Just in case you’re not clear on this, the government of Catalunia is now in the hands of the PSC ERC e ICU-EUiA. I think this is an EUiA longer than the last coalition. But who from outside the region/nation can be sure?

I get the impression the ‘peace process’ with ETA is not going particularly well. Apart from sporadic acts of violence, we have the ETA protagonists still insisting nothing can be achieved until the process is ‘internationalised’ by the inclusion of France. But, as this is only scheduled to happen just after Hell freezes over, it’s hard to be optimistic.

The Portuguese city of Oporto lies a mere 120 kilometres or so down the coast from Vigo. Currently, the train journey takes around three and a half hours but the president of the Xunta has assured us there’ll be a high speed train [AVE] in operation by 2013, reducing it to merely an hour. However, in the same address he explained why all previous deadlines for lines between Santiago and both Vigo and Ourense have been hopelessly missed. So I hope he’ll forgive us for a touch of scepticism. But I still live in hope I’ll be able to enjoy an AVE trip to see my daughter in Madrid before I pop my clogs. Through the mountains of Galicia, down to the plains of Castile, and up again onto the meseta, it will be a spectacular journey.

Today’s Faro de Vigo had a special section on the 2,000 blogs written from/about Galicia. From this I learned that the English contraction of ‘web log’ to ‘blog’ has now been extended in Spanglish to ‘blogillo’. I also learned that the writer is apparently unaware of my blog. Which was a bit miffing. Playing an ironic victim card, I put it down to Galician nationalism.

Elsewhere, I read today that, after you’ve been through all the security checks at the airport, you can buy all the ingredients you need for a bomb at the duty-free shop. Which says it all about the current panic measures, doesn’t it?