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

For football aficionados . . . More on that Real Madrid tragedy of Wednesday night . . . The true story of their season: a chronicle of a death foretold.

Cousas de Galicia

A few reports today that have rather born out observations of mine over recent years:-

• The Xunta confirms that many ‘pilgrims’ don’t register their arrival in Santiago de Compostela. Just short of 40% of them, it’s said. Meaning that it wasn’t 150,000 who passed through Pv city last year, but c. 210,000. Hundreds a day at peak times. Compared with a handful 15 years ago.
• An increasing proportion of these are not just avoiding the dormitories of the albergues but booking luxury accommodation at the other end of the spectrum.
• Pontevedra province now has twice as many pets than kids under 14. Mostly small dog child-substitutes, I guess.

Today was forecast to be the wettest day of a pretty wet week. And it certainly was at 7am, when I could just about see the end of my garden. Last night’s procession was cancelled and I fear the same will happen tonight. An apt cartoon, then:-

Europe

The EU is a failed American experiment, claims this (right wing/’far right’) columnist. And It has no place in the new age of empires, being incompatible with the world order that America is now attempting to erect. And so is in an existential crisis. An interesting read, regardless of predictive accuracy.

LA LA Land

A couple of pungent FT articles:-

• How Wall Street got Trump wrong, despite all the evidence.
• The economic consequences of a mad king. Trump’s delight in doing whatever he wishes in the moment is incompatible with stability and sustained dynamism.

But . . . Is Trump’s America a new Reich? Well, Yes and No. Probably enough to be worried about.

The Law of Unintended Consequences at work? It is finally clear who really stands to benefit from Trump’s trade war. And it certainly isn’t the premier microchip manufacturer, Nvidia. While America fells its own corporate giants, China’s tech powers are only growing stronger.

Defying trump. His administration dared China, Harvard and the supreme court to blink. They haven’t. On this theme . . .Trump’s made Harvard look like the underdog. Weakening the tight ideological control that major universities have over the minds of young people is an objective devoutly to be wished but Trump’s characteristically heavy-handed method may doom the effort.

The new White House . . . All that glistens. . .

Will Trump soon be dressing in imperial purple?

Russia v Ukraine

Possibly true. Hopefully true. Russia is in scarcely better shape than it was in early 1917. The US defence intelligence agency says Vladimir Putin’s motley forces are facing operational disintegration and cannot keep going for more than a few months. The Kremlin’s rainy day fund has run out of money. Oil is in a structural bear market, with analysts are pencilling in $50 a barrel. Russia’s deformed Keynesian war economy is coming apart at the seams. The ex-head of MI6 says the West just has to wait a little, tighten the screws at the right moment, and Putin will be forced to the table on our terms.

But, notwithstanding all that – and for reasons best known to himself – Trump has offered Putin a real estate joint venture in Ukraine.

Quote of the Day

Part of the problem with Trump’s tariff wars is trying to figure out precisely what it is he is trying to achieve. One moment it’s about deficit reduction, the next it’s raising revenues to cut taxes; then it’s merely about forcing others to reduce their tariffs, so that the world can live in tariff free nirvana; then it’s about the higher purpose of bringing manufacturing jobs back to America. Anyone with half a brain can see that this list of aims is a mass of contradictions. But hang on. Now there’s another ambition; according to the Wall Street Journal, what it’s really about is using tariff negotiations to pressurise trading partners to stop dealing with China altogether. This is something of an ex-post facto justification in the absence of anything more coherent, and most unlikely to succeed.

Spanish

• Juerga: Spree, party, revelry.
• Afear: To uglify, deface. But also To censure.
• Perreo: Dirty dancing, twerking.
• Farragoso: Cumbersome, tedious, wordy.
• Arreón: Push

Yesterday Through the Ages

Courtesy of the Autodidact Professor. Inter alia, After years of petitioning the Castilian court, Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus finally secured royal backing for his transatlantic scheme. Time to remind you that his ship the  Santa María was built here in Poio and was originally called La Gallega. And we have a Cristobal Colón museum which majors on proving that CC was born in these parts and not in Genoa. Usefully, it’s sometimes open. We can, of course, now ask AI search engines about this claim and the response of one of these is given here:-

Was CC born in Galicia?

This theory is one of about 25 alternative hypotheses regarding Columbus’s origin. Most scholars regard these as lacking substantive documentary evidence and often motivated by local or national pride rather than historical fact. One expert insists: “The Catalan, French, Galician, Greek, Ibizan, Jewish, Majorcan, Scottish, and other Columbuses concocted by historical fantasists are agenda-driven creations. The evidence of Columbus’s origins in Genoa is overwhelming”. There is no credible documentary or scientific evidence that Christopher Columbus was born in Galicia. The theory is based on circumstantial linguistic and toponymic arguments. These are not accepted by the majority of historians, who overwhelmingly support a Genoese origin for Columbus, based on a robust body of contemporary documentation and testimony. The Galician origin remains a regional hypothesis without broad scholarly support.

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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 . . .
• I can also be read on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/colin.davies.752861 or on Substack at https://doncolin.substack.com/
• 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.