Tranquilo

It's quiet today en el pueblo. There's a neighbour's rooster going quiquiriquí (as he does intermittently from 4am until 10pm), un perro ladrando, and the bell-wether's cencerro clinking as the flock grazes en el terreno de al lado. Someone, quizás del Festival de Danza Sin Fronteras, is playing the bongos.

Apart from the bongos, those would all be noises I'd expect to hear, but en los últimos días they've been drowned out by sirenas and the motors of helicópteros and avionetas apagafuegos. These louder, unsettling sounds have now stopped, and the militares and bomberos have presumably returned to their homes, or gone off to combatir incendios elsewhere.

Perhaps, while the firemen continue with their autobombas, the soldiers will be dealing with coche bombas and furgoneta bombas. My South American friends refer to cars as "autos", and I get very confused between the guys who are trying to blow things up with car bombs and those who are trying to put out the fires using automatic pumps. Bombers and bomberos. Those wall panels with the words "uso exclusivo bomberos" are not offering special facilities for ETA and their ilk, of course, but giving access to water supplies for the firemen.

En mi pueblo there were no convenient fire hydrants to supply agua to deal with the fire. And less so when las llamas took hold up among los pinos de la montaña and the smoke blackened the skies of Madrid, some ninety miles away. Though we didn't need to be evacuated, we heard the firetrucks at the piscina natural, and the helicopters were back and forth overhead filling up at the pantano. I missed the spectacle of five of them queued at the reservoir, though I gather the townspeople were out in force with their cameras. 

Last week the alcalde had warned that water was going to be scarce and that we should only regar los jardines y huertas on alternate days; the local paper said there was just enough to tide us over till after the summer. I wonder how much nos queda now.

There are turistas who come because of the mountains, but they come year round. Many of the summer visitors to the area are semi-residents, so I don't suppose the numbers will be much reduced despite el incendio which has calcinado cinco mil hectáreas of Parque Regional. As usual, then, the influx of veraneantes will put additional strain on los recursos and on la infraestructura which is old and unreliable.

When I started by saying the pueblo was "quiet" today, I thought about saying it in Spanish. But Spain isn't a quiet country, and the language doesn't really have the word. With all the natural background noises, el pueblo certainly isn't silencioso. Perhaps poco ruidoso, though that seems to assume noise is the norm. It's definitely not quieto: that refers more to lack of movement than lack of sound, and hoy, hay mucho viento.

So I've settled for tranquilo, which brings with it connotations of peace as much as quiet. Since the soldiers and firemen se han ido and el incendio is described as estabilizado, even if not yet bajo control, perhaps, for the moment, the village is peaceful.
 

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