Cosas de España/Galiza

Interesting to see that both the centrist party and the 2 right-wing parties oppose a change in the law about prosecuting Francoist atrocities. One of the PP senators went so far as to claim that the new law was “a weapon” and a “betrayal of the Spanish people” that “aims to turn us into a leftist militant democracy”. Anyone know what sort of animal that is?  I suspect she’d be more at home in the Vox party.

A rather disturbing report on sexist machismo in a Catholic college here in Madrid.

Mark Stücklin tells you here how to become a digital nomad in Spain. Old hands will fear they won’t escape the bureaucracy to the extent they’re promised.

My grandson was 3 in January and started primary school in September. The youngest pupil in his class is only 2 as his 3rd birthday will be in December this year. For some reason, the Spanish system includes December as a month of the following year. Seems very young for kids to attend primary school but I doubt that, at this tender age, they do much more than learn how to socialise when there.

Cheating doesn’t quite carry the same degree stigma here in Spain as it does in, say, the UK. Years ago I was astonished to see how tolerant a group of teachers of English was towards a colleague who was seeking inside knowledge of an important test she was about to take. I thought of the incident when reading of this driving test ‘scam’ down South.

I was a tad taken aback at the €14 price of a G&T in Plaza Mayor last night. But we did have the pleasure of seeing the (Mexican) waitress almost collapse in laughter when I referred to myself as a guiri viejo.

At my favourite tapas place later on, we had the even more pleasant experience of a waiter telling us the bill he’d given us was too high, as they’d included 2 brandies (also at €14 each) instead of the single one enjoyed by my colleague.

The EU/Europe

Spain and Belgium have said they’re none too happy with the German fiscal stimulus package, seeing it as potentially prejudicial to other EU members. Something, of course, which hasn’t much bothered German decision-makers over the years.

M Macron now has a wider vision of ‘Europe’, it says here. Post the Ukraine invasion: The very existence of the new summit acknowledges that the EU’s ambition to speak for Europe is no more. Now, for the first time, the EU has gone out of its way to respect the concerns of non-member states and accept that their voice deserves to be heard just as loudly.

Ukraine v Russia

An unhappy 70th birthday for Mr Putin?

The Way of the World/Social Media

Another article on the modern curse of social media. Now we know for sure that big tech peddles despair, we must protect ourselves.

Spanish

Tener envidia sana: Literally ‘To have healthy envy’ but possibly just ‘To be envious’.

English  

SMS abbreviation: ‘tldr/tl:dr’ – Too long; didn’t read

Finally   . . . .   

Some idiots get lucky . . . An English youth tried to climb Mont Blanc in just a tracksuit and was found by rescuers just minutes away from death, with a body temperature of 25C, some 10C below the hypothermia threshold. But he had taken a tarpaulin to use as a tent . . . 

To amuse . . .

That cartoon reminds me of one of my favourites, which I can’t post now as I’m away from home. It has the Chinese emperor saying to his chief engineer – who has a lot of smiling Mongol warriors standing behind him, with a wall behind them – “When I asked you to build a great wall to keep out the Mongol hordes, couldn’t you have checked which side of it they were on before you finished it?”

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.