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

The unsurprising reason Spanish landlords are switching from long-term to tourist lets – and what can be done to stop it.

Pension spending hits a new record. Note: The monthly amount cited might well be paid 14 times a year, as state payments usually are.

You might be surprised to hear that: The average state pension in Spain in 2025 is significantly higher than that in the UK. Spain’s state pension is about 205% above the basic “break-even” point for average living costs, meaning pensioners generally have a sizeable surplus after paying monthly expenses. The UK state pension is nowhere near that.

Salt is regularly added to chips/fries in Spain. This might be one reason why Spain dramatically misses WHO health target to reduce salt consumption by 2025.

Cousas de Galiza

There’s nothing like having the (damaged-by-daughter) plastic bits under your car’s engine hanging down a bit to emphasise just how many speed bumps there are on the roads around Pv city. And how they all differ in height, width and angle of incline and decline. A perfect time to be ferrying family members from my Poio eyrie to a local beach. And back again later. Roll on September and the repairs . . .

The UK

The growing problem of US celebrity refugees . . .

THE USA and THE MAGA REALITY TV SHOW

Trumpisms.

• Seth Myers has the personality of an insecure child. [He must have overheard that description somewhere.]
• A friend of mine in Washington tells me he can now dine out 3 or 4 nights a week and everyone is going to restaurants there again as the streets are so safe. So, restaurants are busier than they’ve been in a long time. [The truth: Several restaurateurs have contradicted this. One said reservations are “low, low, low,” adding, “The city is dead.” Another said this month will be the slowest August in 7 years, including during the peak pandemic period. The presence of heavily armed law enforcement puts guests and staff on edge and reservations are down by up to 31% on some days compared to last year. These drops happened despite promotional events like Restaurant Week that typically boost business at this time of year.]

A few more sentences from The Coming of the Third Reich: How the Nazis Destroyed Democracy and Seized Power in Germany. Draw your own parallels.

• Hitler was backed in his election campaign by an unprecedented flow of funds from industry. On 11 February he announced tax breaks to help automobile manufacturers.
• ‘The struggle against the Communists’, said Hitler, ‘must not be made dependent on judicial considerations’.
• Paragraph 2 [of a new law] allowed the government to take over the federated states if public order was endangered. This provided the legal pretext for everything that was to follow.
• Not only the Communists, but anybody who had ever spoken out against Hitler’s movement, was in danger.
• The local stormtroopers were authorized to carry loaded firearms on 28 February 1933 and enrolled as auxiliary police on 1 March, whereupon they ostentatiously began to mount patrols in the streets.

The Way of the World

 £19/€23 for a bottle of water!

Reading that article, I realised that Marton is a village I drove past hundreds of times en route to and from work for 20 years. And where my elder daughter nearly crashed a car on her first outing as a learner driver.

Maybe Marton will now see some of those US celebrities heading into the wilds of the North.

Spanish

I got to wondering if Spanish drivers – because of the way they negotiate roundabouts – are involved in many accidents in the UK. There’s a longish AI answer below on this but here’s a list of motoring terms that were thrown up. Almost certainly Mexican Spanish in some cases. Castellano in brackets:-

English	Spanish
back seat	asiento trasero
blinker	luz de emergencia
car	automóvil, carro [coche]
carpool	compartir el auto
driver	conductor/a, la conductora
driver’s license	licencia de conducir [carnet]
headlights	luces altas
horn	bocina [claxon/pito]
license plate	placa del automóvil [matrícula]
passenger	pasajero/a
seatbelt	cinturón de seguridad
shotgun	copiloto/a
steering wheel	timón [volante]
turn signal	Pidevías [intermitente]

Did you know?

• A nice perpetual motor.
• The ridiculed British invention that [eventually] changed the world.

You Have to Laugh

The appeal of Travis Kelce* is that he’s essentially like a labrador that’s learnt how to text — and that’s every woman’s dream.

*Currently scheduled to marry Taylor Swift.

Finally . . .

One of those headlines . . . A groom died of injuries from celebratory gunfire after his wedding in Turkey. He was hit by shots fired by a female relative of his wife.

ROUNDABOUTS . . . .

SPANISH DRIVERS ON SPANISH ROUNDABOUTS

In Spain, roundabouts are a major source of accidents: Between 2015 and 2019, there were more than 45,000 accidents on roundabouts in Spain, resulting in 317 deaths and 58,000 injuries.

Common mistakes include: failing to give priority, exiting from inner lanes, not using proper indicators, and misunderstanding multi-lane flows—problems that, if carried over to British roads, could easily lead to confusion and incidents.

SPANISH DRIVERS ON UK ROUNDABOUTS

Spanish roundabout rules differ from British ones: Some practices In Spain —like signaling and choosing exit lanes— do not align with the UK’s, which may cause Spanish drivers to make errors on British roundabouts if unfamiliar with local rules.

Confusion over driving direction and exit lanes: Spanish drivers may instinctively enter and navigate roundabouts differently, leading to dangerous situations if they do not quickly adjust to British rules.

Lack of signal use: As a high percentage of Spanish drivers do not indicate correctly on roundabouts at home, this habit can increase the chance of accidents in the UK where signaling is strongly enforced and expected.

In summary, while a high accident rate at roundabouts exists among Spanish drivers in Spain due to confusion and errors, there is no concrete data on accidents on British roundabouts—though differences in road rules make this a plausible risk factor.

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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 . . .

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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.