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 economy: The great challenge facing the Spanish economy, says The Corner, is that of improving productivity. As in the UK. Perhaps the reason for both is the importation of cheap labour to do the jobs the locals are averse to.

Talking about immigrants . . . Asylum seekers are bringing Spain’s ghost ghost villages back to life.

A propos . . . Spain has Europe’s 2nd-lowest birth rate after Malta and, at 84 years, the continent’s highest life expectancy after Switzerland. The only thing slowing population decline is immigration.

Lenox Napier writes here of his problems with Facebook. I don’t share these because I never post anything on my Home page – only my blog posts in my Thoughts from Galicia group. TBH, this is something I’d like to close and then get off FB completely. But this might upset the relatively view readers who access my posts there.

Pv city has become a favourite venue for major national and international athletics events. This weekend, for example, we have a Spanish triathlon championship. But that’s not all . . . We also have something called The 10th International Degrowth Conference and the 15th Conference of the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE) And it says here that: This joint conference will establish Pontevedra as the European capital of degrowth in 2024. Our (left-wing) mayor of 25 years certainly can’t be accused of poverty of ambition. As for degrowth, he’s been trying for more than 20 years to close down a paper pulp factory which is the only major employer in the city. Which would certainly cause some degrowth for the income of many residents. But please the ecololgically-minded.

Still on local matters . . We have at least 3 police forces operating in the city and I often get the impression they don’t have a lot to do and so can get pretty bored. Today I saw 5 of them clustered around a car in the centre, and another 7 chewing the breeze just around the corner. Possibly because of the joint conference taking place this week.

The UK

A tour of the UK, via Limericks . . .

More seriously, Effie Deans addresses here the question of why mass migration in general and mass migration of people from Islamic countries is an electoral issue. I’d apply her hypothetical example of Poles moving to France to the actual one of millions of South Americans coming to Spain in the last 10 years* – no threat to the culture and easily assimilated. Indeed, where would the key ‘hospitality’ sector be without them?

*While exact figures are difficult due to naturalization, well over 2 million South Americans have come to reside in Spain over the past decade, with significant numbers from Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina and Peru.

The USA

Someone has made the very pertinent observation that the issue is not whom to choose from between Trump and Biden but why on earth the choice is between these two old men in the first place. Are they really the best candidates the USA could throw up?

English

• Scorn quotes: The quotation marks put around a word or phrase to show you don’t believe a claim made, or a title given,
• Degrowth:-

1. Negative growth (i.e. reduction) of an economy or a population.
2. A political, economic, and social movement based on ecological economics and anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist ideas.

Spanish

Enfurruñarse: To sulk

Finally . .

The good news . . .

1. There were no speeding notifications among the pile of letters awaiting me,
2. I’m slowly remembering how things work in my house, eg the coffee-pad machine.
3. The garden reflects the extensive clearance work I commissioned via my neighbour. Meaning it wasn’t a jungle to come home to and I haven’t burnt out a 2nd lawnmower in a year.

The bad news . . .

1. I can’t get the new boiler installed a week before I left for the UK to give me hot water.
2. The problem of mould in my basement has gone, in my 6 months absence, from large to humongous.
3. As my calves are telling me, Pv city’s old quarter is pretty hilly and I’m no longer used to the inclines and declines.
4. As I’ve mentioned, the gardeners employed by my neighbour cut down 2 young palm trees of 5 and 7 years growth and ‘sculpted’ a large bush I didn’t want sculpting.
   But, as María says, life goes on.

Finally, finally . . . .

Welcome to new subscriber Susana Cabaço, who might or not be interested in Spain and or Galicia.

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. Finally, some advice on getting a mortgage.