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

Some very strange US sites come up in my Spain feeds. One of the oddest is The Gateway Pundit, which tells us this morning that Spain is staring into an abyss and is sliding towards the flames, on the edge of another civil war. The benefit of a view from afar, I guess. As no one here seems to have noticed. The writer is one Drieu Godefridi, a Flemish‑nationalist Belgian who claims to be a philosopher, entrepreneur, venture-capitalist and essayist, reporting from Europe the truth the mainstream won’t touch. Well, his truth of course. Needless to say, a big fan of Trump. And an acquired taste.

Spain’s Tax Office – the Hacienda – is not known for being lenient, even in the case of innocent mistakes, for example on the reporting of overseas assets on Modelo 720. So, professional tax advice is always advisable, if you’re moving here. A good start.

I heard this morning that the UK was on its 38th day of consecutive rain. I suspect we are too. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a weather map like this one; there’s usually at least one sun symbol somewhere.-

Right on cue . . . Why is it raining to much in Spain and will it stop?  Well . . No immediate relief is on the horizon, as forecasts show continued instability into mid-February.

After 2 weeks or so of nothing, my mailbox yesterday was stuffed with 6 letters and a magazine, strengthening my suspicion that we no longer have daily deliveries. Is this unique to Pv city and its environs, I wonder.

Europe

The Ryanair boss isn’t at all happy happy about a ‘lunatic’ plan to mandate extra carry-on luggage for passengers.

The USA

See my earlier Trumplandia post.

Russia

An almost amusing report on inflation in Russia . . . ‘Cucumbers are the new gold’.

Reading yesterday about the storming of the Moscow theatre in 2002 – where Chechen terrorists were holding hundreds of hostages – I was shocked to read that the Russian government had refused to tell medical staff tending to the hostages affected by the pumped-in gas what chemical compound had been used – severely limiting their ability to treat their injuries.

Quotes

• Anyone who hasn’t been on X recently might have missed how floridly bonkers Musk has become. It’s not just the Grok nudes, although that is a rank bit of hypocrisy from a man who claimed he bought Twitter, in part, to defeat the scourge of child exploitation online. No, the really terrifying thing is the sheer volume of posts, which alternate between AI-generated cyberpunk hotties, spaceflight updates and assertions of imminent race war. Scrolling the Musk feed is like channel-hopping on a TV that only gets Babestation, a NASA live feed and ‘Sundays with Stormfront’

• They will never believe it about themselves but sometimes the super-rich are as undeserving and talentless as the rest of us. [See next article for some more lovely statements about the pretentious crowd.]

The Way of the World

The ‘big ideas’ of Epstein’s circle were vacuous guff. Emails show that – despite hooking up the rich, the powerful and intellectuals – the philosophising was utterly banal. . . . The files remind us not only of the corruption but also the hollowness of our elite. To our horror we might add a derisive laugh.

Spanish

• Mapache: Racoon
• Jerga: Slang
• Acuciar: Urge, excite, hasten

English

• María advises that her students of English have difficulty differentiating between the pronunciation of this and these.
• Still on these 2 vowel sounds . . . I can’t get the waitresses in my favourite watering hole to say Colin instead of Coleen. Mind you, I now suspect they’re calling me the latter just to provoke me, after I’d foolishly told them it was an Irish female name.

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

I was wrong about the mice. Got the 10th last night. On we go.

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 . . .

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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 there.

If you´re thinking of moving to Spain, this link should be useful to you.