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

So much for impressive macro growth and increased average GDP numbers . . .The Voz de Galicia today on the cost of living challenge in Spain: Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the surge in basic household expenses—food, transport, and housing—has placed relentless pressure on family budgets, consuming more than half of their income. Over the last 4 years, these 3 essential categories have seen price increases 3 times greater than the rise in wages, thereby eroding purchasing power. In Spain, wages have grown by 17.6% during this period (just 0.1 percentage points below the average for eurozone countries), while the costs of food, housing, and fuel have jumped by 57% (11 percentage points below the eurozone average). This is an interesting table showing how things have move in several EU countries.

In contrast to Spain, Poland has done rather well. Possibly in part because: Poland is currently the EU’s largest beneficiary of EU funds, especially in cohesion policy, and it also has the largest net financial benefit after subtracting its contributions to the EU budget:-

Hmm . . . 30% of properties in Pv city are occupied by single individuals. Presumably a factor in the shortage of properties.

Might well be true . . . Pv city is the only city which doesn’t obligate an E sticker because it has the lowest contamination in the country.

A strange autumn . . . Having fallen from 26 to 15, the temperature in Pv city rose back up to 24 today. More confusion, to go along with that created by the weekend change of the clock. Will we ever be rid of that?

Europe

Europe’s oldest hatred re-emerges under new flags.

The United States of Trump America

Truly frightening. . . The worst is yet to come. In this video, psychologist John Gartner talks of Trump’s inevitable further decline – past and future – and expresses fears that, weakened, he’ll become even more evil and dangerous, certainly becoming physically violent and possibly resorting to some sort of a nuclear attack. If you didn’t read this article cited yesterday, maybe this is the time to do so. Not that any of us can do anything about what seems to be coming down the track. And no one in the USA seems able to stop the madman.

Another reason to be afraid . . . Peter Thiel, 58, is the most influential figure in Silicon Valley since Steve Jobs emerged in the late 1970s. A libertarian, anti-establishment promoter of technoconservatism, he is behind the rise of political figures such as Vice President J. D. Vance . . . “He is the father of a small but powerful sect that pursues these extremist, antidemocratic ideas in Silicon Valley,” 

Will the US ‘democratic experiment’ stand the strain? Will any of us be alive in a year’s time?

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

• Ajustar cuentas: To settle accounts. (Often used in relation to narco clan disputes)
• Pelu: Salon. Hirdressers. (from peluquería)
• Engañar: To cheat.

English

• Dun: In the 19th century, a dun was a creditor or debt collector who repeatedly demanded payment of money owed. It can also mean the demand itself.
• To dun: To repeatedly pursue a debtor, demanding payment.

• Uninhibited: Naturally free, expressive, or lacking self-consciousness.
• Disinhibited: A loss or reduction of normal restraint, often leading to impulsive, inappropriate, or risky behaviour.

The terms overlap, but disinhibited carries a stronger clinical or negative implication. I guess you could say Trump is both.

Did you know?

The miracle winding staircase of c. 1880.

You Have to Laugh

Some light relief . . . . A rather caustic view of Mrs Trump. Perhaps a tad OTT: The fact that the Trump administration is trying to push the narrative that Melania Trump has somehow brokered a cease fire between Russia and Ukraine is, quite frankly, fucking hilarious. Melania Trump can hardly string a coherent fucking sentence together! She spends most of her day pouting and squinting, while trying to look all sultry and mysterious with most of her facial skin now stretched back and stapled firmly in place behind her ears. It’s so tight now she has to communicate mostly by blinking! And all topped off with more make up than Liberace locked in the cosmetics department of Boots on a month long crack cocaine binge. She has all the personal warmth of a 5″11′ cannister of liquid nitrogen with legs. She has all the inner charm and personality of a multiple head-on fatal car crash. Melania is about as interesting as a dog’s arsehole. Melania somehow got her US citizenship through the Einstein visa. (For gifted foreign nationals) where it was claimed that she among many other talents, could speak several languages! Turns out languages were actually words! She could just about speak several words but not necessarily in the correct order to make a sentence and she also managed to put the round, square and triangle blocks in the right shaped holes in the little plastic toy thingy! Eventually. Her best historical work has been done allegedly on her back with a credit card reader on the bedstand and a sign on the headboard saying ” Me no kissy.” The most passionate she has ever been was when she went on TV to definitely deny she was in the Epstein files and that she definitely never ever knew Epstein himself. That was when the world realised that she was most definitely in the Epstein files and that she most definitely knew Epstein personally. The lady doth protest too much. I guess if we all forget that she was allegedly bonking Epstein as a teenager until his bones rattled and that it was Epstein who allegedly gifted her to Trump, which is why Trump’s friendship with Epstein turned into a hateful jealousy and because Epstein would always know what Melania was up to back then. Melania is definitely mentioned hundreds of times in the Epstein files. Within the thousands of pages that Trump won’t release precisely because of that! Melania is in those files for allegedly doing some rather unpleasant things, along with her future creepy orange old pervert husband, to young trafficked girls in threesomes on Epstein’s island! I guess apart from all that, she didn’t know Epstein, who also was actually her sponsor in the US. It’s just hilarious that the Trump administration are trying to sell this load of old fucking nonsense as a serious break through in the defence of the Ukrainian from Putin’s Russian murder machine. Right before the mid-terms for which Putin is CERTAINLY trying to repay Trump a favour by agreeing to this total bullshit. Melania Trump couldn’t make a fucking pot noodle! She could fuck up a slice of toast! She thought NATO was a Mexican dish consisting of tortilla chips and melted cheese, layered with seasoned meat, beans, and fresh toppings. So there is no way she has been spending her evenings on WhatsApp bringing peace to mankind just with her inner warmth and intellectual prowess. She is as fucking dumb as a rock and about as likeable as a toe nail fungus. Melania Trump struts around America like every man in the US desires to make love to her ! Or I should say the ones left in the US that haven’t because their American express cards had maxed out! Melania seems about as much fun to spend time with as stage 3 lung cancer! To be honest I would rather go home and make myself a ham sandwich! People in a vegetative state have been known to hold a more interesting conversation. I mean even the Donald preferred to get naked and wriggle around a bit and drip sweat on top of a rusty old porn star than to spend the evening putting up with all Melania’s boring shit over the spaghetti bolognese.

P. S. The White House Claims Melania Solved Oleshky—But the Paper Trail Reveals Pope Leo XIV and Frontline Heroes did the Heavy Lifting! Official statements went so far as to label her the “exclusive mediator,” insisting that aid deliveries and civilian evacuations would have been entirely impossible without her direct intervention. When 2 administrations renowned for tight narrative control—the White House and the Kremlin—suddenly align to credit a single political figure, skepticism becomes mandatory. The documented record tells a radically different story.

Finally . . .

White House insults hurled at Dr John Gratner:- “deranged leftist” “zero credibility” “pathetic” “Democrat hack doctor” and “If it quacks like a duck, it may actually just be a Democrat hack doctor”.

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.