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 Balearic and Canary islands . . . Expect more measures to deter tourists. Whom Ryanair are happy to (threaten to) take elsewhere in Europe.

Spain is trying to maintain a balance between its critical tourism industry and a growing housing crisis. A Bank of Spain report this year found the country had a deficit of 450,000 homes. More than in the UK?

Things are not getting any easier for the minority government. This forecast turned out to be accurate.

Spain shares with the UK the problem of skyrocketing absenteeism. Possibly a consequence of Covid.

Lenox Napier visits Granada.

Cousas de Galiza

Galicia has 357,000 rural plots whose owners can’t be found to pressure them to comply with the legal obligation to clear their land of brushwood. Despite this being an obligation for almost 20 years, only a tiny number of folk have been prosecuted for not doing so. Smacks of unseriousness, I guess.

Maria writes here on curiosity and here on more doleful matters.

Europe

Trump or no Trump, Europe’s relationship with the US will never recover. Even if Trump were to vanish, it’s hard to see the transatlantic relationship reverting to that shared sense of kinship that characterised it in past decades. . It can no longer be assumed to be based on shared values and identities. The most we can hope is to become a separated couple temporarily living under the same roof for the sake of the children, and then amicably parting ways.

THE USA

You will have seen that someone called Charlie Kirk was shot to death yesterday at a rally. He was one of the US’s numerous gun nuts, saying a while back: I think it’s worth the cost of some gun deaths every year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. Assuming there’s a heaven and that he’s now there, perhaps his god is explaining to Charlie that he/she has never said anything about guns. Not even when (s)he was on earth.

Trump has said the murder of Kirk is a dark moment for the USA. Nowhere near as dark, some would say, as the plague of mass shootings of children that afflicts the country and which Trump and Kirk appear to have regarded with total equanimity. Maybe, in Trump’s mind, they too are the price of liberty. Not to mention the votes of the MAGA faithful. TBH, given what he has already started to try to make of it, I suspect Trump is subconsciously pleased by the killing. It certainly won’t lead to a change in US gun laws.

The US national irony meter – never very robust – has clearly now totally broken down: Trump has said that violence and murder are the tragic consequence of demonising those with whom you disagree. Perhaps he will now stop doing that. As if. It’s far more likely that we’ll be subjected to more doublespeak. After all, he’s started with: For years, those on the radical Left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals. More projection, of course.

Trump, of courses, infamously said nothing about the murder of a Democrat and his wife.

One wonders if Kirk’s family and friends still share his view on the valid price to be paid for guns.

Meanwhile, ‘serious political consequences’ are expected. I suppose civil war in the USA is a day closer, whenever it was before. Putin must be happy about that.

I saw this video after writing all the above. Trump is a criminal who talks about the rule of law, an autocrat who suppresses criticism but talks of freedom of speech, and a man who clearly has no religion who talks of faith. You couldn’t make it up.

Trump is not Hitler, of course – though Vance once said he was – but a note I will include tomorrow contains, I believe, further indications of the Nazi-like direction Republicans are heading in.

After that, I might well stop writing about the USA. A reflection of despair, I guess.

Spanish

Presumir: To show off

Did you know about?

The London Great Stink of 1858: When the Thames Made Parliament Hold Its Nose.

Finally . . .

Well, I never thought it would happen but the wonderful folk in Almansa town hall have deposited 96 euros in my account. So, they’ve repaid me not merely the 56 I said was unjust but also the 40 I said I was prepared to pay. Perhaps, as bureaucrats, they couldn’t do anything but all or nothing.

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.