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 . . . The Spanish fishing fleet has lost 1,500 fishing vessels in 12 years: The EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is driving it toward extinction. This is the view of vessel owners, who argue that maintaining this legislation—without addressing its shortcomings—does not preserve European fisheries, but rather undermines them. They denounce the “blindness” of the Commission as regards its 2025-2040 program, which fails to resolve current problems. They state that between 2013 and 2025, 1,574 vessels (614 of them from Galicia) have disappeared from the registry of the active Spanish fishing fleet. So . . .Will there eventually be an EU ‘cod war’, like the one the UK lost to Iceland a while back?

My vote for the ugliest building in Pv city is the modern theatre across the river. Apart from its intrinsic lack of beauty, there’s been a problem for years of large slate tiles falling off the side of it – as with the also-modern museum n Mérida and, indeed, the Ciudade da Cultura white elephant/vanity project in Santiago de Compostela. Modern architects seem to have a problem with the affixation of stone. Anyway. the solution for our theatre will be to remove all said tiles, instead of – as now – catching them in a mesh before they kill someone.

I spoke to soon about the new Centro Comercio in O Vao being open for Xmas. Despite recent feverish activity, it won’t be – meaning that 2 Xmases and their profits will have been missed. The latest forecast is for ‘early 2027’. So, next Xmas is secure. I guess.

Europe

I asked Perplexity which countries had benefitted from the CFP, in contrast with Spain’s disbenefitting. The answer was: Spain’s decline is driven by several things:- quota reductions for particular stocks, stock movements, fuel and operating costs, fleet restructuring, and competition in distant-water fisheries. Spain remains the EU’s largest fleet by gross tonnage, at about 24% of the EU total, and together with France and Denmark accounts for roughly half of EU catches. The main relative gainers are France and Denmark, with Portugal gaining in landing value and the Netherlands or Finland gaining in particular years or fisheries. It is mostly France and Denmark that are best placed to benefit from the same North-East Atlantic and pelagic stocks.

As for the UK . . . The UK has gained share of many North-East Atlantic stocks relative to the counterfactual of EU membership, especially through the 2021–25 adjustment period. But the headline gain is now mostly complete, and 2026 shows that a better relative share does not prevent a fall in the volume and value of fishing opportunities when stocks or total catch limits shrink.

The Middle East/West Asia War

The latest update from Naked Capitalism. An imminent US attack, impelled by Israel?

The United States of Trump America

Trump has always waved to an imaginary crowd that the cameras never show. For narcissists, it’s all about creating an aggrandized self, a persona, a narrative —  that he is popular, special, celebrated, and idolized. Binders with blank pages. Fake Melanias. As a psychiatric pharmacist originally from Canada, if you’d ever told me this level of mental pathology would get elected to the US Presidency not once but twice, I would have said absolutely no way, even knowing the narcissism, insularity, and exceptionalism of the US itself. I keep reading people trying to make sense of Trump’s behavior with normal human schemas. This will never work. He doesn’t possess what makes one human. Quit trying to apply human emotions, qualities, traits, desires, motivations, reasoning to him. They don’t apply.

The lesson learned by foreign officials and others steeped in diplomacy is that you cannot truly change Trump’s mind or stop his overall trajectory. Even if he seems briefly chastened or stages a tactical retreat, he will eventually return in new, often-surprising modes to push his original views and goals. Witness Greenland, Canada and Ukraine. A heart attack might work, even if obvious dementia doesn’t.

I read that Steve Witkoff had publicly called Putin “a humanitarian”. Finding this unlikely, I checked it on Perplexity: The context was the release of a US prisoner and Witcoff’s words were: “You talk so much about President Trump being a humanitarian. You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you. And I thank you again.” Unsurprisingly, there was bipartisan negative reaction to this. While, of course, Trump defended it, saying Putin could be called humanitarian “for that particular purpose.” As he no doubt would have said about Hitler for being kind to his dog, Blondi. Not to mention his kindness in persuading his (belated)wife to down a cyanide pill. I seem to recall that Genghis Khan also had his humanitarian moments. I’d guess Trump also sees himself as at least occasionally humanitarian.

This is an interesting podcast featuring the author of this book. Shame the kindle prices is not much discounted . . .

The US tipping culture is notorious around the world but I was still surprised to read that a customer was asked to pay an 18% tip on the screen of a supermarket self-checkout machine. What a society!

Relevant Books

• An Unreliable Boyfriend. See above.
• 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.

The Way of the World

A UK museum has removed mummies from display because of a lack of “informed consent” from the dead Egyptians. A spokesperson explained “The removal of human remains from display reflects contemporary museum practice. In the absence of consent, we believe removing ancient human remains from display is more respectful to the deceased individuals.” Who will surely be appreciative of the gesture, having surely by now become utterly fed up with folk gawping at their sarcophagated carcases.

Spanish

Words to be careful about:-

• Peine: Comb
• Pene: Penis
• Enconado: ‘Fierce, violent, and highly stubborn’.
• Encoñado: ‘Sexually obsessed with someone’.
• Cono: ‘A solid bounded by a plane that intersects a closed conical surface’. Cone.
• Coño: ‘Pussy’, etc.

English

• To olden: 18-19th century ‘To age’.
• Sated: 18-19th century past particle of ‘sit’ cf. modern ‘sat’.
• He was sat: Northern English for ‘He was sitting’.

Did you know?

At the risk of sending Perry down another rabbit hole . . . Perry is made from fermented pear juice; it is the pear equivalent of cider. Sparkling versions were historically marketed as “champagne perry,” though they are not champagne.

Finally . . .

When a Colombian friend told me her name Jennifer was Spanish, I said I doubted it because of the 2 Ns in it. I checked on Perspective about both her name and mine:-

• Jennifer: Of Celtic origin, it’s a Cornish form of the Welsh name Gwenhwyfar, from which the name Guinevere—the queen of King Arthur—also derives.
• Colin: The Anglicised form of the Irish Coileán/Cuilén, which means “puppy” or “offspring.”
• Davies: Also of Celtic origin. ‘Son of David’.

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.