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

This is the official number of foreigners in Spain as of now, based on local council padrón registrations:-

• Moroccans – 969k
• Colombians – 677k
• Romanians – 609k
• Venezuelans – 378k
• Italians – 346k[??]
• Brits – 267k [cf. other figures of around 410k or even a lot more]
• Peruvians: 261k
• Chinese – 238k
• Ukrainians – 202k
• Hondurans – 178k

This writer goes way beyond my comments about the gap between Spain’s macro and micro economic performances. He alleges that Spain’s economic miracle is just a statistical mirage. Because: Headline GDP is inflated by a strong increase in immigrant population, a ballooning public sector, and the injection of one-off EU funds, while GDP per capita, net real wages and (already atrocious) productivity stagnate or worsen. His bottom line warning: Spain may seem like an economic growth miracle but details show a time-bomb that will explode once the placebo effect of debt fades and immigration’s net negative impact on public accounts soars. Let’s hope he’s wrong about the future at least.

Fellow bloggers on Spain:-

• Lennox Napier writes here on the breaking of wind.
• I’m beginning to wonder what Noémi is taking . . . Here she is now with the best sunset spots in Barcelona.

The VdG reports that in depopulated Galicia 88% of houses are empty. If they go on sale, they can stay on the market for years. In 2021, in Galicia as a whole there were more than 500,000 empty homes, 29% of the total property stock. That said, it’s frequently noted that Galician owners are very stubbornly reluctant to lower their price demands, however overvalued the property and however long it’s been for sale.

Down in Valencia, a masterpiece rises from the ashes after almost a century.

Here in Pv city, one organisation has decided to take a step against the increasing incidence of homeless folk (los sintechos) who sleep in covered entrances and under the soportales dotted around the old quarter. At a cost of 47,000 euros.

Our comfort-seeking narcos have a new ‘cabinned’ speedboat, designed in France.

The UK

Those potentially troublesome new border rules for folk with more than one nationality.

Oh, and the man once known as Prince Andrew has been arrested . . . This can happen to commoners.

The USA

See my earlier Trumplandia post.

The Way of the World/Social Media

I don’t use Facebook for news, if only because anything that looks newsworthy usually turns out to be fake, eg today’s item that Pam Bondi had been sacked. Which I didn’t even bother to check the veracity of.

Spanish

• Piedra Noble: ‘High-quality natural stone materials, valued in construction and decoration for their durability, timeless elegance, and natural origin’.
• Galopada: Gallop.
• Catenaria: Overhead (power) line

English

My mother had a wide variety of sayings that might well be dying out. Here’s one I recalled today when someone ‘pulled a face’ denoting some negative emotion or other: One day the wind will blow and your face will stick like that.

More anon.

Did you know?

A chap called William Brodie was the original Jekyll and Hyde.

You Have to Laugh

Uncomfortable Finns . . .

Finally . . .

Sad to read of the many puffins found on our beaches, killed by the storms en route from their migration from the UK to pastures warmer.

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.