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

The economy: Another metric going the wrong way in Spain – ‘severe deprivation’. The Spanish economy is growing, yes, but so is poverty:

The Property crisis.

• Barcelona adds just 2,400 homes a year as more than a million Catalans hunt for somewhere to live
• Even with the right plans in place, new developments take 4 to 5 years to complete. Municipal leaders from several of Spain’s big cities warned at an event on October 21 that it will be years before supply catches up with demand. Meanwhile, it’s handy to have obvious scapegoats to blame and to shift the focus away from administration failures.
• Nationally, there’s an ongoing crackdown on false ‘seasonal’ lets, which have become a loophole for avoiding tighter rules – and higher taxes – on letting properties. A holiday let (alquiler turístico/vacacional) is a short-term tourist accommodation, while a seasonal let (alquiler de temporada) is a temporary rental for a specific non-permanent need such as work, study, medical treatment, or an extended winter stay. Those advertised as seasonal lets fall outside both the rules on tourist flats and the protections for long-term tenants.

Funerals in Spain tend to be rather informal, social occasions. Possibly even more so these days . . . Funerals are being reinvented: The way we bid farewell to the dead has been in constant evolution since the dawn of humanity, and today it is undergoing one of its most disruptive shifts. Cremations are increasingly gaining ground over traditional burials, civil ceremonies are becoming more common at the expense of religious services, and new technologies are completely transforming the experience of mourning – Live-streamed ceremonies, drones, and beer toasts.

There’s a magazine dedicated to tapas here in Spain. In this edition it selects the 30 best grill places in the country, including one here in Pv city.

The UK

Harry Kane has made his legendary career through hard work and dedication rather than through PR and social media. He lets his feet do the talking. He is everything that is brilliant about Britain as we used to be – and, if we treat him as a role model, can still be.

The United States of Trump America

I asked Perplexity: What are said to be the shared characteristics of people who‘ve voted for Trump 3 times and will vote republican next week? The answer – none of which is terribly surprising – can be found at the end of this post.

From Spy Magazine: In the September 1989 edition, we observed that “Events now routinely sound like chapters from a trashy, sprawling, overheated novel of the fin de siècle — a hypothetical potboiler we’ve decided to call “1999: Casinos of the Third Reich,” introducing a monthly serial with characters that would include “Donald Trump, recently talking about himself. ‘Who’s my toughest competitor, if not in content, only in style?’ he asked. ‘Prince Charles,’ he answered. ‘I’m thinking of becoming an entertainer,’ he also said. ‘Liza Minnelli gets $75,000 a night to sing, and I’m really curious as to how I would do.’” In that last sentence, you may discern the seeds of the Trump presidency. Speaking of which, guess what else was in the news in 1989? Neo-Nazis!

Princes and Thieves: A new book on the corruption of Jared Krishner, reviewed in the NYT here (RV)

Other Relevant Books

• Betrayal: Trump, Putin and the New Age of Conquest
• Wtf America?!: The Way Out of This Hell and Back to Democracy. 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

• Botijo: Jug, pitcher
• Pelusa: Lint, fluff, fuzz
• Embaucador: Trickster

English

Some more lost words from Vanity Fair of 1850:-

• To thrum (one’s fingers): To drum or tap the fingers idly and repeatedly on a surface—often showing impatience, boredom, or nervousness.
• Purse-proud: Tight-fisted
• To streel after: To trail, saunter, or follow along carelessly; literally, to “trail after” someone or something.
• Awful: Awesome
• To conn over: To study, read over, or examine carefully; older con meant to learn or commit something to memory, so “conn over” means to go through a text or matter attentively.
• Spunging house: A historical debtor’s lock-up: a bailiff’s house where people arrested for debt were held temporarily—and commonly “sponged” of available money—before prison or settlement.
• Yoke-mate: Spouse
• Calipash: The greenish, gelatinous edible part beneath a turtle’s upper shell, historically regarded as a delicacy.
• Calipee: The corresponding lighter, gelatinous edible part beneath a turtle’s lower shell; together with calipash, it was used in turtle soup.

Did you know?

As I suspected, changing the clock in spring and autumn can damage your health.

You Have to Laugh

How about a whip-round for the driver?

Finally . . .

I’m convinced that it’s the strategy of podcast producers to force you – via increasingly frequent ads – to switch to a ‘premium’ service you have to pay for. One podcast this week runs an ad which apologises for ‘interrupting the podcast at your favourite moment in it’ and then proceeds to do this another 5 times in the next 40 minutes.

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

TRUMP VOTERS

The clearest shared trait is strong partisan or ideological aversion to Democrats, even when they are dissatisfied with Trump. In recent reporting, three-time Trump voters who still plan to vote Republican next week tend to say they are angry or disappointed with Trump but remain unwilling to support a Democrat. They remain Republican-leaning or anti-Democratic. Several interviewed voters explicitly say they “will never vote for a Democrat,” regardless of their view of Trump’s second term.

Social conservatism is often decisive. Opposition to abortion is a repeatedly cited reason for staying with Republican candidates despite economic or foreign-policy concerns.

They are economically frustrated but not necessarily politically converted. Common complaints include higher grocery, energy, and health-care costs; yet some still plan to vote Republican because they see Democrats as worse or fear Democratic control of Congress.

They distinguish Trump from the Republican Party. Some disapprove of Trump’s trade policy, immigration enforcement, Iran policy, or perceived self-dealing, but still intend to back GOP congressional candidates.

They are often long-time, habitual Republican or independent-leaning voters. Reporting describes them as a mix of long-time loyalists and newer Trump coalition members, but most identify as Republicans or independents rather than natural Democratic voters.

Important caveat: This is not a single homogeneous group. Research on Trump voters has consistently found major internal differences on immigration, race, economics, religion, trade, and social issues; the shared features are better understood as coalition-level tendencies than a universal profile. Also, many three-time Trump voters who have soured on him are not planning to vote Republican: some may vote Democratic, split their ticket, or stay home. The group you describe—those who will still vote Republican—is specifically the more party-loyal or socially conservative portion of that disillusioned bloc.

I then asked: Do these people share any educational or religious features? And got:-

Yes—broadly, they are more likely than Democratic voters to be non-college-educated and Christian, especially Protestant/evangelical. But those are tendencies across Trump’s coalition, not guaranteed traits of every 3-time Trump voter who will still vote Republican next week.

Education

• In 2024, 67% of Trump voters did not have a four-year college degree, while college-educated voters favored Harris by 16 points nationally.
• White voters without a degree were especially likely to support Trump: 66% did so, versus 44% of white college graduates.
• So, for the group you’re asking about, the most likely educational pattern is no bachelor’s degree, though college-educated conservatives and evangelicals remain part of the Republican coalition.

Religion

• About 79% of 2024 Trump voters identified as Christian, and Protestants made up 54% of his coalition; Catholics were another 22%.pewresearch
• White evangelical Protestants are the strongest religious core of Trump support: Pew found 81% voted for Trump in 2024, while PRRI found 85% reported doing so.
• Regular religious attendance is also associated with stronger Republican/Trump support: 64% of voters attending services monthly or more backed Trump in 2024.

How the two overlap

The strongest overlap is among white evangelical, non-college voters. In 2024, Trump won roughly 90% of working-class white evangelical men and 83% of working-class white evangelical women, compared with much lower support among non-evangelical white working-class voters.

Feature	More common among this group	Important exception

Education	No four-year degree	Many college-educated Republicans and evangelicals still vote GOP .
Religion	Christian, especially Protestant/evangelical; frequent attendance	Trump also drew Catholic, non-evangelical Protestant, and some non-white religious voters.
Strongest profile	White evangelical, non-college voter	Not all Trump voters fit this profile; the coalition is diverse.

Caveat: The recent interviews with three-time Trump voters do not establish that education or religion causes their continued Republican vote. They suggest that, among people disillusioned with Trump, social conservatism—often tied to evangelical or Catholic beliefs, especially abortion—is one reason some stay with the GOP, while economic dissatisfaction is pushing others away from Republican candidates

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.