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/Galicia

Corrections

• There was some heavy machinery moving on the site in O Vao today. The August idleness has ended. Along with our annual Fiesta de la Virgen Peregrina. I might get some mail soon.
• The gypsy song I linked to yesterday was being sung in Extremadura, not Andalucía

The Spanish love to change English film titles into Castellano, which is perfectly understandable, even if some are bizarre and some totally misleading. What’s less understandable is translating foreign names into Spanish. So, the British royal family includes Carlos, Guillermo, Catrina and Carlota. In contrast, I’ve never heard or seen Juan Carlos referred to as John Charles in the British media. Which seems more respectful . . .

Talking of lack of respect . . . Madrileños are coming in to some nasty taunts in Galicia. Details here. But if you think fodechincho really means ‘fish thief’, then I have some news for you. Foder
is the Gallego equivalent of joder in Spanish. Which equates to a well-known 4-letter expletive in English. Also beginning with F.

Here’s The Guardian again, on how to be a good tourist.

And here, from the NY Post, is how to be an exceptionally bad one.

Still on the tourism theme . . . This is the VdG today, on the ‘tourist load’ in Galicia. The Galician Institute of Statistics has calculated which areas suffer the most tourist pressure. The greatest weight is borne in the municipalities of the Arousa estuary, with 3.2 visitors per hundred residents. Santiago is next, with 2.3 tourists, and A Mariña is third, where it’s 2 per hundred. I have to confess I didn’t know where A Mariña was. Google Maps gave me 3 options but my guess is that the relevant one is in or next to Cambados, which I regard as being in the Ría Arousa, so not really separate from the place of ‘greatest weight’.

I read that in some UK restaurants, you can now take out cheap insurance against a seagull snaffling your meal. I fear it’ll be quite a while before this innovation reaches Plaza de Leña in Pv city.

Portugal

Residents of Oporto are so fed up of the tuc-tucs on their narrow streets that the mayor has been forced to restrict the area in which they can operate. Oporto is by no means the city it was 25 years ago. But, then, nowhere on a tourist trail can be. I’ve read today of a place that’s said to be the Cotswolds of Spain but, as I plan to visit it, I’m not saying where it is . . .

The UK

Here’s another reminder that Brits will need a visa to travel into the EU from next summer. This will be under the ETIAS scheme, not the EES scheme, which starts this November. Says The Times: Together, the 2 schemes – designed to make the bloc’s border more secure in the face of terrorist threats – will make travel significantly more bureaucratic. Which is one word for it. Short for ‘pain in the arse’. One travel ‘expert’ suggests that the ETIAS scheme will mean ‘a huge level of complexity’, with each passenger taking up to 2 minutes to process, as opposed to a few seconds now. I imagine that, come Boxing Day, many more Brits than ever will be looking at, say, Turkey, Croatia and Albania. Which won’t really reduce the security threat to the EU, as holiday makers don’t usually go in for terrorism.

The UK

The good news for some of us is that the EES won’t apply to holders of a TIE, proving residence rights. But will the machine recognise them? We’ll know in November.

If ever there was bad news it is that the British ‘young and cool’ are taking up smoking . . . It’s what Gen Z might call a ‘vibe’. Per the Office for National Statistics, only about 13 % of Britain’s adult population still smoke but the age group with the highest percentage is 25 to 34-year-olds. My perception has been for some time that this is also true of young Spanish women. Who might also believe smoking dulls their appetite and keeps them slim.

If you’re thinking of going to the UK for a holiday, you might like to know that, overall, prices for 2024 are 24% higher than in 2019, with accommodation costs up by 36%, restaurant prices by 29%, and airfares by 48% per cent.

The USA

If you thought Trump couldn’t get more insane – or be more of a shyster – take a look at his latest social media messages and, in particular, his use of fraudulent AI images and memes. It’s beyond astonishing/frightening to think that the US has a serious candidate for its presidency who’d be utterly unbelievable in a novel. Even a satirical one.

Social Media

Who’s afraid of Elon Musk? Is the combative entrepreneur fanning the flames of far-right politics or is he just ‘an angry man screaming into a hurricane’? . . . Musk’s recent provocations underscore his journey from celebrated innovator to divisive ideologue. For all his achievements in the fields of renewable energy, transportation and space, he is now seen just as much as a troll as a trailblazer.

Quotes of the Day

• Luckily, X is still not where most people get their news.
• Someone told Socrates that a certain man had not been improved by his travels. I should think not, he said. He took himself along with him.

One wonders what Socrates would have said of Trump.

English

Midwit: “Someone who is around average intelligence but is so opinionated and full of themselves that they think they’re some kind of genius. Midwits have a shallow understanding of things and at first can seem a bit smart, until you dig deeper and realize they’re just posers. They overlap with pseuds”.

Did you know?

In Tristram Shandy, there’s a bizarre chapter on whiskers. I had my suspicions, so did an AI search . . . The whiskers episode demonstrates how words can acquire new connotations simply through context and usage. It illustrates the malleability of language and how meanings can shift based on social context. By showing how an innocent word like “whiskers” becomes laden with indecent implications, Sterne comments on the fluid nature of linguistic meaning. This episode can be read as a criticism of John Locke’s view of language. While Locke argued for fixed meanings of words, Sterne shows how easily meanings can be redefined through social usage. The banning of “whiskers” challenges the idea that words have inherent, stable definitions. So, now you’ll be well armed when you read it.

Finally . .

The kids return to school in early September. As usual, this will be a very expensive business in Spain. One reason, I’m told, is that there’s a new edition of the obligatory text books each year. Which is great for the Spanish publishing industry – some say it keeps it alive – but not for family budgets.

Finally, Finally . .

The worst yet – This morning I got 5 calls from the same number within a couple of seconds. They didn’t have the ring of honesty about them.

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. If you do this but don’t read the posts, I will delete your subscription. So perhaps don’t bother if you have other reasons for subscribing . . .
• 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. And this article ‘debunks claims re wealth and residency taxes’. Probably only relevant if you’re a HNWI. In which case, you’ll surely know what that stands for.