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

This is an interactive map on towns in Spain at risk from flooding. There are instructions at the very end of this post on how to use it but I hope you have more success than I did. I gave up after not being able to locate the Search button after I’d set my national, regional and provincial parameters.

By pure coincidence, this guide to the camino stages from Sarria, came into my feed, just as a reader advised she’s about to walk them.

You might not recall that a Greek chap called Teucro was the founder of Pv city. Mythically, of course. There’s a large statue of him atop a bank building in the city, standing on one leg and firing an arrow into the sky. Or he would be, if his bow hadn’t fallen into the street 5 years ago. It still hasn’t been replaced. The council seems to have enough money to, inter alia, finance several free firework shows a year and to subsidise our annual bullfights but not to effect this repair. Or to fill in potholes in the road effectively.

Spanish friends last night showed me a foto a bus-stop ad in New York displaying the legend The Christmas lights in Vigo are the best in the world. I can’t find a foto of that alleged foto – possibly an AI ‘fact’- but I have found this paragraph: The mayor of Vigo, Sr Caballero has publicly challenged New York’s mayor to compete with Vigo’s festive displays, claiming that New Yorkers will be “jealous” of the city’s lights. His efforts have dramatically increased tourism, with hotel occupancy rates soaring during the holiday season. The spectacle is not only a visual feast but also an economic boon for the city, drawing approximately 3 million visitors each year..

I also found this video.

Portugal

• Good news, on the economy
• Bad news, re floods.

The UK

The Times reports that children are among thousands of people being investigated by police for non-crime hate incidents, with police forces recording incidents against a 9-year-old who called a primary school classmate a “retard” and against 2 secondary school girls who said that another pupil smelled “like fish”. Strange times.

The USA

Some post-election comments:-

• t’s come to something when you take a look at the appointment of JD Vance and Marco Rubio to the new White House team and think they don’t sound that bad. Over the last couple of days Donald Trump appears to have been on a mission to assemble a cast of the mad and the actively dangerous. Almost as if the lesson he took away from his first term in office was there was no point trying to have people trying to run a normal government. Now he has gone for broke by putting together a team whose only qualification for the job is absolute loyalty. Don’t put it past him to try to re-litigate the 2020 presidential election and change the rules to allow him to stand for a third term.
• A profile of Robert Kennedy Jr. He is a vaccine sceptic and spreader of health-related conspiracies about wi-fi signals causing “leaky brain” and chemicals in water turning children transgender. He has no medical or public health qualifications and is a champion of alternative medicine. He has blamed childhood vaccines for autism, a theory that has been comprehensively debunked, and was banned from Instagram during the pandemic for sharing unfounded claims about Covid-19. He plans to remove fluoride, which prevents tooth decay, from drinking water. More here.
• Trump is an unpredictable showman who likes nothing more than to blur the lines between governing and taking the Mickey, but he is not an isolationist. Hus quick rollout of top national security appointments suggests a foreign policy of affirmative and targeted engagement that avoids unnecessary entanglements and focuses on necessary assertions of US power. More here.

Russia

24 hours strapped into Putin’s propaganda machine. . . Perhaps more than anything else, it is Russia’s media ecosystem that best reflects the depth and breadth of change which Putin has engineered during his time at the helm. .

Social Media

The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. . . .  a stampede away from X has seen rival Bluesky add 1 million users since the US election, . . The future of social media looks increasingly segregated for users’ safety, like rival fans at football. X for the right-wing and the raging; centrists and policy nerds on Bluesky; people who hate politics on Threads or Instagram; Gen Z on TikTok; boomers on Facebook. . . . Social media made us angrier and more defensive. Its legacy is a world immeasurably more polarised and miserable to boot, with research showing a link between heavy social-media use and depression not just in teenagers but into middle age. More here.

Quotes of the Day

• Google is a monster. Worse than Standard Oil[Esso] in 1906.
• The term ‘conflict of interest’ seems rather quaint to describe Musk’s potential influence on the government.
• There’s a degree of Dunning-Kruger about both Musk and Trump – the presumption of expertise in fields which they know little about.

English

Coronated: An alternative to ’crowned’. American?

Scottish

Rumple-fyke: An obsolete Scottish word that specifically refers to “an itch in the anus”

Finally . . .

One of the things my mother used to day quite often was Itchy bum, message to come. Today, I decided to research its origin and got this from an AI engine:-

Spiritual Interpretations: An itchy bum is believed to carry several metaphorical meanings:

• Emotional Release: An itchy bum spiritually signifies the need to release emotional baggage and let go of past hurts, resentments, and unresolved issues. The physical irritation is seen as a metaphor for persistent emotional discomfort that requires attention.
• Self-Care Reminder: The spiritual interpretation suggests an itchy bum is a wake-up call for personal attention and self-care. It indicates that you might be neglecting aspects of your health or well-being and need to reassess your lifestyle.
• Prompt for Change: Spiritually, an itchy bum can symbolize a sudden need for transformation. It represents the discomfort of remaining in situations or mindsets that no longer serve your personal growth.
• Grounding Signal: The itch is viewed as a reminder to stay grounded and maintain a balanced perspective, preventing complacency and encouraging humility.

Who’d have thought it?

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.

The interactive map

• To find your home, you can use the SNCZI box on the left hand side and click on the ‘dph y zi’ tab.
• Choose your region under the ‘Comunidad Autonoma’ section, followed by your province under ‘Provincia’. 
• Under the selection boxes, untick ‘dominio publico hidraulico’ and ensure ‘zonas inundables’ is selected. 
• Then click ‘buscar’ to get your results.
• This will bring up a list of all the rivers and streams in your province which carry flood risks. 
• You can zoom in on the map to see these risk areas by scrolling in a northward direction.
• Another way to assess your risk is by the ‘arbol de servicios’ tool in the bar at the top of the screen. 
• From there, there are many parameters you can choose but the most useful is the ‘cartografia zonas inundables de origen fluvial’, showing the areas at risk of flooding from rivers. 
• Choose ‘mapas de peligrosidad’ (danger maps) and add the three danger parameters: ‘Peligrosidad por inundacion fluvial T=10 años’ (risk of flooding every ten years), ‘peligrosidad por inundacion fluvial T=100 años’ (risk of flooding every one hundred years) and ‘peligrosidad por inundacion fluvial T=500 años’ (risk of flooding every 500  years).
• To add these parameters, click the plus icon at the bottom right of the window. 
• The flood areas are marked by a blue tinge, to reset, simply reset the page.