Second post of the day.

Last year, 4,000 Africans arrived in the Canary Islands in kayaks or the like. This year’s total is heading for 30,000. These are brought by Senegalese fishermen, who justify their activities on the basis that huge EU trawlers have destroyed their fishing grounds and thus robbed them of a living. Ironic, isn’t it?

An Irish purveyor of a cream liquor [no, not that one] faced a couple of options for its Christmas billboard theme here in Galicia. The basic English version was ‘Your little moment’. The Spanish translation was ‘Tu momentito’. And the Galician, ‘O teu momentiño’. What they came up with was ‘Your momentiño’. And thus took the first step towards the invention of Galenglish. Or perhaps Galish.

Displaying a grasp of reality that you’d expect, the Galician Nationalist Party [the BNG] has proposed Galicia moves to the same time as the Canary Islands and Portugal. In terms solely of longitude, this makes excellent sense. But, as a political policy, it doesn’t have a prayer. For one thing, with only one exception the whole of Spain really should be on the same time as the UK. But since this exception is Catalunia, Madrid is never going to permit any tinkering with time zones.

En passant, because Spain is on the ‘wrong’ clock, Spanish mornings are darker and the evenings lighter than they should be. And, as Galicia is on the western fringe, this effect is exacerbated here. At the moment, for example, it doesn’t get light until well after 8.30 in the morning. The compensation, of course, is long light evenings throughout the summer.

There was a rather hard hitting editorial in the Voz de Galicia on Monday, touching on some of the themes that crop in this blog. There’s a translation below. But, first …..

NOTICE: I’ve compiled my blog for 2003-4 into a compendium under various obvious headings. Anyone who’d like a [free] copy should write to me at colindavies@terra.es, putting Compendium as the subject.

Here's the editorial . .

GALICIA AND GRUYERE CHEESE

The highway in 0 Salnes was carried away as if it had been drawn in the sand by a child. Subventions to RENFE serve only to maintain third world trains which circulate empty. The dam in Umia couldn’t even prevent a single flood. Vigo and other cities pour their untreated waste into the sea. Santiago’s City of Culture lacks cultural projects. Excess urban developments extend over water courses and marshes which will need millions in investment in the coming years, like someone burying money. As for the grand projects which the PP party gifted us – high speed trains to Medina, Bilbao and Oporto; the Cantabrian autovia; an autovia between Ourense and Lugo; the widening of the highways to Ribeira and O Grove; a second autovia between Vigo and Pontevedra; super ports and airports; plus a thousand other miracles – none of these happened in the 16 years in which it governed and all of them – what a coincidence! – were going to be realised in their 5th term.

Pérez Touriño is right when he says Galicia is like a Gruyère cheese. And it will be even more so unless, instead of just analysing the state of the public works, we also look at the financing of the universities, the health system, the collapse of agriculture, the level of access to new technologies, care of the aged and other things of this sort, which all co-exist with a population which has the lowest salaries and pensions in Spain and which is ageing in gigantic strides.

For sure, the apology of the last government can’t last for ever. And it’s also true the coalition government hasn’t had the courage and the wit to make a public audit of the Fraga era so as to clarify the waste of EU funds. For this reason, two tasks are outstanding. The first – which is the responsibility of the Xunta – is to say what hasn’t been said, to sort out what hasn’t been sorted out, and to sink money as if there were no tomorrow in correcting old disasters and into making the country, as soon as possible, like an Arzuan cheese. The second – which falls to the citizens – is an obligation on our part to learn what constitutes good government, to distinguish good management from clientilism, to avoid confusing works with their plaques and not to entrust tomorrow to political paternalism.

The third world reputation which we’re gaining throughout Spain has something of the truth about it and much that is deserved. And perhaps the time has arrived to look again at what we analysts have said about the mania for governing from the car or from the parliamentary bench - on the basis of cheap shafts of genius - and to rip up the pages of the newspaper. For the cost of that age of (German) gold has mortgaged our future.