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

This is a very good video explanation – aptly entitled Something Is Going Very Wrong in Spain – of how the country came to have a property shortage and of how it got much worse over the last 20 years or so. As others have said, there are much bigger factors at play than that of tourist flats. One of them was the cheap money that resulted from the introduction of the euro. For which no one will ever take the blame, of course.

Here’s a bit from The Corner on the politico who’s just been sent to (preventative) jail. [Yes, it does end in mid-sentence.]

This is one way to deal with excessive tourists. Not exactly new; I recall it being used in a Portuguese forest back in ‘99.

Cousas de Galicia

There was a party along our north coast this week, celebrating the engagement of a couple from 2 different ‘clans’. Someone from one must have said something to someone from the other, giving celebrants the chance to use the guns, knives and swords they’d brought along. Just in case, I guess. Anyway, one person was killed and several wounded. And there was a police chase along the nearby autopista. I confess I wasn’t surprised to read that the clans were of gypsies. They tend to go in for these reyertas and el ajuste de cuentas.. Usually drug-related. So, star-crossed lovers and a modern Romeo and Juliet? I wonder what the gypsy version is of: Did you bite your thumb at us, sir?

The EU

Brussels fears that Spain’s stance on defence [the only honest one?] could be a stumbling block in trade talks with the USA. Not a problem for the UK, though. A Brexit bonus . . .

MAGAworld

Well, the BBB passed through the Senate, thanks to Vance’s casting vote, and will now go back to the House of Representatives. Where it might well be revised, as there’s at least one (in)famous Republican who hates it.

Meanwhile, the war between Trump and Musk continues, with the former threatening to investigate and deport the latter. What a shame these 2 ‘warriors’ can’t both lose. Or, can they?

Ungrateful AI does Trump a disservice.

A sycophantic gem . . Kristi Noem (wearing, above her hair extensions, a different stupid hat from the one on Trump’s orange bonce): Mr president. You surround yourself with great people. And I think that’s because everybody wants to work for the greatest president the United States has ever had. So, is she evil/mad enough to be a future US president?

Ms Noem features in this NYT article on the ’look’ of MAGA women, who are always thin and almost always white. The look is said to be hyperfeminine and overtly Christian, offering a stark contrast to the often blunt and even brutal language they employ. And their clothes, whether casual or corporate, are form-fitting and often accessorized with giant crosses. The columnist cites this comment on Ms Noem: She was cosplaying an ICE agent while wearing 25 pounds of hair, only to be outdone by her 30 pounds of makeup and false eyelashes.

There’s also this article on MAGA women with the “Mar-a-Lago face” – a suntanned complexion, sprayed-on lips, wrinkle-free faces, black eyeliner, glued-on eyelashes and striking eyebrows. Their hair is very long, often artificially elongated, parted in the middle and slightly wavy. . . . What they have in common is that they looked completely different a few years ago. . . The image of women in Trump’s administration is closely aligned with the ideals of certain patriarchal evangelical circles.

What a funny country it is. If it were a cartoon movie, it’d be hilarious. But it isn’t . . .See this video on The banality of cruelty. Where: The vacancy of Donald Trump’s mind is on display.

Spanish

Guess where these came from . . .

• Reyerta: Brawl.
• Ajuste de cuentas: Settling of accounts
• Machete: Machete
• Catana: Katana. A traditional Japanese sword known for its curved, single-edged blade, a circular or squared guard, and a long grip designed for two-handed use.

Humbled again by my grandson . . . I don’t think I make many mistakes in Spanish but I certainly do make some. Last night I got the verb sobrar wrong and said sobrían for the imperfect. ‘Grandad’, it should be sobraban’. said the 6 year-old resident linguist. Who surely, unlike me, knows nothing about the 3 verb categories in Spanish and only has his ears to go by. And his human brain, I guess. I don’t recall my border collie correcting me when I was first learning castellano. Smart, but nor smart enough.

Finally . . . Did You Know?

German hyperinflation of the 1920’s is almost impossible to conceive of:

• Prices reached a billion times their pre-war level, a decline that has entered the annals of economic history as the greatest hyperinflation ever.
• The most dramatic and serious effects were on the price of food. A woman sitting down in a café might order a cup of coffee for 5,000 marks and be asked to give the waiter 8,000 for it when she got up to pay an hour later. A kilo of rye bread, that staple of the German daily diet, cost 163 marks on 3 January 1923, more than ten times that amount in July, 9 million marks on 1 October, 78 billion marks on 5 November and 233 billion marks a fortnight later, on 19 November.
• Hyperinflation became a trauma whose influence affected the behaviour of Germans of all classes long afterwards. It added to the feeling in the more conservative sections of the population of a world turned upside down, first by defeat, then by revolution, and now by economics. It destroyed faith in the neutrality of the law as a social regulator, between debtors and creditors, rich and poor, and undermined notions of the fairness and equity that the law was supposed to maintain. It debased the language of politics, already driven to hyperbolic over-emphasis by the events of 1918–19. It lent new power to stock fantasy-images of evil, not just the criminal and the gambler, but also the speculator and, fatefully, the financially manipulative Jew

Is it any wonder that the Germans have a folk memory of this and a lingering aversion to credit.

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

The Usual Links . . .

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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.
• This post of mine contains several relevant articles from ThinkSpain.
• 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.
• A comparison of UK and Spanish living costs.
• And here’s a personal guide to moving to Spain – to work, not to retire.
• What to do if your visa application is rejected
• Finally, from a tax lawyer: Everything you need to know about taxes and healthcare when retiring to Spain.