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’

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

Some Spaniards – possibly ‘65,000’ of them – were revolting in Madrid yesterday. Against the PM’s job-saving dealing with Catalan separatists. In this endeavour, he’s not being helped by at least one PSOE ex PM. Near term, we’re about to witness the failed attempt of the right-of-centre PP party to form a government. After which, the chalice will be passed to the PSOE leader. If he, too, fails, there’ll be another general election quite soon. Someone in the PP has accused the PSOE leader of being a psychopath. This raises the question of how many politicians keen to reach the top of the ‘greasy pole’ aren’t narcissistic psychopaths these days.

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for these items:-

• Spanish carrier Air Nostrum has ordered 20 helium airships from a British manufacturer for flights to the Balearic Islands. These can land anywhere, so don’t need airports.
• A consumer group’s spokesperson claims that: ‘There’s a staggering lack of competition in the banking sector that does little to encourage change’. And that: ‘They’re more concerned about increasing profits by reducing costs than in winning fresh customers’. This comes after reports of massively increased profits and a large number of layoffs. As I’ve before, it’s actually a surprise that one isn’t charged for breathing the air inside Spanish bank offices. Where practices differ greatly from those of, say, British banks. Or my Italian on-line bank.
• Way back in 2000, right wing groups started legal action against the far-left party Podemos, which has recently virtually disappeared from the political scene, replaced by Sumar. Very, very few folk believed the allegations of illegal funding and the case was finally binned very recently, a mere 23 years after it was initiated.

Pv city returns to normal today, after a successful and very well organised – but noisy – international triathlon competition. For the record, a Frenchman won the men’s elite event but British women came in at 1 and 2 in theirs. It seems there were no transgender participants in the latter. Maybe they’re banned.

At midday yesterday, I watched – briefly – what I suspected was an allcomers event. At least 2 genders were involved and the age range was very wide, seeming to include folk in their 70s or 80s. But all clearly slim and fit. Well, most of them, at least. The pace of the contestants varied enormously and, by the end, some of them were reduced to walking around the (hilly) urban course in Pv city’s old quarter. I was left admiring of their commitment but wondering why they do it. Especially the many who had a look of agony on their faces, as they toiled in the midday sun. Some of them had come a very long way to do so.

More quotes from Cees Noteboom’s Roads to Santiago:

• [Of poor old Felipe II, him of the Spanish Armada of 1588]: In April 1574 the army which had been assembled in Germany to come to the assistance of the Dutch rebels suffered a crippling defeat But this was not to bring cheer to Philip for long. The force of gravity of his distant territories was against him and in June he wrote “I believe that everything is a waste of time, judging by what is happening in the Low Countries, and if they are lost the rest of the monarchy will not last long, even if we have enough money” . He was right. The great, sombre decline of Spain had begun, it became a country that didn’t count anymore, where old times were perpetrated, so that until recently crossing the Spanish border was like entering another continent, and even more like stepping into the past, as if it were actually possible to travel in Europe like a contemporary of Stendhal’s, to see what the world had looked like before progress, with all its merits and demerits, set in–
• My attention is called now and then by a blue sparkle in the bushes, a lightning flash of blue, and it is only when I stop the car and wait that I discover what it is, an azure-winged magpie, the envoy from the tropics which is found only here, in this part of Spain. [Guadalupe, in Extremadura]

If he’s referring to the common-or-garden magpie(hurraca), the bloody things are not exactly rare in my garden, here in Galicia. In his favour, I’ve just seen this on Wiki. And this. I suspect the latter have moved north. Seeking cooler weather perhaps . . .

The UK

The columnist I cited yesterday on Russel Brand is an ex-Leftist now writing – along with one or 2 others of the same ilk – in the right-of-centre Telegraph. She had this to say say her ex male colleagues on the (hard)left: The right wing played its part in elevating Brand, according him a political bogeyman status that served him well. But the left did more. The British hard left has a long history of treating women as irrelevant collateral. Female Labour MPs have long complained about sexism on the left (“Left-wing men are the worst — the actual worst,” Jess Phillips has said). The left is also prone to worshipping messianic male figures. It is no surprise that so many of the men photographed cosying up to Brand — Jeremy Corbyn, Billy Bragg and others — are from the far left. People say things have changed since the 2000s, but not in this arena, they haven’t. Many far-left men now express their misogyny not by praising a comedian who talked about choking women with blow jobs but by sneering at women for defending their rights and maintaining their boundaries, calling them Karens and bigots and Terfs. And the women around them say nothing — because they’re all on the same side, right? As I said, partisanship is a strong drug.

(A)GW/Energy/Net Zero

The chart I showed yesterday is taken from this video.

A UK columnist alleges here that: On net zero, Britain can’t afford to be the moral model to the world. Which is surely right.

Spanish

Cacidada: As in: Los españoles no somos tontos y no vamos a tragar con este fraude y esta cacÍcada. The RAE: Arbitrary action typical of a cacique or someone who behaves in the same way.

Finally . . .

The UK’s ‘shoplifting capital’ has been revealed, and it isn’t Liverpool. In fact, this fine city doesn’t even make the Top Ten. Some classic jokes at its expense will have to be revised . . . It’s Leeds, by the way.

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.