Word Watch: In view of the pleasure they give me, I have expanded the Gerund Watch to include all Spanglish words I come across. This week’s crop:-
Un flash – a cameraman, paparazzi
Un nick – a nickname
Hackear – to hack [into a computer, not into undergrowth]
Un hacker – have a guess

I suspect it’s not widely known just how much hard work it took to make Spain even appear to be a single political entity. And now it’s beginning to look like it will be an even bigger challenge to maintain the appearance. The two macro forces at work are post-Franco decentralisation and EU regionalism. The biggest ‘nationalist’ [i. e. breakaway] parties are in the Basque country, Catalunia and Galicia. Each region has its own proud language and culture but the major difference between them is that the first two are industro-commerical, and so rich, whereas Galicia is agricultural and poor. The former could more than survive on their own whereas Galicia needs the national trough. Every day now seems to bring a new proposal from the north east of the country in the direction of independence, backed by terrorism in the case of the Basque country. Is it too much to fear that Spain will ultimately break up unto the weight of these forces?

Meanwhile, it seems I gave too much credit to our local lads yesterday. The hackers [or los hackers, if you prefer] who used Vigo university’s massive computer to download films in only a matter of minutes actually lived in six cities around Spain.

En passant, if you have stumbled onto this blog page by accident, you may like to know that I have a web page dedicated to Galicia and Pontevedra. It also has various scribblings done over the last 2 or 3 years that may amuse. It can be found at:- colindavies.net