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

Lenox Napier has 2 bites of the cherry today.

• Politics: The new coalition of the Right. I recall being astonished by the PP’s ‘sun tax’ year ago.
• The dreadful fires down in Almería.

As regards the latter, at least 4 Brits are included in the dead, I believe all from a ‘community’ or ‘colony’ in or near Bedar or Los Gallardos, described in one Spanish paper as being occupied by Brits living in a bubble, with minimum contact with local Spaniards, so not receiving the warnings of approaching fires. Which might well be true. There are some strange Brits . . .

The Diario de Pv talks featured an article today on the severe problem of getting staff for the hostelry sector of the city. The 2 consequences I’ve noticed are: 1. the astonishing turnover of staff, and 2. the deterioration of service levels. I guess a third would be the number of young Moroccans now employed in the cafés and bars.

Portugal

Can this foto of EES chaos in Lisbon airport be genuine?

Germany

The country’s car sector crisis has implications for Spain.

The World Cup

Congrats to Spain, who now face the formidable French in a semi-final. While, if the win tonight, England will fact lucky Argentina.

Trump has single-handedly taken all the goodwill accruing to the US from the World Cup and fed it into a shredder.

The United States of Trump America

The Nato summit exposed the real source of Trump’s power. Trump isn’t ‘unethical’. He’s ‘non-ethical’. He isn’t immoral. He’s amoral. It’s hard for most of us to conceive of living in a Trumpian world without standards, norms, rules or laws – a world composed only of transactions and calculations in which the only test is what’s in it for me and at what cost.

Why Trump Bombed Iran Again.

Spanish

• Reparto: Cast (of a film, etc.)
• Cuero: Leather. But also another word for ‘football’, used by match commentators, if no one else.
• Rechazar: To decline, refuse, reject

English

Humblebrag: “An ostensibly modest or self-deprecating statement whose actual purpose is to draw attention to something of which one is proud”.

Did you know?

According to Kurt Anderson – in his book Fantasy Land – there were 2 distinct types of English folk who sailed to North America in the early 17th century. One consisted of men solely interested getting rich from gold. These went to Virginia. The other consisted of Puritans unwelcome anywhere in Europe, and these went further north. So, on the one hand, people obsessed with making money, and, on the other, religious nutters. It’s arguable they’re still very much a feature of the USA today. And that they most obviously come together as the idiots who buy the Financial Bible hawked to them them by hucksters on the TV. And then, of course, there’s The Grifter-in-Chief, Donald Trump, and his Bible.

Finally . . .

One of the best voices from the 1960s and after – “singing, exquisitely, one of the most beautiful songs in the English language”.

Finally . . . Finally . . .

I’m really quite fed up with water problems. . . Alerted by an overactive water pump and by decreasing pressure in the boiler, I searched for a leak. Having discovered at least one in the copper tubing installed in the garage 15 years ago, I’ve just found indications of another one behind the wall of the downstairs toilet. And then there’s the water coming up through the floor in a corner of the basement. Can they all be a reflection of poor construction when the house was built 40 years ago? And is this why Spaniards tend to prefer new builds?? Plumbers will come ‘soon’ but I suppose it’s too much to expect that the 3 problems are connected and can be solved in one fell swoop. But at least we have water for me and my 7 family visitors. Some of it arriving at the taps. . . .

Oh, and the laptop I bought less than a year ago is overheating and cutting out . . . I’m jinxed.

But my house isn’t threatened by fire.

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 no longer post on Facebook. But I can be read on X at Thoughts from Galicia. And on Substack here

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.