I guess stupefaction would be a good way to describe the initial British reaction to the appointment of Baroness Ashton as the new EU High Representative for Foreign Relations and Security. At least we knew the new President’s name because it has been knocked around for the last few weeks. But no one seems to have heard of the lady at all. Even in Britain. Worse, she is singularly inexperienced in what the high profile position seems to require. So, I’d love to see the Job and the Perfect Bride Specs for the holder. Assuming they started with these. Which I rather doubt. But, apart from this, all went as predicted here; the Big Beasts of Germany and France got exactly what they wanted and everybody got to shaft Tony Blair.

And politicians wonder why they’re not much respected. Anyway, here’s an interesting (eurosceptic) take on the nonsense. Sampler:- It is hugely ironic that after decades of slaving away at crafting the foundations of a European superstate, the Eurofederalists have been left with two of the dullest politicians on earth as the public face of the European Union. Incidentally, the menu for last night’s election dinner special included wild mushrooms.

An Israeli historian has just published a book in which he makes the general claim that Jewish history was invented in the 19th century and the specific claim that the Romans never expelled the Jews from Palestine. The same general observation applies, he says, to Germany, France and Italy. Their histories are all the invention of romantic 19th century nationalists. And I can think of one or two examples closer to home.

As it happens, one of the waitresses in this wi-fi café has just given me a history of Galicia. Since it’s in Gallego, I’m guessing it’ll prove conclusively that Galicia is not only quintessentially Gaelic but also that it’s been a downtrodden real nation for hundreds of years. But I’ll let you know. Though this might take some time; she’s given me two other books as well. I see one is entitled “Myths, Rites and Legends of Galicia: The Magic of the Celtic Legacy”. There you go. Will I get an answer to my question of why Galicia is considered so much more Celtic than our next-door neighbour Asturias? Which really did successfully resist the Muslim conquest, by the way.

The Galician supreme court – I think every region in Spain has one – has pronounced that a house built very close to the sea by one of the Xunta members is illegal and must be demolished. Even though she should have known the law better than most, the lady in question has dismissed this as political persecution. It will be interesting to see whether the demolition order is ever carried out. There do seem to be rather a lot here that aren’t.

But maybe she has a case, as there’s widespread confusion about what the planning laws actually are in any place around Spain. And about who has the power to change them, as between the municipal, provincial, regional and state administrations. Hence the ability for some court to rule that thousands of houses owned by expatriates are illegal even after they’d been assured by the local authority they were legal. As someone has written, “Surely it is time for central government to take on a new overall role and impose a same-size-fits-all policy for the entire country. And now is the time to do it. Many town halls are rapidly running out of money and so some sort of replacement funding could be the incentive for the town halls to bring their municipalities into line with new rules established by Madrid.” So, is there the political will? Probably not. Bigger fish to fry.

The company which has high-jacked my phone to send me a recorded message every time I get an international call is Interec. I wonder if Telefónica know what’s going on. Assuming they don’t own it.

Finally . . . Confused about how much red wine to drink? Consult this and then relax. After that, start worrying that the research was by the University of Bordeaux.

Footnote: Most Unwise Quote of the Week, made on Wednesday

The days when France and Germany could decide things for a small cosy club are long gone. And a good thing too.
- An East European diplomat. Possibly about to be an ex-diplomat.

No great surprise to read that lung cancer deaths among Spanish women are growing apace. And at a rate which can only increase as current deaths are of those who took up the habit in the 70s and the 80s. The number of young females smoking is surely much higher now. Back in the 80s, women dying from lung cancer were only 3% of the total, against 10% now. Equality of mortality can’t be too many years away. Which is surely shocking. And very, very sad.

So, Perfidious France then. What a shameful way to qualify for the World Cup. Let’s hope either the match is replayed or the team exits in ignominy. Again. Meanwhile, Thierry Henry should be quietly guillotined, to restore France’s honour.

Which sort of reminds me . . . After months during which the current EU President has valiantly failed to get a consensus on the appointment – sorry, election – of the new ‘permanent’ holder of the position, all will be decided tonight, during and after(!) a dinner for the leaders of the 27 members. If this reminds you of some medieval process involving regional barons, I guess this should not come as much of a shock. That said, there are reports of widespread anger at a Franco-German stitch up in favour of the current Belgian Prime Minister. Whose name again escapes me. So, not really a top-down decision by powerful barons – or caciques, as they’re called here – but an arbitrary decision by two pretty absolute monarchs. But who knows? Perhaps the peasants will revolt tonight. Or at least the barons ‘representing’ them.

Correction 1: The amount which the British state is reimbursing my mother for the service charges on her flat over the last two and a half years is not, as I wrote, a hundred pounds a month but a hundred pounds a week. The logic is that this is cheaper to them than her going into a care home costing them twenty grand a year. As my mother will never be going into a home, this is redolent of my sister’s financial approach of a couple of years ago. When she insisted she was saving 500 pounds by buying never-to-be-used gym equipment on the net for 700 when it was 1200 in the shops. As I told her at the time, people can go bust making such savings. Her reply? “Oh, you are just like my husband!”.

Correction 2: I may have to withdraw my retraction of my positive comment about Telefónica. I now suspect the company that calls me after every overseas call is not them. The number they give is 900 170 000 and I’m checking it out after posting this.

Finally . . . At the wi-fi café today, I was sitting by the door to the terrace. A woman who went out and back again a total of 8 times left it open each time, exposing me to the cold wind. And this was despite the fact I was soon slamming it with a noise I wouldn’t have thought anyone could miss. I wouldn’t be telling you this except that, when the family finally left, the teenage daughter who was (rare here) dressed in punk gear closed the door on the way out. So, there’s hope for the future.

So, the Spanish government has secured the release of the crew of the Basque trawler kidnapped by Somali pirates a couple of weeks or so ago. Allegedly by paying a ransom of 2.3m euros. I read a while ago the ship had been operating illegally, raising the sort of issues addressed in this thoughtful article. Incidentally, if you don’t think every one of the 27 EU states would have paid a ransom in these circumstances, imagine how hard it’s going to be for the new nattily-named High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security to arrive at a common policy after he/she is in position on Friday morning.

Asked whether they thought the merger of British Airways and Iberia would result in better services from the latter, 68% of the readers of (I think) El Mundo responded with a resounding No. Which doesn’t really say much for either airline, does it? Incidentally, there seems to be a great deal of confusion as to where the new airline will have its HQ and who will be (titularly at least) in charge. But the consensus here is that ownership won’t be Spanish. Which is a bit of a shock to local egos after all the purchases of British companies earlier this decade, on the back of construction sector profits.

I retract the positive comment I made about Telefónica a few days ago. My last two calls from the UK have immediately been followed by an automated call in which a woman in a South American accent rabbits on about the company’s international service. I’m now even more anxious than ever to get away from them.

For those interested, here’s an interesting comment on an interesting development in the world of Global Warming. More accurately, what we should now call Anthropogenic Global Warming. Or just AGW. We can’t do much about those old sun spots, of course.

More domestically, the Galician Xunta has announced it will be reducing the speed limit from 50 to 40 on certain roads near our main cities. They say this is to reduce the noise bothering folk who live alongside these. Well, maybe but I’d be interested to see how the takings from speeding fines go over the next year or two. Especially as ‘Spain’ and ‘noise reduction’ don’t fit easily in the same sentence.

And still in Galicia, the merger between our two savings banks (cajas/caixas) has run into the sand. Now not only the Bank of Spain but also the conservative PP leadership in Madrid are pushing for a (“virtual”) merger between the smaller bank and a couple of others outside Galicia. Urged on – naturally – by the Galician Nationalist Party and the local Socialist party, the regional PP party appears to be gearing up to veto (if it can) this attempt to reduce the Galician-ness of the caixa. Whether operating efficiency and the interests of the customers play any part in these shenanigans, I rather doubt.

Talking of customer service . . . The people who run the train station in Pontevedra clearly have a different concept from me. Arriving there to make the always-lovely trip to Vigo yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice all the Departures and Arrivals TVs on the platforms had been removed. Or hidden. Perhaps it’s only temporary. Possibly they’re being polished under the auspices of Plan E/J and will be back soon.

Finally, here’s a post I found easy to empathise with.

My thanks to everyone who’s contributed to the (civil!) discussion of Spanish suffix diminutives. The lesson to be drawn is exactly the one I started with – Don’t mess with them. But I have a couple of riders:-
1. Would you believe, the waitress in the café this morning smiled and just said “Un zumito?".
2. The one usage I felt I had understood was añitos. As in “Tiene ella 25 añitos.” I thought it meant she was a young 25. But now I’m sure it doesn’t.
3. I have heard horita here in Galicia. As in “Tienes esperar una horita”. Meaning three hours . . . Plus cafedito.

Anyone who moves in middle class circles here in Spain soon realises a couple of things about it that differentiate it from the same class of people back home. Firstly, every family has a maid, often full time. And, secondly, every family owns at least three properties. In this post, Charles Butler of IBEX Salad explores this latter phenomenon but I wonder whether there isn’t an additional factor. It’s easier - and more sensible - to keep hold of properties you’ve inherited if no one in the family has ever moved more than a few miles from where they were born.

Talking of people who do or don’t move away from their birthplace . . . I’ve now read that there are more than 700,000 Brits in Spain. Or more than three times the official number. This would put us at least equal with the Rumanians, after the Moroccans at 800,000. Time we were allowed to vote in proper elections.

Generally speaking, I’m a fan of Google. But I’ve possibly indicated a degree of consternation that, despite all my effort (and hits which passed 200,000 today), this blog is very rarely cited in Google Alerts for Galicia. So imagine how I felt yesterday to see that Graeme of South of Watford had been cited for the first bloody mention of the place he’s ever made.

Talking to one of my Spanish friends about the mess caused by public works in Pontevedra, I said that it was all thanks to Government investment under the label Plan E. “You mean Plan J”, he replied. “For Jodido”. This project has, of course, further enriched the developers who pocketed squillions during our phoney property boom. So, it was good to read today that many thousands of the labourers working here in Galicia are brought (legally) from nearby Portugal on contracts which involve them working for very long hours for very little pay. It’s almost enough to make a socialist of me.

Finally, I read an article today in which the internet was accused of creating ‘echo chambers of extreme ideas’. Where “neither reason nor persuasion can drive people away from certain kinds of lie”. As it happens, I’d just visited the blogs I follow and noticed that one or two of them are now infected by the Cade virus. This is virulent but weak. And so easily blocked. The funny thing is that, when you do this, it then turns on itself by creating its own blog and inundating this with its own self-important comments. Which are clearly computer generated, as no human could come up with the tripe that ensues. As if this were not enough, it then creates a secondary virus – which it calls Alex – to infest its own comments with thoughts of an even greater tripe-ness. A perpetual tripe chain, if you like. But it’s not all bad news. There’s a major beneficial aspect to the virus. It’s programmed to visit the original target site every few minutes to check whether the writer has referred to it. Which then prompts another round of machine-generated bilge. Meanwhile doing wonders for the target site’s readership numbers.

Because of its habit of folding back into itself by building on its own posts and comments thereon, the virus also goes under the name reintegrista. And herein lies the true genius of the person behind it. The virus is exquisitely time-limited. Eventually it just disappears up its own backside. Could it be unique in its multi-faceted benevolence? Not to mention its idiocy.

Anyway, if you have a half hour to spare, I urge you to visit one of the virus’s home sites and the comments thereto. It should have you in tears within a few minutes. Though you might want to leave things until the automaton makes its knee-jerk response to these mentions of its name here.

Just going back to Tony Kevin’s book on the Camino pilgrimage he made through Andalucia, Estremadura, Castile and Galicia . . . I had to smile at his early comment that he’d gone into a bar at 3pm and happened upon a group of locals “taking a late lunch”. I guess he later learned that, in Spain, this is neither lunch nor late. In fact, it’s what we northerners still call ‘dinner’ and, at 3pm, it’s often only just beginning. I also has problems with his contention that Spain has been more successful than other countries in preserving its old buildings. Perhaps this is true of the whitewashed old villages he passed through and it’s certainly true of the glorious old quarters of cities all over Spain. But I’ve seen the disappearance of too many lovely old houses in Pontevedra to find this generalisation easy to accept. And some of Spain’s new city quarters are a case-study in what happens when there are no effective planning controls. Beyond dreadful. Not slums, just ugly.

Corruption in Spain: More evidence of shoulder-shrugging? Despite the allegations of skulduggery in the Madrid and Valencia wings of the PP party, as highlighted in the current Gürtel case, a poll printed in El Mundo newspaper confirmed that the public are not that bothered. The party would repeat its overall majority in both regions if an election were held today. Spaniards, it emerged, are more concerned about the imminence of tax increases. At least in these two regions.

Which reminds me . . . I thought again of Tony Kevin’s praise of ‘civil’ politicians here when, last week, I read that the besieged – and very possibly corrupt – Valencian President had used the language of the civil war to claim the Government wanted to see him visited in the early hours of the morning, taken away in a van and then found face-down in a ditch. But at least he didn’t accuse them of being liars.

Finally . . . For God knows what reason, it occurred to me as I lay dozing this morning that each successful nation has started with what you might call an elitist, top-down form of government, then experienced some sort of cataclysm and finally ended up with a government of popular legitimacy. Usually associated with functioning democracy. The most obvious example may be France and the French Revolution (if we gloss over the various but temporary Napoleons), followed by the USA and its own Revolution, Britain and its civil war, Bill of Rights, etc.. The model is slightly different with Germany, Italy and Japan – where the cataclysm took the form of devastating military defeat and the collapse of civic society – but the thesis just about holds true even in these cases. But, watertight or not, it does make one wonder what will happen in China to ensure that elitist, top-down government gives way to democracy there. Not to mention the Near East examples of Saudi Arabia and the like. And then, of course, we come to the nascent EU superstate. Will this really break the mould? If not, what form will the cataclysm take? Perhaps what Steinbeck called The Committee of Sleep will give me the answer tonight. Of course, some folk argue that the EU Commission already has democratic legitimacy but I confess to finding this hard to accept.

Prices in the best segments of the Spanish property market are said to be now on the rise. In contrast, those in the worst segments are still falling. Especially if they’ve been taken onto the books of banks in lieu of loan repayments. It’s also reported that construction has virtually ground to a halt. Well, all I can say is that I can take you to at least ten sites in Pontevedra city where work is proceeding on large blocks of flats. Indeed, on one or two of these, work is only just beginning. My guess is that – Spanish lead times being as long as they are - these are the smarter developers with access to cash who plan to bring properties onto the market in 3+ years’ time, when it has picked up. But maybe I’m being too charitable.

When you’re learning Spanish, the advice on suffixes (illo and ito in Spanish and iño in Gallego) is generally Don’t experiment with them; wait to learn over time which words take them and which don’t. I’ve thought of this every time I’ve ordered a clara (shandy) or a caña (beer) and the response has been “Una clarita?” or “Una cañita?” And also when I’ve ordered a clarita or a cañita and the reply has been “Una clara?” or “Una caña”. I’ve often wondered whether the waiter or waitress was just taking the piss. But confusion has now reached maximum levels since I started to order a fresh orange juice instead of a second coffee in the wi-fi café of a morning. Thinking I would shortcut the conversation “Me pones un zumo de naranja natural, por favor”. . .“Vale. ¿Pequeño o grande?” . . . “Pequeño”, I took to saying “Me pones un zumito de naranja natural, por favor.” But I was still asked whether I wanted it small or large. Talking to a Spanish friend about this today, she explained it was merely fashionable to add the suffix these days and so it was not a reliable indicator of small size. But I’d be interested in non-Pontevedra views on this. Prior to which I’ll just add that I heard “Un descafeinadito” yesterday. I think.

I asked the same lady friend whether it was true, as claimed in a letter to one of the local papers this week, that there’d been oral tests for many years in the region’s Schools of Languages. Apparently, someone had suggested it would be a good idea to introduce them. Presumably because – like me – they’d seen little evidence the pupils were actually taught to speak English, for example. My Galician friends at dinner on Friday night had confirmed that the emphasis was still primarily on grammar and my lady friend duly put the seal on this by adding that, yes, there was indeed an oral test at the end of her course but she’d been the only one to pass it.

And still on the subject of languages . . . I came across a new Spanish word today – cibertonto. Which is probably best translated as ‘net-nut’, though with only half the number of syllables. It seems like a useful word to keep in reserve, as you never know when you’ll need it. On the other hand . . .

Finally . . . Can anyone tell me why it takes so long to download the documentary podcasts from Radio Spain? Is it because of constant – and, to my mind, unnecessary – dramatic sounds and music that always accompany the speech?

And does anyone know how to solve the problem of a misbehaving labelling function in Gmail?

So, Britain and Spain are the only two major European economies still in recession. And British Airways and Iberia have finally agreed on their merger. Seems only right. But no wonder Ryanair have said it’s like two drunks propping each other up.

Which reminds me . . . Spain’s Federation of Rehabilitated Alcoholics says alcoholics here are now more likely to be in their 20s than in their 50s. Allegedly, two million people are said to fall into this category. Worse, almost four million – or 8% of the population – are said to abuse alcohol. Which is defined as drinking at least half a litre of wine a day. Or a little over three quarters of a bottle. The good news is that Spain’s drunken 20 somethings still show little evidence of the senseless boorishness and violence associated with booze in the UK.

As companies all over the world – even banks – report reduced profits, it comes as a comfort to know that our much-loved company, Telefónica, has kept theirs at the same level. I wouldn’t have thought it had much to do with customer service. But I must be fair and say they reacted remarkably swiftly last night to a report of a fault on my line. If they could only offer ADSL at a reasonable price, I might just sign up with them.

Danger: Bureaucrats at Work. A man born in Goole in the UK left instructions in his will that he be buried in another town, under a headstone that said “I would rather be in Goole”. The council finally acceded to his request, provided it was amended to read “Frankly, I would rather be in Goole”. On the grounds this would be less offensive.

I came across a new text/email abbreviation today – FFS. I’m not entirely sure what it means but plan to use it a lot. Starting right now. FFS!

Finally . . . In these days of globalised Americana, I can’t help wondering if any kids in the UK had to duck for apples on October 31. Or were they all out terrorising their neighbours? Especially the drunk ones. Kids, I mean.