Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.
And, lo, the hunter of the east 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

Says this columnist: Spain and Portugal’s decisions on education should serve as a cautionary tale for others.

Even iIf you live in Spain, you might not know that, as of today, the maximum permitted alcohol level is 0.2 grams per litre of blood (or 0.10 milligrams per litre of expelled air). This is a very low limit, matched only in Norway, Poland, and Estonia. I did an AI search on how much wine of 14% would take me over this limit but something went wrong, as I got answers of 900 to 1200ml! So, I ran the search again, ensuring that the gram/milligram details were included and got the expected answer of c.100ml. With the rider: Given all variables, it’s safest to assume that any amount of alcohol could put you over the limit. So . . .The new regulation effectively means that drivers should not consume any alcohol before driving. I’m buying shares in companies selling gaseosa and breathalyser test kits.

Oh, yes. Today’s new law also prohibits the social media dissemination of the location of police checkpoints. But possibly not semaphore signals . . .

Cousas de Galicia

This is yet another article which leaves me convinced that the writer does all their travelling via a search engine on on a laptop screen. Or has been replaced by an AI machine. It’s about Pv city and is understandably laudatory but, firstly, the museum was moved from Praza de Leña years ago and, secondly, anyone who’s actually been to nearby Combarro would never refer to this fishing village as a ‘town’. But I was interested to read that September’s Feira Franca commemorates Enrique IV’s approval of an annual tax-free market back in 1467. Not that many were held between then and the year 2000, when this tradition’’ started – in a tiny, tiny way that was nothing on the scale of the huge event it now is. The Spanish do love their fun.

The UK

Britain must not give in to Trump’s VAT grievances. Value added tax is not a tariff and UK and US producers pay the same rate.

Trump The Not-Quite-Autocrat

In ominously inflammatory language Trump took his insults of federal judges to a new level yesterday. in a Fox News interview he used the following phrases: rogue judges are destroying our country . . . the worst judges . . crooked judges… so corrupt . . . very bad judges . . . judges that shouldn’t be allowed . . lunatic judge. He ended with this coded message: I think at a certain point you have to start looking at what to do when you have a rogue judge. Which won’t do anything to stop the death threats.

MSNBC’s legal analyst has warned that Trump is edging closer to enacting a coup by openly defying court orders. Effectively ignoring the Rule of Law and, as I’ve said, putting himself above the law. Just like a medieval monarch. Which, given their history, should get up the noses of Americans with more than a few brain cells. But apparently doesn’t. Or not yet, at least.

Trump the Peace-Maker

If you were not expecting much from the Trump-Putin chat, you won’t have been disappointed by the news of what [wasn’t] achieved. Likewise, if you were expecting Trump to spin the outcome as a massive success for him.

Some views from the British media:-

Putin has defied Trump once again – and paid no price. The Russian leader has played his familiar trick of agreeing to something that binds Ukraine’s hands far more tightly than his own. . . . The dismal pattern whereby Putin concedes nothing and offers nothing, while Trump declines to respond with any hint of steel, remains the order of the day.

Putin agreed to halt attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure but insisted on a range of demands that ­frustrated President Trump’s hopes of a general ceasefire. There was no sign of agreement on the US-proposed deal to end all the fighting, which Ukraine signed up to last week and which Trump was keen to announce.

There was confusion over exactly what had been agreed, notably the definition of infrastructure to be spared. The Russian statement ­described “energy infrastructure” while the White House talked of “energy and infrastructure” raising hopes of wider ­relief for schools, hospitals and apartment buildings. This interpretation did not appear to be shared by Russia.

Trump had suggested before the call that the two leaders would talk about the status of territory and power plants in Ukraine but there was no reference to this in briefings afterwards, nor of the potential for a meeting with Putin that Trump raised last month. Much of the call was taken up with discussions about a revival in US-Russian relations.

Boris Johnson: Trump had been played by Putin.

Musk

Irony . . . The mad co-president has called the wave of violence targeting Tesla and its customers “insane.” A tad short on self-awareness.

The USA

Says a despondent María from her small Galician town here: The American experiment in modern representative democracy is dead. The question now is how far it will go, how much it will affect the rest of the world, and where it will all end. Things are not looking good.

Putin v Ukraine

Putin keeps ceasefire hopes on a knife edge after the Trump call. Russia has paused attacks but its demands for a ban on western arms arriving in Ukraine have frustrated Kyiv.

So bold are Putin’s ceasefire demands, it’s hard to believe he is entirely serious. The extraordinary demands of the Russian leader to weaken Ukraine would make a mockery of any peace deal.

Boris Johnson again . . . The Russian leader is laughing at us.. He wants control over Ukraine. He rejects an unconditional ceasefire. He wants to keep bombing and killing innocent Ukrainians. He wants Ukraine disarmed. He wants Ukraine neutralised. He wants to make Ukraine a vassal state of Russia. He isn’t negotiating. He’s laughing at us.”

Russia bombed Ukraine energy infrastructure just hours after Putin told Trump he would halt attacks on the grid. Zelensky wrote that Putin had “effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire” after Russian attacks on civilian infrastructure, including a hospital in the Sumy region. “They are not ready to end this war, and we can see that. They are not ready even for the first step, which is a ceasefire.” Zelensky warned that Ukraine would “respond” if Russia launched attacks on its energy facilities during the 30-day truce period. He also said that Russia was planning to intensify its offensives against Ukraine in the coming months.

Putin needs a deal, but it won’t be easy for him to end the war. The Russian dictator needs a story to tell his people.

The Way of the World/Social Media

It is a nefarious tactic of the social media age: go to a restaurant, find a problem, demand special treatment. Spoken or unspoken, the threat is there: if the business does not oblige, they can expect a negative review on Google or Tripadvisor. A particular scourge is social media influencers who demand free meals in exchange for posting about the restaurant.

Spanish

• Lo suyo: What he/she deserves, his/her share
• Ir a lo suyo: To look after oneself/number one, do one’s own thing, go one’s own way, think only of oneself
• Cada cual a lo suyo: It’s best to mind one’s own business. Every one should mind their own business.
• Descerebrado: Mindless, brainless, braindead lamebrain, half-brained, empty-headed, numbskull, etc.
• Saltar: To jump, leap. To ignore
• Faltón: Unreliable.
• Plagio: Pagiarism, piracy, illegal copying.
• De medio pelo: Second rate. Of no social standing

English

• Boujie: A slang term that refers to a luxurious lifestyle or attitude, often associated with pretentiousness or aspiring to a higher social class than one actually belongs to. It is derived from the French word “bourgeois,” which originally described the middle class.
• Spiraliser/Spiral: Vegetable slicer. A kitchen appliance used for cutting vegetables into strands which can be used as an alternative to pasta.

You Have to Laugh

One nutritional therapist said that staples such as beans and tuna are “undergoing a transformation from humble essentials to glamorous ingredients” partly because of a social media-fuelled “glow up”. 

Finally . . .

Talking of lunatics . . . Aldous Huxley, in Texts and Pretexts, 1932: Man is so intelligent that he feels impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as a punishment for its transgressions. Therefore. you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. No horse, for example, would kill one of its foals in order to make a wind change its direction. Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cats’ meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent, but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.

All of which rather puts me in mind of current events in a particular country . . . And of Animal Farm and 1984.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

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. But see here on this. 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.
• Getting a mortgage in Spain: Some advice on this challenge.