Cosas de España/Galiza 

Sad to relate, Spain’s coastal strips have long been for sale. Or most of them, at least. And now comes news that: More than 6 million square metres of pristine coastline in Tarifa are in line for urban development. All rubber stamped by the council. Not surprisingly: A cabal of bankers and housing developers are rubbing their hands with glee. It’s being resisted by a national campaign but I confidently predict this will fail, allowing Tarifa town hall to increase its urban footprint by 450%. Making a few folk very rich. Both entrepreneurs and civil servants.

Here’s Brendy Boyle on the side of Spain that too few see. I recall reading Giles Tremlett’s comments about how kids are treated here. Back then, I was giving conversation classes to teachers of English at major Pv school and once a week had to experience the horrendous noise of kids leaving their classes at the end of lessons. Of discipline there seemed to be very little. At least after the bell had sounded.

En passant, several of the fotos in that article are taken in Pontevedra. To where Mr Boyle might have moved a year or two ago, before possibly moving back to Madrid.

I very much enjoyed the final day of the Gaelic football tournament in Pv city yesterday and hope it’ll become an annual event. Thankfully, the temperatures on Friday and Saturday were well below Thursday’s 39 and no one seemed to suffer anything like heatstroke. It was a very good-natured event, with the predominant language – except among the French teams, of course – being English in an Irish accent. The sport is rarely violent, at least at this level, but the male teams in the final were, shall we say, rather more robust that the female teams in theirs. I half expected the raucous crowd to spontaneously erupt into C’mon Eileen at some point but, sadly, no. As mentioned, there were teams from Brittany in France but this was an unexpected shirt:-

On the beach with my daughter and grandson this week, I was very surprised to note that most of the women over 25 were overweight. Which rather brought home the regular reports about Spaniards – especially the indulged kids – getting heavier.

Germany

Why is Mrs Merkel’s legacy being brutally reassessed there. Allegedly. Click here to find out.

The Way of the World/Quote of the Day  

In the UK: These days the sun has only to poke its head above the parapet, and the experts at the vast and vastly expensive UK Health Security Agency (HSA) and at the Met Office begin to issue dire threats and warnings that amount to: stay inside, in a cold bath, or you will shrivel up and die. Instead of heralding nice sunny days, as they used to, they talk of devastation, disaster and mortality. It wasn’t always like this. I remember with great happiness the 1976 heatwave, when all we had between us and annihilation was the “Minister for Rain”, instead of the 5,000 employees of the HSA. The highest temperature then, 35.6C, was only a couple of degrees lower than the present record and, more important, we had temperatures higher than 32C continuously for over two weeks — nothing like that has happened since. Yes, there was a drought and standpipes in the street, but I don’t remember the constant nannying we have today, the repeated injunctions to do the bleedin’ obvious, such as take it easy and maybe have a cold drink now and again. Instead I remember the sheer bliss and the novelty of staring wide-eyed in astonishment in early September when it began to rain. But they think we are all stupid now, too thick to look after ourselves, and so they treat us as if we were intellectually challenged children.

A propos . . .

Heatwaves and the climate of fear

Spanish  

Can anyone fluent in Spanish help me with this headline, as my Madrileño son-in-law can’t?: Mende, gran ring para un nuevo cheque volcánico.

Finally  . . . 

A good site for the perpetually curious.

For new readers: If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.