Dawn

Dawn

Monday, September 17, 2012

Football Fun; Blaming the Bulls; Matchless Moments; Serious Shopping; A Venal Virgin; An Aimless Airport Ad ; Fatal Farming; The Lovely Letizia; NiNi Numbers; (H)iberian Holmes.


I went this evening with my friend-in-fish, Jon, to see Pontevedra FC play a team from Vilalbés. To say the least, there weren't many of us. Maybe 10% of the total capacity of 12,000. And what we saw provided a possible reason, with Pontevedra going down 0-1.
But I did enjoy myself trying to figure out the words of the chants from the local fans. Sad to say, though, the only ones I could make out were Pontevedra, Arriba(Go!), Puta (Whore) and Hijo de Puta (Son of a whore). One small aspect of the ground intrigued me and raised the question of how they could design a clock and scoreboard which couldn't fit the name of the team. Or, in this case, teams. The home side was given as PONTEVED and the away team as VILALBÉ. I was reminded of that piece of advice you used to see on office walls:–
PLAN AHEA
D

Talking about fun . . . In early August, I mentioned the bullfight peñas which every year turn the old quarter into a drunken bacchanalia on the four nights the corridas are held. Well, someone is very unhappy about these, fingering them as the main reason why Pontevedra hotel occupation in July and August was down on predictions. Frankly, I'm not sure this is a true bill.

Changing Spain 1: People are increasingly unhappy that the Primera Liga matches are not known for very far ahead. And nor are the times of those matches which are. They look with envy at the list of matches and times for the Premier League games issued before the start of the British season. Maybe next year.

Changing Spain 2: There is talk of shops being allowed to open for an extra hour a day. The astonishing thing (if you're not Spanish) it's suggested this will be at 10 to 11 at night. Not between 2 and 3, or 3 and 4. I guess this is because the shops know how hard it would be to get people to give up some of their three-hour 'midday' break to do their shopping. So best to tack it on to the end of the day.

A couple of weeks ago, there was a fiesta in a small village not far from here – Amil de Los Dos Milagros, I think. Anyway, the highlight of this was the pinning of money to a statue of the Virgin. Which seemed to me to be a lot taller than usual, thus maximising the space for the pinning of notes to. Or is this too cynical?

Can it really be true? There's an infamous airport at Castellón – built when times were better – which has no commercial flights at all. Nor any prospects of any. Nonetheless, five million euros a year is being spent on advertising the place.

Judging from the number of septuagenarians and octogenarians crushed by their tractors in Galicia, farming must be a long and hard life here. There seems to be one a week.

The lovely Princess Letizia was 40 over this weekend and the papers carried a great foto of her. It got me wondering whether, if she'd been snapped topless on holiday, the Spanish papers would have carried the pix. I'm guessing not.

Some comparative data on NiNis- Young people between 15 and 29 who are neither in work nor studying:-
OECD average – 16%
Norway, Holland, Luxembourg – 7%
Germany – 12%
UK, USA – 16%
Turkey, Israel, Mexico, and Spain - 24%

Finally . . . A Spanish film company has launched Holmes, Watson, Madrid Days. The only thing I know about it right now is that the Spanish Sherlock smokes cigarettes, not a pipe.

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