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

Ceuta

• The day that Spain exploded in anger for Ceuta and its people, after a month of crisis. [I imagine that the cries of ‘Son of a bitch’ were really of ‘Son of a whore’ – Hijo de puta. I also guess the crowd was denied the chance to lustfully bawl the national anthem, because this is wordless. But perhaps they loudly hummed it, while waving their flags ‘melodically’.]

As detailed here, the costs associated with buying a Spanish property differ ‘vastly’ across the country’s 19 regions. The consequences of this are spelt out in the article.

Galicia’s La Coruña and Vigo come out well in this rating of all of Spain’s major cities. Superficial stuff.

Today in Pv city saw the last of our summer fiestas – the Feira Franca, a now huge medieval extravaganza that has grown from tiny one-street beginnings in 2000 and which now takes over the entire old quarter and much of the new quarter. And which involves a great deal of prior planning and setting up, just for one day. Nowadays, the great majority of those who form the dense crowds avail themselves of a costume from one of the several pop-up shops that appear in the city a couple of weeks before the event. Or, of course, from one of the city’s several Chinese bazares. Special menus in all the packed restaurants and tapas bars cost at least as €45 a head. It all generates a vast amount of rubbish, of which nothing will be seen in immaculate streets by 8am tomorrow. Truly impressive.

It all kicked off with an acrobatic spectacular last night . . .

The United States of Trump America

MAGAworld is said to be in meltdown after the sacking by Fox News of its most dedicated Trump endorser. This being the USA, a law suit has already been initiated by the latter.

Melania snubs her hubbie. Again. And MAGA, of course.

Trump’s UK nuclear claim is the latest rambling of an old man who’s lost it. In a recent UK interview, the US President treated us to a concentrated stream of nonsense

Relevant Books

• To be published in October. Can be pre-ordered now: Wtf America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. On Amazon or here.
• 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 [Digital] World

A specific ‘creator’ . . . . “Mr Beast is the online name of ‘Jimmy Donaldson’, a US entrepreneur who’as become the most-subscribed individual creator on YouTube, known for ultra-high-budget challenge videos, stunts, and large-scale giveaways. He’s seen as both an entertainment phenomenon and a case study in modern digital media. Extremely popular with younger audiences, he’s highly influential in creator economics, and sometimes controversial for the scale and format of his stunts. On YouTube he has well over 500m subscribers. He started posting on it in 2012 as a teenager and gradually shifted from gaming/commentary content to expensive, fast-paced challenge and philanthropy videos. He’s often described as having turned YouTube into a kind of global game-show studio, where ordinary people compete in extreme scenarios for life-changing prizes. Beyond YouTube, Donaldson runs Beast Industries, a media and consumer-goods conglomerate. Forbes estimated his annual earnings in the hundreds of millions and valued his company at c. $5 billion. Nice work, if you can get it.

Spanish

• Camposanto: Cemetery
• Rebanar: To slice, slash
• Placa: Plate, plaque, hob, panel, licence plate, nameplate, sheet, tag.

Did you know?

• The Roman name for part of France was Provincia, giving us modern Provence. And . . .
• The Roman provinces of Mauretania and Numidia correspond broadly to parts of modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.

You Have to Laugh

Costumes at the Feira Franca today were many and varied. But I rather doubt Roman senators and Scottish highlanders were wandering around medieval Pontevedra.

Finally . . .

Comedy is the only job you can do really badly and people won’t laugh at you.

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 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.