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 . .

Holed up in his palace with his [adored] wife, the PM keeps the word guessing. For years this star of the European left has awed his supporters and rivals alike with his survival skills and political high-wire exploits. Now he has left them bewildered.

Commentators have compared the political rift to the growing divide between Democrats and Republicans in America. “Spain is living through one of the most polarised and poisonous periods of its recent history,” wrote Guillermo Altares in the El Pais newspaper.

Agustin Gervas, a retired diplomat, said the crisis reflected a deep Spanish malaise that has been latent for decades. “There’s a lack of maturity in Spanish society. Politicians are busier quarrelling than reasoning. Ours is a primitive rudimentary society that has yet to recover from the Franco era,” he said. “There has never been a serious methodical effort to erase the habits and prejudices of those years.” Which has the ring of truth about it. The go-to insult for your opponent of any and every stripe still appears to be ‘fascista’.

And here’s a right-wing view of the saga from The Corner. The word bulos is again translated as ‘hoaxes’ ,when it should be ‘fake news’.

Allegations of corruption are nothing new for Spain, one spectator has said. Which is, indeed, true and I have often wondered whether Spain gets something of a free pass in this area. Unlike, say, Italy and Greece.

The UK

The issue/question of the moment:-

• Has Tony Blair’s great devolution experiment failed?
• The SNP is imploding. Has devolution failed? As the Scottish government performs a brilliant impersonation of a box of frogs, with the first minister hanging by a fraying thread and the SNP at war with itself over his possible successor, this is the obvious moment to ask: what has devolution done for Scotland?

After Brexit, the UK lost a lot of EU folk who’d worked in bars, restaurants and hotels. But these have been replaced by immigrants – as in Spain = from ex colonies. So, it was that last night, in a tapas place in Canutesford, the young man I took to be as Spanish as his colleagues turned out to be from India.

Which reminds me . . . The price of a glass of wine can be staggering here in the UK. A 125ml glass of a common-or-garden Verdejo set me back almost 9 quid. Or more than 10 euros.

Ireland

As part of the Brexit deal, the Irish government complicated life for those exporting from the British mainland to Northern Ireland by achieving its demand that there continue to be no border – and so no checkpoints – between the Republic and Northern Ireland. Dublin feared a “visible” border would risk the peace process and Ireland’s place in the single market. But this success has now bitten them in the bum, as a swelling number of migrants fleeing the UK are exploiting the free flow of movement, creating a crisis for the Irish government. Hitherto not averse to virtue signalling around its ‘kinder-than-the-British policy’ in this area, it is now proposing to amend the law to allow the return of migrants to the UK. As the father of a friend said to me when I was 19, ‘It’s easy to be tolerant when you’ve nothing to tolerate-‘

Italy

Wild boars are threatening Italy’s prosciutto ham industry. Time to switch to Spanish jamón?

The Way of the World

My generation of student radicals fought for liberty. Today’s are a delusional cult. I was there when Berkeley erupted in outrage at restrictions on free speech. It was nothing like the protests today.

Social Media

The Spanish PM is concerned, it seems, not only about his wife but how to keep his teenage daughters out of a hostile limelight: the two have been subject to abuse on social media by right-wing activists who have left insulting messages on their Instagram pages.

Quote of the Day

A good question . . . We can’t joke about fat people – so why is it OK to mock small men?

Did You Know?

This article claims to give us the 10 best Dad jokes. I’m not so sure.

Finally . . .

Here are examples of the sort of page 1 headlines which raise for me the question I cited yesterday:-

• Sophie Grégoire Trudeau: My life after Justin.
• Any headline about the British royal family, eg Prince Harry ‘snubs the King’ by not wearing a Coronation medal

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.

If you’re thinking of moving to Spain, go to one of my early April posts to see a link to an excellent guide on this.