Spanish mermaid

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They write from Galicia in Spain that some fishermen lately took on that coast a sort of monster, or merman, five feet and half long from it’s foot to its head, which was like that of a goat. It has a long beard and moustaches, and black skin somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, and hand longer than they ought to be in proportion to the rest of the body: long fingers like those of a man, with nails like claws, very long toes, joined like the feet of a duck, and the heels furnished with fins resembling the winged feet with which painters represent Mercury.

From Scots Magazine 1739.

Ice wells in Fuendetodos

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Impressive ice well in Fuendetodos, birthplace of Goya. One of ~1000 in Aragón, Catalonia, Valencia, Murcia Built during the Little Ice Age (C16-19th) they were big business in Eastern Spain. Ice wae collected over winter in sierras, stored and shipped to the cities until the early C20th when technology rendered them obsolete.

It goes without saying that climate change has rendered them ultra-obsolete. So little snow falls in these places in the heating 21st century.

Frozen Ebro

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The River Ebro frozen at Tortosa, Catalonia, near its mouth. 1891, at the end of the so-called Little Ice Age. You’d have thought not much chance of this happening again for the foreseeable future, although climate sciencists say with heating world in chaos such cold snaps are also very possible.

Brown bear cub

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Esbardu. A lovely Asturian word meaning bear cub.
Some 370 brown bears now live in the Cantabrian mountains, on a steady path to recovery after a a nadir at the turn of the century.
Photo. @fundacion_oso_pardo

The Cantabrian bear population is distributed across the autonomous communities of Asturias, Cantabria, the Castillan regions of León and Palencia, as well as in recent years a small part of Lugo I. Galicia. Historically, the population declined until the late 20th century, but a recovery period began in the mid-1990s and continues to this day.

Basque whalers

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Hondarribia stamp bearing a right whale

Official stamp of the Basque border town of Hondarribia, dated 1335, showing the hunting of a Right Whale (Ballena de los vascos in Spanish). With local whales decimated by the end of the Middle Ages, Basque whalers found new population off Newfoundland, reaching these territories by the early C16th or even before.

Image Wikipedia