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

Trump has brought our all his favoured adjectives – those of a 6 year old – to show his disfavour with Spain. I’m confident I don’t need to list them.

It’s long been said that many/most Spaniards hanker after a job in the public sector. Here’s one modern reason why. Along with job security, of course. And a guaranteed break for ‘elevenses’. Oh, and the pension.

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for the local news item – missed by me – that: Recently, there’s been at least 10 cases in Vigo of vacation renters barricading themselves inside after the end of their stay, with the owner being unable to evict the squatters, even after calling the police or filing a complaint. Some owners have had to resort to express eviction companies to recover their properties. Not really what I would have expected up here in the North.

I almost laughed when reading that the price of petrol/gas was expected to rise from around €1.45 a litre. Up here in Galicia ours has never been that low. On Sunday last, it was 1.54 for 95 and today it’s 1.65. As to why we pay more in this poor region than anyone else in the country, I have no idea. Though there is possibly a logical reason for our high car insurance premiums, to do with our winding roads. And drug-addicted, uninsured drivers in cars which don’t have their annual technical review. Or daughters who reverse your car into a granite block . . .

The USA

See my earlier post.

I have a dream of Trump in Hell being compelled to read throughout eternity the views of historians on his appalling reign as the would-be king of the USA. And, of course, of his subsequent demise. True, I’d get more pleasure out of the dream if I actually believed in an extra-terrestrial Hell but you can’t have everything.

Quotes of the Day

• In today’s social-media-dominated world, there’s no way a politician can be inauthentic and survive.
• Trump is actually authentic. [Genuinely stupid, ignorant, arrogant, corrupt, etc., etc., etc.
• Many believe is an inexorable process – the rise and fall of empires, followed by the rise of new empires, which eventually fall and are replaced in turn by even newer empires, in a repeated cadence of birth, growth and evolution, decay or destruction, and ultimately renewal in a new form. Can there now be any doubt that Trump and his Cabinet of clowns have accelerated the decline of the US de facto empire? Though the process could well take some time yet, of course. My bit . . . There are several apps you can get to tell you if a product you’re about to buy is American. An AI engine will tell you what they are.

The Way of the World

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has long warned that highly efficient systems are fragile. The modern world order, having organised itself around efficiency, cost minimisation, and logistical precision, has created a machinery of dependence so extreme that the interruption of one narrow corridor can propagate outward into a general crisis of civilisation. Strangely enough this was the final comment of the author of the book on the collapse of all the highly efficient and extremely – overly? – interconnected Late Bronze Age societies. As you’ll recall, these were all hit by, among other things, a megadrought. The last line of his book was: As Mark Twain reportedly once said, history might not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

AI

Autonomous AI agents have an ethics problem.

Spanish

• Volcarse: To turn over
• Volcarse en: To lavish attention on, put one’s energies into
• Cata: Wine-tasting. Exploratory excavation; archaeological dig.

Did you know?

FIFA has announced that the 2026 men’s World Cup final in New York will feature the first-ever half-time show. It will modelled on the NFL’s Super Bowl half-time, with a list of major artists performing during the break. It remains unclear whether the normal 15‑minute break will be extended. The mind boggles at how Trump will try to take electoral advantage of this. Though the sound of 100,000 folk booing simultaneously might not be to his liking.

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

The mice – well a mouse – are back in my kitchen, after more than a week of no-shows. A new generation? But – despite me ‘turning a sod’ every morning – still no robin in my garden. Only the greedy greenfinches and the subordinate sparrows.

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.