Santiago

This is a shot taken when we were standing outside the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos, kitty-corner from the famous Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, in northwest Spain. It's your typical tourist picture, and had likely been captured many thousands of times from the very same spot. The components are Old World, picturesque, with elements of history, and religion, alongside ancient and modern culture, and perhaps even myth as well.

If you look closely, you will see along the hills in the background that there are new houses either being built, or recently completed. A cluster of three of them in a row appear no different than tract homes seen in our American suburbs. A larger house in the middle distance is much higher than its neighbors, and shows the current European trend towards large skylights. Its roof tiles are modern and regular, unlike those of the older buildings in the foreground, some of which have become discolored over the years, and indeed show signs of decay and tufts of weeds along their courses.

The climate does not allow whitewash to remain white for long in rainy Galicia, and you can see the stains of mildew on the walls of the older houses, which stand cheek-by-jowl alongside houses that have, at least on their façades, a cleaner look.

The street on which the foreground houses stand is very steep and narrow. Some of the houses have wrought-iron balconies, others have roof terraces. The street lights are, of course, electric, but their design suggests that before the advent of electricity, they may have been fueled by natural gas, and maybe even tallow.

To the right are visible the decorative pillars on the outer wall of the Hospital, and the stone of which they and the supporting base are made is grey and weathered, much in contrast to the incongruous modern spy camera mounted a metre or so below, which points down towards the street, and whose coiled cable forms an elegant calligraphic lower-case letter 'g'.

On the wall to the left the pillars are of a newer design, and one might suppose that they were either added later, after the originals had crumbled through age, or the entire lighter-toned stone structure might have been erected next to the original wall centuries later; a couple of windows lower down seem to favor this second thesis.

In the street below two commercial enterprises are visible. Their entrances are surmounted by canvas canopies which appear to have been well-maintained. One is a restaurant called "Las Huertas", and the other is a pharmacy. Between them is a "No Parking" sign. A couple of people stand outside the restaurant, looking at the printed menu outside. They appear to be locals rather than tourists, who have all recently dined at the quite impressive refectory within the Hospital de los Reyes Católicos.