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

The Guardian puts the final nail in the coffin of Ciudadanos here.

And a pretty far-left Guardian columnist says the rise of the right in Europe is more than terrifying, apparently unaware that some it has to do with aversion to the causes he espouses

Vox 1. A Times columnist on Voz: The PP and Vox share positions on key issues such as an antipathy towards the government’s pacts with the far-left and Basque and Catalan separatist parties. But the two parties diverge on issues such as feminism and immigration, on which Vox holds views that appal moderate conservatives. More here.

Vox 2. Bits of a Times editorial view of Vox

• Combative on the issues of immigration and feminism, Vox espouses a return to a more traditional Spain, Catholic, paternalistic and centralised, rid of the regional tier of government that it [correctly] blames for waste and corruption, and fostering breakaway sentiment in Catalonia and the Basque region
• Vox is hostile to globalisation and greater political integration with the European Union it wants to boost Spain’s declining population with home-grown babies, and just maybe immigrants from Latin America willing to conform to its ideal of a Spain for the Spanish. Of course, Muslims are not welcome in this world, and gay couples would not be accorded the right of full marriage. 
• Like all populist movements, Vox is fuelled by a largely inchoate discontent with the status quo. Spaniards tend to decry the situation in their country while ignoring the enormous progress that the kingdom has made since fascism’s departure

As for a Grand Coalition to keep Vox out of government, The Corner thinks that: Observers expecting a grand coalition between the 2major parties may be disappointed. Although common in countries such as Germany, grand coalitions in Spain’s fragmented and polarised politics are particularly difficult to form. That said, we recognise that Sánchez has called early elections before and has proven himself adept at forming coalitions with unlikely partners.

Some good news . . . There’s going to be more competition on the high-speed train tracks between Madrid and regions other than those in the South. Even to Galicia, it seems.

I can’t say I’m unhappy about this, though I rarely spend time on beaches: The foundation that grants blue flags is now thinking of adding another requirement: that the beach is free of tobacco smoke. Even better news: The [Galician] Xunta wants to go further and extend the smoking ban to plazas, soccer fields, basketball courts, swimming pools and university campuses. I’d only want to add that offenders are shot, not just fined. But only if this turns out to be the democratic will, of course.

The UK

London is now an anti-car, anti-tourist ‘ghost city’ it says here – where: Shopping, eating and travelling are much more expensive than in rival capitals. All the fault of Brexit, no doubt. Rather than, say, imposing a tourist tax and stopping tourists buying goods tax-free.

Russia v Ukraine

It seems that current president, Putin, and ex-president, Medvedev, need to have a chat. The former says Russia is not at war with Ukraine, while the latter says that – within the framework of the universally accepted international law which regulates modern warfare – the UK helping of Ukraine constitutes an undeclared war against Russia.

Quote of The Day/(A)GW/Energy/The Way of the World

The idiot West is sleeping as the end of the world draws near. The obsession with net zero has left elites bizarrely blind to the risks posed by AI, biowarfare and nukes. More here. Some of us wonder if it will take a major war to change priorities.

(A)GW/Energy

Richard North today: I was thinking about writing a piece on wish/cycling which has emerged again as an issue, with a plaintive plea for householders to put less in their recycling. This comes alongside the realisation that plastic recycling may be doing more harm than good and is thus attracting the ire of the Greenies. We’ve been seeing articles for a while now, warning of problems with plastic recycling, with an interesting one in October 2018 warning that plastic was becoming “too expensive to recycle”, raising fears “that homeowners’ efforts to sort through their waste may be futile”.

Did you know?

An interesting map of how the Ottoman empire shrank in stages.

And this is a podcast on the final stage. Also available elsewhere.

Finally . . .

A friend commented that we’re getting thunderstorms at the same time every day, in the evening. I was about to mansplain that this was because the temperature on land was different from that at sea, when I realised Madrid isn’t exactly on the coast . .

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.