You may or may not have heard that one of the princesses of the Spanish royal family has just got a divorce. And has also had her marriage annulled by the Vatican. Given that the couple have several children, the grounds for the annulment surely weren’t non-consummation. So I wonder what they were. And how much it all cost.

Incidentally, the Vatican has been in the news for a second reason in the last week – its bank is being investigated for money-laundering. Which has to be at least a tad embarrassing. Though perhaps not in Italy.

Talking about banks . . . Taking cash from an ATM this warning, I was rather taken aback to see it was going to cost me 13.50 euros, or 4.5% of the total. It turned out I’d gone into a bank with the wrong network for my card. But at least I was warned and so able to abort the transaction. Which wasn’t the case when I first came to Spain.

Down in Pontevedra, under the government’s keep-‘em-working Plan E, the Duke of York’s men are still taking up and replacing the paving stones on either side of the Alameda. And dismantling and re-mantling the wall that surrounds it. And all at the traditional snail’s pace. Thanks to several days of incessant rain, once you get past the obstacle course of the obras, you then have the quagmire of the Alameda itself to tackle. Lovely.

Finally. . . You’ll all be asking whether I now have a fully-functioning central heating system. Well, yes, the new boiler certainly works. But, sadly, not in accordance with the thermostat. So, can I get the plumber back to fix this? We will see.

As I haven’t been able to write a blog tonight, here are my notes on the first chapter of Miguel-Anxo Murado’s book, Otro Idea de Galicia. Or “Another View of Galicia”. Apologies to those to whom this is of no interest.

Reading this book – and even more so when I was typing up these notes – I found myself asking whether, if I were a Gallego and had moved to, say, Kent, would I be interested in reading about the geography, foundation, history, myths and politico-economic development of that region of England. And, if I were, would I be able to find books like this one. “Another View of Kent”, for example. If not, why not? What would this say about Kent? What does it say about Galicia and the Galicians? Is it all to do with a far more developed sense of regional (‘national’) identity? Born of a different language, for one thing. Maybe when I’ve finished writing up the notes, I’ll have an answer to this. Meanwhile. . .

OTRA IDEA DE GALICIA - By Miguel-Anxo Murado

CHAPTER 1: THE COUNTRY’S FACE

Galicia is an Atlantic country. And is much closer to the British Isles and the French coast than appears from the impression given by maps. For example, the early Galician linen industry came to rely on trade with the Baltic.

Explaining its famous rainfall, Galicia is the first continental point hit by polar fronts.

Galicia is humid and green but it’s not a garden. Oversimplifying, Galicia comprises granite in the west and slate in the east. But in both areas the soil is low on chalk and, so, extremely acidic.

Archaeologists believe Galicia was ‘super-populated’ in pre-historic times.

Although emigration has hit hard, Galicia’s population density is still above Spain’s average and is higher than half of all other European countries.

Although counting for less than 6% of Spain’s territory, Galicia has almost 50% of its nucleuses of population. These arose wherever there was a water source. And there are a lot of these. As a result, the population is highly dispersed. Galicia’s first nationalist – Antolín Faraldo – saw this as the root cause of the country’s ills and a as brake on progress. In truth, it’s Galicia’s most singular characteristic and the origin of a good part of what we might call the Galician identity.

Galicia’s urbanisation index is less than half that of developed countries and is only growing slowly.

Galicia’s super-population also explains the other constant in its history – poverty.

The Galician potato – which now occupies a place of honour in supermarkets – was once only given to animals. Similarly, the shellfish for which a fortune is now paid was once unvalued by sailors. For whom there were plentiful alternatives from the sea.

From the body of the Apostle St James to the oil from the Prestige in 2002, everything has arrived in Galicia by sea. Including the booty from numerous shipwrecks. For example, the accordions from “The Grand Liverpool” which the locals thought were the laments of souls in pain, as they were tossed around by the waves. And the condensed milk which was taken to be whitewash and used to refresh the walls. Leading to a plague of flies.

Nowadays, 70,000 people live off the shellfish industry. Sadly, though, some varieties are now almost exhausted. The Galician scallop – the symbol of St James - is on the verge of extinction and the Galician oyster is now very rare and expensive.

Galician is the third fishing power in the world and her fleet is as large as all those of the rest of the EU put together. But it has been hit by the exhaustion of fish stocks around the world and by ‘territorialisation’ of the seas.

Fishing is a silent business. And, as we will see, silence and resignation have been very much a part of being Galician throughout the country’s history. This Galician silence often applies in respect of themselves, though often not voluntarily.

At times, the perception of silence gives way to misunderstandings, such as the belief that the Galicians are essentially conservative.

We will not give way to the temptation to look for a key to or the essence of Galicia. They don’t exist. Galicia is a geographic space that is changing, singular but not incomprehensible.

So, let’s begin with the most positive of the misunderstandings: the lazy idea – exaggerated and at times counterproductive - that Galicia is an Arcadia, a paradise, an innocent landscape . . .

I read recently that the tabloid British press was taking advantage of the weakness of the government to ride roughshod over legal restrictions on the reporting of alleged crimes. But I wonder whether anything has been as bad as the case here this last week of the media ‘lynching’ of a young man who’d taken his partner's baby to hospital and then, in short order, found himself accused not only of killing but also raping her beforehand. And with his face and initials all over the newspapers and the TV. Less than a week on, he’s been released and the air is thick with apologies from various bodies - including the police and the hospital - for devastating his young life. Over the years, I’ve often wondered about the assumption of innocence here in Spain and the reporting that takes place immediately after a murder. But never as much as after this episode. No wonder there was a fulminating editorial in El Mundo today, calling for heads to roll.

On the same page in El Mundo there’s also a cry of pain around Spain's poor ranking in the 2009 Index of Corruption. Which shouldn’t really come as a great surprise to anyone, given the diet of accusations and arrests to which we’re accustomed. Inured even.

The most current of these is a contract killing of a mayor in a small village where, according to one commentator, every single inhabitant there had a good motive for the crime. The background is said to be the (ex) mayor’s refusal to go along with some huge construction deal. Or was that another case I read of?

Gibraltar is back in the Spanish news, with the right-of-centre PP party whipping up a storm about alleged British advantage-taking of Spanish government weakness. There was, of course, a cartoon in one of the national papers, in which a Spaniard was featured standing knee-deep in water, facing up to a Briton also knee-deep in water and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, with the Rock behind him. As ever, the Brit was wearing a sort of bowler hat and sporting a moustache. The Spaniard, however, was not dressed in a matador costume. I guess we should be grateful the former wasn’t toting an umbrella. Possibly to stop other Spaniards from taking him to be a Galician.

In Spain, the departed are usually buried in a small niche in one of the walls in the local cemetery. Which are actually rented from the church, I believe. In the small town of Cee, up our coast, one of these was broken into last week and the body removed. As the deceased had been a property millionaire and there was a family dispute – or possibly would-be family dispute – about inheritances, it’s suggested the corpse was removed to assist DNA testing. Which is not something those of us involved in discussions with Alec Jeffreys in 1984 ever envisaged as being a future application of his astonishing invention. But, then, we probably didn’t imagine he’d get a knighthood and a Nobel Prize out of it either.

Finally . . .

Galicia: I will be posting my notes tomorrow from the book Otro Idea de Galicia. For today, I just wanted to reproduce these paragraphs from the chapter on the Galician language. Of course, my reason for doing so will only be properly understood by those who’ve followed the comments of a certain Galician gentleman – I use the term loosely – who lives in Britain but has strong – albeit absentee – opinions on the subject. The rest of you might want to knock off here for today.

It has to be said that one of the problems in the way of normalising Gallego has been some of its defenders. It’s always been difficult to explain why, almost 100 years after its foundation, the Royal Academy of the Galician Language hasn’t been able to deliver a proper grammar, dictionary or spelling scheme. This fell to another organisation, the Institute of the Galician Language(ILG). But, unfortunately, the ILG used a pretty controversial methodology, in line with keeping as far as possible the Spanish spelling used hitherto through ignorance. In the face of this, the ‘reintegracionista’ philologists proposed spellings more in keeping with the language’s history so as to ‘re-integrate’ it into its Portuguese-Brazilian family. However, the ‘reintegracionistas’ promptly fell out among themselves in an interminable debate about how close Gallego should be to Portuguese. So it was that, in the 80s, Galicia was witness to an unusual fact: a highly technical discussion of comparative linguistics carried out by graffiti and personal insults.

Ultimately victory went to the linguists of the ILG, who had the support of the Xunta, who were nervous of the secessionist implications of Portuguese spellings. More prosaically, the Xunta worried that, as the spelling favoured by 'reintegracionistas' was quite difficult to learn, it would be a barrier to literacy among the new generations of speakers.

To be honest, the 'reitegracionistas' are technically correct that Gallego and Portuguese are variants of the same language . . . . That said, the perception that they are distinct languages is so great that, in this case, that’s how things are. Portuguese culture tends to ignore Galician culture and, in this sense, the insistence of the 'reintegracionistas' is unrealistic.

Amen to that. Of course the ‘interminable debate’ carried out by insults is not yet over, having been given a boost by the internet. This despite the fact the reintegracionista cause is now even more lost than it was in the 1980s. One almost admires their perseverance. Even those odd souls who carry on the campaign from the UK. Marching to the beat of their own solitary drum.

The Spanish economy: Yes, the comments to the recent Economist article are more interesting than the article itself. Without claiming they’re either representative or correct, here are a few that appealed to me:-

1. I'd like to point out a feature of the Spanish culture. It’s an extension of the Mediterranean culture; When things go wrong and tempers run high, instead of fixing the problem, we start fighting each other. Everybody goes around seething with anger, looking for somebody to blame for everything. Then the whole country becomes a theatrical set.

2. Spain - A country where nothing makes sense... I’ve been living in Madrid for the last 5 years and I still can't figure out how things work here:-
* unemployment approaching 20%
* a housing bubble that refuses to pop
* super low salaries
* a highly unproductive workforce
* low purchasing power for consumers
* a very conformist society – people seem content with the status quo
* a government that is oblivious to its problems
* rampant tax evasion
* millions of unsold new flats
* millions of second hand flats that no one will buy
* a false belief that housing prices never fall
* banks hiding billions in non performing loans & mortgages
Someone tell me when things give!

3. Several readers have commented on the relative lack of civil disorder given the country has around 20% unemployment. Well, my answer would be 'wait and see'. At present a large part of Spain seems to be in a kind of collective wishful thinking mode. . . . I think it's only a question of time before Spain becomes an international problem for the ECB, IMF or whatever. The country's going to need a huge bail-out which it will get, but with conditions. Then the fun will really start because the government, whoever it may be, is going to have to make sweeping reforms to its economic and social systems. Maybe 'necessity will be the mother of invention'. I hope so.

The EU: This is primarily for reader Moscow, whose email I’ve lost . . . Here’s a famous British eurosceptic’s take on a performance by a famous British europhile. And here’s how the former says he’d reform the EU, if he could.

Anthropomorphic Global Warming (AGW): Here’s the case for the Opposition. We wait to see if it’s overstated or not.

Galicia 1: On the France 24 TV channel this morning there was a 15 minute special on cocaine smuggling into Galicia. You can see this on their web page, if interested. You won’t learn much but you will see some pretty estuaries and harbours.

Galicia 2: On the recommendation of an anonymous reader, I’m working my way through Otra Idea de Galicia (Another Idea of Galicia) by Miguel-Anxo Murado. And, you’ll be pleased to hear, taking appropriate notes. These are for a future post but I’ll pass on here the fact that the first victims of the Inquisition in Galicia were five British sailors. Having survived shipwreck off Finisterra, they were then burned at the stake in Santiago. It really was The End of the World for them. Well, this one anyway.

Finally . . . Plumber number 6 did arrive at 10.30 yesterday and was prompt again in the afternoon, at 3 on the dot. Which is more than I was. He turned up even earlier this morning and again at 2.30. He’s worked commendably hard all day today and will hopefully give me some heating by tomorrow morning. Which is just as well as we’re now enduring the worst combination of Galician winter weather – incessant rain and low temperatures. This, of course, is the price we pay for living in the first place in Europe the Atlantic weather hits. Even more aware of this than me will be the poor sods who ran the half-marathon in Pontevedra on Sunday morning.

One or two readers have asked whether the fact there’s no Amazon subsidiary operating in Spain doesn’t say something about book reading here. I’m not so sure. It may reflect concerns about the postal system or just a more general reluctance to shop on the internet, for fear of being ripped off. As someone once said, this is a ‘low trust’ society.

AGW and 'Climategate': If you want to see how this is unfurling, this is a must-read blog. And the MSM* writer to google is James Delingpole. Will it make any real difference to the Copenhagen conflab? I rather doubt it. And maybe it shouldn't.

Still on this subject, here’s a good letter sent to the magazine which featured the special section I cited yesterday: “All of the contributions to Prospect’s climate change special assume that human activities are affecting the natural rhythms of climate; that, unchecked, the effect will become increasingly powerful; and that the damage to life on Earth will be cataclysmic and irreversible. Yet there is a substantial body of opinion that challenges these assumptions, backed by an impressive array of scientific facts. Between the two extremes there are many people like me—educated enough to be thoughtful but unqualified to make serious scientific judgements—who are concerned at the lack of any impartial debate. I had hoped that Prospect might have put this debate at the heart of its coverage, or at least acknowledged the uncertainties that seem still unresolved.”

For that professional Jeremiah, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, the EU’s basket (and test) case is now Greece, rather than Spain. But I think even he now accepts that, whatever comes down the pike, the EU will solve the problem one way or another, rather than watch a member leave the union. This must be some comfort to the Spanish government, knowing that whatever mistakes it makes – or, rather, continues to make - the EU Commission will always bale it out. I think this is called ‘moral hazard’ in the context of the banks acting with impunity. Anyway, in the case of Spain, it’s all very ironic as EU membership was meant to put it in a straitjacket and to force it to make significant structural changes to her economy. Not carry on regardless because higher political considerations would always ensure there’d be no can to carry. But we will see. Maybe Edward Hugh is right to predict things will eventually get so bad here, the EU Commission or the IMF will have to take hold of the reins of government. As the latter did for the UK in 1976.

Meanwhile . . . As this foto shows, the Palestinian scarf is just as much a fashion item this winter as it was last year. At least here in Pontevedra. It’s a little ironic, I feel, that young women seem more concerned about that benighted place than about their own lungs. Assuming, of course, they think about either of them.
Well, Ryan Giggs finally scored his 100th goal for Manchester United on Saturday. That he is still playing for this top flight team at 36 is an astonishing achievement. Which almost ranks in importance with him being the inspiration for the naming of my now-sixteen year old border collier. Though not by me, obviously. He's called Ryan, by the way. Not Giggs. Or That Skinny Welsh Bastard on the Left Wing.


* Main stream media, I believe.

OK, tell me who’s the EU High Representative for Foreign Relations and Security? See, you’ve already forgotten. It is, of course, Catherine Ashton. I mention this because, by pure coincidence, I read this morning a September article about her having to fight to avoid losing her job as Trade Commissioner. Which, of course, she now has. There are some in Spain who see her promotion from a position she looked like losing to one she wasn’t even seen as a candidate for as a masterpiece of British diplomacy. But I beg to differ. Of course, I can’t really explain her rise but I do feel that the Spanish, like the Iranians, have a tendency to over-estimate the acumen of the British government. Maybe it stems from a long-standing inability to get Gibraltar back. Despite a Foreign Office desire to get shut of the place.

Having finished an article written in September, I turned to the long section of an October magazine dedicated to Global Warming and the Copenhagen conference in December. From the many thousands of words there, I recorded these basics:-
- CO2 levels are rising and the brate at which this is happening is increasing.
- However, no one really knows what they are. “The worldwide system of measurement is open to error and abuse and only half of global emissions are accounted for.”
- There’s a consensus that the world can tolerate a 2% increase in temperatures.
- They’re said to have risen by 0.75% over the last hundred years
- They’ve reduced in the last ten years but the majority believe this is a blip which doesn’t invalidate the fear they could rise by more than 4% over the next X years, unless drastic measures are taken.
- The majority believe the trends reflect human activity in the past and are susceptible to human measures in the future.
- In absolute terms, China is now the world’s biggest emitter, with India coming up fast.
- The Australians are the highest per capita emitters in the world
- Kyoto has not been much of a success
- Such is the complexity of matters and the huge vested interests at stake, the chances of a what the majority would consider a good deal coming out of Copenhagen are small
- The chances of attaching any real sanctions to failure to implement undertakings coming out of Copenhagen are even lower.
- Population control might well be better than anything else in reducing emissions but no one wants to talk about it.
- All the measures being considered have humongous price tags attached to them. Equals taxes.

Of course, it’s now the end of November and we are mired in what’s come to be called Climategate. This is a scandal centred on the emails exchanged between the small group of scientists at East Anglia University who are responsible for the data and the conclusions on it which drive the global warming agenda and the lobby which surrounds it.

In a word, a huge question mark has been put against the data used to prove that, despite the current blip, the world has been warming up for the past X years. In a travesty of the scientific method, the leading scientists have been found to have been not only refusing to share their methods and data with others but actually going to illegal lengths to hide and destroy it. In effect, they’ve been acting as zealots unwilling to even talk to people they dismiss – doubtless with the very best of intentions – as heretics. Five hundred years ago, I guess they’d simply have had them executed. The situation is so bad that one of the gods of the AGW movement – George Monbiot - has actually apologised for using this data in his analyses and doom-laden prognostications. We now wait to see whether governments and the bodies they set up to advise them do the same. Beyond that, we now look forward, I guess, to objective attempts to replicate the calculations justifying the trillions of dollars, euros and yen currently tagged for measures which will save the world. And leave us all much poorer.

Personally, I don’t much care which way things go, so long as we achieve a true consensus about the data on which massively important political decisions are taken on our behalf by the self-serving bureaucrats who are in charge of us now.

Postscript 1: I believe that Mrs Ashton was replaced as Trade Commissioner by a Spaniard but, to be honest, I actually have forgotten his name.

Postscript 2: Endorsing my comment above about British diplomatic competence/incompetence, it’s reported today that the French are gloating about how they’ve wiped the floor with the British in giving Brussels the power to regulate the City of London. If I were a cynic, I’d say this could possibly in the interests of Paris and Frankfurt.

Returning to the subject of book readership in Spain . . . A couple of readers have commented that quite a lot of reading is seen on the Madrid metro. Which is true but I do sometimes wonder how many of the readers are home-grown. More to the point, perhaps, what else can one do on a tube train, other than stare blankly into the faces of the people directly opposite? Or at your shoes. But does one see much reading taking place in the cafés of Madrid? Or, say, in the Retiro park? Anyway, I’ve been trying to get national book readership figures to give some statistical endorsement to my comments but without luck so far. I’ll keep trying and, until the data is in, will continue to believe the Spanish will always eschew reading if there’s a chance to chat. Which I like to think is a factual, not a censorial, observation. I like both of these pastimes equally and revel in the fact I can enjoy both in Spain whenever and wherever I find myself. Sometimes at the same time.

From Santiago university, Xoán Wahn comments that his (poor quality) text books cost at least 25 euros each. Having been in that fine institution a couple of weeks ago and having seen not a word of Spanish on any of the notice boards, I’m guessing these are all in Gallego. Which a limited market, of course. But full of captive customers. I imagine the publishers could double the prices and get away with it. So, what’s keeping them?

By the way – The third market which foxes me here is that for newspapers. As with books, I can’t figure out how anyone makes money other than via subsidies. Which come in direct and indirect forms. Ghost subscriptions in the latter case. The press yesterday gave us the news there are 12 daily papers circulating in Cataluña, for 7.4 million people. Well, we have even more than that here in Galicia, with a population of under 3 million.

A propos . . . For some reason or other – possibly irregularities in application – Brussels has suddenly cut off all aid to the Spanish film industry. This has promptly led to internecine fighting among those accustomed to relying on this largesse. This is so bad one commentator sees it as potentially suicidal. Which rather points up the danger of developing an industry on the basis of hand-outs of other peoples’ money.

Finally . . . It’s been suggested half of the income on rental properties in Spain is not declared to the inland revenue. You’d think the government would tighten up on this before ramping up taxes for the rest of us. On the other hand, there’d probably be even less of a rental market here if they did. It’s a funny country sometimes. But I suppose they all are.

Combining the two regular themes of noise and prostitution comes the story told to me today of an American couple who bought a house from a local builder - now in jail – with walls so thin they could hear everything going on in the brothel later set up next door. Needless to say, exhausted from lack of sleep and worried by the response to their complaints, they abandoned the house. And then the country. I’m beginning to feel grateful I’ve only got nice-but-noisy Toni. Who arrived back from sea smack on time last Thursday.

After several months of trying – including conversations and follow-ups with six plumbers – I finally have a new central heating boiler. In a box in my garage. Plumber number 5 insisted he’d told me on the phone he could bring one but that I’d have to get another guy to set it up. Fortunately, though, he’s a friend of a friend and so he got on the phone and told plumber number 6 that (despite only knowing each other for five minutes) we were friends and I needed help urgently. The happy outcome to this case study in the stellar importance of the personal factor in Spain will possibly unfold when plumber number 6 turns up at 10.30 on Monday morning. Or prima hora, as it’s known here.

The Economist magazine has issued another depressing commentary on the Spanish economy, which you can read here. I haven’t read them yet but I expect the Comments to be more illuminating that the article itself.

Which reminds me . . . It seems nobody’s told RENFE we’re living in deflationary times either. This is our national (government owned) rail operator and they’ve announced a 5% price hike from January. Likewise the monopoly electricity companies, who’ve warned of a mere 3% increase. Actually, prices for all government services (and many others) traditionally rise on the first day of the year. So it’ll be interesting – and probably very painful – to see how they all deal with an official inflation rate of around zero. Well, it avoids raising income and sales taxes beyond what’s already been announced.

Finally . . . A new verb for those learning Spanish. I came across it twice yesterday but not one of fifteen Spanish friends last night knew what it meant. It’s trufar. The original meaning - as you may have guessed - is ‘To stuff with truffles’. But a secondary meaning is ‘To tell stories to the detriment of someone or something’. And, finally, it’s another Spanish word meaning ‘To lie’. Of which there are quite a few, I suspect. Especially in the plumbing community.

I forgot it was Friday night.

The smoke in this wi-fi bar at 9pm is so thick I can hardly see the people at the next table. Never mind breathe.

Tune in later but, if there's no post tonight, at least you know why . . .