October 5 Ponferrada – Always Somethin’

As Rosanne Roseanna Danna used to say, It’s always somethin’ but I now have a Spanish SIM card. Went to the Orange store-can’t look up my account because I have French SIM. Want to buy a Spanish SIM. Out of stock until Monday -but! A store in the mall has them. Walk to the mall. Wait one hour while a new phone customer is served. Got my card. Done. Took some photos in Ponferrada as I got lost a few times.

Posted by phone

October 5 Molinaseca – What the heck?! Sculpture

Mary took this photo, not knowing what it is. And for good reason…

As your intrepid editor, vegan in chief, back home here in Kansas City, I have the advantage of Internet access.

So, if you’ve given up on what this is…

Read this from wikipedia:

Botillo (Spanish: [boˈtiʎo]), Butiellu (Leonese: [buˈtjeʎʊ]) or Botelo (Galician: [boˈtɛlʊ]Portuguese: [buˈtɛlu]; also known as chouriço de ossos in Portuguese) is a dish of meat-stuffed pork intestine. It is a culinary specialty of El Bierzo, a county in the Spanish province of León and also of the region of Trás-os-Montes, in Portugal. The Spanish term botillo, the Portuguese term botelo and Leonese term butiellu derive from the Latin word botellus, meaning intestine.

And then this (summarized below in English)

The Capa foundry ends the first great monument to the botillo, a piece of bronze of 500 kilos that will honor José Arias Franganillo, pioneer of the meat industry in León.

Molinaseca is popular for being a key milestone on the Camino de Santiago, for its tasty sausages, for its wineries, or paradoxically for its water festival. But very soon it will also be recognized for hosting the largest monument to the botillo in the world. The long crowned king of the gastronomy of Berciana will have in this population a bronze icon of almost half a ton of weight and a meter and a half high. And these days it is being finished off in one of the most prestigious foundries in Spain, the Capa house. The work is a design by the Leon artist Álvaro Santos, and although it has been paid for by private promoters, linked precisely to the sector, it will be donated to the City Council to occupy a prominent place on the Jacobean Route. Further, The monument aims to serve as a tribute to one of the precursors of the meat industry not only in Bierzo, but throughout the province, José Arias Franganillo, the grandfather of the generation that is now the front of Frimols, one of the societies more leading in the sector, which also bets on the diversification and development of rural tourism. With this double, sentimental and economic approach, the monumental botillero bronze will be installed next to the new tourist complex that the Arias family will open in the heart of the Camino de Santiago. A hotel with 24 rooms, in which comfort and good taste prevail, and in which about two million euros have been invested.

So, there you have it…