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

Spain goes to war against holiday rentals. Authorities still face the difficult challenge of closing down illegal rentals. Barcelona city council said last year it had closed some 6,000 illegal holiday rentals over the last decade, but inspectors continue to discover an average of 300 more per month.

The pioneering Spanish government has now banned junk food in schools.

The picaresque is a narrative prose literary subgenre, deeply linked to Spanish literature, that emerged in the Golden Age, between the Renaissance and the Baroque. The term derives from “pícaro,” meaning a cunning character of low social standing who survives thanks to his ingenuity in a corrupt and unequal society. The hero is an anti-hero of humble origins, marginalized, and without resources, who resorts to deception and cunning to survive. – the opposite of the ideal knight; his only feat is to survive day to day. I was reminded of this when reading of a real-life character: a Portuguese chap – Charles Augustus Howell – who wormed his way in the Pre-Raphaelite group of British artists in the mid 19th century. Some of the comments about him are listed below. I confess he reminded me of someone but I couldn’t quite put my finger on who. . . .

Cousas de Galicia

Guess what happened last evening, bringing joy to Pv City. . .

LA LA Land

This is the podcast to watch or listen to, if you want to know:-

• what a Trump pin is.
• whether the USA has already crossed the Rubicon into a Constitutional crisis, and/or
• how close and in what ways the USA already is to East Germany, Russia and even Nazi Germany.

How Harvard became resistance HQ in Trump’s war on woke campuses. The Ivy League university became the first institution of its kind to reject White House demands, but the repercussions could be crippling.

European visitors are down 17% on last year, with some countries seeing drops of more than 40%.

That hapless envoy per Private Eye

Trump’s Easter messages for the ages. Filled with Vengeance and Vitriol. Somewhere along the line he said that evil must be resisted by all good folk. By which he presumably means the mad MAGA crowd.

The Way of the World

The trans row epitomised ‘Looking Glass lunacy. The dangers of our leaders allowing themselves to be gaslit into declaring black is white and white is black are not over.

Spanish

Disuasorio: Off-putting; deterrent, deterring, discouraging, dissuading

English

Donald Dashers: Americans fleeing the US. Especially to the mother country it says here.

Did You Know?

These are the 9 most important things about tipping abroad

You Have to Laugh

Yesterday Through the Ages

Courtesy of the Autodidact Professor.

Finally . .

CHARLES AUGUSTUS HOWELL

• He has been represented as a villain; he was certainly a romancer:

There’s a Portuguese person named Howell,

who lays on his lies with a trowel.

Should he give over lying

‘Twill be done when he’s dying.

For living is lying with Howell.

• It seems he was the son of an English drawing master living in Lisbon and married to a Portuguese.
• He claimed descent from Boabdel El Chico.
• His youth, he used to say, was spent in diving for gold in the sunken wrecks of Spanish galleons.
• He invested his presence in England with the vague importance of a secret mission and wore a broad red ribbon across his shirt front which was alleged to be some Portuguese decoration. It was supposed he had stolen it from somebody.
• In 1887, he left Oporto where there was trouble over cards, and even card-sharping was mentioned.
• One of the group called him the Munchausen of the pre Raphaelite Circle.
• Gabriel characterised his talk as ‘a Niagara of lies’.
• Howell’s charm of manner and fund of amusing stories made him a general favourite. But, of course, those against whom the amusing stories were directed found reasons to change their view and were loud afterwards in abuse.
• You might take such a man seriously and regard him as a smooth and plausible villain in whom there were alarming possibilities, a dangerous companion who might pull you into the depths if you are not careful. [“The polecat Howell; the vilest wretch I ever came across”]. On the other hand, you might regard him as a supremely amusing type almost a character of fiction. This was Whistler’s view. He described him as “That wonderful man. The genius, the Gill-Glass-Robinson Crusoe hero out of his time. The creature of top boots and plumes, splendidly flamboyant.”

See Wiki on him here.

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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.