The minutes say 1963 and Evaristo was in Melilla

EXTRAORDINARY COUNCIL MEETING OF COBOS DE ABAJO — 20:04 — SINGLE ITEM

MRS OTERO (council clerk): I shall read the motion. "That the new junction on the N-630 be named Rotonda de Evaristo Lamas, in recognition of the resident who for eleven days during the 1963 flood supplied the village with his lorry."

MR LAMAS (resident, retired, drove the milk lorry until 1991, from the public gallery): In sixty-three I was in Melilla.

MR QUINTÁS (mayor): Evaristo, you are in the public gallery.

MR LAMAS: That is exactly why I am saying it now. Afterwards the session closes and nobody lets me.

MRS OTERO: Two minutes, Mr Lamas. I am closing the minutes tonight. The file has been on display for thirty days with no objections.

MR LAMAS: I did my military service there. I went in in November of sixty-three and I was discharged in June of sixty-four. It is in my service book, here.

(Pause.)

MR QUINTÁS: So the lorry…

MR LAMAS: The lorry was mine from seventy-one onwards. In sixty-three what stood in this square was my mother's inn. Pura Lamas. And my mother fed forty-two people for eleven days on what she had in her larder and on two sacks of flour she carried up on her back from the weighbridge. The supplying of the village was done by her. I was two thousand kilometres away learning how to make a bed.

MR QUINTÁS: Felisa, can this be fixed?

MRS OTERO: No, because the public display… Wait. Yes. If what changes is the name within this same item, it is an amendment and we vote on it now. If we withdraw the file, that is another thirty days and I publish the notices all over again.

MR QUINTÁS: An amendment, then. Rotonda de Pura Lamas.

MR BARDAL (councillor): The plaque has been cut since Tuesday.

MR QUINTÁS: Votes in favour?

(Four in favour. Three against.)

MRS OTERO: Carried, four votes. Remigio Oruña charges fourteen euros a letter: going from Evaristo to Pura saves four letters, fifty-six euros. Coming back out with the plaque already cut is ninety in call-out. It costs us thirty-four more.

MR BARDAL: That is why I voted against.

MR LAMAS: I will put up the thirty-four.

MRS OTERO: Then you bring it to the office tomorrow, between nine and two. I am not going to your house.

MR LAMAS: Nine o'clock. And on the day they unveil it I am putting flowers on my mother, because in sixty-three years this council has not put a single one.

MRS OTERO: That no longer belongs to this item.

(The session is adjourned at 20:19.)