The headline read that Andalucia's black market -
to no one's surprise, I'm sure - is 5% greater that Spain's as a
whole. What they meant, of course, was that it's 5 percentage points
more. Anyway, according to a local study, the most corrupt town is
Almería (34% of the total), followed by Granada (32%), Cordoba (32%)
and Cordoba (31%). The 'best' percentages were Huelva (26), Sevilla
(27) and Malaga (29). Tellingly, all these were above the Spanish
national number.
Talking of corruption . . . After passing quickly
over 4 or 5 pages in the Voz de Galicia of the reports on local
trials, I came up short at a foto of the shrink who's guiding the
reduction of my post-depression medication, below a headline about a
trial for 'corrupt practices'. Fortunately, it turns out he's the one
who's taken out the writ - against the health services for giving a
job to someone he thinks less qualified for it. In a belt and braces approach,
he's initiated both legal and 'administrative' cases. So, plenty
of material for us to discuss at our next 15m session in March. Last
time, he treated me to a very nice sketch of the thyroid and the impact of various
antibodies. In a word, destruction.
The following is something I read yesterday in the latest
edition of Prospect magazine. It's about French women but I
venture to say it's equally true of Spanish women (and society):- When
these writers invite us to ape French women, they omit to mention
that the tricks lying behind her so-called mystique - dressing to
seduce, hiding her beauty secrets, playing hard to get - are those of
our mothers and grandmothers. The school of feminism that advocated
policing the private sphere as well as the public one seemed to
bypass France during the 1960s and 70s. French feminism left the roles traditionally played by men and women
virtually untouched. Nor did there seem to be any appetite among the
population at large to revolutionise private relations between the
sexes. We’ve seen enough French cinema to know that French women
are not expected to play by the same rules as we Anglos do. La
Française is still allowed to behave with her menfolk like an
overgrown, pouting toddler. These women don’t have to be grown-up
mainly because there has been little movement in France towards
equality in the bedroom. French gender roles are not contractual but
hierarchical. That’s why there’s relatively little conflict.
Judging from the success of books such as Mireille Guillano’s, we
seem to find this state of affairs refreshing compared to the
pitiless transparency of male-female relations in Britain and
America.
Finally . . . Pontevedra trivia. I was
surprised to hear from a neighbour last week that the street I use
daily to exit the city is now part of a zone which is "Services Only" and that -
over the last 2 months - I'm lucky to have escaped the fines imposed
on other drivers for ignoring (or not understanding) a single sign
that says Agas Servicios, which is Gallego for Sólo
Servicios. Anyway, along with other odd measures - such as reversing
the flow of traffic in one street and blocking off half a roundabout at the end of it - the clear purpose of all this is to close the main bridge to traffic
leaving the city and to funnel drivers, up and over numerous speed bumps, to
the new bridge which is further away from where most people want to
go. It would be nice to say it's all part of a master plan but my
suspicion is they make it up as they go along. Anyway, my neighbour
and I agreed it hardly mattered what the mayor decides to do,
the people of Pontevedra are never going to resort to Burgos-like
riots. They're far too placid for that. Reflecting the fact, perhaps,
that most of them are funcionarios working for the provincial
or municipal administrations.
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