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

Franco continues to haunt Spain, claims The Guardian here.

The Valencian socialist party plans to complain to the Prosecutor’s Office about the regional president ‘lying’ to Congress. This is the chap who was enjoying a 5-6 hour lunch with a lady on the day of the appalling floods west of Valencia a year ago. Hardly surprising that he would have something to lie about.

Some good news for train travellers in Spain – parliament is forcing Renfe to re-introduce reimbursement for as little as 15 minutes lateness. This will quite possibly involve every trip between Galicia and Madrid.

I’ve mentioned how much the profile of Camino ‘pilgrims’ have changed in the last 20 years, as the experience – whether spiritual or not – has gone massively upmarket. Today’s Voz de Galicia tells us that for over 5,000 euros you can book a package that include 4/5-star hotels, mansions, private paths and luxury boats. One wonders what St James must be thinking as he looks down on this and sees private companies making even more money than the Catholic Church. In a country he never actually went to.

The mad, bad world of MAGA

Another Delusional Trumpism:-

• People ask me for recommendations on how to grow their children.

Why Trump wants to go to war with Venezuela, as he did in is first term. The Falklands War saved Margaret Thatcher’s career. Donald Trump appears to believe it could save his.  The “Falklands Effect,” embodies the political miracle of a short, victorious, foreign conflict. It is also the political fantasy Donald Trump has never quite abandoned. . . . While Trump’s first-term ambition for a Venezuelan intervention faded under military resistance and political cost, signs of a revived temptation are accumulating rapidly. The evidence of a possible crisis is growing through deployments, proxies, and legal pretexts. . . . Achieving a quick military victory to accomplish political resurrection is the temptation of diversionary war. But in the case of Venezuela, its consequences are potentially catastrophic. . . . An impulsive attempt to invoke the Falklands Effect in Venezuela could become a political and humanitarian disaster.

The Way of the World

From a political observer: There’s no such thing as expert opinion these days. If you want to sway the voters, it’s all about ‘coms’*, and the more charisma the communicator has, the better. Good examples are Nigel Farage in the UK and, possibly, Donald Trump in the USA. The British governing party (Labour) is said to be very poor at coms and the PM is said to lackcharisma. The end result is very low popularity, however many experts back their policies.

*Short for ‘communications’.Involves the way information is conveyed in politics, including media, messaging strategies, public relations, and influence on public opinion and policy development. Political communication (coms) plays a crucial role in shaping public agendas, defining political issues, influencing voters, and impacting policymaker decisions through mass media and other channels. It includes campaign messaging, media framing, agenda-setting, and interactions between politicians, the media, and the public within the political environment

Spanish Idioms

• Se me hace agua la boca – An item of food is so delicious it makes my saliva flow
• Tiene mas lana que un borrego – a person is loaded with cash. “Lana” is slang for “cash.”. Borrego = sheep/lamb.
• Echar agua al mar – To do something pointless.

English

I’m reading a rather odd book by an Irish novelist, in which these new-to-me words have appeared:-

• Heart-scald: An archaic term for heartburn or a feeling of shame or aversion. [So, Heartscalded: Tormented by sorrow or remorse.]
• Stirabout: Porridge
• Beyant: Chiefly an Irish variant of ‘beyond’.
• Stoon: An informal/dialect term generally used to describe a large stone or rock. It sometimes conveys a sense of heaviness or immovability associated with the stone it describes.
• To downface: To contradict.

Did you know?

The novelist also refers Ju-jubes, which I first thought were a type of gummy sweet from my childhood but I see they were only discontinued in 2012 when 2 (US?) companies I’ve never heard of merged.

You Have to Laugh

I read these amusing items this morning . . .

• A husband phoned his elderly wife as she was driving home to say: “Be careful, darling. It says on the news that there’s a car driving the wrong way on the motorway.” “It’s not just one car,” she replies. “It’s hundreds of them!”
• “I can’t wait till I retire so I can get up at 6am then drive around slowly for no reason and make everyone late for work.”

Finally . . .

I thought this morning that a little self-seeded holly bush had sprouted a pink petal . . .

But it turned out to be from the bougainvillea above it.

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.