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

Spain and the EU: Spain causes EU feathers to flutter in the dovecot with its legalisation of immigrants – here and here

Politics: Spain’s hard left parties fail to unite ahead of the general election. (Did anyone really expect that they would?)

Property: Barcelona plans to increase taxes on renters of tourist flats.

Life: Good to see that commercial calls will begin with a tell-tale 400.

Local News

• At the moment, the train from Galicia (Vigo) to Portugal’s Oporto airport is infrequent and slow. The Portuguese government intends to make the trip a lot faster. Which will ensure the airport grabs even more of Galicia’s international flights business than it does now. Which is a lot. I doubt this will stimulate Galicia’s politicians to rationalise the inadequate operations of our 3 facilities.
• This is the glorious pharmacy that I use, in Plaza de Verdura in Pv city’s old quarter. Always a pleasure to visit it.

The ‘West Asian’ War

The latest update from Naked Capitalism.

The United States of Trump America

Trump

• The Mexicans paid for the wall via the huge tariffs I placed on them. [Actually paid by US importers, of course.]

Others

• The administration lied to us. They said there wouldn’t be a live execution. But there was. It was Katie Zacharia. [The interview with Sean Hannity, on the instructions of ???]
• The political style of Donald Trump is so sloppy and coarse that he rarely gets the credit he deserves for cunning and even subtlety.

How Trump gets away with showing contempt for his MAGA base.

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

• Ignífuga: Fire-proof
• Hacer caja: To make cash.
• Tiritar: To shiver, tremble

English

• ”Groypers’: An informal group of supporters of far-right activist and online streamer Nick Fuentes. They are named after a variant of Pepe the Frog, an internet meme. Female Groypers are sometimes called ‘Groypettes’.
• ‘Shredded: In British informal slang, this most commonly means very muscular and extremely lean, with clearly visible muscle definition.(Chat Copilot). Does anyone know the difference between formal and informal slang? Chat Copilot offers this, suggesting there’s no such thing as ‘informal slang’. Just – as I suspected slang: Formal: He’s very muscular; Informal: He’s very fit; Slang: He’s shredded

Did you know?

Probably not news to at least 50% of the population. Women are more emotionally intelligent than men.

You Have to Laugh

The Halfway House on Substack today. . . . If the Republicans retain control of the Congress, dozens of countries are reportedly planning to turn off all their particle accelerators at the same time, to try and shift Earth onto a new dimensional timeline where the US isn’t batshit crazy.

Finally . . .

Age-old wisdom . . .

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.