Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable

Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’

Cosas de España

Pep Guardiola says he’s ‘not optimistic’ that the racism problem in Spain will improve, adding that La Liga should learn from the measures taken by the ‘strict’ Premier League over the last 20 years. I can’t say I’m too optimistic either. Despite the (panicky) noises being made right now, because of potential financial consequences to a failure to address this issue before now.

Coalitions of left-wing parties are always fissiparous, each member claiming to be more pure than the other(s). Spain’s current government is basically a coalition between the socialist PSOE party and the further-left/’Communist’ Podemos party. Now called United Podemos, because – I think – it now includes some farthest-left faction(s). As if that wasn’t enough, an ex Podemos minister has formed a ‘movement’, called Suma(‘Unite’), and is apparently determined to split the Left vote and allow the Right parties back into power next year. This is a lady call Yolanda Díaz, whose movement/future party has no candidates in tomorrow’s municipal and regional elections but certainly will have for the 2024 general elections. Hard to figure out as she might be, Sra Díaz doesn’t suffer from poverty of ambition and seems to believe she will beat Sra Ayuso of the right-wing PP party to the prestigious title of first female Prime Minister of Spain. It’s very had to join her in her belief. Anyway, there’s something on her – so far ‘unstoppable’- rise here. TBH, I have no idea how her policies differ either from UP to her left or PSOE to her right. I wonder how many voters do. Possibly just rather more charismatic than the leaders of both those parties. Or at least better turned out.

The building I included yesterday is in Calle Noviciado in Malasaña and is the HQ of a charity called Acción Social Protestante. I found myself walking past it again last evening.

Given his reputation, I was surprised yesterday to see I was in a street here in Carabanchel named after Salvador Allende. Or, rather, I was until I realised I was confusing him with the dictator Augusto Pinochet. All these Chileans look the same to me . . .

The UK

The notion that the Tories are uniquely evil, craven and incompetent – and that all our current ills flow from the original sin of Brexit – ignores the real causes of the crisis we are in and lets the Tories’ similarly useless opponents off the hook. . . . Commentators would rather blame Brexit for our cost-of-living crisis than decades of dire economic and energy policies that they either ignored or tacitly supported.

Germany

In recession, I read. Wasn’t this supposed to happen only to the UK? Which isn’t, in fact. Though perilously close to it

(A)GW/Energy

More on the economic consequences of Net Zero ambitions . . . Environmentalism is a bourgeois cult that wants ordinary people to put up with less. No wonder workers are fighting back. See “Just Stop Oil and the Climate Class War” here.

The Way of the World

Is veganism really cult? And has it passed its peak popularity? This columnist thinks so.

Spanish

I saw the phrase enfermedad de mobilidad and wondered if it meant constipation. But I guess it doesn’t. Or at least, not always. Constipado: Stuffed up. Un constipado: A cold.

Did you know?

Orcas are colloquially know as ‘killer whales’. But they are, in fact, dolphins. Back in the 19^th century, whalers – having seen them at work – nicknamed them ‘whale killers’. But, along the way, this got inverted. And the rest is (boating) history.

Finally . . .

A repeat appearance . . .

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.