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.
Travel News
Today I drove down from the outskirts of Toledo to Valencia, stopping to sight-see only in Ocaña, where I wanted to see its impressive Plaza Mayor.
Google Maps took me – twice – on another tour of very narrow streets to a parking place which doesn’t now exist. Assumimg it once did.
I eventually parked in the facility of a supermarket and I was pleased to find the effort to find the Plaza Mayor had been worthwhile.
Back in the day, Ocaña moved back and forth between Christians and Moors and once had a thriving Jewish community. Tomorrow I’ll post fotos of the Plaza Mayor and a couple of its lovely Mudéjar style buildings. Can’t do it now as I’m typing on my phone.
The drive from there to Valencia featured a lot more traffic than the previous 2 days but there were no problems until I hit the outskirts of Valencia, where there was a massive traffic jam, moving at walking speed. As luck would have it, this was only 500m from my turnoff into the city.
Tonight a real treat . . . My daughter is taking me to IKEA, to buy duvets for her new flat here!
Cosas de España
I confess it’s a tad depressing to go from the excitement of the US midterms to Spanish elections. Especially in view of the likely success of a Right-Far Right coalition.
The UK
Why Liverpool feels like a different country.
The United States of Trump America
Trump’s extraordinary post-wipeout speech hit new levels of delusion(RV2). Trump decided to use his first post-election appearance not to address the fury of voters who had turned on him. Instead, Trump thought this was the moment to wax lyrical about his ballroom for nearly 20 minutes. The elections only came up – briefly – when he insisted that the problem lay not at his door but with the losing candidates from coast to coast. “We weren’t able to transfer the voters’ love of me to the candidates”.
The back-up plans . . . Stephen Miller and other former Project 2025 figures are reported to be preparing for the final 2 years of Donald Trump’s presidency by relying much more heavily on executive power. Miller and OMB Director Russell Vought have reportedly been working since April with White House lawyers to identify actions Trump can take without new legislation. The reported strategy is to preserve the agenda through executive orders, agency rulemaking, tariffs, visa rules, and control over federal grants and spending.
It was fun watching Fox News desperately trying to spin the midterm results – essentially blaming the voters. Or anything other than Trump. And without mentioning tariffs even once. If you can’t read this article here, the text of it is at the end of this post.
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
- Purines: Slurry. Liquid manure.
Englis
More words from Vanity Fair of 1850:-
Both these words are French-flavoured terms, used to suggest aristocratic Parisian society.
- Cordons: Decorative sashes, ribbons, or orders worn by noblemen and high officials—marks of rank, honours, or membership in an order.
- To raffole of: From French raffoler de, meaning to be crazy about, adore, or be wildly enthusiastic about.
Did you know?
The meaning of the Scottish word gardyloo–
You Have to Laugh
Katherine Leavitt: I think the (US)American people forgot about the good policy and maybe listened to the lying media on the other side. Takes one to know one, as they say.
Finally . . .
Perry has supplied another palindrome – Evil rats on no star live.
My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.
Fox News is stuck in ‘hell of a pickle’ with Trump era ‘coming to a close’.
Fox News landed in an awkward bind after Tuesday’s election rout, and a longtime observer of the network sees no easy exit.
Matt Gertz, a longtime Fox watcher at Media Matters, told Zeteo’s Justin Baragona that the network now finds itself in a “hell of a pickle” because “admitting that actually Trump and his policies are incredibly unpopular would amount to a fairly substantial rug pull for that audience.”
Baragona, writing in his weekly Ragebait newsletter for Zeteo, reported that Fox worked hard throughout Tuesday night’s coverage to avoid blaming Trump, despite a widespread understanding among those on set that the results amounted to a rejection of the president.
He characterized the network’s election night broadcast as an hours-long “struggle session,” with its biggest stars grasping for any explanation other than Trump for the scale of the Democratic victories.
One former Fox employee told Baragona that “Trump is toast,” but said the network still refuses to turn its fire on him. “Even while they move on from him, they won’t attack him or throw him under the bus,” the ex-staffer said.
Jared Holt, an extremism researcher, argued that Fox and the GOP painted themselves into this corner. “The Trump era is coming to a close, and the problem that networks like Fox and even just the broader Republican Party has in general is that they’ve spent the last 10 years purging out all dissent from their ranks,” Holt told Baragona.
The president turned his fire on Fox itself after sweeping losses became clear, writing on Truth Social that the network “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition.”
The network was reeling before the polls closed. Fox News viewership fell 27 percent year over year in October, while CNN’s audience grew 3 percent and MS NOW’s jumped 17 percent, CNN reported. According to preliminary Nielsen figures reported by Variety, October was on pace to be the network’s weakest month in total-day viewers since December 2023.
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.
