we’ve been accused of being cheapskates and elitists who don’t care about the wellbeing of the workers. On the contrary, I was often a waitress in my checkered youth, and I have deep respect and empathy for all waitstaff. That’s why I’m trying not to upend the existing system, which is more advantageous for them than a tipping economy. Waitstaff here are professionals who are paid a living wage and aren’t dependent on propinas (gratuities). If foreigners drive up tipping standards sufficiently, wages will stagnate as proprietors will no longer feel the need to increase salaries. Eventually, as in the US and elsewhere, the base salary will be woefully inadequate, and the servers’ livelihood will depend on kowtowing to the whims of customers. Sevillano friends have told me this is viewed as demeaning, a reversion to the old class system in which these professionals would be treated as inferiors. “But everybody appreciates getting money!” some Americans insist. Not always. Once, in a funky old bar, Rich attempted to leave a few coins as a propina, and the offended proprietor pushed it back, growling, “This is not that kind of bar.” His pride was worth more to him than a few coins.  A professional waiter prepares tapas for his customers at El Rinconcillo, the oldest bar in Seville, which has been in continuous operation since 1670. 6. Accept chupitos gracefully. At the end of a big meal, your table may be served a complimentary round of chupitos (little slurps), shot-glasses of liqueur such as limoncello or vodka carmelo (literally vodka candy, which is much nicer than it sounds). Hipper establishments may serve your chupitos in test tubes, infused in a sorbet, or as dollops of foam. Your host wants to send you out into the street with a smile on your lips and warm thoughts about returning again soon. Spain has the highest number of bars and restaurants in the world, one for every 175 residents, and each host is hoping you’ll drop by often and eat heartily — much like Rich with his bird feeder. So far our carefully displayed song-bird seed hasn’t won us any dinner guests, but there are encouraging signs. Lemondrop, the finch who visited last fall, has fluttered by a few times, and two parrots have taken up residence on a nearby rooftop. Clearly news is spreading by word of beak, and while he waits for hungry song birds to arrive, Rich has plenty of feathered neighbors to keep him entertained.  Is this what we need to do to entice Seville song birds into eating the bird seed? Yes, the name of that wine means "Lame Pigeon." I bought it for Rich in the run-up to Valentine's Day, as a romantic gesture.  Father Tim uses a squirt gun filled with holy water to bless parishioners' Easter baskets in front of St. Ambrose Catholic Church, Grosse Pointe Park, Michigan. When I read that a Catholic priest was using a squirt gun full of holy water to bless his parishioners’ Easter baskets while social distancing, I realized it was time to embrace the wacky side of the new dystopian order. This was in a suburb of Detroit back in April of 2020, and when Father Tim stood outside San Ambrose, armed and sanctifying, I like to imagine his flock found it as heartwarming and chucklesome as I did. Looking for the lighter side of these dark times has helped me hold onto some shreds of sanity. And since Father Tim’s squirt gun hit the news (and the Easter baskets), I’ve discovered countless stories about just how oddball things can get when people have high anxiety, a relaxed hold on common sense, and way too much time on their hands. For instance, an international group of scientists, who obviously have never seen a horror movie, recently created the first human-monkey embryo. Press releases describe the scientific breakthrough in which hybrids, known as chimera formations, are made with human stem cells implanted into monkeys. "Of course," notes the online magazine Nerdist, "that doesn’t answer the most obvious questions we have. Like, ‘Why?’ Followed by, ‘No, seriously, WHY?’ And of course, ‘Is this a plot to destroy mankind with an army of monkey-human hybrids?’”  In the 2017 film War for Planet of the Apes, things didn't go so well for humans. Maybe we'll do better next time around. Until recently, there were strict legal limits to growing human cells in animal embryos, and all experimental chimeras had to be destroyed after two weeks. Then Spanish scientists created a human-monkey chimera in a secret lab in China (I am not making this up), and soon after that Japan relaxed its laws, allowing such embryos to be brought to term; other countries are following suit. Teams at the University of Tokyo and Stanford University are busy doing experiments they hope will lead to growing animals with organs that can be transplanted into humans. Yes, what could possibly go wrong? On the plus side, thinking about an army of monkey-human hybrids taking over the planet probably cleared your mind of worries about the pandemic, if only momentarily. Suddenly our present reality doesn’t seem quite so terrifying, does it? Turns out our definition of catastrophe largely depends on what else we have to worry about. It’s easy to stop fretting over an awkward Zoom call if the house catches on fire. “I suppose,” says the narrator in H.G. Wells’ science-run-amok classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, “everything in existence takes its colour from the average hue of our surroundings.” The literal truth of this has been demonstrated by generations of art teachers using the famous Checker Shadow Illusion image shown below. The checkerboard squares marked A and B are exactly the same shade of gray. Yes, they are.  The second image in the Checker Shadow Illusion uses a gray strip to prove that, despite what your eyes are telling you, the squares A and B are identical shades of gray. And it’s the same in real life. Our perceptions are only approximations, deeply influenced by the context in which we view them. For instance — and you may find this happens to you, too — some days the world feels particularly topsy-turvy and I lose my psychological footing, falling into a pit of free-floating anxiety. For no obvious reason (except of course the pandemic, climate change, the economy, the fact I’m not getting any younger, and a few other pesky issues) my usual optimism wobbles, and I become enveloped by nameless, nagging worry. At such times, I take comfort from the words of one of my spiritual teachers, Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who passed away this week at the age of 95. “Fear,” he said, “keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive.” As Americans, we are raised with the idea that anything less than perpetual happiness feels wrong and vaguely unpatriotic, as if we’re not living up to the “pursuit of happiness” clause in the Declaration of Independence. Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that it’s enough just to be alive. To wake up every morning, still breathing, with eyes to see the world and ears to hear our loved one’s voices. Sometimes just putting one foot in front of the other is a victory worth celebrating.  Life will always fall somewhere on the spectrum between bliss and misery. Luis Gallardo, president of the World Happiness Foundation, says the overarching cause of our personal and global problems is feeling disconnected — from ourselves, from our communities, and from nature. While we may perceive ourselves as being disconnected, physicists and spiritual leaders insist we're really not. “Everything is connected," observes Albert Einstein. “We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness,” says Thich Nat Hanh. Or as humorist Wavy Gravy puts it, “We are all the same person trying to shake hands with our self.” If we’ve learned anything about the global pandemic, it’s that it affects us all. Yes, even those who deny Covid exists, exhort us to bypass the vaccines in favor of horse de-wormer, and insist it’s all a plot of the reptilian aliens who have infiltrated the Deep State. Each one of us is shaping the course of events in this global emergency. As my friend Maer says, “It’s like traffic. You aren’t stuck in traffic, you are the traffic.” For better or worse, we have met the pandemic response team and it is us.  We are all frontline workers in the pandemic response. And I am deeply grateful to every one of you who wears a mask, gets vaxxed, and supports a sane approach to public safety. Thank you! Photo: Noam Galai, Getty Images There is room for optimism. WHO Europe Director Hans Kluge said Monday, “It’s plausible that the region is moving towards a kind of pandemic endgame.” The fact that many expect 60% of Europeans to be infected by Omicron in the next two months is both good and bad news, an area as gray as the A and B squares in the Checker Shadow Illusion. Yes, we’re still in for a rough time and many (way too many) sad losses. But as the Omicron surge subsides, Kluge says, “We anticipate that there will be a period of quiet before Covid-19 may come back towards the end of the year, but not necessarily the pandemic coming back … I am hopeful we can end the emergency phase in 2022.” Of course, as anyone who’s ever watched a horror movie knows, making a statement like that is taunting fate to jump roaring out of the closet to prove you wrong. Yes, the numbers are coming down in Spain, some other areas of Europe, and parts the US. But a lifetime of movie-going has taught me not to count my chickens before the final credits roll. Covid is as tricky as a brain-enhanced monkey, and no doubt is planning to spring more surprises on us. I suspect it won’t go quietly. Life as we know it will change, over and over again. So what can we do? Perhaps philosopher Alan Watts says it best: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”  Dancing in the Rain, by Des Brophy A Note to My Readers Over the next few weeks, I'll be updating my book, Seville's New Normal, to keep up with evolving circumstances. I hope to keep posting on the blog, but bear with me if the schedule varies a bit. If you have any suggestions for topics that should be addressed in the book, or if you found typos that should be corrected, please let me know in the comments section below. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY If you're not already on my mailing list,
sign up today and get a free copy of my book Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YES! SEND ME THE FREE BOOK & WEEKLY UPDATES  Macy is really coming into his own as an artist. Good dog! “My sister's dog has taken up painting,” remarked my sister-in-law Deb during a recent Zoom call. “He's pretty good. Abstract art, of course.” “Yes, I can see how it would be hard to achieve realistic detail without an opposable thumb,” I replied. “But back up a minute. Her dog paints? Pictures? How?” It’s a simple process really, and I recommend it as a stellar form of entertainment — for you and your dog — whenever pandemic pressures have you hunkering down at home. It was Deb’s niece Tessa who thought of it. She bought canvas board, covered it with blobs of paint, and taped a plastic bag over it. Then she smeared peanut butter on the plastic bag, placed it on the floor, and called the dog. Macy bounded over and enthusiastically licked off the peanut butter, which rearranged the paint underneath, creating a masterpiece. Or at least something you could frame and hang on the wall to amaze your friends. Or, as Tessa did, give your mom for Christmas. I know. Dare I say it? Genius! It’s moments like these that I really miss being a dog owner. Sadly, our beloved Eskimo Pie passed some years ago; how she would have loved the peanut butter art project! And as it happens, Rich and I were not among the 23 million Americans (20% of all households) who acquired dogs or cats during the pandemic. Despite stories about these Covid cuddle-buddies being jettisoned later, the ASPCA reports 90% of the dogs and 85% of the cats are still with their adopted families. In fact, trainer Kate Perry says the animal-human bond forged during the pandemic is so powerful she’s now teaching courses in “how to detach from your dog and prioritize your baby.” “Pet adoption became an obsession in the time of Covid,” wrote Nick Paumgarten in The New Yorker. “Another boom, along with sourdough baking and butt implants.” Wait, what? That’s a thing now? Apparently so. Dermatologist Ava Shamban attributes the 20% rise in that particular surgical procedure to people becoming more sedentary while working at home, resulting in “a general flattening of the buttocks ... Presumably, seeing the higher, tighter, rounder assets on social media, or any number of reality distractions, had patients researching and ultimately scheduling procedures to give their bottom line a much-needed boost.” I can't believe Rich and I are missing out on so many pandemic distractions. We’ve never even made sourdough bread, let alone sought surgical remedies for any deficiencies in our derrières. And our lifestyle involves too much travel to adopt a dog or cat.  Yes, cats paint too, but rarely when or where you want them to. Photo: Why Cats Paint “What we need,” I told Rich the other day, “is a pet without the responsibility. Why don’t we get a bird feeder?” As my regular readers know, Rich has become engrossed in the world of pigeons, calling them “the neighbors” and studying their habits via a pair of binoculars, like Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. Rich leapt on the bird feeder idea, hoping to attract a more varied collection of feathered friends, the kinds of “pets” that can be left to their own devices for months at a time. So far he hasn’t had any takers, not even Lemondrop, the finch who spent weeks eating the seeds off our autumn chrysanthemums. But hey, the feeder’s only been up a few days.  Rich, who loves DIY projects, hung a shower curtain rod across the window opening and suspended the bird feeder via a bungee cord. Hearing about all this, friends tend to roll their eyes and suggest we need to get out more. And we are. With Spain’s hospitalizations dropping 28% in the last week, and Andalucía’s down 29%, we’re feeling a bit more confident about hanging out with humans. Which is a good thing because snowbird friends from New York and Canada are now flying into Seville for their annual visits, like swallows returning to Capistrano. And it’s easy to see why. The city is at its best right now, relaxed and peaceful, with holiday revelers gone home and Omicron causing most tourists to cancel planned visits. Getting into restaurants and monuments is delightfully easy again. Last week, Rich and I strolled into the Alcazar palace without the usual fuss of advance reservations and tedious long lines. We made a beeline for the garden café, one of the loveliest spots in the city to have a coffee. When we walked inside to order, the barista asked for our Covid passports. Rich misheard him and pulled out his Alcazar entrance ticket. The barista glanced at the ticket's QR code from four feet away, accepted it without scanning or questions, and waved me through as well, even though I hadn’t shown him anything. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident; Covid passports or the equivalent, such as CDC vaccination cards, are not always checked as scrupulously as you might wish. Which is why Rich and I are not eating inside restaurants any time soon.  It's wintertime, and the living is easy. Most days are warm enough that you don't need heaters to eat lunch outside. Covid is sweeping Seville, and two weeks ago one of our closest friends caught it and was quite ill. I naturally visited the shrine of San Pancracio (Seville’s patron saint of health) on his behalf. My sister-in-law, who also knows this friend, decided to invoke a higher power of her own creation, San Hamcracio. “In matters of healing and health, (s)he really brings home the bacon,” she said.  Homemade shrine to San Hamcracio Whether it was the intervention of higher powers or sheer good luck, our friend wasn’t ill long and is now fully recovered, with the negative test results to prove it. Now he’s suggesting, half-seriously, that Rich and I deliberately contract Omicron, the weakest variant yet. That wouldn't be difficult; the World Health Organization predicts that within the next few weeks half of Europe will get it, and right now it seems half the households in Seville have at least one case. But I’m sticking with my plan to avoid Covid if I can. Our human neighbors are helping by masking up in public; we’re all hoping to avoid the kinds of restrictions seen in other parts of Spain. “If there’s ever another lockdown, maybe we could rent a dog,” I said to Rich. “At least we’d have the fun of watching him create art.” “We don’t need a dog for that,” said my husband. “Put a little pistachio ice cream on the plastic cover and I’ll lick it off.” So there’s that to look forward to. For now, we’re keeping our fingers crossed Omicron plummets as quickly as it crested, Rich and I manage not to contract it, and Lemondrop flutters onto the bird feeder one day soon, while Rich happens to be watching.  Whatever happens with Rich's feathered friends, we know we won't be seeing scenes like this during Seville's snow-free winter. If you're not already on my mailing list, sign up today and get a free copy of my book Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YES! SEND ME THE FREE BOOK & WEEKLY UPDATES YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  Seville: a great place to visit but is now the moment? I didn’t realize orgies were back in fashion until I read about the one Spanish police raided on New Year’s Eve. More than 50 participants were arrested in a suburb of Barcelona — not because anybody cared about their sexual hijinks, but because they’d violated Covid restrictions limiting indoor gatherings to ten people. A neighbor raised the alarm when a couple knocked on his door by mistake and announced they were there to join the love-in. Oops! It’s not easy for any of us to cope with the stress of a world lurching from one catastrophe to another. However, blowing off steam in a sex orgy doesn’t seem like a very practical solution to me. For a start, was anybody checking at the door to make sure everyone was vaxxed and tested? And imagine the awkwardness of having to explain to the contact tracers that you caught Covid (and heaven knows what else) during a night of debauchery with multiple party animals whose names you may not know. But it got me thinking about what — besides random sex partners — we can embrace to feel better in these exasperating times.  At first glance, LIica d'Amunt — the Barcelona suburb where the orgy took place — doesn't look like a hotbed of depravity. I don’t know what it says about my character, but I find it very cheering to observe others coping with situations far more ghastly than mine. I recently watched The Darkest Hour, in which Winston Churchill becomes prime minister in May of 1940 while Germany was taking Poland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Talk about lurching from one catastrophe to another! No wonder he said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Sometimes the most heroic thing we can do is just to get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other.  Another strategy — and I learned this one from Rich’s happiness course — is expressing gratitude. And despite everything, we have much to be thankful for, beginning with the fact that the Nazi army isn’t poised to attack us by land, sea, and air. A NY Times article suggested taking a gratitude photo every day, posting it on social media or sharing it with a friend. Rich and I liked the idea and set up a Word document where we take turns adding photos of feel-good moments and things we love. How does this help? According to the article, “When we make an effort to notice our surroundings or show appreciation for the people, places or things that make us happy, it’s called ‘savoring.’ Scientists know that savoring exercises can lead to meaningful gains in overall happiness and well-being.” The article suggested daily photos, but we prefer to keep it loose, adding shots a few times a week, when something inspires one of us. And speaking of savoring, all the how-I’m-learning-to-love-dystopia articles advocate eating well. Rich and I aren't going out much, so I’m devoting an extraordinary amount of time to cooking three meals a day, trying to find the optimal balance between yummy and reasonably healthy. Rich can’t get enough of my Chicken with Apricot-Onion Sauce, my Baked Risotto (SO much easier than the usual method with all that stirring), and my Maple Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (perfect for gluten-free friends, when we have a more active social life). A little culinary bliss goes a long way toward brightening the doomsday gloom.  Maple Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies. Yum! Luckily I’m not a big meat eater or I might find myself embroiled in Spain’s most sizzling controversy. Last July, Consumer Affairs Minister Alberto Garzón observed, quite rightly, “Eating too much meat is bad for our health and for the planet.” As you can imagine, the meat industry exploded with outrage. Spain is the world’s fifth largest meat exporter, its citizens are the EU’s biggest meat eaters, and jamón (ham) is revered as the national dish. This was blasphemy! Then in late December, as things were finally simmering down, Garzón decided to throw a little gasoline on the fire. After defending traditional grazing methods, he added, “What isn’t at all sustainable is these so-called mega-farms. They find a village in a depopulated bit of Spain and put in 4,000, or 5,000 or 10,000 head of cattle. They pollute the soil, they pollute the water, and then they export this poor-quality meat from these ill-treated animals.” In the ensuing uproar, former-lawyer-turned-shepherd María del Camino Limia posted a Facebook video calling Garzón “an ignoramus” and “a puppet at the service of eco-terrorist movements.” Naturally her video has gone viral, inflaming the controversy still further.  Shepherd María del Camino Limia has a beef with Consumer Affairs Minister Alberto Garzón over his comments about Spain's meat industry. All this fuss has been a tremendous boon to newscasters who are desperately seeking something to talk about besides the worrying Covid statistics. The chart below shows the number of cases at the crest of the second, third, and fifth waves (the fourth was barely a blip) and then what’s happening now — which, as Rich pointed out, “isn’t a wave it’s a tsunami.”  As you can imagine, my email inbox is stuffed with requests for on-the-ground insights, mainly from those planning visits to Seville in the next two months. They all want to know if it’s safe. But what is safe these days? If we know anything about Covid it’s that we don’t know anything about Covid. So here’s what I’m telling everybody. At the moment, Seville feels close to normal. Yes, masks must be worn in public and Covid IDs are required at bars and restaurants, but we have no restrictions or curfews. Everything’s open. The weather is gorgeous, mostly sunny with highs in the mid-sixties. The holiday throngs have departed, the kids are back in school, and the city is breathing a collective sigh of relief.  Adios, holiday carousel. It was packed up yesterday and by now is long gone. But underneath it all, we’re bracing for news of an even higher spike following the non-stop togetherness of the holiday season. Rumors of possible upcoming restrictions abound. On Friday, when I attempted to buy tickets to a February concert as a gift, a staff member told me they they’re only selling tickets for January events. “After that,” he said with a resigned shrug, “we have to wait and see.” Nobody knows what the next few months will be like anywhere. Italy, where hospitals are crammed to bursting, is now mandating vaccines for residents 50+. Here in Andalucía, more than 90% of residents over age 11 have been vaxxed, health workers are rapidly inoculating the younger kids, and so far our hospitals are handling the case load well. One of the biggest worries for many potential visitors is what happens if they contract Covid while they're here. In an effort to allay these concerns, Andalucía is offering international travelers free Covid-19 insurance covering doctor and hospital bills, medicines, hotel accommodations during recovery, and more. Be sure to read the fine print carefully; for instance, you must stay in licensed commercial lodgings, repatriation is covered only within Europe, the package is an add-on to your own trip insurance, and there's a 100€ deductible. After sharing all this with friends, relatives, readers, and total strangers who write me, I explain that there's no clearcut answer to the question of whether they should visit Spain right now. They have to study the facts, weigh alternatives, and decide for themselves. “Yes, but do you think should I come or stay home?” some persist. "Just tell me already." “I can't say,” I reply. “Gun to my head what advice can I offer? Write this down. If you’re coming here to hold an orgy, be sure you give all your guests the correct address in advance.”  Apparently they're more mainstream than I thought; I just found this on Amazon. If you're not already on my mailing list, sign up today and get a free copy of my book Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YES! SEND ME THE FREE BOOK & UPDATES YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY STORIES OF HOPE FROM PEOPLE WHO KNOW ABOUT WEATHERING HARD TIMES  I don't have a photo of the actual HonorSnack box in my studio, but this is very, very close. Many years ago in California, a salesman showed up in my office holding a cardboard tray enticingly stuffed with cookies, candy bars, and chips. “I’m going to leave this in your break room,” he said. “No, I don’t want any money up front. We’re HonorSnacks. We trust that when one of you takes something, you’ll deposit the correct change." “What if people don’t leave the money?” “In my experience, people are basically honest.” I rolled my eyes. Yes, we were reasonably honest folks. But (and I did try to explain this to him) we were also young, overworked graphic artists with deadlines that required very long hours at our drawing boards. The packet of Cheetos grabbed at midnight, and virtuous intentions to settle the tab later, would inevitably be forgotten in the mad rush to get the next project out the door. “It’ll be fine,” he insisted. You won’t be surprised to hear that three weeks later the HonorSnacks guy stood glowering in my doorway, brandishing a battered, empty cardboard tray and a small handful of change that was far, far short of what was due. “You slit your own throats,” he growled.  Speaking of honesty, I was shocked to discover fill-in-the-blanks Harvard diplomas online. Do the Harvard professors of Justice and Ethics know about this? I was reminded of the HonorSnacks incident as I listened to Rich describing what he’d learned about ethics in Harvard University’s Justice course. He’d recently completed this popular 12-week online study program, which is free if you don’t want the Harvard diploma for your wall. I offered to use my graphics skills to create a fake one for him, but instead he’s simply going around telling everyone he graduated from Harvard. “What's the take-home message from the course?” I asked. “We studied political philosophy and ethical theory from Aristotle onwards,” he said. “It may sound like esoteric stuff. But as the teacher pointed out, we’re faced with ethical questions every day of our lives, small ones and big ones.” We all know ethics can be slippery. My favorite definition comes from former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “Ethics is the difference between knowing what you have a right to do and what is right to do.”  “The professor,” Rich told me, “emphasized the difference between consequential and categorical morality.” “Huh?” “Consequential morality is all about the outcome. The ends justify the means. It’s OK to rob a bank to keep your kids from starving. Categorial morality says that some things are just plain wrong, like murder, and can’t be justified under any circumstances. It’s not OK to murder your great-aunt to get money to feed your kids.” “So it’s about what you’re prepared to do to achieve something?” “In part. There’s a classic moral dilemma known as ‘The Trolley Problem.’ Imagine you’re on a bridge over some tracks and see a runaway trolley that’s about to kill five people. A fat man is standing next to you, and you realize if you push him off the bridge, he will fall on the track, and his massive body will derail the trolley car, saving five lives. The question is, would you kill the fat man?” “Well, for a start, I doubt I’m strong enough to heave a fat man over the railing. And I am positive that I could not properly calculate his trajectory to be sure that he’d fall on the track in a way that would derail the trolley.”   “My point — and I do have one," said Rich, "is that from the consequential ethics standpoint, the outcome would justify the killing, but categorical thinkers wouldn’t agree.” My head was beginning to spin with the effort to grasp all this. But in a vague way I saw what he meant. It’s about different ways to calculate what you’re justified in doing in order to achieve your goals. For instance, Rich and I recently resorted to a little trickery to obtain Covid tests. Was that morally wrong? As you may have heard, Spain has lost its “safest destination in Europe” status and is now swamped with cases — 161,000+ on December 30th alone — although hospitalizations and deaths remain mercifully low. Masks are now mandatory outdoors unless you’re eating, drinking, doing sports, or sunbathing. (Yes, they have their priorities straight. No facial tan lines!)  I think we can all agree it's not a good look. Some areas have curfews and other restrictions, but Andalucía’s officials believe we should eat, drink, and be merry now — then cope with the fallout after January 6, when Three Kings Day marks the end of the holidays. In Seville, the shopping, dining out, and partying continue unabated, and no one wants to cancel the Three Kings parade or repeat last year’s compromise — the trio passing overhead in a hot air balloon.  In 2021, the Three Kings parade was cancelled for the first time in its 102-year history. The hot air balloon was viewed as a clever substitution but pretty tame compared to 33 glittering floats tossing out 172,000 pounds of candy to screaming throngs. Of course, everyone’s aware of the Covid risk and self-testing like mad. Home test kits, which were plentiful in Seville a few weeks ago, grew desperately scarce by December 20th.This put me in a bit of a pickle, as I’d asked my 17 guests to self-test (twice, if possible) before coming to lunch on Christmas. Rich and I had ten kits on hand already, but we began scouring the city for more. We finally found one pharmacy that had some but would only sell us five. We bought those and kept looking, unsuccessfully, until I had my brilliant idea. “Go back to where we bought those last tests,” I said. “But they’ll recognize me,” he objected. “Not if you’re in disguise.” So Rich put on a different jacket, a baseball cap in lieu of his trademark fedora, his other glasses, and my red scarf — and walked out of that pharmacy with five more tests. He is still basking in the glow of carrying off a successful clandestine mission.  Yes, Rich is a master of disguise, as this photo from March 2020 reveals. From the standpoint of consequential ethics, his pharmacy caper was fully justified. Technically, the categorical thinkers might say we didn’t have a right to those test kits, but Rich and I felt that making sure our guests were safe was a moral imperative. And luckily, additional test kits were soon shipped to pharmacies throughout the city, so nobody went without. From Aristotle to Potter Stewart to all of us, people have spent thousands of years trying to define what’s right, and it never gets easier. To me, the best starting point is considering the common good. And in this era of FOO (Fear of Omicron), the common good calls for doing our best not to catch or spread Covid. So Rich and I are voluntarily isolating at home for a few weeks. We’re going out for walks, shopping, even having an occasional coffee in an outdoor café, but we're not sitting barefaced within contagion distance of others. I’m enjoying the time to paint, write, do jigsaw puzzles, make comfort food, and solve TV mysteries. Naturally, Rich has jumped into a new study project: pigeons. His conversation is studded with such gems as “Did you know pigeons can see in color? And they can recognize human faces in photographs!” Yes, it’s pretty thrilling stuff. Watch for an in-depth post on pigeons soon. In the meantime, stay safe, be kind, and just say “no” if the HonorSnacks guy ever shows up at your door.  If you're not already on my mailing list, sign up today and get a free copy of my book Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YES! SEND ME THE FREE BOOK & UPDATES  Tis the season... I love entertaining and over the years I’ve learned to cope with all sorts of potential disasters: blizzards, drunken guests (yes, Dan, I’m thinking of your three-martini-chugging experiment), being cornered by a friend’s heartbroken suitor who read me his terrible poetry for an hour, a feral cat tearing the hide off one guest’s lapdog and another's golden retriever... It’s a long list. But this is the first time I’ve ever had to worry about presiding over a super-spreader event, and I have to admit at first I was a bit nonplussed. Weeks ago, when I sent out invitations to our annual December 25 lunch, I thought I was going the extra mile by requiring everyone to be fully vaxxed and alerting them to dress warmly as all the windows would be open for ventilation. At that time, Spain had recently been declared the safest travel destination in Europe and was viewed as the poster child for how to manage Covid with vaxxing, masking, and social distancing. Everyone was predicting a huge influx of tourists early in 2022; I even wrote a book about Seville’s New Normal to help visitors to get in on the fun. Did I jinx everything with that book? If so, sorry about that, folks!  This variant thing is beginning to seem like the movie Groundhog Day. And you want to know something else? This variant thing is beginning to seem like the movie Groundhog Day. As you may have heard, even Spain couldn’t hold out forever against the combination of Delta and Omicron. Our numbers kept creeping upwards, and on Friday, December 17, we crossed the line. With more than 500 cases per 100,000, we were officially in the high-risk category. I remember staring at that announcement on the TV screen, wondering what to do. Should I cancel lunch on the 25th? Require guests to wear hazmat suits? Give everyone their turkey in doggie bags at the door? I took some deep breaths, then performed a qigong exercise called Ten Dragons Running Through the Forest. You place all ten fingers on top of your head and shove them through your hair from front to back; repeat five times. It’s great for your chi and less drastic than actually tearing your hair out. As usual, I followed Ten Dragons Running Through the Forest with a few heartfelt exclamations of “Serenity now!” in the manner of George Costanza’s father on Seinfeld. Once I’d used these time-honored spiritual exercises to restore my metaphysical equilibrium, I got to work researching the issue. Surely savvy epidemiologists had some suggestions for the holiday hostess who didn’t want to send her guests home with a potentially fatal disease? Somewhat to my surprise, the experts did not advise cancelling holiday gatherings. The main reason? After two years of high-stress pandemic living, we’re all shell-shocked and bumfuzzled (that's another way of saying discombobulated). Being with people we love is a great antidote, explains Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We need to balance that people really do need to be with their loved ones with appropriate risk-mitigation strategies.” OK, but exactly how do we mitigate the risk? For a start, should we even consider traveling by air these days, as 47 million Americans will be doing this season?  Plane rides are the least of our worries, according to Katelyn Jetelina, author of Your Local Epidemiologist blog and mother of two very small daughters. “I’ve flown several times with the girls throughout the course of the pandemic and have never been necessarily concerned about the flight itself. The air filtration is great on planes, there’s mandatory masking, and flight attendants do a darn good job of enforcing it. (Thank you!) If this wasn’t the case, there’s no way I would fly with my girls.” Airports, Uber rides, and other aspects of travel can be more risky; you’ll want to take full precautions. And of course, be sure to familiarize yourself with terms and conditions in other countries you'll be visiting.  What about holiday gatherings? Like many other experts, Jetelina suggests that you make sure everyone at the party is fully vaxxed; if not, and the unprotected won’t agree to mask up indoors, she suggest you respectfully decline to attend. She also urges everyone to take a Covid test two days before the event and the morning of. Hmmm, I thought when I read this. I’d already made sure all 17 of my guests had gotten their shots, but I hadn’t considered making self-testing part of the plan. When I wrote to everyone to suggest it, the response was instantaneous and enthusiastic. “Excellent plan! Thank you,” everyone said. Now it turns out there's been a run on test kits; two days ago they were readily available in every pharmacy, and now nobody has them, although rumors abound that shipments are coming in any day now. Maybe I should revisit the idea of hazmat suits.  Seville’s still a long way from going full hazmat, but we are all gearing up to comply with the latest protection measures. Andalucían officials announced we’re now required to show proof of vaccination to enter a restaurant or bar; this is easy for vaccinated locals, who all have an EU Digital Covid Certificate on their phone. Theoretically visitors and expats can obtain some version of this certificate, but when I click on the appropriate link on the Spanish government’s website, I just get a blank page and a spinny wheel. I’ll keep trying and let you know what I find out. Not having that handy digital certificate, Rich and I had to fall back on our CDC Covid Vaccination Cards today when we had lunch at a café. The owner, who had just finished taping up a sign about the new regulation, eyed the cards askance, but eventually he decided they (and we) were legit. Whew! Meanwhile, Spain remains committed to its strategy of mass vaccination. On Wednesday it started inoculating kids aged five to eleven, and officials just approved giving boosters to everyone over forty, with older adults first in line. However as we’re all learning, the current vaccinations aren’t as effective against Omicron. Some estimates suggest two shots give you 33% protection against infection, and the booster brings it up to 75%. “Just about everyone should be prepared to get infected during this wave, even if you’ve been vaccinated,” says Ohio State University chief quality and patient safety officer Iahn Gonsenhauser. Yikes! He adds that being vaxxed and boosted should protect us from significant symptoms. Not for the first time, I thanked my lucky stars (and Rich’s research skills, which located a last-minute pop-up clinic) that we managed to get our boosters before leaving the US.  As you can imagine, the nearby shrine of San Pancracio, Seville’s beloved patron saint of health, is more popular than ever. Even scoffers like me find ourselves slipping him a few coins and asking him to please keep us safe — if only for another week or two. In these uncertain times, there's one thing we know for sure: the best way to get through these shortest, darkest days of the year is together, with laughter on our lips, a glass of wine in one hand and a brownie in the other. Which is why I’m going ahead with lunch on December 25th. And with luck, my guests will go home with nothing but wonderful memories and Tupperware stuffed with leftover turkey. Sometimes playing it too safe can be dangerous!
I want to thank you all for joining me on the journey through these challenging times. Have the merriest possible holidays; you've earned some fun times! I suspect you'll be too busy playing with your new toys and recovering from hangovers to read much on the blog, so I won't post again until the first week of January. See you in 2022! If you're not already on my mailing list, sign up here for updates and get a free copy of Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YES! SEND ME THE FREE BOOK & UPDATES  Some young friends helped us decorate the tree, and Ina couldn't resist trying on the gas mask I'd received as a gift at the Atomic Bunker Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania. In the US, brownies are nothing remarkable, but one of the benefits of expat life is that if I show up with a fresh-made batch here in Seville, I am worshiped as a domestic goddess. My husband being a die-hard chocoholic, I always add — in lieu of chocolate chips, which are rare and of poor quality here — chunks of a dark chocolate candy bar, and this year I went all out and dotted the top with M&Ms. I was baking a batch of these glorious treats for a potluck on Friday when disaster struck. I was pulling them out of the oven when it happened. The disposable aluminum pan, which apparently was not as strong as I'd hoped, suddenly collapsed, sending great gobs of half-molten chocolate all over my stove, the cupboards, the floor, and my new kitchen rug. It looked like a crime scene photo. I could just hear Barnaby from Midsomer Murders saying, “Judging by the spatter, the victim must have gone down fighting!”  These aren't my brownies — I was way too frazzled to take photos at the time — but this is what the replacement batch looked like. Photo: What Megan's Making Luckily I had all the ingredients on hand to produce another batch, so I didn’t have to show up empty handed to the first holiday party I’d attended in two years. “Everyone’s fully vaxxed,” my hostess assured me in advance. “And we’ll have all the windows open throughout the evening, so dress warmly.” Seville had been going through a cold snap — temperatures in the low 50s by day, low 40s by night. Yes, I realize those of you reading this with snow piling up outside the windows may not view that as arctic, but hey, that’s downright chilly with all the windows wide open. Everybody wore five layers of clothing, and as luck would have it, the temperature shot up into the 60s and we all sweltered. But nobody cared. Because we were all intensely grateful for the comfort and joy of gathering with friends and even a few strangers as the year winds down. You could almost see visions of the 2020 holidays flitting through everyone’s mind. I knew about half the guests at the party, and a month ago I’d have greeted each of them with kisses on both cheeks in the traditional Spanish manner. But now, with that pesky Omicron ushering in an official 6th wave of the pandemic, we are all being careful again. Nowadays everyone’s more observant of the regulation requiring masking outdoors in crowded conditions. And Rich and I are once again avoiding dining inside restaurants unless we can sit by a wide-open door. This isn’t easy for me in December, the chilliest month in Seville, as I’m a total friolera, a Spanish term for someone extra sensitive to cold. But I’m getting quite used to dining out wearing three sweaters and a coat, and I’ve purchase a cheery green scarf that’s so massive people are referring to it as “Karen’s blanket.” Whatever it takes, folks!  Look, it's a live tree! There aren't many in Seville, but we always manage to buy one from the florist by the Setas (Plaza Encarnacíon). Spain is urging caution but so far it has not closed its borders. Fully vaccinated travelers from all but the most worrying countries can still enter without a Covid test. While our neighbor Portugal has declared a “state of calamity,” Spain has not issued its equivalent “state of alarm,” which would pave the way to drastic steps like restrictions or lockdowns. Government leaders know such steps are bad for morale, business, and their chances of re-election. As you can imagine, the decision to stay open to visitors is receiving strong support from the hospitality industry, which has invested heavily in attracting tourists and is now tearing its collective hair out at yet another setback. Talk about a state of calamity! In Seville alone there are somewhere around 32 new hotels, 200 pre-existing hotels, and 5,000 Airbnbs. The number of visitors, soaring in pre-pandemic years, has taken a nosedive. In the first nine months of this year, Spain had about 20 million tourists compared to nearly 70 million in the same period of 2019. Tourism minister Reyes Maroto optimistically predicted a late surge of 10 million visitors in the last three months of 2021, but by now it’s pretty clear the chance of that happening are (as the saying goes) slim to none, and Slim just left town.  One thing Seville has plenty of these days is poinsettias. "We can only buy as many as we can carry," I keep reminding Rich when he gets that gleam in his eye. Judging by the travel plans of my expat friends (a completely random, statistically insignificant sampling) people are not cancelling trips to their home country this month. Those of us who have chosen to stay in Seville take comfort from the fact this area has one of the lowest Covid rates in Europe and that no matter what else is going on in the world, this is one of the jolliest places to spend the holidays. This was the second year the holiday lights were switched on without fanfare, to avoid attracting an opening-night crowd, but they are now twinkling merrily all over the city. There are Nativity scenes and festive trees everywhere, including some goofy variations on the usual themes. People are doing plenty of shopping, but it hasn’t yet reached fever pitch, as here the big celebration doesn’t happen until the Three Kings arrive with gifts on January 6. The major shopping streets have an atmosphere of cheerful bustle during the week and on Saturdays are jammed, or as they say here, como sardinas en lata (like sardines in a can). Although I don’t mail many packages these days, I did have to send one gift back to the US, and frankly, I was dreading it. The gift was one of my own paintings, and I knew from experience that customs officials here view all artwork with deep suspicion, certain each one is a thinly disguised attempt to smuggle out an old master. The previous time I'd tried to mail some of my paintings to the US, the mailing service I’d used ran into a morass of customs paperwork and eventually thew up its hands in confusion and gave me back the artwork, although not the whopping fee I’d paid them. Not that I’m bitter. By sheer good luck, Rich remembered a DSL office had opened on Calle Alvarez Quintero, and there we discovered David, the agent in charge and possibly most efficient person in Seville. He produced a mailing tube and the pile of appropriate forms. “We must call it ‘decorative’ instead of ‘art,’” he explained. “Not art?” I exclaimed, affronted. “Or you can pay infinitely more,” he said. “Yeah, right, " I agreed. "Decorative it is.”  I call this one "Last food purchased before pandemic lockdown 2020." Painting it helped me stay (relatively) sane during the first months of quarantine. My sister-in-law loves this painting even more than I do, and I knew she and my brother would give it a good home. The final run-up to December 25 is my favorite part of the holidays. The heavy lifting is done: holiday letters sent, shopping (mostly) completed, shipping dispatched, the tree up and decorated. It’s time to relax and enjoy the fizz of excitement, the sparkle of lights, and the relief of having made it through another tumultuous year. Nobody knows what lies ahead; some good times for sure, and no doubt some shocks and setbacks too. But as the Spanish say, “Si te caes siete veces, levántate ocho,” if you fall down seven times, get up eight. Or as I say, when things go awry, make another batch of brownies. If you're not already on my mailing list, sign up here for updates and get a free copy of Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY  I love the lights on Seville's town hall, where everyone gathers on New Year's Eve. “Maybe the universe is telling you something,” my friend Enrique said yesterday, when I had poured out the sorry tale of last week’s stuttering book launch, plagued by bizarre tech glitches that temporarily prevented some people from downloading free subscriber copies or signing up to receive updates on my blog. “But wait, there’s more,” I said, accepting another splash of verdejo in my wine glass. “Now Amazon Spain is refusing to send me copies of the paperback version of my book.” “What? Why?” “Apparently my book has a ‘limited purchase quantity.’ The first day I tried to order six copies, and they told me I could only order three. I did, and they came in today. When I went back later and tried to order more, it said ‘We’ve changed your purchase quantity to the maximum permitted.’ And that number was zero.”  For an author, getting in a shipment of the new book is as thrilling and magical as buying candy and toys from a street stall during the run-up to Christmas. Enrique, who runs one of the most successful publishing companies in Spain, was as flabbergasted by this turn of events as I’d been. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. It could be a paper shortage. I know Amazon uses massive rolls of paper.” He flung his arms wide to indicate the gargantuan roll size. “Maybe they just can’t get them now.” These days, Amazon and other publishers, including Enrique’s Lantia, take advantage of print-on-demand technology that lets you upload a file, hit a button, and produce a printed and bound paperback book in seven minutes. It’s little short of miraculous. If you can get the paper. Fortunately, many of my readers have written to tell me they’ve successfully ordered the paperback in the US and the UK, where Amazon isn't suffering from the same supply issues, and there’s no problem getting the Kindle version. In fact, sales of Seville’s New Normal: Insider Tips for Visitors 2022 have been brisk enough that it hit #1 on Amazon in new travel books about Spain & Portugal. So it’s officially a bestseller already. Thanks for that, everybody!  For me, the mindboggling annoyance of attempting to navigate Amazon Spain’s purchasing system was just the warm-up for researching today’s update on what it takes to visit Spain right now. I’d planned to include just a brief paragraph outlining the latest information, but fact-finding proved far more slippery than I’d expected. For a start, it used to be helpful to Google “Spanish Embassy in the US — Going to Spain — Entry Requirements” but that site has now expunged nearly all mention of Covid, directing those inquiries to the Ministry of the Interior page, which never mentions Covid, and to a Health Ministry page that comes up blank. The Embassy’s home page has a link to Covid FAQs that contains no questions (let alone answers), just a suggestion that you consult your local consulate. If you click on the consulate link, you suddenly find yourself on Travel Safe, the official Spain tourism website. I'm almost getting the impression that Spain’s national government is hoping to distance itself from its Covid policies. Anybody else find that worrying at all?  People in Seville always wear masks inside public spaces such as shops and museums. Outdoors it's more of a judgement call whether conditions seem crowded enough to require protection. According to Travel Safe, step one is filling out the health control form no more than 48 hours in advance to obtain a QR code attesting to your Covid status. (Oddly, there’s a separate form if you are arriving by ferry, but let’s assume for now you’re traveling by air or land.) Step two says that to determine the entry requirements, you have to find out if your country is designated low-risk or high risk. To find out your country’s status, there’s a handy link. That link takes you to (drumroll, please) another blank page. So much for the official sources. Luckily I found Travelling to Spain During Covid-19: Here’s What You Need to Know by SchengenVisaInfo. This cleared up the question of which nations are currently designated as high-risk and low-risk (or, to put it in seasonal parlance, the naughty and nice list). Sadly, both the US and the UK are high-risk, so citizens of those countries (and many others) must provide proof of vaccination to enter Spain. The good news: Spain doesn’t require an up-your-nose Covid test in addition to the vaccine. The bad news: if you’re unvaccinated, you aren’t going to be visiting Spain any time soon. No doubt there are scofflaws already trying to figure out how to circumvent these rules, possibly via private airstrips in the dark of night. Which may account for the rather startling news story I just saw about dogs being taught to pilot airplanes. Yes, you read that right. A UK reality TV show has taught Shadow, a rescue dog on the verge of being put down, how to steer an airplane. And for those of you who might be worrying about in-flight safety, let me reassure you that Shadow was kept on his leash every minute. Sit. Stay. Steer. Good dog, Shadow! In other news, some parts of Spain (but not Seville) now require Covid documentation to enter public places such as bars, restaurants, and nightclubs. The rules vary by region (check regional requirements here); most commonly, locals must present an EU Digital Covid Certificate, aka Covid passport, issued to EU citizens through the public health system. The rules are a bit fuzzier for visitors; most likely they’ll accept your printed USA Covid vaccination card or similar documentation. But before you pre-pay for a pricy event, such as a concert or Michelin-star restaurant meal, check the policy of the region and, if possible, the venue. Here in Seville, the approach is much more relaxed. Covid passports aren’t required anywhere, although the government will soon make them compulsory when visiting people in hospitals and care homes. With almost 90% of eligible residents vaxxed, everyone correctly assumes I’ve had the good sense to get my shots, including my vacuna de refuerzo (booster). “Experts attribute Spain’s vaccine success, in part, to its widely trusted public health system, which spearheaded the effort,” says the NY Times. “Politicians also played a big role, taking their doses with fanfare early on and avoiding politicized debate about the vaccine. Spaniards, for the most part, followed the health guidance of their leaders when it came to vaccines, masks and other precautions.” Salvador Illa, who oversaw the first year of Spain’s pandemic response, explains, “As far as vaccines go, in Spain there’s just a wide consensus among citizens — they follow the recommendations of the scientists.”  The church is supportive of public safety efforts, too. For the faithful hoping for a little extra protection, local stores sell these masks with the image of your favorite Semana Santa (Holy Week) religious statues. Wow. Confidence in the public health system. Leaders avoiding controversy. Trust in science. What a country! It’s comforting to know that if (Heaven forbid) Omicron or some other variant should require another vaccine, my neighbors will cheerfully line up, fully masked and two meters apart, to get it. Maybe Enrique’s right and the universe is sending me a message. If only I could figure out what it might be! However, with so many problem-solving, brain-boosting challenges filling my days, it’s just possible my mental acuity will sharpen fast enough to let me figure it out before I go completely bonkers. Thanks to all of you who wrote to me saying how much you enjoyed Seville's New Normal. If you bought the book, I'd be grateful if you would leave a review on Amazon; this will boost the book's visibility, making it easier for others to find. Unfortunately Amazon ignores reviews that aren't associated with a verified purchase. YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY Sign up here for updates and get a free copy of Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word. 
Actually, what I’m feeling is whew! I loved writing Seville’s New Normal: Insider Tips for Visitors 2022. It started out as a purely practical guide, a way to answer the questions that were constantly arriving in my email inbox: How has Seville changed over the past two years? Is it safe? Is it fun? Can I even get into Spain? With two million people a year visiting Seville, it was clear I could not reply to each and every one individually. So I thought, “Why not corral all my info into a short guidebook?” But then, as I set out to assemble the information in something approaching coherent form, it struck me that Seville isn’t just about facts, it’s about stories. There are ancient myths, medieval legends, modern superstitions, and tidbits of hot gossip about every nook and cranny of this city. It would shortchange the book if I didn’t include at least some of them, along with a few of my own zany expat exploits. The older stories beautifully define Seville’s legacy of lunacy, passed down through hundreds of generations to me . . . and now to you. I love these stories and believe some of them may even be mostly true. For instance, if you’ve visited Seville, you may know the Alameda, an absurdly long plaza in the northern part of the city centro. But did you ever wonder why the two pillars at the southern end are off-center? 
This late 19th century postcard shows the two columns at the southern end of the Alameda de Hercules. You can see the extra space at the right, where you might expect a third column.
Having your city established by an actual god conveys certain bragging rights, and to make certain nobody missed this point, in 1574 Seville officials built a vast public garden — Europe’s first — and named it the Alameda de Hercules. For decoration they chose six Roman columns that had stood on the other side of town for 14 centuries. Hauling ancient, 30-foot stone columns in wooden wagons over unpaved streets through a busy city; what could possibly go wrong? Incredibly, two made it safely to the new garden before one managed to roll off and shatter spectacularly in the faces of horrified onlookers. No doubt a few heads rolled — possibly literally — over that snafu, and suddenly no one wanted the job of pillar transporter. The two surviving columns, topped with statues of Hercules and Julius Cesar respectively, stand at the southern end of the Alameda, their off-center alignment reflecting space left for the third that never arrived. The other three columns are aging gracefully in the Calle Mármoles (Marbles Street), where they are likely to remain until the end of time. 
A couple of years ago I ran across this tour group on Calle Mármoles. The guide was telling absolute whoppers about how the column was broken in transit to the Alcázar Palace instead of the Alameda. But of course, when it comes to legends, who can be sure what's true?
I thought providing some of these tales would give you all a fuller picture of Seville’s landscape, past and present. In the end, what I’ve written is not a conventional guide listing monument visiting hours, railway timetables, and budget hotels; you can easily find all that online. And it’s not comprehensive; you won’t find the top ten of everything in every category. But you will learn where I go for the essentials of life: churros (fried dough), flamenco, that perfect dry martini, a good vantage point for photos of the Three Kings parade, emergency dentistry, pre-flight Covid tests, and the latest changes in Spain’s entry requirements. It addresses these questions from my email inbox: How have the last two years reshaped Seville? When is the ideal time to visit? How can I check Spain’s entry requirements? Why do Sevillanos eat five meals a day? What do locals do for fun? What’s with all the oddball myths & legends? People still take siestas? Do I have to? What if I get sick? Will I have reverse culture shock going home? 
The times, they are a chagin'. The sign on the right advertises (gasp!) a vegan menu at a Seville café — a shocking sight in this ham-loving community!
In the book I explain the most striking thing about Seville these days is how normal it seems. People mask up and get vaxxed without a fuss, and then go about their daily lives. With more than 85% of Andalucíans inoculated, this is quite possibly the safest destination in Europe. Of course, that could all change in the next five minutes due to this pesky Omicron variant or some other nasty surprise. Be sure to keep checking this blog for updates. In the meantime, I’m hedging my bets. I frequently slip a few coins into the nearby shrine of San Pancracio, Seville's patron saint of health. Yes, of course I know it’s pure, medieval superstition. But hey, what harm could it do? 
Here I am making a contribution at San Pancracio's shrine in 2020. The shelf is full of parsley, as the saint is said to be partial to it. Nobody can tell me why.
Seville's New Normal is fun and informative, and my goal is to make it accessible to all. I’ve priced the Kindle version at 99 cents. Even if you’re a subscriber, you might want to buy the Kindle edition because A) it’s a more convenient way to read, B) it boosts my Amazon ranking, and C) the higher that rank is, the more visible Amazon will make my book so more readers will find it. Of course, reviews help a lot, too. The paperback is also priced as low as possible ($4.99). I won’t make much on these sales, but if they make a dent in the number of emails in my inbox, I’m more than satisfied. I’ll be raising the price right after the holidays.
Want a free sample of the book? Click on the live preview button below.
I don’t mean to brag, but figuring out how to insert this live preview was just one of the many pieces of technology I’ve mastered this week. The technical side of publishing is not my strong suit, but I've soldiered on, spending countless hours burrowing into previously unknown recesses of my computer, Amazon’s author support pages, Kindle formatting, Microsoft Word, my web host, and the mailing platform. I have triumphed over approximately 43,697 technical glitches. The worst cropped up just after this post first went live: the mailing platform I use crashed, and several of the links I'd sent to subscribers, which were perfect when I sent them out, suddenly went wonky. Thanks to everyone who alerted me to the issues! Now, two days later, all appears to be working perfectly. Fingers crossed, knock wood.
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If you're a regular subscriber, you should already have received a copy of the book in Microsoft Word — my small way of saying thanks for being part of my readers' circle. (If you somehow missed it, please let me know; email me at enjoylivingabroad@gmail.com and I'll re-send it.)
If you're not yet a subscriber, click on the link below to sign up for your free copy of Seville's New Normal in Microsoft Word and the free updates I'm sending out about Seville and international travel. If you'd prefer to get the book in Kindle or paperback versions, here's where to find it on Amazon. At this point I think, hope, and pray that all my tech glitches are resolved, and that my dozen rounds of proofreading have caught at least most of the worst typos. So whew! The book is out! Tonight I will be picturing every one of you settling down in your favorite armchair, happily reading Seville’s New Normal and dreaming of your next visit to this wonderful, warm, zany city. 
Rich's favorite reading chair in Seville.
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As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things that interest me and that I believe might prove useful for you all to know about. Whew! I wanted to clear that up before we went any further. Thanks for listening.  Karen McCann
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I'm an American travel writer based in Seville, Spain and currently visiting my home state of California. Wondering how to navigate travel's new normal? Sign up for my blog so you can get free updates as the situation unfolds. 
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