COVER N. 692  / POSTCARDS 212-213 - SPAIN

Postmark: Illegible

Posted on ?;  Received on the 5th March 2026

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A letter  can be a window... better yet, all letters are windows.

More often then not, they reach you closed. And it is easy to understand why, for as such the draught of  unrelated gazes or minds is kept outside, protecting the words within from intent disturbance and privacy violation.

It is then up to you, the name called for on the face of the envelope, to open it, to let the free flowing breeze of words out of its temporary confinement, to finally allow content and intent to self-regenerate themselves through the sheer magic of reading, that most fundamental of all fundamental skills. 

But not all letters are created equal, so not all letters receive the same attention or treatment.

A letter might seat for days on the desk, unopened. In some extreme cases, it might even end up in the bin in the same condition, a sad waste of paper and intent...

These, though, are letters that lack the warmth of pure and simple conversation; these are the letters that are opened by brutally tearing apart the side of the envelope with an unceremonial finger inserted through the flap on their back; these are letters that in lieu of an attractive stamp on the corner of the paper rectangle that imprisons them, exhibit a cold printed legend: "Postage Paid"; these are impersonal letters; these are letters that herald "utilities", "financial statements" or other just as unpleasant but nonetheless essential consequences of the interactions between the individual and the state.

And then, there are the other:

The letters that generate a surge of dopamine and curiosity; that exhibit on the envelope the grace of a functional tiny piece of art applied on it as a laissez-passer; the letters that are slowly, pleasurably and carefully opened up with a small knife running along the top fold of the envelope so as to minimize as much as possible damage to the envelope; in short, the letters that say "Hi, good to see you"!

Well, Today I got one of these from Spain. Muchíssimas Gracias, Eva!

Eva used a 2€ stamp issued on 04NOV2014 as part of a 2 x 2€ stamp issued themed on numismatics.  The stamp is illustrated with the image of the back of a 1 Peseta (the pre-Euro Spanish currency) banknote of 1953 issue. The companion stamp in the set, bears the image of a 1 Peseta coin, of 1944 issue.

The stamp has some augmented reality capability embedded in it but unfortunately it seems that the app used to access it is no longer available to download (at least I could not find trace of it over the internet),  so I can not report on what's on hiding in it.

If letters are windows to a secret world only accessible to the addressee, then Postcards are obvious windows into the regular world, and by nature much more unconductive to privacy unless upgraded in treatment to letter support status.

That's what happened to the two curious postcards Eva included in her letter.

Postcards. There once was a time when every little town, or even village, no matter how small or hidden, would have a little shop or kiosk with a postcard stand. 

The chosen images were sometimes not the most interesting, compositions amateurish, printing deficient, BUT there was always at least a few to chose from neatly ranked on the stand where some of them exhibited a curvature and some washing out of the colours, due to the continuous exposure to the inclemency of the sun.

Sending out postcards to family, loved ones, and friends was an axiom of life back then, especially on holidays....sadly, though, as George Harrison" so aptly put it once, all things must pass, and today, baring the larger, more touristy places, finding the little 10x15 rectangles with a local image to slap a few words and a stamp on it is getting ever more difficult (while in inverse ratio finding hidden Pokémons has become a more productive routine for some, it seems).

Eva is one of those Postcard hunters that will not yield to Pokémon. And she managed to trace two interesting examples of 80s vintage postcards from the city of Alcañiz, province of Teruel, in the Autonomous Community of Aragon in the Northeast of Spain which she kindly included in her letter.

The Plaza de España (just as Eva wondered in the letter, who would care to include so much empty featureless street in the foreground on a picture ..😃)

The Monument to the Drum and the drummer, authored by José Gonzalvo and inaugurated in 1968.

As I understand it, drummers are very much a part of the processions on Semana Santa in this region of Spain and the statue represents one such drummer wearing the tradinional vestsof the Holly Week.