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 macro-micro thing . . . Poverty and exclusion rates stagnate at 26%, diverging from macroeconomic growth. The improvement in macroeconomics is failing to reflect in the lives of families.

Not very neighbourly . . . Macron has claimed Spain’s deadly power cuts were caused by a shift towards net zero. Which the Spanish government has already vehemently denied.https://archive.ph/ERWEP

Nationwide, 1 in 5 residents – c.10 million souls – now come from outside the country. As for Galicia, the number of foreigners here has risen dramatically since I came here 25 years ago – from around 20,000 in 2001 to over 187,000 in 2025. More tomorrow on this.

Ten Spanish Designations of Origin to taste before you pop your clogs . . . I was pleased to see the list didn’t include percebes . . .

January was Pontevedra’s darkest in 30 years, with more 50% of it’s sunshine going AWOL. Plus record rainfall. So, was last night’s opening Carnaval ceremony with Rei Urco and his mates dry? Well, almost.

But, miraculously, today has been dry and sunny, ahead of a big parade tonight that so much work has gone into.

Iran

Iran has more options than Trump and Netanyahu assume.

The USA

See my earlier Trumplandia post.

During these troubled times, I’ve heard it claimed that the USA is the world’s oldest democracy. So, I asked Perplexity if this was true. It topped its longish answer with this: Not in any simple sense; it depends what you mean by “oldest” and by “democracy.” The U.S. is one of the oldest continuous modern representative democracies at the nation‑state level, but it is neither the first democracy in history nor the first polity to have enduring representative institutions. And tailed it with this: The slogan “world’s oldest democracy” is, at best, shorthand for something like “one of the world’s oldest continuously operating modern representative democracies at the national level,” and even that is debated once you factor in limited early suffrage and older parliamentary traditions elsewhere.

Spanish

• Ir bien encaminado: To be on the right track
• Velador: Bedside table or any small pedestal-style table, including those on a bar or café terrace
• Casero: Home made. Household. Landlord.
• Esnifar: To sniff, eg coke.

Did you know?

This is an amazing invention but, ironically, the last thing Andalucía needs right now is more water .

Finally . . .

An African or Spanish bone of contention, it says here.

Finally . . . Finally . . .

I got my tyre replaced this morning, when the mechanic confirmed my suspicion that all the rain and the deteriorating roads had meant an uplift in business. ‘We’re usually quiet after Christmas’, he said ‘but this year we haven’t stopped replacing tyres destroyed by potholes’. Usually, I suspect on their (thinner) inner wall, caught by the sharp edge of the hole.

But, of course, there are potholes and potholes . . .

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 there.

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