“You are not Spanish,” she said. It was not a question.
And then the Meseta disappeared.
“The rain always asks the same question,” she said. “ ¿De qué está hecha tu sed? What is your thirst made of?” The Rain in Espana 1
“You want to know who I am,” she said. “I am the one who spins the rain. Every drop that falls on the Meseta passes through my hands first. I weigh it. I measure it. I decide whether it will be a soft shower that brings the barley or a flood that sweeps away a bridge.” “You are not Spanish,” she said
The rain came not in drops but in sheets, then in walls, then in something closer to a vertical river. Within sixty seconds, I was blind. My jacket became a second skin of cold water. The dirt track I had been following turned to chocolate-colored mud that sucked at my boots with every step. I could no longer see the village behind me, nor the low hills ahead. I was suspended in a world of grey and water, a solitary creature at the bottom of an invisible ocean. “The rain always asks the same question,” she said
“The rain remembers the Moors,” she continued. “It came during the siege of Toledo, so thick that archers could not see the walls. The king said it was Christian water fighting for him. The imam said it was a test from Allah. The rain said nothing. It simply fell.”