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.
España/Galicia
Three articles from The Olive Press which you might be able to read by pressing Reader View once or twice:-
Can banks in Spain refuse to open accounts for expats if they have a passport but no NIE?
Why Tuesday 13th is the Spanish day of bad luck and misfortune.
Cultural differences . . . I had a perfect example today of how Spanish and Japanese (and British) cultures differ. Walking into town, I became aware that 2 people were coming towards me on the right, bent on crossing my path. As I’m accustomed to Spaniards not letting me continue in these circumstances, I stopped. But, being Japanese, so did they. It took some effort to make them go first but they eventually did, smiling and saying Thank-you in English. So, even the Japanese can recognise that I’m a guiri. Must be my read face.
The United States of Trump America
Trump: Answering the question of why there wasn’t the Ukraine-Russia ceasefire he’d said there was. There is one. Because I told them there was one.
Many others: (US)America is now a barbarous country.
- If you’re interested in the Kimberley Gilfoyle saga, you might want to listen to Michael Wolff suggesting the real reasons for her sacking here.
- But I guess everyone’s seen enough of the less-than-perfect and mendacious performance of the new White House Press Secretary, who might or might not be the lawyer she claims to be. And who might not last the week.
- There are many brilliant commentaries on Trump and his regime on the internet but this is a very good one, from an acerbic English comedian called Jonathan Pie – whose shtick is to play an aggressively honest TV news reporter.
- If these alleged facts are true, it could well explain a lot. As I recall, I’ve said that the issue of ignorance born of poor education surely needs addressing. At least from a liberal/Democrat point of view. It obviously suits today’s Republicans.
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. This is not simply a book about Trump. He is the vessel, not the disease – the product of a system decades in the making, fueled by powerful interests, weakened democratic institutions, and a media ecosystem that too often chose access and complicity over accountability. The book confronts the defining questions of our time: How did we get here? Why did so many institutions fail when they were needed most? And what must we do now to defend democracy before it is too late?
- 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
Some useful slang expressions:-
English
In a novel of 1850, I noted the word ‘slipt’ – a similar past participle to slept, dreamt, crept, leapt, etc. . It seems that, since 1850, the modern word ‘slipped’ has ‘slipt’ back to what I assume was its original form. In other words, it’s gone in the opposite direct from words which have lost the ED ending in favour of T. A weird language, English. But useful.
Did you know?
You Have to Laugh
A comment from that novel of 1850: This I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without a bad hump, may marry whom she likes. Only let us be thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don’t know their own power. They would overcome us men entirely if they did. Almost 200 years after this was penned, I suspect the secret is well out. And power has shifted. All thanks to ‘the pill’.
Finally . . .
After chatting to a tall* Dutch friend yesterday about height, I said that, although many Spanish youths are taller than me, few Spanish men of my age are. I guessed this was due to a better diet – as with the Dutch and the Japanese – but later I got to wondering exactly how DNA changed with diet, from one generation to the next. Perplexity gave me this answer: Diet doesn’t change your actual DNA sequence, but through a process called epigenetics, nutrients alter how your genes are read. Foods rich in protein and nutrients—like meat, eggs, and dairy—provide vital methyl donors like vitamin B12, choline, and amino acids. These compounds trigger a chemical process called DNA methylation, which essentially acts as a volume control to turn specific genes on or off, helping to regulate inflammation, metabolism, and cellular ageing. Per Wiki . . . DNA methylation is a biological process by which methyl groups are added to the DNA molecule. Methylation can change the activity of a DNA segment without changing the sequence.
*I say ‘tall’ but this is by British standards, not by Dutch standards. Thanks to the proteins in dairy products from cows fed on the rich grasses of land recovered from the sea, the Dutch are the tallest folk in Europe.
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.
