Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Spanish property; Spanish concrete; Spanish wealth; Spanish 'terrorists'; A&E; Nando's; & A great routine.

British buyers are expected to flood back to the Spanish property market this year, including many folk now free to access their pension pots and to splurge the proceeds in Spain. Let's hope fewer of them leave their brains at the airport this time round. And that all of them realise an agent's smile is inversely proportional to his honesty. As with his antipathy to the use of a lawyer. But 'horses' and 'water' are words which spring to mind.

Talking of property . . . HT to Lenox of Business Over Tapas for the citation of a Guardian article on Spain's coastline then and now. Aptly entitled Costa de Concrete. The paper refers to the Med coastline but, last time I looked, neither Cantabria nor the Basque Country were washed by the same waters as Benidorm, Marbella, etc.

An Oxfam survey tells us that Spain is the 2nd most unequal society in the world, which surprised me for one. Presumably this takes into account the overseas bank accounts of politicians, administrators and drug dealers, but even so . . . Anyway, here's a cartoon I've slightly adapted to make it even more relevant to spain:


Another HT to Lenox for this astonishing bit of news: The definition of 'terrorismo' has been broadened by the Spanish Government to include crimes associated with abortion, damage to the foetus, genetic manipulation, acts against 'public order' or against the 'social harmony' or the creation of a grave sentiment of public insecurity or fear – which includes violent labour disputes and 'escratches' (mini-demonstrations usually outside a politician’s private residence). One wonders if some of the extreme members of a very right-wing government don't dream of a return to Francoism at night.

I've talked about over-stretched A&E departments in both the UK and Spain (Urgencias/Urxencias) in the last week. Here's a cartoon from a local paper which manages to combine this theme with that of the state of the economy:-


You'll have noticed that tha the catoonist names his work A Tira - the word I featured last week. Meaning 'The Strip', of course.

Another comment which surprised me this week is that Nandos, apart from being a chicken restaurant, is also one of the most successful cults in Britain, one that makes the 17th-century Ranters and Diggers appear rank amateurs. A chicken-based cult? Do they have to hitch its trousers halfway up a bird's leg at the initiation ceremony and make it stand on one foot? I bet they'd deny this.

Finally . . . Here and here are how music videos used to be before disrobing and/or sticking your tongue out became more important than your dancing and singing skills. Rita Hayworth, partnering Fred Astaire, was clearly brilliant but I felt for her. The routine is complex and Fred was a notorious perfectionist. Imagine the rehearsals! All the more reason to admire not just her technique but also her smile. Rita, by the way, destroyed her career through booze and 'being difficult' but she looked back on her films with Fred as the 'only jewels in my life'. And the only ones she could view without laughing. I think I would have liked her.

And, together, they would surely have walked Strictly!

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