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:

Argentina’s far-right President Javier Milei has called the Spanish PM a “dictator” in a visit to Madrid, and has urged voters to oust the Socialist leader in upcoming elections. The attack drew condemnation of “external interference, attacks and insults” from the Spanish government.

Property:

Spain’s rental market faces a 30% collapse(RV), as the government’s ew housing decree sees landlords pull 4,235 homes in just 10 days

PP election promises(RV). Café para todos. There might be a few doubts about practicalities.

This is the PV city theatre complex I mentioned yesterday . . .

Portugal

In 1662, Portugal needed a strong ally against its powerful neighbour, Spain. So, the daughter of king João IV, Catarina de Bragança, was offered as a bride to Charles II of England. With her came the offer of a staggering dowry of £300,000 in hard cash, plus the right to trade with Brazil, the city of Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India. Unsurprisingly, cash-strapped Charles leapt at the deal. But no one in England wanted the mosquito-ridden swamp of Bombay. So Charles leased it to the (in)famous East India company, giving them an invaluable strategic position in India. Of which it took huge advantage. And the rest was history.

The UK/Europe/The EU

Interesting immigration data:-

Spain’s number is, course, a higher percentage than the UK’s, but I fancy most of them assimilated better here, for reasons I’ve spelt out more than once.

One wonders what France’s number would if some/many migrants arriving there don’t cross the Channel in rubber dinghies.

The United States of Trump America

Politics can be a very nasty business. Nowhere more so than in the USA, perhaps – where repulsive attack ads are a common feature of campaigns. But it’s widely thought that a new low has been reached with a Republican ad in which a long-estranged mother accuses her own (Democrat candidate) daughter of lying in court about being raped by her stepfather. There are several videos on YouTube about the ad and this is just one of them. Many Republicans have criticised the ad but, as you might expect, the vile Vance has defended it. And we can safely assume, I’m sure, that Trump believes it’s the best attack ad in the history of the world, it being true that ‘You’ve never seen anything like it’. This podcast covers the row over the ad, which most believe to have been counterproductive for the Republican candidate, who’s spent $4m on making and distributing it.

Is Ramaswamy’s ad the future of politics, as it amounts to a bet on the post-Trump GOP leaning further into Trumpian incivility. Indeed, Trump has urged Ramaswamy to keep broadcasting the spot. Given the rock bottom moral tone of the Trump administration, I’m reminded yet again of the adage that a fish stinks from the head.

Paul Krugman argues here that – in the light of the its shutdown – Starlink must, one way or another, be taken away from Elon Musk. It’s a matter of national security: we cannot let private individuals make foreign and defense policy, and it would be totally irresponsible to leave a crucial military asset in the hands of a racist, authoritarian conspiracy theorist.

The near future . . . If Democrats take back power in Congress, prepare for an all-out brawl against Trump’s top financial officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

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

• Malversación: Embezzlement
• Allanar: To pave. T clear/pave the way
• Zarandear: To shake, rattle

English

From Vanity Fair of 1850:-

• Snapt: Snapped. Another past participle that seems to have returned to the regular form.
• Uproused: Angered. A word that should be brought back. From To uprise, I guess.
• To condole: Another one. Much handier than ‘To give condolences’.

Did you know?

Early in the 12th century, Geoffrey of Monmouth published his is History of the Kings of Britain, in which he gave the legendary/mythical King Arthur his first full literary biography. It was a great sensation, not only in England but also right across Europe. In fact, the first monumental representation of Arthur and his knights was on the Fish-market Portal of Modena Cathedral in Italy, 1120-1130. As you’ll know, the myth persists, probably based on a tiny bit of factual evidence of a 6th century Welsh military leader. It was helped along by Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, first printed by William Caxton in 1485. It’s a good story

You Have to Laugh

HT to Lenox Napier of Business Over Tapas for this amusing Guardian article

Finally . . .

I’ve mentioned my bad luck with 4 laptops during the last 5-6 years. The latest one was giving me intermittent problems with 4 non-performing keys, all in the same place on the board. Advice from all sources was that this was a hardware problem, meaning a new keyboard after less than a year’s use. But I wondered if the intermittency of the problem indicated that heat was making the keys stick. So, for the last week, I’ve cooled the bottom of the laptop and the problem has not re-occurred. So, wish me luck that this is a solution and than I won’t have to lose the machine for several days/weeks and have to type my posts on my phone.

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.