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

Spain’s population increased by 642,000 in 2023, the latest year for which full figures are available. Given the low birth rate, many/most of these were immigrants. Which has continued to be the case since then. Perhaps real resistance to this will start once more immigrants don’t speak Spanish and aren’t Catholic.

News here of an alleged boost for the top end of the property market.

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for the news that some 25 million euros has gone walkabout over the last eighteen years from the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas in Barcelona. And for the news that The mayor of a small pueblo in the province of Cuenca has been arrested after the Guardia Civil found he was maintaining a marijuana plantation with 215 plants.  

Bigger fish are some senior politicians and their mates and relatives down in Almeria, who are accused of profiteering over Covid facemasks, as well as taking commissions on public works.

I often wonder if the disbursement of EU funds here is slower than Brussels demands because the government is acutely aware of the risk of `leakage`.

As of January 1, all drivers in Spain will have to carry a wifi-connected light they can put on their roof in case of accidents or breakdowns. They cost upwards of 30 euros, which factored by the millions of drivers here makes a tidy sum. I checked and found that Spain is unique in forcing drivers to make this expense. So, I wonder what logic prompted the initiative. Especially as many of us have already bought the non-wifi version. Which I actually use to make sure I get from one side of a zebra crossing to the other, without having to jump put of the way of an oncoming car.

María makes some heartfelt – and very valid – points here on the Franco era and on the naive ignorance of the young Spaniards warming to the far-right Vox party

Life in Spain: As the tiler who’d defrauded me has re-paid me and done the work, I went last week to the Guardia Civil to cancel the denuncia I’d made in July. They told me that it had been passed to the courts, so I’d have to go there to do this. Which I did this morning. But I made the rookie mistake of getting there at 11.30, always a bad time in Spain in view of the universal custom among funcionarios of a 30-45 minute coffee break around then. After 25 minutes, I was on the point of of leaving the wheels of Spanish justice to grind exceeding slow when the chap came back to his office. But he couldn’t find the case in his computer, no matter how many possibly relevant bits of data he entered in it. So, he gave me his name and number and suggested I call him after a while. Which I might do. Or I might not.

The mad, bad world of MAGA

Another vile Trumpism:

• Referring to the horrendous murder of a troublesome reporter in Saudi Arabia: These things happen.

And then there’s the Be quiet, piggy! retort to a female reporter, which has gone massively viral over the last week.

What a piece of work is man*, said the Bard. We’d use a different noun in place of ‘work’ these days, I guess. *Hamlet is reflecting, at first admiringly, and then despairingly, on the human condition. Imagine how he’d feel if he’d had to observe Trump at work and play.

Quote of the Day

No one insults the intelligence of MAGA supporters more than Donald Trump himself.

The Way of the World

Pension reforms are essential but, for one reason and another, they keep failing because the politics overrules the economics. . . .They collapse when they collide with electoral incentives and public mistrust. Spain would have to increase its average value-added tax by 9 percentage points, from 16% to 25%, in order to raise enough revenues to sustain the current system indefinitely. By delaying unpopular decisions on pensions, politicians are setting themselves up for even more unpopular tax hikes in the future.

Spanish Idioms/Phrases

• Dar la cara: To face the music, face up to things.
• Poner al punto: To fine tune, perfect.
• Hay/hacer tomate: To be/do something wrong.
• Si, pilla antes un mentiroso que un cojo: A liar will always be caught out.
• Ojos verdes azulados: Blue-green eyes

Galician

The Diario de Pontevedra gives us some common Galician words here.

English

I was a tad surprised to hear the hyper-intelligent president of the West Wing series say that Beowulf was written in Middle English, when it was actually written in Old English, or Anglo-Saxon. This was first recorded around the 5th century – after the Germanic invasions – and it survived for about 700 years before being replaced by the Middle English of Chaucer, inter alia. Middle English is difficult to understand. Old English is impossible, bearing almost no relationship to (much less complex) modern English. Think German.

Did you know?

Talking of languages . . . Here are some old languages that are still spoken:-

• Aramaic: This is related to Biblical Hebrew. In fact, it’s actually older by a century, being first recorded in Syria in 1100 BCE. While today’s Aramaic isn’t entirely unchanged from its ancient form, it’s been continually spoken for almost 4000 years with half a million speakers today.
• Lithuanian: This emerged as a distinct language around 800 CE and is spoken by over 3 million people today. Of all the Indo-European languages, Lithuanian is the most conservative, retaining features from extinct languages such as Sanskrit.
• Armenian: This is is unique as, while it’s an Indo-European language, it exists in its own language family and is not particularly close to any other languages. The oldest surviving Armenian text is a 5th-century translation of the Bible, for which the Armenian alphabet was initially developed.
• Basque—This is spoken in Spain and France. It is an isolated language, and the only surviving one in Europe. It’s difficult to say for certain when Basque first developed, but it was already spoken during the Roman Empire

Finally . .

I’ve said this several times over the years . . . Whenever you get your tyres changed here, check the pressure of the new ones. They are always grossly overinflated by the mechanics. By as much as 50%.

Sorry about the 4-5 typos in yesterday’s post. I rushed the editing task, which should never be done, as your brain misses mistakes that are really obvious later.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

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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.