Having recently upset a lot of people in Catalunia, Galicia and X, I thought I’d go the whole hog today and annoy everyone in the entire country [or, if you like, in all the countries that make up Spain] by quoting something said last week by the Spanish writer, Juan Eslava Galán – The Spanish all share a combination of faults – arrogance, lust, gluttony and envy. Can’t imagine he’s too popular this week. And, of course, I don’t agree with him.

In the province of Pontevedra, there’s a small town called Cans, pronounced more or less as it’s written. Every year, during the week of the Cannes film festival, they hold a competing event. It doesn’t quite attract the same calibre of star – possibly because it’s billed as an agrofiesta - but I think it’s wholly admirable. And I loved the comment from the organiser yesterday that, as the temperature was over 40 here this week, he was going to write to ask his counterpart in Cannes to move the week back in the year. By the way, cans means dogs in Galician.

After the events of the last few days, I can’t say I was too surprised to see a report today from the Galician Institute of statistics which said only 3% of Galicians speak English fluently. This compares with over 90% in Sweden, Norway and Holland. More than 65% of the population here admitted they don’t know a single word of the language. Of course, nobody’s obliging them to but it does say something about the region’s ability to communicate with the rest of the world.

Those with no interest in the following subject can log off now ….

GALICIAN POLITICS

Well, none of my Galician readers has rushed to answer my questions of yesterday. Just one pleasant but hard-to-understand message referring me to Wikipedia entries on Galicia. This, of course, is an encyclopaedia written by contributors and it will hardly surprise anyone to hear that 1. the version in Galician refers to Galicia as a ‘nation’, whereas 2. the version in English doesn’t. So, not much progress there. While we [or I at least] wait for more information, here’s what Wikipedia says [in English] about the leading Galician nationalist party:-

The Bloque Nacionalista Galego, is a minority nationalist political organisation, founded in 1982. Ideologically, the BNG defends the Galician language and the autonomy of the Parliament of Galicia. Structurally, the BNG consists of independents and federated political parties and constitutes a permanent electoral coalition. At one time, the BNG supported the independence of Galicia as a long-term goal, but after absorbing the regionalist Unidade Galega in 1990, it moved to a policy opposing Galician independence and supporting autonomy within Spain.

It was the second largest political group in the Galician Parliament after the 2001 elections, slightly ahead of the Spanish Socialist Party but in the 2005 elections it lost 4 seats and slipped to third place. It lost its one Euro-MP in the European Elections of 2004. Although the vast majority of its members are so-called 'independents', the BNG does recognise a number of other groups within it:
Unión do Povo Galego: (The Galician People's Union), a communist party
Esquerda Nacionalista: (Nationalist Left), a social-democratic party
Unidade Galega: (Galician Unity), a social-democratic party
Colectivo Socialista: (Socialist Collective), a socialist party
Inzar: formed through the merger of the Galician branches of the Maoist Communist Movement (Movimiento Comunista) and the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist League (Liga Comunista Revolucionaria)
Partido Nacionalista Galego-Partido Galesguista: (Galician Nationalist Party- Galeguist Party), a liberal democratic party

A somewhat eclectic group whose members possibly don't all agree with each other, never mind with me.