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 Galicia/España

Gibraltar . . . Perhaps things aren’t going that well after all. There’s unhappiness on the Spanish side as well, of course.

Talking about Spanish unhappiness. . . Madrid is recalling its ambassador from Buenos Aires after Argentina’s president called the wife of the president/prime minister “corrupt”. This is
the latest escalation of a war of words between the countries, which began earlier this month when Spain’s transport minister said the Argentinean president was taking drugs. A self-declared “anarcho-capitalist”, he was a star speaker at a conference of global hard-right leaders which featured the launch of Spain’s Vox party’s European parliament election campaign.

This is a Breitbart report on the conference. I take Breitbart to be a right-wing journal.

I’m sorry to have missed this during my purgatory in the UK.

When Spain was a Carthaginian colony. Well, partially at least.

Spanish bureaucracy . . . The VdG today: 225 días para ser español: La cita previa en las Administraciones sigue siendo un embudo para el usuario. Dependiendo de la localidad, los días pueden convertirse en meses. En Pontevedra, para lograr la nacionalidad española en Extranjería, hay que esperar hasta 225 días, pero en Ferrol apenas son dos semanas. Llegar al Registro Civil para celebrar una boda puede ser cosa de un día en A Coruña, pero de 174 días en Carballo. Esta situación hace aflorar la picaresca. Los gestores administrativos hablan de un mercado negro de citas. Who’d be surprised at that?

The UK

Unlikely to happen in Spain . . . UK restaurants and supermarkets are catering to the growing demand for accessible street food. Bao buns are well on track to becoming a mainstream menu item.

I’ve noticed that many of the deliveries to my daughter’s house are brought in private cars. This enlightening article might explain why.

Iran

I see that the death of the president of Iran in a chopper crash has made him a martyr to some. But I guess he remains a tyrant to an awful lot more people.

The Way of the World

Getting my tyre changed this morning, I noted that the original company had become a member of a large corporate ‘family’. I think we used to say ‘group’. And, unless the function of a family is to compel every member to financially benefit its top brass – quite the opposite in my case – this is surely a misnomer. But totally in tune with our Age of Marketing/Bullshit.

Quote of the Day

The Black Lives Matter era is over. It taught us the limits of diversity for diversity’s sake:  From a black columnist on a left/wing newspaper.

AI

Anyone surprised? AI chatbots’ safeguards can be easily bypassed. All 5 systems were found to be ‘highly vulnerable’ to attempts to elicit harmful responses
.
Did you know?

It had to happen . . . Scammers can easily phish your multi-factor authentication codes. Here’s how to avoid it.

And here’s the link to passkeys.

Finally . . .

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.

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. And this is something on the so-called Beckham Rule, which is beneficial – tax-wise – for folk who want to work here.