I’m following up yesterday’s love letter to Spain with a small dose of reality. Franco can still draw a crowd. Just like in the US, the conservatives have captured the flag. The colors hanging from balconies denote “the “patriots,” the anti immigrant crowd, the ones who have no tolerance for the separatist movements.
We were sitting in the window of a café in Madrid last Sunday when this couple walked by. They paused for a minute, right in front of us and said something to one another. I fumbled for my camera as fast as I could but I missed getting the front of this guy’s cap. The big white letters read ESPAÑA and it looked just like a MAGA hat. There was a guy sitting next to us at the counter. He was reading El País but apparently watching me as well. He said, “there’s still people like that here,” and he chuckled.
We woke up at five thirty this morning. Still mostly on Spanish time. We couldn’t wait to take a walk in the leaves, it was so beautiful out. They moved our polling location to the Transfiguration Church on Culver. We really liked our old place, the Point Pleasant Fire House. They have a bar in the building that they rent out and we always imagined Margaret Explosion playing there.
At Transfiguration there was a guy with an American Flag shirt on getting out of his car, a button collar, long sleeve shirt with the stars and stripes. The church gloms onto election day to host a bake sale so we checked out the cookies on the way in. The man who handed us our paper ballots was wearing a tie that had “Jesus” printed on it along with a quote from scripture. We cast our votes and bought two peanut butter chocolate chip cookies on the way out.
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