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

The Argentinian president Javier Milei sparks a political brawl in Spain. The Spanish opposition blames the PM for escalating the row with Argentine president, who left a political storm in his wake in Madrid, as Spain’s right-wing opposition sided with him in a row with the country’s prime minister. Spain is the second-largest foreign investor in Argentina. Big Spanish companies including the bank BBVA and Telefónica quickly distanced themselves from Milei’s comments. See here and here.

Portugal

Thousands of British expats used Portugal’s property scheme to get citizenship and tax advantages for themselves and their families. But the scheme, which required investors to buy €500,000 (£428,450) worth of real estate, has now been axed after fears it was driving up property prices and doing little to help the locals. Yet the Portuguese government is still happy to hand out the coveted golden visas to those willing to invest elsewhere in the country.

The UK

Richard North today unequivocally praises here a ‘powerful and coherent’ article on the ‘toxic mendacity’ of the British ruling class. Some nice lines:-
– Rancid paternalism pollutes the state’s every tentacle,
– The NHS is not so much a sacred institution as a corrupted priesthood
– Britain’s archaic, entrenched, corrupted bureaucracy
– State secrecy is so prolific, so compulsive, so endemic that it threatens to effectively render Britain a failed democratic state.
Says RN: Jacobs writes that a succession of public inquiries reveals that the British culture of elite secrecy is without parallel in the Western world. But one wonders whether things are much better elsewhere, while hoping they are. Scandinavia? The Netherlands? Germany?

Money-based corruption might well be less evil, I guess. At least, as Francis Bacon once said: Money is like muck: no good unless you spread it.

Iran

Talking of corrupt governments  . . . .For the mad mullahs of Tehran there were only ever going to be 2 parties responsible for the helicopter crash that killed the president – certainly not an Act of Allah. These, of course, are the USA and Israel. So, no surprise to read that the chopper crashed not because of bad weather plus pilot error but, rather, because of ‘punitive’ US sanctions that inhibited repairs to its ageing fleet of American-made aircraft. But somehow these didn’t stop the development of death-dealing rockets and drones. I guess they’ll soon declare they’ve also found evidence of Israeli sabotage,

The USA

Whatever the merits or otherwise of Joe Biden’s latest package of tariffs on Chinese goods, they signal the final death of early 21st century globalisation. Not before time, many would say

The Way of the World

Populism is gaining strength across the democratic world, says this author, because the dismissive response to it from the elite class has been fumbled and hapless. One looming result, he says, is that: Across the EU, next month, national populist parties look set to enjoy their most impressive gains in the entire history of these elections to the European Parliament, rallying not only the old but, increasingly, the young. From France to Portugal, Spain to Sweden, Italy to Austria, the latest forecasts point to seismic gains next month for parties that are all, in different ways, tapping into the failure of elites to secure the borders, lower immigration, clamp down on Islamist extremism, and promote the interests of the national majority.
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Did you know?

In 1985, Utah senator Jake Garn got so ill on the space shuttle Discovery that he’s remembered in the Garn scale, an informal measure of space sickness. The mark of being totally sick and incompetent is one Garn.  

Finally . . .

I had the unusual experience this morning of a car stopping dead right in front of mine, with the driver getting out and signalling his vehicle was kaput. As I moved past him, I thought I heard him explaining it was an e-car and he could do nothing with it. So, I did an AI search on what happens when the battery of an electric car dies or runs out of charge completely . . . The vehicle will simply come to a halt. The car will lose all power and the electric motor will stop functioning, causing the car to gradually slow down and eventually stop moving. It will not be able to move under its own power. All electrical components like lights, infotainment system, climate control etc. will shut off. Which certainly seems to have happened here but whether or not the battery had failed, reached the end of its life or just not been charged, I have no way of knowing. But I do know that, with my luck with laptop motherboards, I should never buy an e-car.

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.