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

As part of Spain’s national political game of Your Corruption is Worse than Mine, the (Galician) leader of the right-of-centre party, Alberto Feijoo, is facing serious allegations about money made by himself and in relatives over the last decade. I’m not clear whether these are coming from the PSOE party of from the supporters of his rival for the future premiership, the Presidenta of the Madrid Region, Isabel Ayuso. Possibly both. One major accusation relates to a hospital in Vigo which had a cost overrun of €470m but which, despite that, has serious operational problems.

This article on visiting Spain – in which there are grains of truth – will probably be publicised by Albania’s Tourist Board, inter alia: Spain makes for an awful holiday.

Some good news . . . The requirement for intrusive personal details from tourists has been postponed a couple of months but, in fact, might never see the light of day. Or at least not in its current form.

Talking of new laws affecting tourists to Spain . . . Here’s the latest gen on the new EES system, starting in November. Nothing new, I think, but it certainly needs to be known about, if you plan to disregard the above article and come here. Note that it won’t apply to residents, including TIE holders. Different gates??

Note, too, that: From 2025, travellers will also need to apply for the European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS) before their trip. Which bears a cost.

Oops . .

The tourist flats situation in Pv city seems to be as wild-western-ish as elsewhere in Spain. The council has asked the regional government to crack down on the numerous unregistered tourist flats. While we wait for that, the city council says it will only permit ground floor or first floor flats or entire buildings to be registered. As yet, nothing is being said about the obligation to have a lift or a separate entrance for tourists in shared blocks..

Galicia is reported to be the number one region for traffic offences. I guess that might be because we have more dangerously serpentine roads, Or more drivers on drugs. Or maybe our police are officious bastards. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t do much for our insurance premiums – among the highest in Spain

The UK

More scepticism here – richly deserved, I believe – about the capacity of the new Labour government to address the UK’s core problems, while creating more of them. Others will be more optimistic. P.S. I’ve just read that the writer is “one of the sharpest brains in the punditry”.

The USA

A fascinating video from the FT. . . The women who vote for Trump.

The Way of the World

The king of Spain hasn’t been invited to the inauguration of the new Presidenta of Mexico. Because – she says – Spain still hasn’t apologised for its conquest of the country 500 years ago. Like Normandy for its invasion of England in 1066. And Britain for setting up colonies in (North). America.

Quote of the Day

I am getting very tired of literary authorities who advise young writers to deal only with those subjects that happen to be familiar to them personally. It is true that this theory probably produced ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’ but the chances are it would have ruled out ‘Hamlet’: Wolcott Gibbs, New Yorker, 1945

English

Scrimption: A very small amount or degree.

German

Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher is the word, I believe, for this thing – used for taking the top of a boiled egg:-

Spelling Bs must be terrifying in Germany . . .

Did you know?

The Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian in July 1914, determining the major events of the 20th century. And this one, in fact. Before he set off on his fatal car trip through Sarajevo, FF was warned about the risk and asked about changing the plan. He replied that he had to do what he had to do and would put his trust in God. Big mistake, it seems. And rather an unfortunate one for many millions. With which we still live. You’d think a loving God would have prevented it. But, being omniscient, I guess He knew He wouldn’t.

You Have to Laugh

Finally . .

This is what my favourite terraza looks like when the rain is lashing down and the wind howling. Deserted except for one crazy Brit. Mad dogs and Englishmen and all that.

MY YEAR IN THE SEYCHELLES

• Part 1: 12 September 2024: Why VSO?
• Part 2: 13 September 2024: The Leaving of Liverpool
• Part 3: 14 September 2024: An interlude: The Seychelles back then
• Part 4: 14 September 2024: Departure, Nairobi and Arrival
• Part 5: 15 September 2024: Arriving in Mombasa
• Part 6: 16 September 2024: The YCWA in Mombasa
• Part 7: 17 September 2024: The flight to Mahé
• Part 8: 18 September 2024: Our Arrival
• Part 9: 19 September 2024: Early Days
• Part 10: 20 September 2024: My Colleagues and Some Early Adventures
• Part 11: 21 September 2024: Mr Warren and Me
• Part 12: 22 September 2024: Chris Green
• Part 13: 23 September 2024 The Hotel des SeychellesPart
• Part 14: 24 September 2024: A Night to Remember
• Part 15: 25 September 2024: Visitors

Part 16: Dr McGregor and Me

The inconvenience caused by Frank Judd’s visit was nothing compared to the disruption resulting from a flying visit of the Salmonella bacterium.

In August 1966, a couple of weeks before we were due to leave the Seychelles, 2 or 3 residents of the hotel went down with dysentery. Since they were all members of one family and as stomach troubles were not uncommon in the islands, nobody took more than a passing interest in the news.

The crisis passed and the family duly took the boat to Mombasa. A few days after they’d embarked, however, a solemn looking doctor McGregor brought tidings of discomfort and distress to the hotel.

It appeared that our ailing but now absent friends had fallen foul of a particularly infectious bug of the Salmonella variety. Since it had first been isolated in Ndola it went under the wonderfully poetic name of Salmonella Ndola.

Dr McGregor was a Scotsman, a Glaswegian, in fact. And he spoke with the (in)famous accent of that city. I’d got to know him a bit in the middle of one night, after I’d had a motorbike accident that I’ll tell you about in due course. I hadn’t taken to him at all back then and the experience related here did nothing to change my mind about him.

Anyway, on that August day, not very long before my departure from the Seychelles, we were informed that for the next 9 days at least, and possibly 14, we were to be quarantined in the hotel. No-one would come in and no-one would go out.

The news was bad enough for the other residents of the hotel but for me, with only 2 weeks left in the Seychelles and 2 unused reels of colour film in my possession, it was nothing short of disastrous. Id been counting on my last few weeks to increase my total count of photographs and slides from a meagre 12 to a more respectable 90.

In vain, we pleaded with the doctor to reverse his decision but the most he would promise was to take specimens from us all and release those who proved negative.

Jerry Legrand, of course, was thunderstruck. This kind of thing was not good for business. But while he walked round in a more or less permanent daze, his residents fumed.

Poor Dr McGregor was subjected to tirade after harangue. His professional competence was called into question. If, as he claimed, one contracted the illness within 6 days of contact, how come he was bolting the stable door 14 days after the original carriers had booked in at the hotel? Surely in the interim period of 8 days we’d already infected every other person on Mahé? We’d visited all the other hotels on the island, so why weren’t they in quarantine? And, anyway, what were the symptoms of this deadly sickness? No-one had any complaints. One resident even claimed it was

the healthiest sickness he’d ever had in his life.

But it did no good. Quarantined we were and quarantined we were to stay. None of us had any symptoms, claimed the good doctor, because we were probably all carriers and strong enough to resist the bug. But it would be fatal to allow us to take it amongst the locals.

We were issued with little plastic containers and ordered to fill them. Dr McGregor would return in the morning to collect them and take them for analysis.

There was little we could do but comply. And, true to his word, the worthy but much-maligned doctor removed and analysed all our samples. At 2 o’clock the same day, be returned with the results. Sad to relate we were all positive except Mrs Legrand and all the kitchen staff. This was rather fortuitous because it meant that at least the food was pure.

We were all issued with aerosol cans of disinfectant and a week’s supply of little green capsules and warned that if any one of us was seen outside the confines of the hotel, he or she’d be banished to what had once been a leper colony on one of the outlying islands.

But few of us so restricted our wanderings and even fewer swallowed any of the capsules. What had started as something of a joke was rapidly becoming very irritating indeed. Several residents had business to attend to on the island and there were various aspects of the affair which seemed somewhat irreconcilable to them.

If, as the doctor claimed, the object of the quarantine was to prevent the disease reaching the local Seychellois, why were the servants being allowed to go home every night? Even if they’d proved negative, as he maintained, it was possible, on his own admission, for them to catch the disease from one of the residents after their testing and transmit the bug when they returned home. So what use quarantining the residents?

Furthermore, the hotel grounds were bisected by the main road, across which residents had to go to get to the dining room and along which went all the local traffic, vehicular and pedestrian. It had to; there was no other road. Why therefore hadn’t he blocked off the road? How come he could visit us and then return to his patients in Victoria? Did he possess some immunity he wasn’t willing to share?

Feelings mounted, especially when it was discovered that the only persons to develop stomach trouble were those who had dutifully taken the foul green capsules. But Dr McGregor soldiered on analysing samples daily and segregating into 2 camps those who still proved positive and those who changed to negative.

By some strange coincidence the 2 people who’d proved most vociferous in the complaint sessions were the very last to recover from the great plague and they were only pronounced clean on the morning of the day on which their boat was due to leave.

I was one of these and it seemed quite a coincidence that I’d been declared infected the longest. It wasn’t hard to believe that Dr McGregor had resented our questions and tried to punish us for our impertinence in questioning his professional opinion. Such as it was.

As I’ve said, I’d carried on as usual throughout the whole period of quarantine, ignoring the instructions to stay in the hospital grounds.

If Dr McGregor’s view of the consequences of this had been correct, I could have infected the entire islands. But for some reason it never worked out that way.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts, either after reading on line or in my FB group Thoughts from 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. 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.