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

Might be of interest to some. Holapueblo is a scheme to help folk to move to Spain’s dwindling rural villages.

The judicial watchdog is investigating the judge who’s been persecuting and charging the PM’s wife. Not before time.

More on Spanish politics . . .

Cousas de Galiza

Grape harvesting has begun up in our hills but no one yet knows how much of the vineyards has been destroyed by fire.

An article in the VdG asks, justifiably, whether RENFE gives a toss about its Galician customers. Perhaps things will change when there’s as much competition here as there is elsewhere in Spain.

Well, we’re 3 weeks into August and still no work on the pavement I pass several times a day. But I was wrong about work on the new commercial park on the Vilagarcía road; this hasn’t completely stopped. Maybe it will be finished by Xmas. There must be a financial inducement.

I walked past this roundabout today and noticed something that caused me to question one of my regular assertions.

Every driver – like this one – used the inside lane, whether going left or straight on. I concluded this was because of the configuration of the roundabout. To use the right hand lane, you really do need to make a severely curved turn to your right. But, need I say that the one driver under instruction did exactly that and then turned left, across the traffic. And without signalling. Nice to have one’s faith restored.

The UK

Summer madness . . .

THE USA and THE MAGA REALITY TV SHOW

Trumpisms

We’ve got great reviews of the Rose Garden. [Anyone seen any of these? Do White House lackeys write them and give them to him?]

Just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder . . .

• Trump wants a big, beautiful cage fight in the Rose Garden.
• Trump blares ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’ and shows off umbrellas flown from Mar-a-Lago in a bonkers tour of the white house.

Trump and the wars he claims to have ended.

Paul Krugman thinks Trump’s clampdown on immigrants will do more damage to the economy than than crazy tariffs.

So, who’s this? . . . Loyalty and faithfulness are for him the highest virtues. He regards politics as warfare, a form of armed combat in which neither justice nor morality have a part to play; the strong win, the weak perish, the law is a mass of ‘legalistic’ rules that are there to be broken if the need arises. He is energetic and extremely egotistical. For him, the end always justifies the means. He appears to be an authoritarian conservative but this is deceptive; he is ruthless, violent and extreme. Yes, of course, it’s Hermann Göring, Hitler’s fat lieutenant.

There have, of course, been real emperors who were considered insane by contemporaries. Here’s a few Romans:-

• Caligula: His reign is famous for alleged sadism, rampant executions, making his horse a senator, and declaring himself a god.
• Nero: Often described as a tyrant who murdered his mother, kicked his pregnant wife to death, and is controversially said to have “fiddled” while Rome burned. He had a passion for performing as an artist and for cruelty.
• Commodus: Believed himself to be the reincarnation of Hercules and participated as a gladiator, often killing wounded or weakened fighters. His grandiosity and erratic decisions were seen as signs of madness.
• Elagabalus/Heliogabalus: Infamous for extreme decadence, religious fanaticism, and strange sexual behaviours

I guess the truth is they all put the orange loon in the shade.

Quotes of the Day

The liar’s punishment is not that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else: George Bernard Shaw

Russia v Ukraine

As you’d expect, Moscow doesn’t agree with Washington’s view of what was agreed in Alaska. Possibly genuinely.

The Way of the World

The latest trend taking over Tik Tok is to use text-tovideo AI tools to create hyper realistic racist videos.

Spanish

• Toser: To cough. And something like To be better than/To out do, as in Nadie le tosió en el estío más musical de las Rías Baixas. . .
• Sortija: Ring
• Tejo: Yew tree

English

• Finfluencer: An aficionado of angling on the net.
• Ket: Ketamine

Did you know?

This is horology . . .

You Have to Laugh

Before giving up, I tried 3 times to use the voice-to-text facility to record this sentiment: Formula 1 motor racing is a truly remarkable sport: the more boring it becomes, the greater its popularity. These were the failures . . .

• Pónmelo chuli pickups
• Pónmelo Wong chuli
• Remolcados comillas racing

Finally . . .

I confess (again?) to finding it depressing to see so many Caminoers walk down Rúa Real in Pv city’s old quarter looking at their phones every few seconds, to assure themselves they haven’t strayed from the route. I mean, it’s not as it there isn’t an abundance of conch shells and yellow arrows on the road and on the walls. Will we humans eventually evolve into creatures who can’t think?

I don’t know reader Noémi but I am very fond of her, as she makes me smile. She often Likes my posts but apparently binge-reads and then sends several Likes at once. But recently she’s posted more regularly and, yesterday, even beat my Finnish friend, Tero, to be the first Liker. I do check her own posts and this is her most recent one – a recipe for gambas al ajillo. One of my favourite tapas dishes. Noémi recommends mopping up the oil with bread. When I first arrived in Spain and did this regularly, it eventually occurred to me that this was probably the cause of my very vivid dreams . . So, be warned. But possibly the red chillies, not the garlic.

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.

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.

If you´re thinking of moving to Spain, this link should be useful to you.