Colin Davies

14 March 2026

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

A Dutch friend years ago insisted that, although many books were published in Spain, most of them were never bought. And that the industry was kept alive by the scam of text books changing every year, ensuring continuing (compulsory) purchasing. Now we’re told that, even if a book is bought, it possibly won’t be read by anyone . . . I guess we can blame the smartphone.

Excellent news for cheese eaters in Galicia.

I mentioned the slowness of the Galician justice system yesterday. Today, the VdG reports that you can wait up to 3 years for your case to get to court, even if it’s regarded as urgent.

I also mentioned bit of street violence on a street in the centre of Pv city. But it was nothing compared to this.

A high level of immigration has been good for Spain and immigrants, mostly from South America, now constitute at least 10% of the population. Pretty inevitable, then, that some bad ‘uns will have come to live, form gangs, and fight here. Just recalled that, many years ago, I saw a couple of Colombians fighting over a woman in an Indian restaurant. They were quickly well outnumbered by officers from our various police forces.

With my cousin arriving tomorrow, I took a look at the weather forecast. I learnt that una marejadilla is a tidal wave and that Google translates one Galician term as a ‘sheepish sea’. Maybe timido.

And so the Camino high season begins. At 7.30 last night, table in my favourite tapas place was taken by Caminoers at 7.30. Time to move to my 2nd or 3rd favourite, returning to number 1 in November. Así son las cosas hoy en día.

The UK

At las, some positive news . . . It’s reported that . . . The oldest roads ever found on earth are British. Rome gets the credit for roads. But Britain had roads before Egypt had pyramids. In 1970, a man named Ray Sweet was cutting peat in the Somerset Levels. His spade hit wood. Oak planks. Laid end to end across the marsh. He’d just found the oldest road on earth. Archaeologists dated the timber precisely — matching the growth rings against thousands of years of climate records. 3807 BC. Nearly 6,000 years old. Beside it, buried in the same peat, they found a jade axe. Not from Somerset. Not even from Britain. From the Alps. These people were trading across Europe 6,000 years ago. For decades, the Sweet Track was known as the oldest road ever found. Then in 2009, archaeologists were digging next to Belmarsh Prison in London. Four and a half metres underground. They found timber. Another road. Built in 4100 BC. 300 years older still. The pyramids weren’t built until 2560 BC. Britain’s roads are older by more than 1,000 years.

The Middle East War

The latest update from Naked Capitalism.

The United States of Trump USA

Trump

I’m guessing you’ve all seen the AI foto Trump posted of himself performing a miracle . . .

Trump laughingly claimed this portrayed him as a doctor, not Jesus. A doctor? Most of us see a god-like figure dispensing violence, ‘justice’ and medical care to someone who looks like Epstein. Which possibly explains why Trump was persuaded to delete it from (Un)Truth Social.

Quote 1: We’ve got pure transactional amorality, a personalist presidency who orients all decision-making around his personal interests and corruption, a sociopathic willingness to kill tens of millions of people and staggering incompetence that’s just so bad that Trump doesn’t even know how incompetent he is. We cannot pretend that we are well as a nation. No morally healthy country would put this man in power twice. We have become a morally insane, civically disordered and self-regarding decadent country

Quote 2: To Trump everything is personal. So, for example, he claims that the Cardinals elected an American Pope simply to better oppose him and his policies. As you’d expect, social scientists call this form of leadership ‘personalist’.

Take his spat with the Pope . . . Trump’s ugly and open social media conflict with the Pope is a new chapter in the information war that shows some deep sectarian cracks in the American pro-war consensus. Just in case you haven’t seen it, here’s Trump’s truly insane post of yesterday:

Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. He talks about “fear” of the Trump Administration, but doesn’t mention the FEAR that the Catholic Church, and all other Christian Organizations, had during COVID when they were arresting priests, ministers, and everybody else, for holding Church Services, even when going outside, and being ten and even twenty feet apart. I like his brother Louis much better than I like him, because Louis is all MAGA. He gets it, and Leo doesn’t! I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s terrible that America attacked Venezuela, a Country that was sending massive amounts of Drugs into the United States and, even worse, emptying their prisons, including murderers, drug dealers, and killers, into our Country. And I don’t want a Pope who criticizes the President of the United States because I’m doing exactly what I was elected, IN A LANDSLIDE, to do, setting Record Low Numbers in Crime, and creating the Greatest Stock Market in History. Leo should be thankful because, as everyone knows, he was a shocking surprise. He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump. If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican. Unfortunately, Leo’s Weak on Crime, Weak on Nuclear Weapons, does not sit well with me, nor does the fact that he meets with Obama Sympathizers like David Axelrod, a LOSER from the Left, who is one of those who wanted churchgoers and clerics to be arrested. Leo should get his act together as Pope, use Common Sense, stop catering to the Radical Left, and focus on being a Great Pope, not a Politician. It’s hurting him very badly and, more importantly, it’s hurting the Catholic Church! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Some pungent commentaries on the man.

Trump acolytes

  • Where is the Spawn of the Devil, Stephen Miller? Even Fox News doesn’t have him on at the moment.
  • Meghan Kelly: Has sniffed the wind and seen it’s changed direction. So now says Trump has lost his mind and Congress needs to act.
  • Ditto the execrable Alex Jones.

Relevant podcasts/YouTube videos

  • The Daily Beast Podcast/Video
  • Inside Trump’s Head Podcast/Video
  • The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent Podcast
  • The Rest is Politics US Podcast/Video
  • The DSR Network Podcast
  • The Politics Girl Video Amusing
  • The Daily Show Video Very amusing

US Society: Quote of the Day

We’ve got pure transactional amorality, a personalist presidency who orients all decision-making around his personal interests and corruption, a sociopathic willingness to kill tens of millions of people and staggering incompetence that’s just so bad that Trump doesn’t even know how incompetent he is. We cannot pretend that we are well as a nation. No morally healthy country would put this man in power twice. We have become a morally insane, civically disordered and self-regarding decadent country.

Social Media

This was once a great global conversation. Now it’s just individuals locked into their own private worlds. . . Social media isn’t so social now. . . Platforms are now dominated by a handful of big users. . . There’s no such thing as social media any more: just individuals and their algorithms.

Spanish

  • Sentar: Most frequently ‘To sit’ but can mean ‘To establish/set up’.
  • Contrafuerte: Buttress, abutment. Contrafuerte de una bota: The heel of a boot.
  • Apocapar: To shorten (words). To elide

English

Through some ad during a podcast, I learned that I could have a ‘dedicated searcher’ to find any of my personal data on the internet and then scrub it. I got to wondering what purpose the adjective served here. Putting aside the probability that it wouldn’t even be a person, did it really mean that the company would employ someone dedicated to only me, waiting for me to ask him/her to do carry out this task? If not, what? Did it really just mean that, if I made a request, some computer would click into action? With no human involvement at all, dedicated or not. Misrepresentation, in other words.

Did you know?

There was once a war involving a cannonball made of cheese.

You Have to Laugh

Another uncomfortable Finn . . .

Finally . . .

A 1773 observation from Samuel Johnson: It is surprising how people will go to a distance for what they may have at home. I knew a lady who came up from Lincolnshire to Knights-bridge with one of her daughters and gave 5 guineas* a week for a lodging and a warm bath; that is, mere warm water. That, you know, could not be had in Lincolnshire! She said, it was made either too hot or too cold there.

* Just under 10,000 pounds in today’s money . . .

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 there.

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

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