Spain’s mobile phone operators will shortly have to stop rounding up their charges and so will be billing us in seconds, not minutes. Ahead of this, they’ve all simultaneously announced they’re increasing the call start-up cost by a mere 25%. Hardly suspicious is it? They must be really worried about the demands they be investigated for price rigging.

I love the Spanish language but there’s one rather irritating aspect of it – the fact that you have to use, ‘fathers’, ‘sons’ and ‘grandsons’ when you mean parents, children and grandchildren. So the question I posed yesterday – How many parents could disagree? Well, mothers anyway – would read in Spanish:- How many fathers could disagree? Well mothers, anyway. Isn’t it about time the Royal Academy did something about this? And the Galician one too.

There’s a new Spanish newspaper on the net, called Reportero Digital. It already has several local editions and uses contributions from [would-be] writers from around Spain. Like all new enterprises, it’s likely to have to struggle for revenue. In fact, they’re so desperate they’ve asked me to contribute a blog in English.

Galicia Facts

Tourist numbers to Galicia were 5% up in 2006. Tourism now represents 12% of the region’s GDP and 13% of those in employment. The city of Vigo sees its future in developing improved yachting facilities, which has to be right.

Here in Pontevedra, shop-fitting skills seem to be of a very high order. This may be a reflection of how often premises change their character. For example, along my kilometre walk from the bridge into the centre of town, at least 5 new bank branches have opened in the last few years. Along with a similar number of estate agents [realtors]. These are not unconnected events, of course.

Galicia is built on granite. So it comes as a bit of surprise to read this is now being imported from India. Another consequence of the property bum?

Galician-ness

Carlos has initiated [30.1] a dialogue on the Celtic-ness [or otherwise] of the Galicians. This is a bit much as I’m still wrestling with his previous question as to where the line should lie between ‘promoting’ Gallego and forcing it down everyone’s throat. But, anyway, I was reminded of a comment in a recent edition of Prospect to the effect that some experts now believe the entire Celtic story is a myth, not just Galicia’s bit of it. And as for Carlos’s points about the genetic make-up of Galicians, I read them on the same day as a letter in the current edition of Prospect which says the idea that the first Brits came from the Basque country is a nonsense. The writer used chromosomal evidence to refute this. Who am I to step into these troubled waters? If the experts can’t agree, what chance have Carlos and I got? Perhaps we should concentrate on the future. Which reminds me, I read this comment early this morning - From being a moody country, resentful about its past and fond of poets who dwelt on that past, forced to emigrate to find work, it has become a land of high promise, a land "changed utterly". It’s about Ireland, of course, but let’s hope it can be said of Galicia within my lifetime. I‘m trying to do my bit.

Meanwhile, one of the problems with promoting/enforcing Gallego is Which Gallego? As a case in point, someone has posted a brief Gallego comment to my blog which I take to be an insult directed at me. But, so far, none of my Galician friends have been able to translate it for me. If and when we arrive at a consensus, I will post the comment, however unflattering it is.