Colin Davies

24 June 2025

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.

PREFACE

Given that we’re dealing with the Middle East and Trump, the only certainty is that nothing is either certain or permanent. As regards Trump, several insane posts of his have appeared on (Un)Truth Social in the last 24 hour but I’ve resisted the temptation to include them here, as they’re easily accessed, if you really want to see them.

As far as I can tell this evening, Trump’s ‘permanent’ ceasefire has been broken by both sides and he has been reduced to ordering/begging them to stop. But something else might well have happened by the time you read this. Unless we’ve all been nuked.

The (lying/stupid) White House publicity woman has claimed that Trump is the inventor of the phrase and concept Peace through Strength. Others think it was the Roman emperor, Hadrian. Who was Spanish. I know whose side I’m on.

USA

Per Trump and his acolytes, the bombing of Iran was was a strike, not a war. But that was 2 days ago; now he calls it ‘The 12 Day War’. Ended by “a permanent ceasefire’, the like of which the world has never seen. Maybe.

The pessimistic – realistic? – view on Trump’s alleged success: Long term, this makes an Iran bomb likelier. . . . We should not be surprised if future Iranian leaders will have drawn the lesson from recent events that the case for a nuclear bomb has now been demonstrated beyond all doubt. . . . Everything we have seen in the Middle East for several decades tells us that the unintended consequences of our actions will be the most important.

Iran

Why it considers its nuclear program essential.

Quotes of the Day

  • We are not at war with Iran. We are at war with Iran’s nuclear plans: J D Vance, making an incredibly stupid claim. Especially as it ignores Iran’s view of things.
  • With J D Vance, if the choice is between the truth and power, he will always go with power.
  • There is no accounting for Donald Trump. There has never been a more capricious US president. Even The Donald has no idea what The Donald is going yo do next. The only certainty is uncertainty. A man who lives almost entirely in the present. No sense of the past. No sense of the future. Just a collection of unpredictable neurons desperately trying to fire across the synapses.
  • Trump often says things will happen in 2 weeks. It’s almost a Pavlovian response. Almost as if he has no idea how long 2 weeks is. Could be a day. Possibly two. Maybe it was the Taco label that got to him in the end. [Not to mention the wily Netanyahu. One can imagine the latter’s line. ‘Do you really want to go down in history as a pussy?’ Trust me.]

Cosas de España

Another policy failure – this time in respect of the limit on tourist flats down in Sevilla. Where the (theoretical?) limit for these is 10% of all housing in the city.

If you have access to British TV . . . Tonight at 9pm UK time/10pm CET on BBC1 – Why Cities Flood: This interesting and intense documentary looks at the science and the experience of those caught up in the events of the Valencian DANA flood of late last year.

Spain’s 10 best cities for food, allegedly. Thankfully, none is in Galicia . . .

Cousas de Galicia

The 3 Galician airports have lost a lot of passengers this year, to the AVE high speed train to Madrid or to Oporto’s airport for international flight. AENA, the company responsible for the airports, has responded to the comment that there should only be one- centrally-located – facility with the comment that it’s nice for Galicians to have an airport nearby to take a plane from. Which rather assumes there’s a plane going where they want to go to. Which will be increasingly unlikely, unless there is rationalisation.

Many years ago, the Franco family were ‘gifted’ 2 priceless 12th century statues of – Abraham and Isaac – taken from the entrance to the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. The Galician Xunta is trying to ungift them but the family has clung to them and taken the issue to the Supreme Court. Where it lost. As I recall, the family doesn’t have a good record in complying with court orders, so it might be some time before the statues get back to where they should be.

Camino news . . . Three companies which transport Caminers across the river Miño – from Caminha in Portugal to A Guardia in Spain – have had their services suspended because of irregularities. Probably lacking one of several licences/certificates required. Or maybe convenient but totally illegal.

Russia

Putin’s dilemma: should he back or ditch the Iranian regime?

Germany

An unknown novel by writer who charted Hitler’s rise becomes German bestseller. Sebastian Haffner’s love story set in the final days of Weimar Republic has been published more than nine decades after it was written.

Spanish

  • Conejillo de Indias: Guinea pig: Crash test dummy.
  • Mapear: To chart, map . . .

Did You Know?

A couple of readers have told me that, with the DuckDuckGo browser, there are no ads in YouTube. True, but you can’t cast to the TV from DDG and I have a 6 year old to entertain . . . Fortunately, I can operate 2 browsers at the same time.

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

This is said to be a letter that was sent to a bank by a 96 year-old woman.

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his depositing the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly transfer of funds from my modest savings account, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only thirty-one years.

You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank.

My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally attend to your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has recently become.

From now on.., I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person.

My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.

Be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope.

Please find attached an Application Contact Status form which I require your chosen employee to complete.

I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative.

Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course,

I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Please allow me to level the playing field even further. When you call me, you will now have a menu of options on my new voice mail system to choose from.

Please press the buttons as follows:

  • Press 1: To make an appointment to see me.
  • Press 2: To query a missing payment.
  • Press 3: To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
  • Press 4: To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping.
  • Press 5: To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
  • Press 6: To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home.
  • Press 7: To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated to you at a later date to the Authorized Contact.
  • Press 8: To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.

To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee of $50 to cover the setting up of this new arrangement. Please credit my account after each occasion.

Your Humble Client…

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:–

4 comments

  1. Does strengthening bridges to carry main battle tanks, count towards the new 5% NATO contribution? Will NATO provide protection commensurate only with Spain’s self declared 2.1% & permit Russia to bomb Madrid?

    Freeloaders did not do well during the expansion of people throughout Europe after the Last Glacial Maximum. Tribes would kill useless mouths or exclude them as outlaws, who could be killed without consequences. Social pariahs were still treated that way as recently as Viking times. There being no executive branch – like police, for example – to enforce their laws, It was left to the general populace to enforce them. Since the laws were more or less just a codification of the social norms that people were expected to live by anyway, political leaders & legal assemblies typically had little problem getting the people to enforce the law themselves.

    This meant that there was no formal death penalty for those crimes the Vikings considered worthy of execution. The list of which crimes fell into this category varied across the Viking world, but commonly included such dastardly deeds as murder, rape, kidnapping, malevolent sorcery, highway robbery & nið (pronounced roughly “NEETH”), a ritual curse that often involved an accusation of extreme sexual depravity.

    Instead of arresting and executing a person found guilty of such crimes, the Norse declared him an outlaw. This meant that, as the term implies, he was “outside the law;” he no longer had any rights, all of his property was confiscated & he could be lawfully killed by anyone. In a culture where honour-based revenge killings were commonplace & considered to be proper, this was often effectively a privatized death sentence.

    Scandinavially, 

    Perry

    Like

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