Days of the Dreaded Sun

The dreaded sun of late July has already appeared.  Though its heat never dissipated through the night, it is burn up the streets even more.

Being very pale and someone who has had cancers removed from his skin,  as well as blistering sunburns, I have never been one of those blonds who beginning as early as possible in late April begins losing his shirt and seeking every opportunity to be near reflective water. I have never developed that tawny tan that blonds get.

I slather sunscreen whenever I go outside in the day, and try, desperately try, to stay in the shade. I watch the sun on the ground, on people, and on buildings, from places where its mostly absent.

Still the beaches fill with people in daytime and northern and Eastern Europeans turned red abound.  

If only I were like my poet friend who goes to the beach at night, when the moon slides across the sky, and tucks himself into the waters of a slowly cooling sea. 

It is not only the sun that is hot, politics is also roaring and sparking, as are fires in some of the peninsula’s mountain forests. 

Last week I wrote about Torre Pacheco, a town in the melon fields filled with Moroccan agricultural workers. The right sought to create an image there of villainous criminal migrants, words that might as well have spring from the fiery tongue of an Orange hate-monger in Washington.  

The Ultras poured in, young men hoping for thuggery and to achieve some nationalist dream, internet goons and influencers, as well as politicians. The police came out and cordoned off the majority Moroccan neighborhood, arrested thugs and politicians, the latter for illegal hate. Spaniards also came out to support the immigrants whether just to pollsters or in more concrete actions.  

The Ultras tried again, in another town, a suburb of Madrid.  Again failure.  But their professional tongue waggers with colorful capes as if they could be national symbols, instead of mass producers of prairie pies, keep trying.  For some reason, the conservatives who are not Ultra, are refusing to denounce them, even while hoping their stink draws flies who vote conservative.  They play a dangerous and polluting game. 

But people are talking. Immigration is a constant theme.

It could still mire the Socialist President Sanchez whose wheels are mired in the thick mud of corruption.  

However, the opposition, conservative party, the PP, sprang a corruption scandal of their own. One can hear its hissing from their political tires. Their vehicle slows.

It is a hot summer, hotter than average. The papers occasionally publish deaths; already they number more than a thousand for Spain for two months. Mostly deaths of poor people and elderly, I am told. 

Still the days have turned noticeably shorter, and soon it will be August when many take vacation. The heat will still be here, but its abatement comes closer. 

Honestly, this year, I will not mind when the day comes I put my shorts away for the year.