Post by Wynette:
We spent last night in O Porto de Espasante. We stayed there two nights in 2019 and fell in love with the town. The son in the family who own the hotel where we stayed (Las Palomas) told us that “everyone always comes back to Espasante.” He spoke excellent English and we enjoyed talking with him this morning at breakfast. He told us that only about 50 people live in Porto de Espasante permanently but in the summer it is mobbed. Many people from Madrid, etc. own apartments there and live there in the summer to get away from the heat. He said right now they have only 3 people working at the hotel (him, his mother, and one other person). He said in the summer they employ 15 people. He said one day, he walked 22 km (13 miles) just inside his restaurant serving people. (He tracked it with his phone.)
We had lunch at Os Vellos bar where we spent a lot of time at in 2019. What a pleasure to return. We ordered a cabbage soup and steamed mussels and pork ribs and were about to order something else when the server stopped us and said “don’t order anything else or you’ll have too much food.” Good thing we did. The servings were huge. Everything we ordered was more than enough for 2 people. We were expecting one person servings.
As we were walking out of town this morning, we saw about 20 memorials like those pictured below. Those weren’t there in 2019 so we think they are probably people in the village who died from covid. Spain was hit hard by the pandemic.
