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

Young people in Spain are helping to drive a surge in support for the far-right party Vox amid growing concern over immigration. This appears to relate to Moroccans and Romanians, not South Americans. The PP right-of-centre party feels obliged to respond by borrowing Vox policies, e. g. the expulsion of migrants who don’t adapt to life here and the construction of holding centres for migrants.

A headline in a Voz de Galicia this morning: Spain will need 2.4m new workers in the next decade and the majority will be immigrants.

Meanwhile . . . Centollas and camarónes will be the stars of this year’s big Xmas lunch for Pontevedrans. I’m not sure this is different from any other year.

The UK

For reasons given here, Richard North believes the British electorate is now so volatile and fragmented that no one party can be sure of winning a clear mandate giving it the authority to govern and seek radical change. And that British society is now too divided to be governed by any single vision. Meaning that: In effect, Britain is on its way to being ungovernable – if it is not already there. I guess we’ll have to wait until the next general election in 2029 to see if he’s right.

The mad, bad world of MAGA

Will Trump survive current and future revelations? And what should he do to ensure that he does?

María despairs of the current status quo.

And yet another echo . . . For Hitler, the success of the 1938 annexation of Austria brought a further increase in self-confidence, the certainty that he had been chosen by Providence, and the belief that he could do no wrong. His speeches at this time are full of references to his own, divinely ordained status as the architect of Germany’s rebirth. In a word, he was making Germany great again. As was frequently said at the time.

The Way of the World

An American chap called Curtis Yarvin believes that US/Western democracy is a failed experiment, as it effectively leads to mob rule. He thinks we should move to a system under which a ‘CEO’/Monarch is put in place by a large group of Directors who can remove and replace him if necessary. This jaundiced view of universal suffrage goes back to Aristotle and was shared by many political commentators of the 18th and 19th centuries. Indeed it has shaped political theory from classical times through the Enlightenment and into modern debates. I’ve been known to say that the internet is now effectively rule by the mob but – while being sensitive to the claim than democracy risks leading to the ‘tyranny of the majority’ – I have never seen it as amounting mob rule. And I can’t see Mr Yarvin’s suggestion taking off, no matter how fashionable it is in US right-wing circles right now.

Spanish

• Macondiano: Surreal or absurd. De Macondo, localidad ficticia que aparece en Cien años de soledad y otras obras del escritor colombiano G. García Márquez,
• Mugre: Dirt, slime, filth.
• Aturdido: Stunned. dazed, light-headed

English

To ambiguate: I didn’t know this was a verb. And neither does my spellcheck. Or the OED. But the Merriam-Webster dictionary tells me it means to make something more ambiguous or unclear, often by introducing uncertainty in its meaning. Adding that: It is not a widely recognized term in major dictionaries but is used in some contexts to describe the act of complicating the clarity of a statement or expression. So. I guess it’s another ugly American(ism).

Did you know?

The kilogram’s origins.

You Have to Laugh

Reader James sent me this amusing – and accurate – guide on how to get the real Camino experience at home:-

Finally . . .

• My Inbox this morning contained 7 emails saying my non-existent Cloud account had been locked.
• And my buzón contained a card posted in the UK 14 days ago . . . I get the impression Correos is just giving up.

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 and on X.

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.