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

Fernando Savater is perhaps Spain’s finest writer but that didn’t stop him being fired by (left-of-centre) El País. The Times has his account of this here, plus his critical views on the current PSOE administration. A taster: For Savater, and many others, Spain is losing its way: its institutions besieged by political radicalism, the national discourse coarsening and the country’s enemies unstitching the carefully formed bonds of the country’s lauded transition to democracy. “At my age I thought I would be living in a different Spain,” he says. “But the situation is the worst since the transition. The PSOE are mutilating democracy.”

Mac75c tells us here of the savoury delights of empanadas. I’m naturally most familiar with the empanada gallega.

The Spanish village that fits within a castle . . .

The UK

Well, the result of the Rochdale by-election will have left few folk confident that democracy in the UK is safe from Islamist extremists. And that was before the PM gave an ’emergency address’ to the nation, insisting that the threat to democracy exists. Richard North accuses the PM here of living in a world that no longer exists. But this Times columnist wonders if the PM – and, I guess, Richard North – aren’t over-worrying. But, then, he might well be a member of London’s ‘out-of-touch cosmopolitan elite’ . . .

An amusing para . . . Liz Truss is liked by just 10% of the Great British public, making her as popular as North Korea, the Russia Today television station and the X Factor quarter-finalist rapper Honey G, who by coincidence has also spent the week stateside posting on Instagram: “#thisisme in Manhattan #holibobs”. Exporting fortysomething novelty acts to America is apparently our only booming sector. So, all is not lost . . .

It’s a long time since I’ve been in a UK library. Indeed, it’s probably 15 years since I was last in Pv city’s library. The one here in Heald Green is probably representative of how these are now in the UK – machines for taking books out and returning them. And for taking your cash once it’s told you how much you owe for being late in doing the latter. All very efficient, but soulless. Especially for someone whose step-grandad was a librarian in a place I loved to visit as a kid.

The EU

Not good news . . . The inflation saga is far from over: Services inflation in the Euro Area is just as stubborn as in the USA. Services are huge. It’s where consumers spend the majority of their money. And the traditional pattern of monthly increases/decreases has apparently been shattered by Covid and its lockdowns. Bottom line:  Services inflation, after bottoming out at a year-over-year rate of around 4%, might be headed higher from here. Meaning the ECB won’t be reducing the interest rate any time soon. More here.

(A)GW/Energy/Net Zero

A podcast revealing, perhaps, the painful truth re NZ.

The Way of the World

Plenty of women – and, I guess, some men – are still falling for ‘love fraudsters’. And AI is making this easier for the latter, of course. FB, it seems, could do a hell of a lot more to reduce the number of cases. As I know from the small stream of beautiful women wanting to befriend me. As if I don’t have enough of them IRL.

Spanish

El que no llora no mama: He who doesn’t cry doesn’t get to suck (on the teat). The equivalent of ‘Don’t ask, don’t get’? Or ‘The squeaky wheel gets the oil’?

Gallego

Quen non chora non mama.

Did you know? . . .

The thing you most need to know about the new Rochdale MP, George Galloway, is that he’s never seen in public – even during TV interviews – without a hat. Not to achieve sartorial elegance but because he’s bald. And so can’t do a comb-over. Vanity – which he has in large measure . needs to be satisfied somehow.

Finally . . .

The wit of Samuel Johnson – No. 11: The world is not yet exhausted: let me see something to-morrow which I never saw before.

Especially is another word I always mistype – especailly. You’d think my laptop would know this by now. (Yes, I know I can give it appropriate instructions but surely it should be smart enough to do this itself without guidance. It does a lot of other things I don’t want it to do.)

The Usual Links . . .

You can get my posts by email as soon as they’re published. With the added bonus that they’ll contain the typos I’ll discover later. I believe there’s a box for this at the bottom of each post. I guess it’s logical that this doesn’t appear on the version given to me . . .

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.