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 Spanish PM has not only bewildered many but angered quite a few by calling for elections that aren’t just early but, worse, set to take place in one of the 2 less-than-busy holiday months. Though I suspect civil servants won’t garner much sympathy nationwide.

I suspect it’s a majority view in the business world that rent controls are counter-productive and lead to structural faults in the property market. Here’s Mark Stücklin with info on how Franco’s 1950s and 1960s ‘socialist’ measures did this. With effects right up to current times, 70 years later.

Someone with long experience of being a black player in Spanish football, expresses his views here on recently (re)raised issues.

This is an article on nice villas to stay in in northern Spain, including Galicia – a region of wild shores and wondrous seafood. I can’t say how accurate the descriptions are but I see there’s a reference to ‘affiliate links’. And maybe it’s relevant that the only time they translate a bit of Galician, they’re wrong. Rías Baixas doesn’t mean Low Rivers but Low – i. e. further South -Estuaries. Something of a difference. And it’s noteworthy that they don’t explain why northern Spain is beautifully green. But maybe it’s obvious to the intelligent reader . . .

There was an horrendous restaurant fire down south a while ago, when a waiter setting alight to a pudding – or a steak – did likewise with the large quantities of plastic tendrils hanging from the ceiling. I thought of this yesterday when I saw these above me in a place I was patronising for the first time:-

I didn’t ask if they were real and, as the glass of wine was €3.30 against €2.50 across the road, I won’t be going back to pursue the question.

(A)GW/Energy

The collateral damage of Net Zero is now getting uncomfortably close to home. First Dutch farmers were threatened with compulsory purchases to satisfy EU emissions targets, fomenting a new revolt in the process. Now it’s Ireland’s turn, where the government is reportedly looking at plans to cull around 200,000 cows to meet its climate targets. The scheme would be a bit like voluntary redundancy, with farmers offered financial inducements to give up their [methane emitting?] cows.

Given its impact on poorer folk, it’s possibly valid to claim – as it is here – that: The Net Zero drive is regressive taxation dolled up as ‘saving the planet’ – a backward, punishing ideology that hits working people hardest. Possibly refelecting class-hatered for ‘the deplorables’.

The Way of the World

Incidentally, the holder of that view has a book out next week – “A Heretic’s Manifesto”. This is his blurb on it. Can a woman have a penis? Is the West forever stained by racism? Are we all going to die from climate change? To the liberal establishment of London, New York or Sydney, the answer to all of these questions is ‘Yes’. And anyone who disagrees is a racist, climate-denying transphobe. Our elites have become convinced of some very strange and extreme ideas. And yet there is precious little pushback against them. Critics are cowed by the threat of shaming, cancellation, even arrest. The new orthodoxies of our age are risible, and yet the space for dissent is shrinking. We need more heretics. Throughout history, it has been those brave enough to puncture the prevailing groupthink who have propelled society forward. But they are in shockingly short supply today.* In this collection of original essays, Brendan O’Neill remakes the case for heresy – and commits a few heresies of his own along the way.

*As I’ve asked, where is Jonathan Swift when you need him?

Social Media

As I have a VPN set to London, Facebook keeps sending me ads for things for sale there, priced in pounds of course. I wonder how many times one has to tell FB that you want Fewer of this type of ad for them to take a blind bit of notice. But at least they have the grammar correct. Correction: They don’t, using ‘less’ when it should be ‘fewer’. Admittedly, an old rule which is falling by the wayside among the young.And not-so-youmg

Spanish

This was a sign in a (very clean) toilet:-

I wondered if tirar was the right verb and, after I’d discovered that the barista was Bulgarian, I wondered even more. Anyone know? I mean, it’s not as if you’re being asked – extremely politely – to pull una cadena. In this case, it’s not even a handle but a button on the top of the tank.

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.