Advantages of being Spanish
We could have been the ones who rule the destinies of the world , that the Crown, the pan-European market of Medina del Campo and Aznar were here for a reason playing dominoes. But we prefer to stay in our homeland , in our small homeland of which we are proud. Which basically has been the bar in the square where they sell piponazos and a few rough pavement streets where you scrape your elbows all the time, that is, childhood.
RESISTANCE TO HYPERCALORIC STEWS
Mexicans have their spicy and we have stews with good paprika and chilli or simply with a fat hat about two centimeters. For example, now, those of chanterelles. In an end-of-the-world scenario, only with that accumulated fund would we be able to survive a couple of decades longer than the rest and even ten minutes longer than the Mexicans. Castilian stews -from potatoes with ribs to cooked maragatos- they were designed to go to work in the fields, but they also serve to take epic August naps that as soon as they are Olympic modality they will turn us into an empire again.
TEMPERING AGAINST EXTREME TEMPERATURES
You release a Castilian into space on his way to the sun and everything seems normal to him. By putting on and taking off a knitted jacket he fixes it. The Saharan sun that combines with polar nights on any given day in July gives the same angular consistency to the wine and to the paisanos. As if that were not enough, the plateau borders the mountains of León, the mountains of Palencia, the Segovian Sierra and the entire Cantabrian Mountains. One goes for a walk, about to pass out from the heat, and comes across a snowy mountain. He puts on the jacket and that's it. And then there is that every time I see a Russian bathing in a Siberian lake on the news, I remember the river in my town in the middle of August and I think that I would like to see them trying it there.
PANORAMIC VIEW
The horizons of Castile are always where Christ gave the three voices. The world seems too long seen from here, so it is preferred not to leave the house much . In this horizontal context, it is even more surprising that the Crown of Castile swallowed that the earth was round. The genetic advantage that we have derived from this is a shrewd vision from afar that allows us to distinguish from the door of the house if that tractor has gotten into our boundaries or if that Madrilenian dressed as Colonel Tapioca who admires the town's fountain open-mouthed he thinks he is on safari.
MINIMALISM
Nowhere is so much said with so little. The conversational pauses and the annotations of a Castilian are treaties of a thousand pages that can only be interpreted by another Castilian.
IRON LIVER
In some towns, the only thing missing is for the wine to come out of the fountains. And since not everything is Vega Sicilia, the Castilian ends up developing from childhood a mutant resistance whatever they throw at it. That's where the governments that have supported each other here from the Comuneros until today come a little.
WIN BY RESISTING
The custom here is sit on the bench at the door of the house to watch neighbors, girls, herds, seasons, opportunities and, in general, the world go by. We have been clear for a few centuries that everything ends up turning "into earth, into smoke, into dust, into shadow, into nothing", so we have developed a patience that makes us reliable, immutable and the types who ask for a repeat of chickpeas. The festival of Castilla y León could commemorate the arrival of Columbus in America, the Reconquest or the invention of the Burgos blood sausage, but it celebrates a defeat, that of the Comuneros. With that way of seeing it, we are invincible.
PICTURESQUE
Thus, by eye, in Castile there are two churches per inhabitant and one beret for every ten heads. A Washington Irving of 2013 would come here to write his own. Instagraming from the Caribbean may be more envy, but the truly exotic photos are those of the plateau.
WE ARE PASSING
The plateau is right in the middle of the universe, so we have Ave, highways and Camino de Santiago. A real Castilian does not use them to go anywhere, except to Madrid for a wedding or to Santander for the beach.
OTHERS ONCE A YEAR
It is in the festivals of the towns that the Castilians allow themselves not to be so much. You sing, you dance, you hug and you seem Andalusian for a little while.
PARAPETS OF LIGHT
Fire is a way of understanding the world. A source of energy and the place where meals and shameful stories from when you were little come from. You recover the fire at any time in your life, you add a glory to it and the world around you can fall.
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We could have conquered the world, but it didn't happen