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

Here’s Fascinating Spain on Albarracín, a village my old friend and I visited on our recent road trip to Aragón and Navarra.

It’s very good to know from the VdG that: The Galician health system – like those of all Spanish regions, – has prevented an opiate crisis like the one affecting the USA. Fentanyl use in Galicia is limited to hospitals,where it’s used in operating theatres and ICUs,. While only patches are available in pharmacies. Relatedly, a woman down south has been charged with using blank prescriptions from a doctor friend to acquire a huge quantity of fentanyl pills, to sell of course. Which reminded me that, a few years ago, I saw this questionable blank-prescription practice done as a favour for a hypochondriac friend.

Two odd reports this week:-

• The family of a young man killed in a road accident have, 3 years later, received a bill for cleaning the road. But subsequently a cancellation and an apology.
• A suicidal woman who threw herself out of a 3rd floor window has received a bill from the bomberos who came to her aid. No mention yet of a cancellation and an apology for her.

A truce has been declared between the mayor of Pv city and the market traders unhappy with their allocated new location. And a compromise, of sorts, has been agreed; they’re going back to their old site, across the river, in Xunqueira. This smells to me like a defeat for the mayor. But not really a victory for the traders, who want an Alameda site, close to the city centre.

I saw an unusual sight in Pv city yesterday morning – a young woman wearing a bra. Back in the 1960s and 7os, women discarded this garment in the name of feminism. Now it’s being done in the name of fashion. A much stronger force, it seems.

Another quote from Cees Noteboom’s Roads to Santiago: [Writing from Valencia in the 1980s]: I must get away from here, I must leave this town on the coast and head inland, to that other ocean with its luminous, dun-coloured waves, an ocean of olive groves and roads on which nobody drives. That is what I have come for, and I know it is hard to explain what is so seductive about these hours of heat and drought, the formations of olive trees marching up the hillsides like a burning vision, the parched river beds and the unassuming, often semi-abandoned villages. Time and again a new panorama opens up before my eyes, different and still the same. Don’t tell me, I know, those who do not see or hear will find nothing but a sandpit, a desert, illlit taverns, coarse food, land that prostrates itself before you, slow and gaunt, withdrawn, irresistible. I often think I should have been born here but perhaps it’s the other way round, the very circumstances of my birth in the marshy green lowlands has made me sensitive to the temptations of harshness and stone.

For some reason, after dictating that, I said Shit! Which came up as ****. As did another word I tried.

Portugal

From a British TV quiz show:-

• Q. An eight-letter word beginning with ‘port’ that is a country lying on the Atlantic coast of the Iberian Peninsula
• A: Patagonia

The USA

Talking of fentanyl . . . In this FT article on the disadvantaged of the USA, it’s claimed that the opioid crisis was triggered by predatory pharmaceutical practices  absent elsewhere in the world.

Quote of the Day

The shortest ambiguous sentence I’ve come across is a road sign found everywhere in New York. It consists of 3 words: ‘Fine for Parking.’

English

My Canadian cousin insists that they don’t say roondaboots in Canada. So, it’s a (North) American slander.

Spanish/Did you know? . . .

Caló is the language of the Iberian gypsies. But it’s also the argot or slang of Mexican-American Spanish. I wonder why.

Narcofrutero: Someone who smuggles drugs in fruit consignments. Obviously.

Finally . . .

A warning . . . This is a short series of emails received from someone known to me. Smelling a rat, I checked it out and confirmed it was a scam. But a good one, as it used the name of someone I know, writing from an apparently genuine emal address and using my own forename, not my email ‘handle’:-

• How are you doing ? Hope you are keeping safe ? So sorry to bother you, If I may ask Do you use Amazon often?
• Please I need to get an Apple e-gift card for a friend of mine, she is down with Cancer of the Liver and it’s her birthday today. I promised to get it for her, I tried purchasing online but unfortunately it says they are having issues charging my card, Can you help me get it from your Amazon account? I’ll pay back
• i need you to buy from your account and i will pay you back, all you need is my friends email address for the gift card delivery and amount needed on it.
• Here are the details needed below

Email address: charlotte_purdie@hotmail.com

Amount: £250

Message: Love from [friend’s name]

How soon can you give it a try?

that’s the details

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.