The Rain in Spain

The rain in Spain is unlike I have seen it here before and it is not, contrary to popular belief, lying mainly on the plain. Seville is soaked to the skin and so am I; well not anymore but there was me taking myself out of my some twenty square metres this morning in search of a good cup of coffee and one of those little surprises that life can still produce for a no longer young, not quite old, body like myself. The good coffee is always available here but the surprises remain few and far between. Today, I sort of got both and I also managed to do a bit of reminiscing.
The day took me back to a very wet day six months ago in Nanjing, which is, in my opinion, one of China's prettier cities. Not pretty that day though and I had the good sense to find a Starbucks with a wireless connection and spend almost the whole day there. Not so much good sense today though and there was me getting wet, wet, wet! That though, was probably due more to the little surprise on getting down to the cathedral area of the city and discovering a rather big demonstration in which the 'Partido Comunista de España' (Spanish Communist Party) appeared to be playing a very central role. Nice to see that there is still life in the old boy and in this day and age I am almost prepared to forgive him his little indiscretions, such as his wholesale murder of his POUM and Anarchist allies during the Spanish Civil War. Well, what else can you do, resistance is resistance and by golly we need resistance, don't we?
So there was "wet, wet, wet" me supping another 'cafe con leche' in 'Flaherty's' where Nadal beat Federer, no real surprises there and one of them had to win but, behind the stink of the incense, the ding, dong, dinging of their church bells, their shopping till their dropping, there is life in this city, and all of a sudden, with the rain in Spain a place that had appeared to have a political consciousness on a par with deepest Upper Bavaria doesn't seem half so bad anymore or can you imagine a mass demonstration of Communists through the streets of Munich?