I’m not sure where storks nested before church towers were built. You sometimes see them on the dead tops of trees, but those are rare. Anyway, there were a couple on the old tower of the church of San Francisco in Fuente Obejuna in Spain last week. They seldom bother flying south now they can catch frogs and things all winter.

I’d travelled, with some difficulty, to this tight little town on a hill surrounded by winter wheat because of its name. It gave the title to the Golden Age play by Lope de Vega called Fuenteovejuna. (The Spanish aren’t choosy between vees and bees.)

The nub of the play is that when the townspeople killed the wicked commander of the Order of Calatrava (a military order, fighting the Moors, of course) everyone said, even under torture, when asked who did it: “Fuenteovejuna killed him.” This is supposed to say something about the Spanish character, and it impressed Ferdinand and Isabella, who pardoned them.