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

Politics:

• As the far-right Vox party promotes its flagship ‘national priority’ plan as part of its manifesto ahead of the November general election, Brussels has – not unexpectedly – warned that its plan to give Spanish nationals priority over foreign residents for public services could breach EU law. Foreign residents, says Brussels, must be given equal access to public aid under European directives and EU Court of Justice rulings.
• I read a day or two ago that the PP-Vox coalition would have more Congress seats than the PSOE left-wing coalition after the November elections. But today’s news is that the state-run CIS gives the PSOE coalition a large lead. This contrasts with ‘most’ private pollsters, who are still going with a PP–Vox majority. Whom to believe?

The Economy: Having wondered about this, I asked Perplexity if anyone had ventured a view of what Spain’s economy would be like now if the tourism boom than began in the 60s hadn’t taken place. The response is at the end of this post.

Property: What you need to know about the new rental laws. For as long as they last.

Not good news: Emigration among young people in the Pv province has risen by 16% since 2021. Although the figures have improved, the drain has not stopped. Even as hundreds of young people seek their future outside Galicia each year, nearly 8 out of 10 businesses report an inability to find staff for their operations.

It’s roast chestnuts season – La Castañada or Magosto – in Pv city, despite temperatures above 25 this week. Wish I liked them.

The United States of Trump America

On Trump’s showing of the tiger video and his own ludicrous AI video:

• This is not the action of a sane man. And it shames the presidency and the entire USA.
• Grim, appalling, despicable. Yet it’s entirely what we’ve come to expect from a man who appears to be in a race to the very bottom.

J D Vance is said to be a clever chap. So, you’d think he’d be able to make a better stab at defining ‘socialism’ than: What it means in the [US] American context is that you want to replace [US] American workers with foreigners and you want boys to play in girls’ sports. Despicable. But in line with the woeful understanding in the USA of what socialism really is and how it differs from both communism and capitalism. Back to poor education, I guess.

A year or two ago, a UK commercial TV channel produced a long documentary consisting of Trump’s lies – well, some of them – alongside corrections. Nice idea but not a success. Just too boring after a few minutes. But imagine a horror film/movie of all Trump’s most evil deeds over a decade or more. I fancy that would have a greater chance of success. And perhaps, like films of Nazi atrocities, it should be aired every year. To remind folk of how bad things can get without effective guardrails, to use a currently popular word.

Just in case you’re confused by the brouhaha in the USA, these seems to be the official US definitions:-

• Attorney: Anyone who is eligible to practice law in and is a member in good standing of the bar of the highest court of any State, possession, territory, or Commonwealth of the United States, or of the District of Columbia.
• Lawyer: Someone who has a law degree, even if they’ve not gone on to be called to a bar in the USA

It seems that the new White House Press Secretary is ‘only’ the latter and can’t be what the White House has said she is – an attorney. More importantly, perhaps, she seems not to be a very effective mouthpiece for a consummate liar she says she’s long admired. Postscript: It’s now alleged she failed the California bar exam. Bit of a mess.

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

• Rabona: Truancy, skipping class.
• Ideado: Devised, designed, developed.
• Benemérito: Praiseworthy, meritorious.

I was confused to read the headline Hoy toda España es caballa, given that caballa means ‘mackerel’. Turns out it’s also the nickname for Ceutans.

English

Bumper: In the 18th century, this was ‘A generous glassful of an alcoholic drink, typically one drunk as a toast’. I knew someone who had one of these – of cut glass – for his gin and tonics. He died in his 50s.

Did you know?

How a priest accidentally terrified Britain.

You Have to Laugh

.Finally . . .

When the clocks go back late this month – Spring forward, Fall back – it might well be for the last time, at least in Europe . . . In 2018, the European Commission proposed abolishing seasonal clock changes across the EU. The European Parliament supported ending the changes in 2019, but the EU Council—representing national governments—has never agreed a common position. Without that agreement, the proposal cannot become law. The issue remains formally open but effectively stalled. The Commission has commissioned further detailed analysis to help governments decide, while stressing that it wants a coordinated solution rather than a patchwork of different time rules across Europe. Progress ain’t fast.

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

The Spanish Economy . . .What if . . .?

There is no well-established, formal counterfactual projection of what Spain’s economy would look like today, if the mass-tourism boom of the 1960s had never happened. Economists generally treat tourism as one important part of Spain’s wider “developmentalist” take-off, alongside foreign investment, emigrant remittances, trade liberalisation, EU integration and industrialisation—not as the sole cause of Spain’s modern economic success.

What tourism contributed

The 1960s boom was economically crucial because tourism supplied scarce foreign currency, helped cover Spain’s trade deficit, and financed imports of machinery and technology needed for industrial expansion. Tourism receipts rose from about 1% of GDP in 1959 to roughly 4% by 1973, while Spain recorded exceptionally rapid GDP growth—close to double digits annually from 1960 to 1974.

Tourism also built much of the coastal and island infrastructure, created large numbers of jobs, and helped integrate Spain into post-war European consumer markets. But it was concentrated in sun-and-beach regions and became a relatively low-productivity, seasonal, labour-intensive sector.

A plausible counterfactual

If tourism had not developed at scale, Spain would probably have:

• Grown more slowly in the 1960s and early 1970s, because foreign-exchange constraints would have been tighter.
• Imported less capital equipment and industrial technology, unless offset by more foreign borrowing, remittances, or export-led manufacturing.
• Had a smaller construction, hospitality and coastal-property sector, especially in the Mediterranean,
• Potentially developed a more manufacturing- and export-oriented economy—but only if policy had successfully redirected investment and labour that way.
• Likely had lower living standards in the short and medium term, though perhaps less regional dependence on seasonal tourism today.

Why a precise projection is impossible

A credible “Spain without tourism” model would need to specify what replaced tourism’s foreign-currency earnings, investment and employment. The result could range from a poorer, later-industrialising Spain to a more balanced economy with stronger manufacturing and higher productivity; the evidence does not identify one unique path.

The strongest conclusion is not that Spain would be dramatically poorer today solely because tourism was absent, but that the 1960s boom materially accelerated convergence with Western Europe and helped remove an external-financing bottleneck during Spain’s fastest modern growth phase. Tourism remains large: recent estimates put its broad contribution at more than 10% of GDP and roughly 12–14% of employment, which is why its long-run effects on productivity and regional diversification are still debated

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.