Day of sadness.

Yesterday was a Día Festivo, the 25th of July, Día de Galicia, the “national” day for this region, feast of Saint James, Santiago in Spanish. But it can’t have been much of a celebration after the train derailment of Wednesday evening. 

My Spanish friends on Facebook were all posting their sadness. English friends with connections to Galicia were doing the same. Appropriately the day began with rain. One of the posts read, “O ceo chora neste día tan triste para Galicia i España....” Roughly translated this says, “The sky/heaven is weeping on this so sad day for Galicia and Spain.”The word for sky, “o ceo” in Galician and “el cielo” in Castilian covers both sky and Heaven. I suppose you could say “The heavens are weeping” if you want to keep the double meaning. 

I can appreciate the posts like that, expressing genuine sadness. What I don’t like are the posts giving links to the stories of victims, which one of my so-called friends put on. There’s something macabre about going through the accounts of awful things that happen to people. 

That members of the royal family and politicians visit the city and the hospital, I can understand. Somehow, however, it doesn’t seem right to plaster details over the social media. I’m not even happy about pages of photos of victims as appear on the online version of La Voz de Galicia. 

That’s all. 

Normal service will resume tomorrow.