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

Spanish politics presents a rich tapestry, much of it centring on corruption. Here’s The Corner on that issue. A major case being investigated at the moment is the so-called Koldo case, which is about illegal commissions taken on government orders for Covid stuff. But the case in the Corner article refers to the action of a PSOE (ex) minister implicated in that case but also now accused of meeting a Venezuelan politician at Madrid airport in the middle of the night in 2020 and relieving her of 24 suitcases allegedly containing cash for the illegal financing of the governing PSOE party. This is The Economist article cited, on the way the PSOE is ‘clinging to power’. It references the political fragmentation that makes the country so hard to govern.

Before 1850, there were no railways connecting Galicia with anywhere. So, this is how long it took to get to key places. In the case of Madrid, a staggering 20 days . . .Which compared with days to get to London, albeit mostly by sea.

Columbus/Colón: Perhaps the boss of all history myths, this misconception is so ingrained that the USA has an entire federal holiday celebrating it. In 1492, Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas on behalf of the Spanish crown. He never actually set foot on the North American continent, but Viking explorer Leif Erikson did nearly 500 years previously, with his landing in modern-day Canada recorded in the semi-mythical Vinland sagas. In the 1960s this legend was confirmed by the discovery of L’Anse aux Meadows, a ruined Viking settlement on the Newfoundland coast.

In Pv city, there’s a street off the Camino which I thought 20 years ago would be quickly gentrified but the process has, in fact, been very slow. True, some of the houses have been reformed and there’s a new hostel there, but we still have several like this one:-

One of these is now being done up and will eventually look something like this, I guess:-

The UK

There’s a shortage of doctors in the UK, very largely because the numbers allowed to be trained is limited. I read that: The responsibility for restricting and managing the number of medical training positions is shared between:-

• Department of Health and Social Care
• Health Education England
• General Medical Council
• Medical Schools

The cap on medical and dental student numbers is maintained for several reasons:-

• To ensure teaching and assessment standards
• To guarantee sufficient high-quality placements for students
• To manage the significant public cost of training doctors (estimated at £230,000 per student)

The consequence?: A reliance on recruiting qualified doctors from abroad. Not all of whom speak English like a native, of course. And the already-mentioned shortage of doctors, of course

The USA

Hmm . . . Kamala Harris is now in serious trouble . . . and here’s how you can tell.

The Way of the World/AI

I really shouldn’t have been surprised to learn from Malware Bytes that:-

• There is an “uncensored AI industry.”
• People can have AI-generated sex chatbots/partners
• Filth is created to satisfy the needs of some sick users, and some of the data contains horrifying explicit references to children.
• One company providing this service – Muah.ai – claims that interactions are encrypted and are absolutely private.
• They aren’t and there’s just been a massive hack of interactions with chatbots, revealing users’ sexual fantasies. These are linked to email addresses, many of which appear to be personal accounts with users’ real names.
• Monitoring by Muah.ai is poor.

Transgenderism

This podcast is well worth a listen, containing as it does some very valid questions and statements. Such as: It’s a fact that men who identify as women can never have the ineluctable things that real women have – a womb, periods and a menopause. So can’t possibly know what it’s like to be a woman.

Social Media

Can anyone be surprised? . . . A UK study into teenage mental health has found that social media is linked to anxiety in teenagers. Some are spending 8 hours a day doom-scrolling’’ on their phones.

Quote of the Day

Unha das extincións máis perigosas é a do humor. One of the most dangerous extinctions is that of humour. Under the aegis of the new puritanism, of course.

English

• The above article from The Corner seems to be translated by a machine from the original Spanish. Leaving me unsure what the words ‘tepid’ and ‘bluntly’ really mean. And I can’t trace the Spanish version to check on what was meant.
• Nativism: A  policy of favoring native inhabitants as opposed to immigrants. Think Trump.

Spanish

• Butrón: The hole made in a wall or floor to access a bank vault. Hence: Butronero.
• Tibio: Tepid.

Did you know?

The way it smells after rain is called petrichor.

You Have to Laugh

Private Eye takes the piss out of a currently very popular novelist . . .

Finally . . .

I am planning to quit Facebook and closing the Thoughts from Galicia group there. This might affect some readers, so I will give plenty of advance notice of the foul deed.

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

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.