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

Spain’s beaches and restaurants are targeted by anti-tourism activists. . . Groups have attacked hotspots and estate agents in the Balearic islands and on the mainland. This can only increase

Finders Keepers seems to be a tenet of Spanish life, at least where I live. And in Madrid. I lost an expensive pen in the Prado years ago and was laughed at when I asked where the Lost Property office was. Here in Pontevedra, I’ve lost several Panama hats over the years but have long given up writing my name and number in them, as no one has ever called me. And this week, I left a paper bag with a cashmere pullover in one of 2 places I stopped in after picking it up from the seamstress. But it wasn’t handed it at either of these.

Just in case you think Chelsea tractors are confined to the posher barrios of London, here’s the scene outside my house yesterday – three 4×4 SUVs. The logic defies me, other than wanting to make a statement about your wealth. Or something else:-

Today’s quote from Cees Noteboom’s Roads to Santiago, of 1992. Please note I’m not necessarily endorsing his views, nor claiming they’re accurate. They are ‘interesting’:-

• I first went to Italy in 1953 when I was twenty years old and I thought I had found everything I had ever, unknowing, been looking for. Spain after that was a disappointment. Under the same Mediterranean sun, the language struck me as harsh, the landscape as barren, everyday life as coarse. It didn’t flow, it wasn’t pleasant, it was absolutely ancient and out of reach, it had to be conquered. I can no longer think in those terms. Italy is still a delight but I have a feeling – it is not possible to talk of these things without resorting to an odd, mystical terminology – that the Spanish character and the Spanish landscape correspond to what in essence I am, to conscious and unconscious things in my being, to what I am about.
• Spain is brutish*, anarchic, egocentric, cruel. Spain is prepared to face disaster on a whim, she is chaotic, dreamy, irrational. Spain conquered the world and then did not know what to do with it, she harks back to her Mediaeval, Arab, Jewish and Christian past and sits there impassively like a continent that is appended to Europe and yet is not Europe, with her obdurate towns studding those limitless empty landscapes. Those who know only the beaten track do not know Spain. Those who have not roamed the labyrinthine complexity of her history do not know what they are travelling through. It is the love of a lifetime, the amazement is never ending.

*My voice-to-text app had this as ‘British’.

Oh, yes , , , I don’t share his approach to punctuation . . .

Portugal

Let’s hear it for the minnows of Portugal’s rugby team, who put on a great display last night when losing to one of the top-rank teams, Wales – A joyous display that captured the intoxicating potential of underdogs at World Cups.

The UK

The values Brits want in their children: We still want our young to be selfless and polite but imagination has risen up our priorities. Manners are still crucial, but the importance we place on children doing as they’re told appears to have plummeted in the past 30 years. A survey has shown that British adults care far less about children being obedient than they did in 1990, and now place more value on independence, hard work and imagination. The researchers believe that their findings reflect a more liberal and individualistic society. Our top priorities are constant, however. In 1990 the most important things parents could teach were good manners and not to be selfish, and the same is true today.

Scotland may never recover from the SNP’s venomous nationalism. (Is there any form of nationalism which isn’t fundamentally venomous?)

France

A French gynaecologist has provoked a national controversy by refusing to examine a transgender patient on the grounds that he is only qualified to treat “real women”. Poor misguided chap.

The USA

An insight . . . Biden’s tall tales won’t stop him running in 2024. Even his party won’t tell him the truth. Selected quotes:-

• Biden has always taken it too far and here is a small theory on why he tells lies: it is not only that he likes to make up stories and to be at the centre of them, it is that he entered national politics in 1972, before mass-media saturation. 
• The Democrats are a party broken into pieces, just like the Republicans.

Quotes of the Day

• The tyranny of the minority”: The way small groups – enabled by the internet – bend larger groups to their will. 
• Cancel culture only works in the context of institutional appeasement. 

The Way of the World

A few years ago I cited a fascinating BBC podcast on the Bulgarian ‘crypto-queen’, Ruja Ignatova. Who’d fraudulently amassed, I think, 16 billion dollars but escaped justice. Unlike her British partner in crime, who’s just been jailed. As I recall, the lady is living – openly but protected – in a German city. Dusseldorf? Some of the many thousands of devastated victims of ‘the world’s biggest fraud’ speak here.

English

The ERGRO solution – UND

Spanish

• Guateque: Party; Shindig; Discotheque
• Colarse: To sneak in. One of the verb’s many meanings.

Did you know? . . .

These are the things that really get on baby boomers’ nerves. You might be old enough to empathise.

Finally . . .

This is an artiste who gave a performance in Pv city’s private club – El Casino – last Sunday. I missed it but have read of the storm of protest from members. Which introduced me to the word guateque.

An appeal: Does anyone know of any non-Spanish male 15-60 who’d like to take part in a 7-a-side match against my friends Os Porcos Bravos on Sunday 30 September in Pv city? The visiting Sheffield Stags are short of players this year. I blame Brexit. If so, please comment and I’ll find a way to be in contact.

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.

For those thinking of moving to Spain:- This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers. Which is possibly why – I’ve just belatedly realised – his nom-de-plume is Johnnie Walker . . . And I’d thought he was a big whisky fan.

Which, it turns out, he really is . . .