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

Undoubtedly good news . . . Spanish scientists have hailed a historic medical breakthrough after a new skin cancer vaccine showed in trials that it can stop deadly tumours from coming back.

Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas tells that it’s reported that: Spain has almost 8m non-primary residences, 30% of the total dwellings in the country. Only 4 European countries have more vacant homes and second residences than Spain, which could cover part of its housing shortage. Adds Lenox: This, is in part, down to families maintaining their village homes; in part, because they’re difficult to sell; and, in part, for nostalgia and a useful bolthole for the summer-break. 

The Golden Rules of ordering tapas. Mastering the art of the tapas bar is a rite of passage for anyone living in or travelling through Spain.

The UK

In Britain – as it might be elsewhere – the Bird’s Eye brand is associated with frozen food, particularly ‘fish fingers’. So, readers there will probably be surprised to read that, in the early 20th century, it marketed cigarettes. Mind you, back then some famous companies were offering products containing cocaine or, I think, morphine.

A bet on ‘far right, populist’ Reform party being the next government doesn’t look as wise as it did 6 months ago. The cracks are showing, says Richard North here.

Iran v. The USA

The FT: Iran eyes military targets in Europe, if Trump escalates the war. Proposals to retaliate against US assets beyond the Middle East come as many in Tehran see renewed conflict as inevitable.

The United States of Trump America

To work on Fox News, you have to give up all your beliefs. [Of all people, Rudy Giuliani]

Even MAGA Secretly Admits the Truth About Trump

Relevant Books

• To be published in October. Can be pre-ordered now: Wtf America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy.
• The final pages of Kurt Andersen’s fascinating run through the USA’s history – Fantasyland: How America went haywire. A 500 year history.

The Way of the World

How living in a ‘digital first’ world has made our lives smaller. How the promise of digital liberation has not just often fallen short but created its own bad side effects. 

Spanish

• Galeno: Doctor (from Galen)
• Droga de sumisión quimica: Date-rape drug.
• Cábalas: Speculation

Did you know?

Common historical myths that are, well, myths

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

This is a letter from a woman who is replying – in a letter to a British newspaper during the 1914-18 World War – to a letter from a man who’d given himself the nickname Tommy Atkins and who was clearly fighting in the trenches in France. Whatever you think her sentiments, I believe we’d all agree it would be difficult to imagine such a letter being written more than 100 years later. Though, on second thoughts, perhaps it could be written by the mother of a US soldier involved in Vietnam, Iraq or Iran

Note: The word ‘race’ s used by her as it commonly was back then, to mean ‘people’. She isn’t being ‘racist’.

Sirs,

May I be permitted to reply to Tommy Atkins, whose letter appeared in your issue of the 9th of this month?

Perhaps he will kindly convey to his friends in the trenches, not what the Government thinks, not what the Pacifists think, but what the mothers of the British race think of our fighting men. It is a voice which demands to be heard, seeing that we play the most important part in the history of the world, for it is we who ‘mother the men’ who have to uphold the honour and traditions not only of our Empire but of the whole civilised world.

To the man who pathetically calls himself a ‘common soldier’, may I say that we women, who demand to be heard, will tolerate no such cry as ‘Peace! Peace!’ where there is no peace. The corn that will wave over land watered by the blood of our brave lads shall testify to the future that their blood was not spilt in vain. We need no marble monuments to remind us. We only need that force of character behind all motives to see this monstrous world tragedy brought to a victorious ending.

The blood of the dead and the dying, the blood of the ‘common soldier’ from his ‘slight wounds’ will not cry to us in vain. They have all done their share, and we, as women, will do ours without murmuring and without complaint. Send the Pacifists to us and we shall very soon show them, and show the world, that in our homes at least there shall be no ‘sitting at home warm and cosy in the winter, cool and “comfy” in the summer’.

There is only one temperature for the women of the British race, and that is white heat. With those who disgrace their sacred trust of motherhood we have nothing in common. Our ears are not deaf to the cry that is ever ascending from the battlefield from men of flesh and blood whose indomitable courage is borne to us, so to speak, on every blast of the wind.

We women pass on the human ammunition of ‘only sons’ to fill up the gaps, so that when the ‘common soldier’ looks back before going ‘over the top’ he may see the women of the British race at his heels, reliable, dependent, uncomplaining. The reinforcements of women are, therefore, behind the ‘common soldier’.

We gentle-nurtured, timid sex did not want the war. It is no pleasure to us to have our homes made desolate and the apple of our eye taken away. We would sooner our lovable, promising, rollicking boy stayed at school We would have much preferred to have gone on in a light-hearted way with our amusements and our hobbies. But the bugle call came, and we have hung up the tennis racquet, we’ve fetched our laddie from school, we’ve put his cap away, and we have glanced lovingly over his last report which said ‘Excellent’ – we’ve wrapped them all in a Union Jack and locked them up, to be taken out only after the war to be looked at.

A ‘common soldier’, perhaps, did not count on the women, but they have their part to play, and we have risen to our responsibility. We are proud of our men, and they in turn have to be proud of us. If the men fail. Tommy Atkins, the women won’t.

Tommy Atkins to the front,

He has gone to bear the brunt.

Shall ‘stay-at-homes’ do naught but snivel and but sigh?

No, while your eyes are filling

We are up and doing, willing

To face the music with you – or to die!

Women are created for the purpose of giving life, and men to take it. Now we are giving it in a double sense. It’s not likely we are going to fail Tommy. We shall not flinch one iota, but when the war is over he must not grudge us, when we hear the bugle call of ‘Lights out’, a brief, very brief, space of time to withdraw into our secret chambers and share, with Rachel the Silent, the lonely anguish of a bereft heart, and to look once more on the college cap, before we emerge stronger women to carry on the glorious work our men’s memories have handed down to us for now and all eternity.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

The Usual Links .

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I can also be read on X at Thoughts from Galicia. And on Substack here. I no longer post 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. And this, on the annual costs of owning property here.