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

Cooler weather – 12 degrees lower – has finally arrived, along with rain here in Galicia. No one seems to be complaining.

Remember the Talgo S106 I moaned about? Well, RENFE is withdrawing it from the Madrid-Barcelona run because of ‘excessive vibration’. Inter alia. We’re still to have it, though. Being the poo relations.

Some folk will come a long way to buy provisions. Seen next to my car in Lérez this morning . . .

Cousas de Galiza

Our grape harvesting (vendimia) began a tad early this year. After a very wet spring and a very hot summer, wine is expected to be plentiful and of high quality. Perhaps the cartel will allow prices to fall . . .

An odd tragedy in Santiago de Compostela yesterday – a woman was knocked down and killed by the tourist train. Lugging a suitcase, she had eschewed a nearby zebra crossing.

No orcas or even standard dolphins visible from O Burgo bridge yesterday. Only one man and his 6 dogs . . .

Europe

Says the NY Times here: Climate Change Is Transforming Summer in Europe. A season of record wildfires and a wave of extreme heat is forcing Europe to confront difficult questions about how to adapt.

Do not antagonise one’s opponents unnecessarily, a basic principle of diplomacy says. But – hardly a surprise – Trump’s emissaries are increasingly ticking off allied countries throughout Europe. . . . First term Trump loved the publicity these incidents received and often sent the ambassadors in question congratulatory notes when their actions produced news coverage.

THE USA and THE MAGA REALITY TV SHOW

An appeals court has ruled that most of Donald Trump’s tariffs are illegal, undercutting the president’s use of the levies to exert political pressure and to renegotiate trade deals with countries that export goods to the United States. So, what next?

Parallel tracking??

• The public disorder that supplied the reason for declaring a state of emergency was overwhelmingly the creation of the Nazis themselves. 
• The concentration camps were a long-planned measure that the Nazis had envisaged virtually from the very beginning. It was widely publicized and reported in the local, regional and national press, and served as a stark warning to anyone contemplating offering resistance to the Nazi regime. Conditions in the concentration camps and detention centres of the SA and SS in March and April have been aptly described as ‘a makeshift sadistic anarchy’.
• Many middle-class Germans appear to have accepted that the regime was justified in its violent repression of ‘Marxism’, of whatever variety. Years of beatings and killings and clashes on the streets had inured people to political violence and blunted their sensibilities.
• Hitler publicly praised the ‘phenomenal discipline’ of the [utterly violent] stormtroopers.
• Germany was well on the way to becoming a dictatorship even before the Reichstag fire decree and the elections of 5 March 1933. But these two events undoubtedly speeded it up and provided it with the appearance, however threadbare, of legal and political legitimation.

Quote of the Day

Trump’s genius is to control the 24 hour news cycle – one way or another.

Spanish

• Alquitrán: Tar, bitumen, tarmac.
• Ombliguista: Navel-gazer. Self-regarding.
• Frivolidad: Frivolity, levity, triviality, etc.
• Conjuro: Spell, incantation, sorcery.

English

Crowding out: According to a local newspaper, this is when public businesses drive out private ones. I guess in Spanish it’s Le crowding out

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

Another of those headlines . . . Prison for a resident of Barro, who killed a thousand of his ex-wife’s rabbits. Quite an advance on Fatal Attraction.

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.