A
public service announcement: If, of a Sunday morning, you want to
find the cake/pastry shop in a strange town, just drive around until
you see five to six illegally parked cars all with their hazard
lights on. If one of them is parked on a zebra crossing, this will be
a clincher. Similarly if one is parked on the road, forcing you to do
a slalom to get past.
I
mentioned the slow progress of the AVE high-speed train in Galicia
and, right on cue, comes the announcement that the contract has been
awarded for the appallingly difficult stretch between Lubián (where
the land is flat) to Padornelo (where it decidedly isn't). There will
be a very long tunnel but, right now, I can't recall exactly how
long. Click here if you want/need to know. It will all be finished by
end 2015. Sure.
There
are regular announcements from the Spanish government on the
self-defeating austerity measures which won't help growth at all. One
of these is that the cost of a university course will significantly
increase. Another is that pensioners will now have to pay for their
prescriptions. According to their income, it seems. Quite how this
will work is unclear, though there's been talk of a sliding scale of
monthly charges. If these have to be paid even if you don't need any
prescription filled, it'll just be a poll tax. And analogous to the
Tory Party's "granny tax" which is causing so much trouble
in the UK.
Finally,
what explains the lack of civil unrest in a country with 50% youth
unemployment? Can
it be due to the fact that Spain has a 'black economy' variously
estimated at 20 to 30%? Is it because, as someone has suggested,
there is plenty of money under the mattress? Can it be that memories
of civil war atrocities act as a damper on emotions? Or is it because
so many of the young are living with their parents and/or extending
their university courses by failing their exams? I really haven't the
faintest idea but I do suspect that Pontevedra, with its solid core
of bureaucrats, is unrepresentative of the whole.
Incidentally,
I noticed yesterday that, ten years after the introduction of the
euro and the demise of the peseta, shops here are still giving the
peseta equivalent of your bill in euros. Do they know - and have they
always known - something we don't know?
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