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

New rules on the energy efficiency of your property, as and when you want to sell it.

The very latest property market news.

The growing importance of China to Spain.

At dinner last night, each of my 5 Spanish friends said that they knew of someone who’d had to pay a fortune to have the pavement made in front of their property. So, it’s clearly the norm. If you live in a flat block, at least the cost is spread among the residents. Cold comfort, perhaps. But, as I say, I’m not sure if this happens throughout the entire country or only in Pontevedra province. Or even just the city.

Portugal

This claims to be the perfect guide to expat – i. e. emigrant – living in the country.

The UK

Something many thought impossible may finally be happening: the political dominance of progressives is coming to an end in Britain. The Labour Party may be in power, but the woke Left is losing control. This is good news for women and for politics more generally, and will allow saner Left-wing voices to prevail. Maybe.

Meanwhile . . . EU chaos looms for British tourists. They say.

LA LA Land

Good question, from someone of the Right. . . How can anybody have supported Donald Trump in the first place? Looking back, all the signs were there. The Capitol Hill insurgency of January 6, for one thing; the fondness for Vladimir Putin for another. The embrace of norm violation on a scale never previously seen. The relentless post-truth improv that characterised his public rhetoric. But, anyway . . . Trump has blown his chance of saving the West. From betraying Ukraine to waging trade wars, the American president has proven to be an utter disaster.

Is anybody confident that in 2028 the man will hand over power graciously?  Perhaps even less so after the emergence of this:-

Meanwhile . . .

Trump is learning America isn’t as powerful as he thought. The failure thus far of his negotiations exposes the extent to which Putin, Zelensky and Xi don’t need to do what the president tells them to.

Trump plays the victim and 2 horrible men get into a spat . . On Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Rupert Murdoch has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump-Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so. This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years.” Trump also called on Murdoch to make changes at the “China-loving” Wall Street Journal, saying: “It sucks!!!”. So, teenager versus geriatric.

En passant . . . Trump’s salvo against Murdoch is the latest sign of cooling relations with the media mogul, who has long been viewed as playing a key role in elevating the former reality TV star to the White House.

The Way of the World

The transgender movement may have had noble aims but the damage it has caused to other, rights-based movements is hard to overstate.

Quotes of the Day

Whatever you do in life you really don’t want Larry David writing a satirical pieceabout you in the New York Times that includes the line: “Göring, with his mouth full, asked what was so funny, and Hitler said, ‘I was just telling him about the time my dog had diarrhoea in the Reichstag’.” 

[Background]

Trump’s berserker approach to tariffs, which veers like a speeding truck full of explosives with a wonky wheel, has injected a volatility into the markets that may herald a global financial crash.

Spanish

Petardo: Usually firework/firecracker and is slang for a spliff(porra) but also appears to be slang for ‘euro’.

English

I have to find a new word for the Camino ‘pilgrims’, bearing mind only the minority are religiously motivated. Walker and hiker don’t quite fit the bill and ’caminoer’ doesn’t exist. Suggestions welcome

Did You Know?

The Phoenicians were renowned as master seafarers and traders of the ancient Mediterranean. They traded as far as the British Isles and establish settlements in North Africa and Spain, inter alia. Where their art an culture replaced that of the original inhabitants. But, to the surprise of archaeologists, their ancestry was not. DNA analysis has revealed that most people who were culturally Phoenician “had no Levantine ancestry” The data is said to support the thesis that : Whenever small groups of Phoenician settlers fanned out to found colonies across the Mediterranean, locals eagerly joined them and adopted their language, religion, and culture.

Needless to say, the estimable Autodidact Professor has several articles on these folk, of which this is the basic one.

You Have to Laugh

A conversation in a flower shop yesterday, all in Spanish:-

• I’m looking for a seeds for hanging plants.
• We only have plants, not seeds. I guess you want seeds because you can’t take plants on the plane.
• Eh?
• I assume you will be flying home.
• No, I live here.
• Oh, I thought you were foreign because of your language.

As I don’t think my Spanish is that bad, I concluded/hoped that by ‘language’ he meant ‘accent’. He himself spoke with South American pronunciation. Anyway, he switched to (good) English, telling me where I could find such seeds. Though I stubbornly stayed in Spanish to stress I knew where the shop was.

P. S. Strangely enough, a couple of South Americans have told me in the past they thought I was Spanish. As my local friends scoff at this notion, I’ve assumed it’s because I speak in Spanish castellano, not one of the many South American variants. So, my British accent is not so obvious to them. That’s my theory, anyway. Others will be welcome.

Finally . .

Looking for a good ground plant, I was delighted, firstly, to read that wild strawberry is one of the best and, secondly, to see that I had quite a lot of these under one of my hedges. Which I’ve now moved to another border, though not with 100% success, it seems. My fingers are clearly less than green.

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 . . .
• 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.