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/Galiza

The demand for holiday homes on the part of non-resident buyers has fallen across Spain, reports Mark Stücklin here.

Here’s Lenox Napier on that Nobel Prize.

A comment on Valencia with which I empathised, in my own small way . . .The annual summer influx of tourists can be bothersome, if complete tranquillity is your primary goal as a retiree.

ALICE IN MAGAWORLD

The Crazy Gang . . . The US Health Secretary says circumcision might be a cause of autism. It’s probably too late for me to worry about that now.

The latest step towards a autocracy . . . A US anti-fascism expert leaves the country the day after being blocked from doing so. The Rutgers University professor who published book on antifa was told at the gate that his trip was cancelled after Trump had made threats.

The Way of the World

France is not alone in its crisis of political faith – belief in a democratic world is vanishing . . .

There’s a view that the legacy media can only handle one war at a time, with the Middle East long being its favoured venue, even though the horrors of the war in Sudan easily match and often exceed those reported from Gaza. And now there’s the Muslim v Muslim war between Pakistan and Afghanistan, which probably won’t garner much attention.

I read the comment from one of the folk in the flotilla stopped by the Israelis that they’d been put in a cell and had had nothing to do all day but discuss forms of Marxism. Which, I confess, didn’t come as a huge surprise

Spanish

• Salvedad: Exception
• Cribado: Screening

In mainland Spain – though not in Portugal – the letter V is pronounced as a B. It’s almost certainly a coincidence that they sit side by side on a kwerty keyboard but it does mean, that when I hit the B key instead of the V key, the word is phonetically right but orthographically wrong. Though some Spanish kids won’t realise this. And possibly some adults too.

Did you know?

Venice rests on a mass of wooden piles . . . Unless this is an AI spoof.

You have to Laugh

An unusual treatment of the opera Carmen.

Finally . . .

Reader and fellow-blogger Noémi, takes on the apple doughnuts challenge.

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.