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 Saga of The Kiss – or ‘peck’ – moves on with:-

• The Kissor’s Mum going on hunger strike until – very unlikely – he’s left alone,
• The Spanish FA threatening to sue the Kissee for defamation,
• Everyone in the Women’s game below the Kissor and his mate resigning en masse
• The Spanish government investigating a sexual crime.

At least, I think that’s what’s happening. I’m beginning to avoid articles on what has become a three-ring circus. But here or here is María on the wider issue at stake.

And here’s a DT article which puts the events in the wider context of the reaction to increased feminism in Spain in the last 20 years: Recent years have seen the rapid transformation of a patriarchal, macho society into one of Europe’s most feminist. This change, however, has been accompanied by a corresponding anti-feminist backlash from those who feel women’s progress has gone too far. Interesting tables.

By coincidence I read last night this paragraph in the latest history of modern Spain, re the lot of women in the Franco era:- This regression to the exclusive realms of motherhood and domesticity was reinforced by a long list of measures: the Labour Charter of 1938 had already declared that the state ‘will liberate the married woman from the workshop and the factory’. In 1941 contraception was criminalized and abortion made illegal; women were excluded from the ranks of the state’s legal and diplomatic corps between 1941 and 1943; the Criminal Code was amended in 1944 to raise the sanctions for infanticide and the abandonment of children, while the pre-republican double standard regarding adultery was reintroduced; and, finally, the Labour Agreements Law of 1944 stipulated that women required the authorization of their husbands in order to work. They also needed their husbands’ permission to obtain a passport, own a property, open a bank account, and even to cash their own pay cheque. In short, women’s rights took a huge step backwards under the dictatorship, which was bitterly ironic given that the leaders of the Sección Femenina were everything that women were not supposed to be – highly qualified, independent, and often single.

This morning, I’ve read this about Spanish education then and now: Under Franco, the Catholic Church was essentially gifted the education challenge. And so . . .  The values imparted in the schools were those of the regime itself; namely, order, discipline, Catholicism, Falangism, and adoration of the national saviour, the Caudillo (all classrooms displayed a photograph of both Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the ‘Absent One’, as well as a cross). Learning was through memorization, thereby fomenting an unquestioning acceptance of the ‘truth’, not critical analysis or engagement, a lamentable legacy that still blights the Spanish educational system today. At the university level, the Catholic unions were replaced by the Movement-controlled SEU, but the universities were still seen as innately Catholic, the students being subject to Catholic instruction and constituting, according to a law of 1943, a ‘theological army that is prepared to battle heresy in order to defend religious unity’. Further, the Superior Council of Scientific Investigation, established in November 1939, was placed under Catholic control from the outset, being intended to guarantee that, in the words of the minister of national education, ‘national science is emphatically Catholic’. Catholicism, in short, permeated the entire Francoist educational system. Like the Movement, the Church controlled national dailies, such as Ya, provincial newspapers, radio stations, and numerous publishers. Additionally, ecclesiastical courts recovered their jurisdiction over matrimonial matters, while the Church also became a censor of books, plays, and films.

I feart heard the criticism of rote learning more than 20 years ago and am surprised to see it still copping blame for inadequacies in the Spanish educational system. But not very much.

Back to today and to my region . . . A high-speed train from Galicia to Oporto and Lisbon? The VdG says that: Brussels has prepared the subsidies, the Spanish and Portuguese governments have planning in process and now Renfe wants to jump on the bandwagon. Possibly, it’s been encouraged to get involved because Iryo – a Spanish-Italian company – has already received EU approval, whatever that means. BUT: Portugal has yet to change its obsolete tracks into high-speed ones and the high-speed line from Vigo to the border has yet to be built. So, I’m confident I won’t be riding on a fast train to Oporto, never mind Lisbon, before I shuffle off this mortal coil. Maybe one of my grandchildren.

The Way of the World

Quite something of an overview . . . Civilisation or barbarism: that is the choice facing all great powers now. Humanity is confronting a pivotal moment that could consign us to darkness or launch a new era of liberty. Rationale here.

Spanish

Frikis: An article in today’s DdP confirms these can be gamers or folk who dress up. They just had a joint convention here. Possibly the groups overlap.

Finally . . .

When talking to my daughter and her husband about their separate (financed by me)flights to and from Spain (i.e. Oporto), I concluded they’d both been conned into paying twice for some ancillary services. So, I was interested to read this in The Times this morning: If a supermarket tried to charge us 5 pounds for fast-track till access, public outrage would slap it back into line. If a shop showed you a fridge without a plug, interior shelves and a door — but said you could buy all of which as extras, we’d walk away. And if a pharmacy increased the price of the remaining stocks of shampoo every time they sold a bottle, we’d complain to our MP. And, yet, airlines can do all of the above with impunity. Inexplicably, they’re allowed to disassemble the components of an airfare to show the lowest possible lead-in price in a bid to grab our business before the competition can. They employ algorithmic pricing, exploit the worry factor to maximise ancillary sales, and fool us into thinking that the more we pay, the more special we are. All very effective as you can see from the reported profits from extra charges and their massive recent increase.

On the flying theme . . . Because my daughter had been threatened in Manchester with a charge of 55 quid for a new – coloured – boarding pass because the Ryanair check-in machine couldn’t read the back and white QR on her print-out, we went to great lengths to get a colour copy here in Pv city. Only to find that, this time, the B&W version from my printer was perfectly OK at Oporto airport.

The other (extremely)good news is that, despite the traffc control mayhem in the UK yesterday afternoon, her return flight took off on time and arrived early. A miraculous escape from the Hell that is facing other (would-be) fliers this week.

But will my road-trip companion – flying from London (to Vigo!) next Saturday – actually make it in time for a Sunday departure?

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 – updated a bit in early July 2023