Hasta la vista

In the flat above the shop there's an old man, Mateo, who often comes round to talk to R about this and that. His home village, some thirty-five kilometres south-east of Huesca, is Pertusa: we drove past it the other day, travelling to the Civil War museum at Robres, through Angües, Bespén and then turning before Pertusa to go through Sesa and Grañén. The road goes up into the hills and R must have had a fantastic view from the passenger seat: the Somontano plain with Pertusa right below us, and above the village but below us still, the circling storks who make their homes in the churches and the water towers across the province in the spring.

I should have liked to stop and watch the storks myself, and enjoy the view: but I will never enjoy it now. A few days after our trip, R was talking to Mateo. She said we had been to his village and enjoyed the view from the adjacent hillside road. Did we know, he asked, what role the hill had played in the life of the village? When there was a dog that they didn't want, the villagers would take it to the top of that hill, and throw it to its death.