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’.
Travel News
Another very pleasant drive of 4.5 hours this morning, from Alcañil to Peñescola, where I planned to see its famous Templar castle. Well, pleasant until I hit a bank of fog that lasted a good 20 to 30 minutes. In all that time, I overtook maybe 2 cars and about the same number overtook me. And there wasn’t a single traffic light! All the roads were excellent and, as ever, I was kept amused by the pronunciation by the English GPS woman of road numbers and town names. Storm Bruna had yesterday hit the western coast of Iberia and then today parts of central Spain. It merited a rare red warning that folk should batten down the hatches. I feared I might encounter it today but didn’t. However, having made it to the castle in time for the 4.30 tour, I feared I might catch pneumonia up on the battlements, when the morning sun gave way to rain and a blustery cold wind.
Having found my way easily to my hotel for tonight, I then had difficulty finding the entrance to the bloody place. Clearly, a modern architect had been employed to design it. This foto shows the entrance, sans any sign that it is that.
Bear in mind that there were no lights on when I arrived. I confess that I walked round the entire (very large) building before I noticed someone coming out of what looked like ugly plastic sheets.
After enjoying a tour of the castle, I set about researching where I could find the traditional lamb dish of the region, only to find that none of the places offering it were open tonight. So, I resolved to eat at the hotel, only to find that its restaurant was also closed tonight. Just as it was in last night’s hotel – both 4-star! I’m used to places being closed on Mondays in Spain but this was new to me. The receptionist at the hotel advised that nothing is open on both Mondays and Tuesdays in the town and so – as last night – I was forced to eat in a cafetería.
Cosas de España y Galiza.
I realised this morning that I wasn’t clear why my life will be affected tomorrow by a general strike, Perplexity gave me this answer:A 24-hour general strike has been called by major unions. It is primarily a protest over the housing crisis and the risng cost of living, alongside demands for higher wages and stronger worker protections. Unions say rents and housing costs have become unaffordable, while wages have not kept pace with prices. Their central demands include limits on rents, a permanent supply of public/protected housing, and wage increases of roughly 4–7%. The strike was intensified by public anger over the eviction of an elderly Madrid tenant, which became a symbol of pressure on long-term renters amid gentrification and soaring rents.
As elsewhere in Spain, the rental market is now so tight that would-be tenants are being forced to undergo an ‘audition’ procedure (un casting). See the Diario de Pv on this here, in Spanish.
This is the Camino de Santiago after it has crossed O Burgo bridge and is heading out of Pv city.
The street was tarted up a few months ago, at a cost of €1.8m, to a design that included vegetation between the paving slabs. Nice idea but creating a need for regular maintenance and annoying the residents on ‘security’ grounds. Which I believe means the locals kept tripping over the new slabs. The cost of filling them will be at least the estimate of €40,000. And the works will be finished by Xmas. Possibly. This is the street I drive up to the Mercadona supermarket, having to slowly pass between Caminoers who don’t use dedicated (slabbed) pedestrian area on the left but walk up the tarmacked road on the right. Perhaps they too are afraid of tripping over the vegetation growing in the spaces between the slabs.
This is an article on the laundering of money by Galician drug barons. It’s in Spanish but Google translation was so bad, I decided not to spend time cleaning it up and posting it.
The United States of Trump America
In “All of the People, All the Time,” Spy’s nine-page April 1991 investigative feature on Trump the con artist, reporter John Connolly noted that “A close study of Trump’s actions over the past few years reveals a man addicted to deception, a man who invested like a fool, a man who shaved from deals and bled failing companies of cash so that he could live with absurd excess, a man who borrowed huge amounts from credulous banks and investors, a man who not only is not now a billionaire but never had $1 billion or $500 million or —very possibly—even $100 million and who has been strapped since 1987. Donald Trump is not just some cartoon character, a guy with a comb-over and a press agent and a board game named after him; he is and always has been a real and fairly treacherous human being.” Plus ca change. Again. And again. And again.
Being a ‘broad church’ of the Left and Far-Left, it was inevitable that something like civil war would break out in the Democratic party very soon after its midterms triumph. This is a relevant article.
And this is an article on the man who will strive to implement – one way or another – policies roundly rejected by the US electorate. Did someone say ‘Cry, my beloved country!?
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.
Finally . . . Did you know of?
The evil man behind the evil Stephen Miller . . . Where are US assassins when you need them?
My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.
The Usual Links
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.
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.
Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable – Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’
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.
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 . . .
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.
