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. If there’s RV2, it means a second click on RV might let you see the article though the first RV click didn’t work.

Cosas de España/Galiza

Not good news re inflation.

The PM has acknowledged that the PSOE has suffered ‘cases of corruption that are true’ but insisted his government had responded effectively. And he has dismissed allegations of corruption against his family as ‘nasty politics’.

Here in Galicia, we’ve just had our first ciclogénesis of autumn winter. This word is defined at the end of this post. The wind yesterday reached 100kph in parts of Pv province

The UK

To say the least, social care and healthcare provided by the NHS have never been integrated. At its worst, this can mean aged individuals falling through gaps, as institutions fight to avoid incurring the costs of looking after them. One end result is that a significant percentage of beds, in an overstretched NHS, are occupied by healthy people who have nowhere to be sent home to. For at least 20 – quite possibly 30 – years – successive governments of both stripes have failed to do resolve this Gordian knot, usually because the opposition party – assisted by the tabloid and, now, social media – has cynically labelled the necessary revenue-raising measure a ‘Dementia Tax’ or a ‘Death Tax’. To his credit, the new PM has said he’s resolved to end this farce but I doubt that anyone is holding their breath.

The Middle East War

The latest update from Naked Capitalism.

The United States of Trump America

Trump:

• Super Intelligence . . . The name has been officially changed by the biggest, the smartest, the greatest people anywhere in the world at this.
• We get along better with China than with Canada. [From the man who is responsible for this].

Did You know:-

• Less than 1% of Republican candidate ads for the November mid-terms mention Trump. So, he has issued one all about himself, paid for – illegally – by US taxpayers.
• Trump has said he’s changing AI to SI because it’s ‘superior’ to human intelligence. Not a huge challenge in his own case, of course.
• Schools are sending a note to parents, via the kids, asking for the name of someone to pick up them up if the person who usually does this has been detained and taken away by ICE.
• All sorts of weird performers have more viewers than Trump TV.

What a humiliated Trump will do in his last 2 years.

In like vein . . . Is it just me, or has anyone else also noticed that our president has been melting down even more than usual lately? That whole “no guardrails” thing, combined with being surrounded by sycophants who are only too eager to do all of his bidding without questioning it and Congressional Republicans who almost without exception remain scared to death of him – plus immunity – has produced a monster who believes no court order applies to him and no law can stop him from doing whatever the hell he wants. Given the above, I don’t think it qualifies as catastrophizing to conclude that all bets are off when it comes to this guy’s wholly unpredictable behavior and what he’s prone to do when faced with what’s looking like an increasingly likely blue wave washing over the midterms. (RV)

Relevant Books

• Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest
• 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.
• Profiles in Cowardice, by Jacob Weisberg. Cited in this podcast.

Spanish

• Derecho: Straight on
• A la derecha: Turn right
• Vodevil: Vaudeville. Music hall

English

To own: US – To irritate someone enough to cause a reaction which serves as a diversion from other matters. A Trump speciality.

Did you know?

The man who forged a Shakespeare play.

You Have to Laugh

Finally . . .

So, it’s goodbye to September, not the month it used to he in Pv city but still my favourite because the tourist numbers of July and August significantly reduce – albeit offset by an increase in Caminoers – and the weather remains warm. Or, indeed, hot this this year. Incidentally, I was depressed to read in a recent article on buying property in Spain, that the Rías Baixas were described as ‘very fashionable’. Hopefully one day they’ll cease to be, replaced by Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country along the cooler north coast.

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

Cyclogenesis [The links might not work]

This is the development or strengthening of cyclonic circulation in the atmosphere (a low-pressure area)] Cyclogenesis is an umbrella term for at least three different processes, all of which result in the development of some sort of cyclone, and at any size from the microscale to the synoptic scale.

• Tropical cyclones form due to latent heat driven by significant thunderstorm activity, developing a warm core.
• Extratropical cyclones form as waves along weather fronts before occluding later in their life cycle as cold core cyclones.
• Mesocyclones form as warm core cyclones over land, and can lead to tornado formation. Waterspouts can also form from mesocyclones, but more often develop from environments of high instability and low vertical wind shear.

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.