Colin Davies

29 September 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’

NB: If there’s a RV in brackets after a (paywalled) link, you might be able to read it via a Reader View extension to your browser, avoiding the paywall. If there is no RV, it will mean that the article is free to view or listen to. Or that I’ve forgotten to type it . . .

Cosas de España/Galiza

Housing:

  • A growing protest camp in the heart of Madrid over unaffordable housing has pushed the PM on Sunday to pledge swift government action. . . .The housing problem in Spain has become a burning issue ahead of a general election due to take place next year.
  • The 2023 law designed to prevent/minimise rent increases in rental prices has failed – as Mark Stücklin would’ve predicted, and probably did. The national average per square metre has risen 18% since 2023 and 66% since 2014. More so in ‘stressed’ areas than in others, of course. In Pv city it’s now closer to €900 per m2 than than the national average of 606. Though this is well below the levels of, say, Madrid, Barcelona, Málaga and Valencia.

The weather . . . Autumn has arrived in Spain, as Cataluña faces torrential rain and hurricane-force winds and both the Costa Blanca and Malaga are under weather warnings. A fierce autumn storm system has brought Spain’s long summer to an abrupt end, triggering severe weather alerts across the Mediterranean coast. While a brief respite is expected on Wednesday, meteorologists warn that the wet weather is set to linger.

Local scuttlebutt . . . There were 2 weddings in Galicia which made the news last weekend, largely because the police were called to both of them. The the first involved an ‘argument’ between bride and groom, said to have arisen – at the reception – from the refusal of the groom to hand over €40,000 the bride claimed he’d promised to give her. After which she’s reported to have sought brief consolation with a waiter in a toilet. That one was up in Ourense but the second one was reported as a fight between families of the betrothed in one of the 2 Roma(gypsy) settlements close to my home. The reception had taken place elsewhere but tensions clearly rose after the parties had returned home. Possibly the worse for wear. A not-uncommon ‘settlement of accounts’ might also have been a factor behind the apparent mayhem. Based on my own observations of their activity, I’d guess the police wouldn’t have needed GPS to locate the settlement. [Late news: 1. The bride’s father has said the fight in the settlement was totally unrelated to the wedding. 2. It’s now reported the fighting was between 2 groups of men in their 30s and that 30 Guardia Civil and National Police were required to subdue them].

Needless to say, I wasn’t the only person affected by the parking problem during the 3 days last week of the triathlon event. Several folk employed in the city have told me of the difficulty they had in getting to work. And at least one of these was fined by the police, who seem to have taken the opportunity to be zealous in penalising desperate drivers for parking where they could. A common question is: Why aren’t there Park&Ride facilities for these very disruptive events? Maybe next time. At the very least, that would obviate the need for commercial operators to park a large van and trailer outside my house, way out of Pv city’s centre . . . [Postscript: I asked Perplexity if there’d been any complaints about the parking situation and got a long reply, the essence of which was You bet! And not only about that. It added that just about everyone responsible had apologised except the mayor, who had simply said that the city had done itself proud and had given an excellent impression of itself. Perhaps more to visitors than to its residents.]

I have to confess ignorance around a bit of Gallego/Galego(Galician) vocabulary . . . Confusingly, the word for ‘nest’ is niño, which means ‘child’ in Castellano. Hence its use in the article on the Asian wasp(velutina) cited yesterday.

Interestingly, since I typed Galician words yesterday and this morning, all the ads in my podcasts and on YouTube are now in Gallego . . .

Sadly, there were 2 more deaths this week of the sort the region seem to specialise in – 1. The driver of a tractor that turned over, and 2. An elderly person on a zebra crossing.

The new obligations for e-vehicle riders come into force tomorrow. As I’ve said, I wonder if they’ll be ignored by the police as much as the current ones. For example, only yesterday morning, one on the road and one on the pavement:-

The UK

Reader Perry has kindly cited this article, which argues that the UK economy is not faring as badly as many folk claim.

Next March, easyJet will launch flights from Liverpool to Girona and to Murcia. We still await one from either Liverpool or Manchester to any of Galicia’s 3 airports.

The United States of Trump America

Quotes

  • No one is more concerned about gas prices than President Trump. He is the energy president.
  • I have come to realise that President Trump has the highest IQ of any US president. [JD Vance. Could there be anyone more cravenly ambitious than this man, who under Peter Thiel will be worse than Trump in implementing Project 2025?]

The Democrats still have a whacking great image problem – 58% of Americans think they are too liberal – and a huge fundraising disadvantage.

Did you know?

  • 50,000 people were arrested by ICE in August.
  • ICE officers are now using local police forces as a front for the initial stopping of cars, so that people won’t video them in action.
  • The tell-tale sign of ICE involvement disguised this way is a black Kia Teluride SUV parked nearby.
  • ICE officers were secretly told to stop arresting immigrants who haven’t been convicted of a crime. Trump said this wasn’t true, presumable because this would make him appear weak.
  • Despite there being a statutory ban on it and despite China being the US’s enemy no. 1, Trump has offered to sell arms to the Chinese.

Has Trump become a communist?

Relevant Books

Spanish

  • Reyerta: Brawl, fray, dogfight, melee,
  • Trifulca: Brawl, etc.
  • Era un día de estos: It was one of those days . . .

English

Finally . . . You Have to Laugh

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

The Usual Links

This – from veteran blogger Lenox Napier – is an excellent weekly newsletter (Business Over Tapas) on all matters Spanish. Indispensable for those who needs insights on how and why things happen here.

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.

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