Snow in Palma

In this part of the world we know about the snow only from its imposing presence in Central European literature, in Nordic literature, in Russian literature. We recall vividly some endless snowfalls, where the slow falling of the flakes appear to raise the earth to the gray sky, but this snow falls in the works of Tolstoy, Chekhov and Pasternak, or it covers everything in the winter of Nils Holgersson crossing Sweden at Selma Lagerlöf’s hand… There’s plenty of snow in the books we have read, in Jack London, in Andersen, in Maupassant, in Kawabata, in Danilo Kiš, in Ádám Bodor… Therefore, when it snows in Palma, we go out to the streets, trying to understand it with all five senses, to register its mysterious form as if it were a sign of another world that we know will disappear very quickly. We do not get anything. It melts as soon as you touch it. Seen and unseen. Like a rainbow, like a wisp.