Life in Spain 

Taking a beer in the centre of Pv city at midday yesterday, I was astonished to see dozens of camino ‘pilgrims’ setting out for Caldas de Réis at 13.30, around the hottest time of a very hot day. Possibly they’d come from Arcade – 2 hours away – and were only planning to walk another couple of hours to an intermediate albergue. But, even so, it struck me as unwise to be walking at this hour, rather than, say, 6am to noon. One of said ‘pilgrims’ was sporting an umbrella as a parasol, to the amusement of other – more nonchalant – walkers.

The other thing I noticed was a young lady constantly taking 1 or 2 pairs of shoes between the 3 shoe shops in spitting distance of my perch. I guessed that, despite having different names, they share ownership. But why incur 3 sets of costs?

Last evening, a visitor and I received calls from Madrid numbers which were both identified as ‘associated with spam’. The funny thing is that they were simultaneous, raising the question of whether everyone in Poio (or Pontevedra, of Galicia or Spain) was receiving such a call from a machine. With the objective of motivating them to (pointlessly but expensively) return a call to a premium number. Imagine the cost of a brief but expensive call multiplied by, say, 25 million. Or even just 1 million.

Cosas of Spain/Galiza 

Here’s something you might want to attend, if you’re in Galicia around now

That controversy about the 3 – yes 3 –  British models used for the Equality Ministry’s campaign re beach bodies . . . The finger has been pointed at the ad agency – Arte Apache – whose web page has strangely disappeared from sight. But the remorseful designer has said he’ll be sharing his €5,000 fee with offended persons. Or some of them, anyway.

The Spanish tourist board – not unexpectedly – has stressed that the rule re visitors having enough cash to hand is not ‘new’ and that it’ll only be applied exceptionally. But I guess it’d still be wise to have the relevant paperwork in your bag. 

The UK & EU

AEP – not an admirer of the EU – provides a correction to all the UK-centric doom and gloom of the British media. Sort of:-

The UK will slide into recession later this year as the global economy rolls over. However, the eurozone is also in trouble. The underlying contraction of the real money supply is flashing a red alert, and the end of QE bond purchases by the ECB has ripped away the Club Med debt shield. The long-standing pathologies of a half-baked monetary union are again coming to the fore.  Britain is indeed in a horrible mess but for reasons that mostly have little to do with Brexit. The eurozone is in an equally-horrible mess, and arguably suffering an even worse confluence of headaches for reasons that have a great deal to do with the construction of EMU. Germany in particular has manoeuvred itself into an economic and political crisis of Zeitwende[turning point] proportions by outsourcing everything: its energy supply to Putin’s Russia, its aggregate demand to Xi Jinping’s China, its military defence to America, and its monetary policy to the ECB. It is not Schadenfreude to point this out. The blunt truth is a necessary corrective to those in the UK’s internal Briton-to-Briton political debate who compulsively exaggerate the EU’s relative economic performance without having the foggiest idea what is actually happening across the Channel.

Russia

A rather add promotional video. Possibly a spoof.

Spanish 

La seca; ‘Una expresión muy de [South]América relativa a un largo período sin lluvia’.

English

Nutzoid: A new (to me) word for ‘an insane or wacky person’

Finally  . . .

Well, who would’ve believed it but there is at least – most? – one person interested in seeing my stuff on the escudos of Pv? Makes it all worthwhile.

To amuse . . .  

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.