Mansilla de las Mulas

There's an element of homeschooling to my time here in that I see something I don't understand during the day and then do homework on it in the afternoon when I have wifi. Learning is for life!

As I mentioned, I'm in Castilla y Leon, the largest, but not only, autonomous region in Spain. Accordingly, most of the trail signage (which, by the way, I don't find as romantic as that in other regions, it's a bit HERE) says Castilla y Leon on it.

Closer to Burgos, occasionally you'd see the 'y Leon' crossed out. In the past few days the 'Castilla y' has been attacked with a consistency and intensity that increases commensurate with proximity to Leon.

Today for example, ending in a town 15 minutes from Leon, every single sign has been defaced and I've seen LOTS of graffiti saying things like 'Leon solo (alone)' and 'Leon sin (without) Castilla'. So it's obvious something's up in C y L.

The long and short of it appears to be "a former Francoist minister, a failed appeal to the Constitutional Court and a counterweight to the nationalists."

When the Catalan and Basque regions went autonomous in the 70s there was some anxiety they'd be too powerful, so one of Franco's guys convinced Leon to band together with the Castilla region to create a supergroup the majority of Leon people didn't want, and which Leon immediately and unsuccessfully tried to back out of after agreeing.

They've tried appealing this for ages, and there's some suggestion a new legal avenue might have emerged in the last few years. By the looks of it, some in Leon remain quite enthusiastic about going at it alone.

In other studies, mum has come through with some insights on those horrid caterpillars. As I suspected, they are up to absolutely ZERO good. Cop the following:

"DO NOT touch the caterpillars! Their hairs are extremely irritating and may cause long-tern dermatitis and other serious skin conditions. Pets may also have negative reactions. …… The millions of long fine, needle-like hairs that cover each caterpillar are sharp and very brittle. These readily penetrate and break off in human skin and contain an irritating protein that produces a highly allergic response in most people. The hair shafts are covered in microscopic barbs, making them extremely difficult to remove. If these hairs get in the eyes, they can cause blindness …..Being voracious eaters, they will sometimes defoliate their tree and need to move to another. When they do this you’re likely to see them moving as a single train, of up to 200 individual caterpillars, in search of a new tree."Read more