Cosas de España/Galicia   

Excellent  news for Galicia: Maersk will invest €10 billion in Andalusia and Galicia to develop 2 of the ‘5 or 6’ centres it needs to produce carbon-neutral fuel to serve its international energy needs. The fight has already begun around which locality in Pv province will get this. Maersk already operates out of nearby Marín. So local hopes are high.

Here’s Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas being dyspeptic about the Spanish Customs. I might well have first posted this 4 years ago but don’t recall. Mostly the fault of Brexit, of course. Giving Spanish bureaucrats the chance to go to town. Im a way which helps to guarantee their employment. As you’d expect.

There’s am ‘emblematic’ café – A Carabela – in a corner of Pv city’s main square. Actually just off it in the plazita de Estrella. When I came here, it was still the place to be seen, especially after Mass on Sunday, and to be attended to by uniformed waiters. But it went downmarket and down hill and eventually closed. To be bought by the daughter of a nearby tapas bar. But she only kept it open for a while and then closed it more than 2 years ago. Meaning we’ve been denied terrace service there for all that time. The rumour was that it’d been bought by the Galician Estrella beer company and they were reforming it. But nothing seemed to happen, until the report this week that it’ll reopen soon, under the ownership of a private chap who owns a hamburger place in the city. It was famous, as I recall, for its calamares, so I will try them as soon as I can and report back. Meanwhile, a 1969 film shot in Pv city has scenes – at 0.48 – inside and outside the restaurant. The wet ground resulting from ‘typical’ Galician rain was produced by a hose. No raindrops on the star’s umbrella.

Amusingly, the mayor of Marbella is threatening legal action over claims that she knew her husband and son were drug dealers. Not a close family, then.

After yet another pedestrian death on a Galician road – and after seeing the effect of them – I’m glad I lashed out on 2 fluorescent armbands at €7 each.

The UK

Nice: Michael Deacon in The Times:I’ve concluded that Matt Hancock is a masochist. Humiliation gives him a thrill. A glorious, ecstatic, rapturous kick. He simply can’t get enough of it. So keeps on and on coming back for more. It just goes to show how far our political class has fallen. In the old days, if an MP wanted to be humiliated, he would go to Soho and pay a prostitute to whip him. A much more respectable choice. Because at least he didn’t expect the rest of us to watch.

Quote of the Day/Social Media

Many longstanding Twitter users are deleting their accounts in fury at Elon Musk’s takeover. They believe that the changes he wants to make will utterly destroy the platform. I do hope they’re right. If so, it would be $44billion worth spent. Twitter has poisoned public debate in any number of ways, but the very worst thing it has done is to turn opinions into fashion items.

BTW . . . On Twitter, a ‘blue tick’ account-holder is someone whose identity has been verified. Apparently favoured by celebrities and politician. You have to pay for it.

English

‘Permacrisis’ is the  new Word of the Year for the folk at Collins Dictionary 

‘Parkour’: Some sort of exercise regime. French, apparently

Did you know? 

‘tldr’ is short for the disdainful: ‘Too long. Didn’t read it’.

Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines.

Finally   . . . .  .

Just to remind you . . . “A perfect gift for Christmas’:-

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.