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’

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Cosas de España/Galicia

The Letizia Lover scandal. Bit of a surprise, though I imagine she’s had many ‘offers’. But I don’t need to go into the details, I guess. Hard to understand why her ex has brought this out into the open now. Perhaps just a cabrón. [Which reminds me: Overheard in Dos de Mayo in Madrid on Sunday, a mother to her 6 year old daughter: Vamos, Elena, coño.]

Here’s Fascinating Spain on some of Spain’s spectacular castles.

The headline says it all . . .

Asturias might be rejoicing about the arrival of a high speed train but there’s been no progress around its arrival in A Coruña, Ferrol. Santiago de Compostela, Pontevedra city and Vigo for more than 2 years. And no one believes in promises about its (decades-delayed) arrival. Waste of time trying to impress Gallegos with bad news new HS2 in the UK. At least I know now why the train from Madrid always stops for a while just short of Ourense. And then crawls through/around the city. Taking another 2 hours to get to Pv city, c. 100km south of it,.

You might have seen that – like the UK – Spain has fallen in each of the 3 columns of the PISA educational tests – which is bad news, of course – but the more interesting data, I think, is of the variations between Western European states and their relative positions. Germany, for example, does less well than I would’ve expected. You can interrogate the tables here. Estonia is the only Western state that competes with Asian states for excellence.

More good/bad news . . . 7,200 kilos – 7.2 tonnes – of cocaine were impounded in La Coruña this week, having arrived in a shipment of tuna. I guess I don’t need to say where it came from.

Sweden

This (troubled) country is said to be leading the way on heat pumps. Rather like Poland, I think. And a Swedish manufacturer has announced a new model for financing installations in the UK market, where buyers lag far behind those of elsewhere. Partly because current building regulations militate against installation.

The USA

Some very good news out of Detroit. But there’s still some way to go.

Social Media

Meta news . . . Being sued. Couldn’t be happening to a nicer company . . . Though Ryanair could give it a good run for its money, I guess.

Finally . . .

On the home front, the good news is that both the plumber and the CH engineer solved the respective problems yesterday. But there is still water dripping from my kitchen ceiling and I still don’t have any heating. I was about to call the supplier of my new boiler but have just recalled that today is the first of this week’s 2 national holidays. So that would be a complete waste of time. I will have to make do with an email today and a phone call early tomorrow, in the hope that, since Friday is also a holiday, I won’t have to wait until next week for the problem with the thermostat to be solved. I imagine this will be by me financing a new thermostat mechanism.

Oh, and the mushrooms in the lawn have been joined by molehills . . . .

The Usual Links . . .

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.