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

Times correspondent, Isambard Wilkinson – whose father or mother must have been an engineer – has been commenting from Madrid for some. Here he is on the PM, whom he portrays as The master of all he surveys and a sorcerer who is defying political gravity and the predictions about the demise of his shaky coalition government. The genius of his survival, says IW, has a certain mystery. Much to the irritation of the PP party and fury of the Vox party.

Dog Section:-

An interesting development down South.

Seagull Section:-

1. The Faro de Vigo reports here on the predations of the seagulls in Pv city, and the costs incurred by bar and restaurant owners of replacing crockery and glassware.

2. As I walked along the riverfront last evening, I had the unusual experience of being accompanied by a young seagull crying for food, as it it were a hungry kitten or a puppy. When the couple behind me stopped and bent down to attend to it, it gave a truly heartbreaking performance. I guess its mother was off somewhere filching chips or empanadas from some victim’s plate or hand. Sadly, my video won’t upload.

Marine animals Section

Thanks, they say, to warmer water, the large dolphins known as Orcas or killer whales have returned to our Atlantic coast. Led by a female called Toñi, they’re probably looking to have some fun by capsizing boats. Singularly inappropriate right now but they probably don’t hear or read media reports from Sicily.

Portugal

Against the wishes of Madrid, Lisbon is insisting on the first high-speed train link into Spain being Oporto-Vigo, not Lisbon-Madrid. All strength to their elbow.

The UK

I checked to see is any of EasyJet’s planned new flights to Spain would be coming from any Northern airport. No such luck: they’ll all be coming from something called London-Southend airport. Which is 43 miles/69km from Central London. Which compares with London-Stanstead, 40/64, London-Luton 35/56 and London Gatwick 28/45. And none of the new flights will come to the north of Spain.

Germany

How Germany’s mighty Mittelstand blew up its economy. Reading how various specific factors helped Germany grow and what happened when the taps were effectively closed, I thought again of how Spain – and now Poland – have significantly benefitted, and still do, from EU largess. I suppose that, should the tap for Spain ever be turned off completely, it’ll still have the sun and its immense coastline. Though quite possibly too much of the former eventually.

The USA

Trump’s most fervent supporters seem a tad late getting to this point.

The Way of the World

Something I’ve observed several times during my life, while regretting, of course, I wasn’t better looking . . . Alain Delon shows how easily we’re fooled by beauty.

Quote of the Day

How to describe Dating Naked UK? It’s Love Island crossed with the sausage section of the supermarket meat aisle. It’s a nudist colony for people who couldn’t get through the Big Brother auditions. It’s a show in which the contestants don’t wear any clothes, but so unerotic that my main thought when watching it was to hope the seating areas get a good going-over with antibacterial wet wipes. Did the Romans, I wonder, sink this low before the Visigoths visited Rome in 410 AD? I guess Gibbon could tell us. Maybe he did. Or possibly Juvenal in his chapter on Bread and Circuses.

Covid

Those lockdowns . . An unprecedented (and, let us hope, one never to be repeated) economic disaster where workers in both public and private sector were paid for weeks on end to stay at home doing nothing. Even at the time it was clear that Britain might never fully recover from this largesse, that our children and grandchildren would have to endure unthinkable levels of austerity as a consequence of decisions taken without sufficient forethought in the midst of a pandemic.

Spanish

• Traer de cabeza de alguien: To drive someone mad
• Facciones: Features. Seen in an article on the (alleged?) plastic surgery of the PM’s wife, Begoña Gómez.
• Marcas blancas: Not ‘white brands but ‘own brands’. Of which sales are said to be soaring, understandably. Í had a memory of the British supermarket Tesco selling very cheap white-packet products in the early 1990s but an AI search suggested that their products had distinctive blue-and-white striped packaging, not just white.

Did you know?

In 18th century England, brackets(parentheses) were known as ‘crooks’. No idea why. Well, I didn’t have until an AI search gave me: The term “crooks”for brackets or parentheses has historical roots linked to their shape. The word “crook” traditionally describes something that is bent or curved, which aligns with the rounded shape of parentheses ( ).

Finally . .

Mark Auchincloss tells me that yesterday’s link to his Linkedin page was broken and offers this one instead. I think you need to have an account to access it.

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.