This post is late today and the reason is I've spent many hours on the third and final part of the compilation of blogs on GALICIA & PONTEVEDRA. So I do hope someone reads them. Normal service tomorrow.

2006

Having been adopted by at least one dog a year since I came here, I wasn’t too surprised to read this morning that Galicia ranks second worst in Spain for abandonment of pets. Mind you, in a poor region with lots of cows, pigs and goats there’s probably a lot less sentimentality here than elsewhere. Though I’ve never come across any hanging greyhounds.


In one of those typically parochial headlines which are the fruit of Spain’s intense regionalism, we read that the country’s second largest lottery [El Niño] had ‘ignored Galicia’ and bestowed its bounty on Murcia. What about the other 15 Autonomous Communities, then?


In Portuguese shops, one often sees the sign No Mexas. This comes from the verb Mexer and means ‘Don’t touch’. Portuguese and Galician are sister languages but Mexar in Galician means To pee. The imperative is formed in exactly the same way, which lends a whole new dimension to shopping across the border. Off the top of my head, I can think of only one such confusing opposite between American and British English. ‘To barrack’ means to support in the former but to jeer in the latter.


The young men of Galicia persist in their mission to eradicate themselves on the roads. Three more this weekend, in the Pontevedra province alone, aged 21, 23 and 24. All,
tellingly, in single-car accidents. And ‘For reasons as yet undetermined’.


Another ten people were killed on Galician roads in the last three days, not counting the three I mentioned on Sunday. As ever, most of the deaths occurred in the early hours of the morning, when cars carrying up to five youths left the road and came up against innocent trees and walls. I suspect quite a lot could be done to reduce this appalling toll but it would be considered ‘unfair’ to put the nightclubs out of business by stationing police cars outside them. One day, no doubt. Meanwhile, we pay higher insurance premiums than elsewhere and stay off the roads at night.


Tomorrow, Galica will see its 11th ‘national’ fox hunting championship. No horses, just men, dogs and more guns than you’d see in the UK in a century. I rather doubt there’ll be any protesters. But, if there are, I won’t be surprised to read of a hunting accident or two in Monday’s papers.


The local town halls are up in arms about the pressure being put on them by the Galician government to implement the law about the completion of house-building projects. The background to this is that the magnificent Galician countryside is scarred by a plague of partly-built houses whose progress, over many years, depends on the availability of cash. Not to mention the builders. Having turned a blind eye to this for decades, the local councils now say three months before an election is not the right time to take this ‘unfair’ and ‘ignoble’ measure. Stuff the law.


A total of 12 foxes were shot during the weekend’s Galician championship. But no humans.


Spain’s national airline, Iberia, have decided they can’t compete with Ryanair into Santiago and so have moved their daily London flight to La Coruña, on the far north coast of Galicia . This strikes me as a bizarre decision which can only alienate their existing customer base and drive travellers towards the rapidly growing airport in Oporto/Porto in north Portugal. The only explanation that occurs to me is that it’s the sort of face-saving gesture mentioned in the article I cited the other day about doing business in Spain.


Another identikit death on the Galician roads yesterday. Male; 20; early hours of the morning; ‘bendy road’; no other car involved; ‘left the road for reasons as yet undetermined’. A writer in one of today’s local papers wrote a hard-hitting article on this theme, referring to the Galician roads as the 5th horseman of the Apocalypse. No need to send young men to die in Iraq. Send ‘em to . Must be easy being an actuary in this country.


When I first came to Galicia, there was no shortage of locals to tell me society here was somewhat short of meritocratic. In fact, some felt it was still pretty feudal. As Pontevedra looked to me rather more 21st century that the town I’d come from in the UK, I was sceptical of this. But now I know rather better. And I’ve come to share the fatalistic attitude that stems from knowing that, if someone’s in a job because he/she’s related to someone else, there’s not much point complaining, as nothing is going to happen. This helps to explain why there’s a tendency here to do an awful lot of talking about things but to take little action.


Sadly, the work-related accident rate in Galicia is running at its highest level for 10 years. I have visions of all those Brits who write to me about restoring old stone houses falling off their uncompleted roofs .

But there is some good news from today – the ladies of the region have apparently taken to belly dancing in a big way. By which I don’t mean the women of have big bellies. Though it helps, apparently.


This week, of course, sees the beginning of Lent. Up here in the Mardi Gras ceremonies are known as Entroido/Antroido. They started this weekend with a procession of floats and will end – on Good Friday - with the ceremonial burning of some sort of effigy. Along the Galician coast this normally takes the form of a sardine but here in Pontevedra - for reasons lost in the mists of time - we burn a parrot called Ravachol. This takes place at the end of a long funeral march on Friday evening which involves a good deal of irreligious dressing up and a fair amount of cross-dressing. I’m sure this says something about the Spanish character but I haven’t yet figured out what this is. Anyway, it’s not the night to chat up a black-veiled widow in fish-net tights and stiletto heels.

You can read an account of one of the processions by clicking on the Carnaval in Pontevedra link at the bottom of the home page of my web page on – colindavies.net

Ravachol, by the way, has just been permanently honoured by the erection of a monument in one of the town’s central squares. I will post a picture shortly.


Not by any means for the first time this winter, I woke to a glorious blue sky and a bright
yellow sun while the radio was telling me Galicia was one of the 12 regions facing severe weather today. In the event, the worst we experienced was merely the sight of snow on the caps of the more distant mountains. I love the Atlantic when it’s benign. But not, of course, when it’s depositing itself on us for days at a time.


If you read this blog regularly, you can’t say you haven’t been warned. In 2005, the worst regions for pedestrians killed by cars were:-
Andalucia [pop. 8m] – 60
Galicia [3m] – 45
Madrid [6m] – 32
So, adjusting for population, Galicia emerges as the clear winner. And Vigo is the city to avoid.

The good news is that, in the 12 months to mid February, Galicia had only 50% of the average annual rainfall of the last 30 years. You might like to be aware of this if you’re reading this because you fancy the idea of moving to what the British press seems to regard as an undiscovered paradise, where the weather is wonderful.


Below are the promised pictures of Ravachol. The first is the fine bronze representation just established in one of the town’s squares. And the second is the effigy which will be burned on Friday evening, after the funeral cortege has wound its wailing way around the town. Meanwhile, the opposition party has accused the local government of using poor Ravachol for party political purposes. I can’t say exactly how as I couldn’t bear to read beyond the headline.


I’ve now discovered that the political spat around Ravachol stems from the fact his effigy is adorned with the slogan ‘A pure Lerez’. This is a reference to the mayor’s campaign to rid the mouth of the river Lerez of the paper mill which is the town’s biggest employer. The opposition party, understandably, feels the celebrations have been high-jacked for political purposes. And this is a crime in Spain, where it’s just not done to be serious when it’s fun time.


If you come to Galicia , you’ll eventually encounter percebes. ‘Goose barnacles’ in English. They look and taste – to me at least – as repulsive as they sound. But in Spain they are a delicacy. And expensive, costing over 120 euros a kilo in restaurants here and even more in Madrid. One reason for this must be their alleged aphrodisiacal powers. But another is that it’s hard to collect them, as they grow only on rocks constantly thrashed by Atlantic waves. There are regular fatalities and the latest were two youths, drowned this week along the north west coast. This sounds callous but it does make a change from reading about road fatalities amongst this benighted age group.


The latest early-hours-of-Sunday death on Galician roads didn’t quite fit the normal pattern, as it was of a 40 year old taxi driver. Mind you, he was hit by a young man in an Audi A3 coming round the corner on the wrong side of the road.


For several years now, illegal immigrants have been arriving on Spain’s coasts in their thousands each year. Many of them don’t make it alive. Recently the numbers have risen significantly, particularly in respect of Mauritanian refugees trying to land in the Canary Islands. In fact, things have got so bad Galicia has even agreed to take a share of those who make it. The poor souls may find the weather a bit of a shock, though it was 29 in one city in today, the highest temperature in Spain.


One of the problems of there being 17 Autonomous Communities is 17 different tax regimes, at least in respect of gift and inheritance taxes. It may not matter much to you but, as far as your heirs are concerned, the best place to shuffle off this mortal coil is Madrid, where rates are very low. And, sadly, one of the worst turns out to be Galicia. I must move.


Here’s a coded message for those thinking of visiting Galicia in the spring - After the last
week or so, I doubt we’ll be having water restrictions this summer.


The local gypsies have figured twice in the news this week. Firstly, Galicia’s Supreme Court has confirmed the local council can knock down the 10 illegal shacks on land earmarked for an industrial park. Mind you, the council has said they lack the resources to do this so it may take several more years before we see anything happen. This might be because the council is only too aware that the second incident involving the gypsies was a shoot-out at one of the pay booths on the nearby autopista. This was between members of the same family. So imagine how they treat strangers.


In Pontevedra this week we had the re-opening of a bridge which had been under repair for some time. Ten minutes after the Mayor had finished the opening ceremony a truck and a bus crashed into its lowered roof. That’s the trouble here; everyone’s in too much of a hurry.


It seems global warming is giving a miss to the UK. The temperature at 7 this morning was a mere 4 degrees. But at least the sun is shining. Though I hear this is true of Galicia again this week, after 15 days of cloud and rain. Incidentally, such arctic temperatures appear to have no effect on the hardy British youth. I've seen several of them on the streets in summer gear. Even a T-shirt and shorts yesterday.


Today I received a form to fill in, advising the Galician government how many chickens, turkeys, geese, doves, pigeons, pheasants, quail, partridge and ‘others’ I am raising in my back garden. You’ll have guessed this is an avian flu preventative measure. For reasons one can only guess at, the accompanying letter stresses the collection of data has ‘nothing to do with the tax authorities’. This might be more convincing if the form didn’t call for one’s identity number, which always doubles as your tax number.


A survey of the cost of living around Spain puts the three Galician cities of Pontevedra, Vigo and Ourense are in the bottom five. On the other hand, both meat and fish are more expensive in La Coruña than anywhere else in the country. As the city is a port surrounded by fishing villages, this is hard to credit. At least as regards the fish. Windy, cloudy and expensive. Not a place I would choose but it seems to be popular with Brits. Must remind them of home.


In 2005, Galicians spent less on cars and housing than the Spanish average but more on food. All those festive seafood dinners, I guess.


Galician families spend an average of €3000 on a child’s First Holy Communion, usually obtained on credit. The cash, that is, not the child. And this is in the second poorest region in Spain. God only knows what it must be in Madrid and Barcelona. But I trust it makes Him happy.


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.


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.


A reader has commented on the poor quality of English in Galician brochures and suggested there's a business opportunity here. I'm afraid not. After several abortive attempts to help organisations for free, I've come to accept the view of my Spanish friends that what happens is the local organisation gets a budget for translations by qualified people and then spends it employing relatives who may have studied English at school but who have certainly never spoken it.


The UK has the dubious honour of ranking first in Europe when it comes to the incidence of crime. Spain is way down the list, with a rate which is only half that of Britain. And in Galicia, it's only a fraction over a quarter of the UK rate. However, we do have the occasional gang of Rumanians which tries hard to improve our rankings, usually by breaking down the doors of flats and clearing them of their contents.


The night train is, for me at least, a wonderful way to get to and from Madrid. It may take 10 hours but for most of these I’m asleep and the early part of the trip from Pontevedra takes you right along the edge of one of the prettiest bays in the world. So much better than all the hassle and inconvenience of flying. Ironically, when I got off the train this morning I read in one of the local papers that Galicia is the worst served region in Spain as regards railways. And things are not scheduled to get much better for several years.


In a countrywide survey, Pontevedra emerges as the Galician city with the highest quality of life, though it ranks only 24th out of 54 nationally. Somewhat to my surprise, the elegant city of La Coruña achieves only a national ranking of 50. Maybe they’re very inbred up there.


Down in Pontevedra’s main square, there’s a delightful exhibition of the colours and smells of Andalucia. This features mock trading stalls, houses and a whole range of spices for one to smell. Galicians, however, are notoriously conservative when it comes to food so I wasn’t too surprised to read comments in the book about the exhibition being nice but bad-smelling. Or to find myself behind people assuring their partners ‘Of course, I don’t really like all this foreign muck’. All very reminiscent of my own mother when I first tried to cook curries in her kitchen and she told me she’d never be able to use her pans again. Needless to say, Asian restaurants are thin on the ground in Galicia, especially if you discount the Hispanicised Chinese places.


There was an hilarious film on TV this morning. Shot in 1960 in the Naval Academy in Galicia, it purported to show how wonderful life in the armed forces could be. And how easy it was to pick up beautiful [blonde!] girls in Pontevedra if you were dressed in a naval uniform. I couldn’t watch much but the highlight was surely a duet on a train from what must have been Spain’s answer to the Everly Brothers – El Dynamic Duo. Franco must have loved it. But possibly not his wife.


Another weekend, another cavalcade of road deaths. Or, to put in the words of a local paper today, “History repeats itself every weekend and the nightlife again leaves in its wake a river of blood on Galicia’s highways”. Among the corpses this time were 3 young people who drove through their own village at double the permitted speed of 50kph and hit a telegraph pole not far from their own homes. I find it hard to believe the police can’t do something to at least reduce this toll, if only parking cars outside the discos from which the kids stagger in the early hours of the morning. But, in this live-and-let-live culture, they seem to think this would be socially unacceptable. Perhaps things will change after the introduction of harsher penalties in July.

It’s not as if Galicia can afford to lose anyone on the roads. Last year it suffered a net 8,000 loss in its population, the highest in Spain. It would have been worse but for the 15,000 immigrants who compensated for the 20,000 people who left the region.


In a bookshop today, I was struck by an array of textbooks for every subject in which one can take the so-called ‘Oposiciones’. These are, essentially, exams you have to take for any lifetime job with the local government, including teaching. Every one of the text books was specially published by the Galician Xunta and I guess much the same happens in each of Spain’s other 16 regions, or Autonomous Communities. The cover of each book contained the insignia of the Xunta and the large acronym MAD. I have no idea what it stands for but it seemed rather appropriate to me.


Some Galician facts:-
- Fewer people [63%] claim to routinely speak Galician these days. This is doubtless a reflection of the depopulation of the villages of inland .
- Galicia is being increasingly urbanised. Between 1987 and 2000, urban development grew 20%
- Between 2006 and 2013, Galicia will receive 3.4m euros from EU funds, a drop of 7% over the previous 7 year period
- Although 63% of the population say they speak Galician regularly, only a small minority have anything other than Spanish on their tombstones. The local Nationalist party [the BNG] fears this will give the wrong impression to future archaeologists and say something must be done about it. I’m not sure what.


By the way, when talking about common sense among Spanish wine-growers, I’d have to make an exception for Galicia’s Albariño wines. These can be truly excellent but they’re undeniably overpriced by world standards. I doubt there’s a bottle available under10 quid in the UK. But I’d be happy to be proved wrong. If you’re writing to confute me, don’t forget to tell me the name of the wine and the bodega. For the dastardly Portuguese also produce it but at much lower prices.


I’m not sure I believe this but I’ve read the Galician government is going to change the law so as to allow one to make a non-specific testamentary bequest along the lines of ‘I leave everything to whichever of my children has taken care of me in my dotage’. This, of course, is to force your offspring [especially in culture where children are endlessly indulged and financed] to do their duty. But I’m not sure it would be allowed under Anglo-Saxon law. In the UK – and, I imagine, in the USA - you’re allowed to leave every thing to your hamster. Under Spanish law, in contrast, you can’t cut your spouse and/or your kids out of your will.


Galicia has suffered the largest drop in student numbers over the last year. And the region has the smallest percentage of foreign students among its university population. I wonder if this is part of the price paid for forcing people to learn Gallego so that they can complete a course. Just a thought.


The Spanish Tourist Board’s current campaign in the UK is based on the theme ‘Smile! You are in Spain’. Then there are subsets, such as ‘Smile! You are in Galicia’. This one features a multinational group of happy cyclists, resting on the grass below Lugo’s well-preserved Roman walls. In truth, the only reason they can be smiling is that they’ve managed to survive the dangerously traffic-ridden road which encircles the old quarter and which is about 30cm out of the image of bucolic splendour.


It was the last day of the superb ‘Smells of Andalucia’ exhibition down in Pontevedra’s main square today, so I made a second visit. This time there was no Visitor’s Book for comments. I guess the organisers got tired of reading variations on ‘Looks nice but smells awful’ from the notoriously conservative Galicians. To be honest, there are few [if any] traces of Muslim influence in Galicia and it’s hard to blame the locals for treating other – very different - parts of Spain like foreign countries. Truth to tell, this is exactly how they are referred to in the local press – as in “Foreign banks have large share of the market”, meaning banks from Madrid, Barcelona and Bilbao.


Here’s something for those buying property up in the hills of Lugo and Ourense to think about – global warming is forecast to mean that, by the end of the century, the interior of Galicia will be ‘hotter and more arid’ than it is now. As it was over 40 degrees in Ourense today, this is not something to take too lightly. At least not if you want to leave some valuable property to your kids.


According to El Mundo, ‘unscrupulous’ Galician fishermen are simplifying their task by chucking sticks of dynamite into schools of sardines. Sadly, I suspect this will leave most Spanish as unmoved as the widespread sale of illegally small fish in the nation’s tapas bars. And who am I to point a finger? I eat them.


As you would expect in a country for which tourism is so important, there are some excellent organisations here. One of them is TurGalicia and I’ve just discovered they provide details of all the region’s major gardens on this their web site. Not just in Spanish but also in English. That’s the good news. The not-so-good news is that - as this brief excerpt shows - someone’s relative has taken on the translation challenge - The 19th century boost which converted Pontevedra from having the title of city into the provincial capital was smart enough to surround the large buildings in charge of meeting the new administrative needs with recreational areas for the citizens. In its centric sphere of jurisdiction, we will find the architectural volumes of the Valle-Inclán Institute, the Provincial Government and the Spanish Provincial Office of Education. I would write to offer to improve this without payment but, sadly, I know I’ll never get a reply.

On the other hand, I wrote yesterday to someone who maintains a site on the history of and also to a professor of Galician History at Santiago university and both of them were kind enough to reply immediately. This rather blows out of the water my claim that no one answers letters in Spain. Though not quite, as the exchanges were electronic. And, therefore, as ‘immediate’ as the Spanish like them. Almost as in the here-and-now as the human voice.


It’s far too soon to be reach any sort of definitive conclusion but it’s at least encouraging that the national road mortality figures for the first 10 days of the new licence system were 40% down on last year’s. Though there was no reduction in Galicia, thanks largely to a crash as the weekend which claimed several young lives.


It was 35 degrees or more in Pontevedra again today and there were lean pickings for the stall holders and the bar owners down at the Sunday flea market. The Galicians dislike these temperatures as much as the British and were either all on the beach or indoors. At times like this I spare a thought for all those Brits who’ve bought property up in the mountains near Ourense, in compete disregard of the warning on my web site that temperatures up there can be 10 degrees higher. But the feeling soon passes. You makes your bed . . .


Galicia, it seems, has proportionately the highest number of unoccupied properties in Spain. There are two poles-apart reasons for this. Firstly, people are leaving the land up in the mountains and, secondly, rather richer people have been buying second and third places purely for investment purposes. The national and regional governments insist they want to see an end to construction well in excess of actual needs but there are at least two factors which must make them ambivalent about it all. Firstly, Spain’s current high rate of economic growth is largely driven by this construction boom and, secondly, with a sales tax of 6-7% on every purchase, the government stands to see a large reduction in revenues when it stops. Rather as with cigarette smoking. So we just get lectures.


Come the summer, come the dreadful forest fires. Particularly in the north west of Spain. Yesterday there were 34 of these blazing in Galicia, forcing the closure of the north-south motorway along a 17km stretch. It’s generally reckoned more than 60% of these fires are started deliberately, which is a sobering thought.


Galicians eat the lowest quantity of pre-prepared foods – 6 kilos a year each, against 10 nationwide. At 14, the Catalunians consume the most. Which might explain a few things.


Throughout Spain, July has seen an impressive reduction in road deaths. Except in Galicia, where they are as high as ever. One of the reasons [excuses?] given for this is that the region has a disproportionate number of townships, meaning a lot of travel for the populace. In fact, Galicia is said to have over half of the country’s 40,000 municipalities. Another reason adduced is that the topography of the place means a lot of two-lane, curvy roads. I am more impressed by this one. It coincides with the local police announcing that, since all the deaths take place on the numerous alternative secondary roads used by drivers when they’ve been drinking, they’ve now had the brilliant idea to put checks and radar traps on these as well. The fact that they haven’t done this todate explains the ludicrously low rate of 1% which they’ve traditionally quoted for drunken drivers caught in their spot checks.


There are more than 56,000 people unemployed in the province of Pontevedra. However, several posts are hard to fill. These include – solderers; pilots; pizza chefs; and [most surprisingly] selling agents and ‘models’.


Galicia’s population grew fractionally to 2.8m at the start of 2006. All of the increase of 2,000 [and a bit more] was due to immigration. Despite this, Galicia remains at the bottom of the relevant Spanish table, with only 2.6% of its population comprising foreigners.

Nationally, people over 65 form 16% of the population. In it’s 22% - the highest in the country. [Incidentally, I use these terms ‘nationally’ and ‘country’ in the sense they’re used throughout the world, other than in Catalunia, the Basque Country and Galicia.]


If you’re thinking of living in the windy, wet north-western tip of Galicia - in or near La Coruña – you might like to bear in mind it has the highest rate of childhood asthma in Spain.


Galicians like to believe they were never really conquered by the Romans, Visigoths or Arabs. So I was surprised to read this week that ‘In 584, the Visigoth king, Liuvigild defeated the rulers of the Suebic kingdom of and added it to his crown’. Another local myth bites the dust. By the way, I suspect Liuvigilid is the same chap as our old friend, Leovigilido. Of Toledo.


Cambados is a Galician coastal town, the centre of one of the region’s two great Albariño wine growing areas and famous for its wine festival every first week of August. For reasons utterly beyond me at least, this year they chose that imposing figure of the wine world, Samantha Fox, to inaugurate it. Perhaps she was just passing through and a thing or two about her caught their eye.


July was blessedly free of the forest fires that plagued last year but August has come in with a vengeance. Over the past few days terrible conflagrations have surrounded the cities of Santiago, Vigo and Pontevedra and the air is thick with smoke, ash and acrid fumes. And the drone of the water-dropping planes and helicopters. It’s no real consolation but the one positive is that it makes for remarkable sunsets, with the sun going down in a blaze of brilliant oranges and reds. The police, as usual, say as many as 90% of these fires are deliberate, attributing them to an ‘outrageous wave of criminal activity’ stemming from a mixture of pyromania, score-settling and pure land-grabbing greed. Hard to believe, especially in view of the deaths caused.


Hits to my blog rose significantly during 's 10 days of torment by fire. But nowhere near as much as when I commented on the nude pictures of a dying Princess Diana in a Spanish magazine. So, perhaps I should invent a story about her naked corpse being found in the ash-filled ruins of a house somewhere in the wilds of Galicia. One thing’s for sure – the Daily Express in Britain would certainly run with it. And Mr Fayed would probably become my best friend. So, on second thoughts . . .


At last some good news about road deaths in ! So far this August, they’ve fallen by 43% over last year.

And, while, I’m being positive – Another of my informal surveys on the bridge into town suggests only a small percentage of Spanish drivers still decline to wear safety belts in the car. At least in the front seats. It’s as if the increased penalties have given them a legitimate excuse to stop being ‘individualistic’. I guess everything has its price.


Life is returning to normal after the fires and I can comment again on such bizarre happenings as the discovery of a miniature submarine in Vigo Bay. This is suspected of being the latest hi-tech way of landing Europe’s cocaine along the Galician coast but the jury is still out.


I read last night that Sunday’s corrida in Pontevedra was so successful 4 of the 6 [always ‘brave’] bulls were given the honour of a celebratory circuit of the ring. This would, I believe, have been prostrate and at the end of a rope being pulled by two horses. In other words, post mortem. In truth, the tribute must be directed at the breeder; the bulls themselves being long past caring.


The mini submarine found in the Bay of Vigo would have been capable of bringing 3,000 kilos of cocaine closes to the shore. No one seems to know why it was abandoned. Perhaps it leaked over the produce.


The national police say the new penalties have reduced the average speed on Spain’s roads by 4%. By my reckoning, this means that people will now be flashing past me on the autopistas at a sedate 173kph [108mph], compared with the previous insane 180kph [113mph].


The national institute of statistics says the hotels of Galicia and Cantabria are the most expensive in the country. The local proprietors put this down to the greater competition in the south and claim our 2-star hotels are equivalent to their 4-star establishments. I wonder if this is connected to the suggestion I once heard to the effect that hotel owners actively pursue a lower rating here to avoid a higher tax rate. Probably not.


Following the recent fatal crash of a train en route from Vigo to France, Galicia’s network has come under a good deal of scrutiny from the local press. And it doesn’t make great reading. Generally, trains lose 20% of their speed once they get here. Specifically, it still takes the same time it took to get to Madrid 25 years ago and the train from Vigo to Oporto down the west coast takes more than 3 hours to cover about 100km. No wonder Galicians feel hard done by, given the improvements made in other parts of the country.

But it’s not all bad news for Galicia today – it has apparently slipped down to number 3 in the list of the main routes of cocaine into Europe. And sales of our Albariño wine in Spain rose 32% in the last year.


An article in one of the local paper’s today raised what it said was a long-standing issue – that of whether Galicia should be on the same time as Portugal and Morocco below it and Ireland and the UK above it. An interesting point made was that most of Spain is actually west of the Greenwich meridian and so should be on this time. But, as this would leave Catalunia with its own ‘independent’ clock, I guess hell will freeze over before the Spanish government moves in this direction.


Do the Galicians have a death wish? For in the case of both road deaths and smoking levels, this region has seen the lowest reductions of all Spain following recent legislation.

And water usage has increased a massive 8% in the last year. Perhaps they are trying to drown themselves.


Over the summer, road deaths in Galicia fell by just under 6%. This, of course, is great news. But it compares badly with a national average of 22%. Which would be higher without the Galician component, of course.


Thanks mostly to the absence of my jinxed younger daughter, there were only 3 days of rain during this Galician summer, a huge improvement on last year. And temperatures in early September have reached record highs, with 42 in Ourense against ‘only’ 37 here in Pontevedra. Not surprisingly, the albariño grape harvest is at record levels for the third year running. By all rights, this should lead to price reductions in your local wine store but my guess is this will only happen in respect of the grapes in their pre-processed, ‘commodity’ manifestation. Leaving a few others in the chain with improved margins.


A reader has suggested that, through my guide to Galicia and links to property agents, I’m doing my best to replicate what I describe as the hell hole of the Costa del Sol. This is a reasonable point but possibly an unfair one. First of all, Galicia does not have sun all the year round; it has 5-6 months of grey and damp. So it has little or no appeal to the sun-seekers who populate the south coast. Secondly, over the last few years, I’ve responded to perhaps 200 people looking at buying here and I don’t recall a single one of them wanting to live along the coast. All were looking for something in the rural countryside. Finally, the two agents I link to operate in the hinterland and offer properties in rural areas which have been abandoned by Galicians. These are a long way from the coast and could do with the investment. If my reader wants to debate this issue with me, perhaps he or she can cast off the cloak of anonymity and write to me at the email address on my site. Where, incidentally, he/she will also find the following blunt comment - Galicia is still a place in which you can enjoy Spain at its simplest and its best. And where any foreigners you bump into are likely to be looking for the same things as you – beauty, serenity, culture and good living. Not packed beaches and restaurants which open at 5, close at 7 and serve only local variants of British ‘staples’. If this is what you want, stop reading now; you are wasting your time. is decidedly not for you.


In the chapter on Galicia in his book “The Ghosts of Spain”, Giles Trimlett mentions the utterly confusing nature of our province, town, village and hamlet names. I can certainly sympathise. The place I was looking for today was called Barro and I was told it was near one of the two official car testing places. The other one is in Borra. And the Spanish for donkey is burro. Is it any wonder I got lost?


Tonight’s blog is something of a cop out. I’ve filleted the chapter on Galicia in Giles Trimlett’s book to give the following Galician Facts and Observations. Many of these may well have already appeared in my web page, cobbled together over the last few years but, to be honest, I can’t be bothered to check. So, my apologies if any of them seem familiar . . .

There are no more traditional Roman Catholics than the Galicians. There are also no people as traditionally superstitious as the Galicians.

In Galicia, a far higher percentage of the population [85%] speaks the local language than in either Catalunia or in the Basque Country. Yet only one in thirty wants a separate state. There is no real argument that, when you are in Galicia, you are in Spain.

Galicians are probably not real Celts. But they would like to be. Many, thanks to some self-interested tinkering with history by 19th century Galician romantics, are fully convinced they are. Whatever the truth of the Celtic origins – and they don’t shout out at you in the physical aspects of Galicians or in their language – people like them.

There are 5,000 Iron-Age settlements – castros - dotted on hill tops and promontories across Galicia

Some twenty Galician sailors and fishermen still die at sea every year.

Stones and rocks have a central role in the superstitions of Galicia. The magic stones of Muxía are supposed to be the petrified remains of a sailing boat belonging to the Virgin Mary.

Galicians have had a thing about drawing concentric circles since prehistory. The concept appears to have been transferred to modern administrative planning. As a visitor, however, all you see is the same name repeated, confusingly, over and over again.

With farms and communities so widely scattered, Galicia accounts for half the place names of Spain – some 250,000 of them. A single place name can be shared by up to two dozen locations.

Galicia’s peasant women have long taken pride in their role as strong-willed matriarchs with considerable power over house, farm and family.

A wall of silence surrounds the drug traffickers. Their wealth has helped pump new cash into what, until recently, was one of western Europe’s poorest, most backward regions.


It was perhaps inevitable that the first public opposition to the narcos should come from a group of Galician women.

The narcos are one of the least attractive of the modern phenomena to have appeared in a country where the juxtaposition of old and new, accentuated by the speed of progress, is a constant source of surprise and wonder. Nowhere, however, is the contrast as great as in Galicia.

Thanks to emigration, Galicia’s biggest city is still Buenos Aires and the biggest Galician cemetery is the Cristobal Colón cemetery in Havana. Perhaps only the Irish can fully understand the Galician experience of emigration. In fact, every ninth Galician voter lives abroad.

Some people believe that the bones in the cathedral of Santiago are not those of St. James but of a charismatic renegade bishop with an abundant and enthusiastic female following.

The Victorians so fell in love with the Portico de Gloria of the cathedral that a cast of it was made for what is now the V&A museum.

Tourist board planning, cheap pilgrims’ hotels and new age esoteric superstitions have, once more, made the pilgrimage to Santiago a phenomenon of the masses.

It seems somehow appropriate that a Galician [the owner of Zara] and one so suspicious of showing off, should have so thoroughly punctured the mystique of fashion.


The Spanish bury their dead in horizontal niches in a long, multi-tiered building inside a walled graveyard. Up near Finisterra, there’s a celebrated cemetery designed by Cesar Portela, one of those architects whose every work is greeted with sycophantic approbation no matter how bad it looks. In this case, there’s no walled graveyard and no long buildings. Instead, there’s a group of concrete cubes apparently placed randomly on the hillside. It was designed for 216 bodies but it’s not a popular place and no one is dying to get in. In fact, although it’s been open for 8 years, it’s completely empty and the cubes are under siege from the undergrowth. The only thing dead there is the graveyard itself. Which all seems to me to be a very eloquent testament to Mr Portela’s work. Looks like he’ll have the place to himself.


Thanks to a dry summer, Galicia’s 2006 Albariño wine will be one of the best ever. The one to try is Castro Martín, available from Bebendum in the UK. OK, it’s made by friends of mine but it really is superb.


Galicia’s spa towns are booming. The number of visitors has increased from 38,000 in 1998 to 100,000 in 2005. Many of these are German, apparently


The average pension in Spain is 725 euros a month, or 8,700 euros a year. Galicia’s average is as the bottom of the national table, taking it closer to the poverty threshold of 6,300 euros a year. Incidentally, 20% of Spaniards [8 million] are said to live below this level, with most of these being people over 65 living alone.


Here in Galicia, feathers are fluttering all over the dovecote after the announcement that a Madrid-based company is taking over a major local estate agency. Or real estate company, to our American cousins. Reading the local press, you get the impression the buyers are from somewhere as alien as Mars. Try as I might, I can’t imagine the takeover of, say, a Manchester firm by a London company causing anything like this reaction. But this is Spain and localism/regionalism – with all its jealousies and enmities – is very much a fact of life here.


Municipal taxes [the IBI] are lower in Galicia than almost anywhere else in Spain


Tourist nights were up this year but per capita spend was down. More cheap Brits, I imagine.


Prices for new flats in Galician cities range from 1250 euros per square metre in Ferrol to 1816 in Vigo and La Coruña. The average for Galicia is 1627, against 3788 in Madrid.


The Galicia ns are renowned for their superstitions. Two I’ve heard about this week are the throwing of stones over the church roof [to ward off evil witches, apparently] and the taking part in a procession whilst lying in a coffin, to expiate your sins. The former naturally results in more injuries to the participants than the latter, as there are no rules as to which side of the church you should throw your stones from. And if there were, no one would obey them. Beats boring reading, I suppose. And possibly even talking.


A friend who has monitored the local weather for many decades tells me that La Coruña has both much less rain and much less sun than Pontevedra. The explanation, I guess, is that they have a lot more cloudy [and windy] days. And/or a lot more drizzle, compared with the mini-tropical storms we occasionally get. If you’re interested in knowing more about the Galician weather, you should go to my web page, www.colindavies.net


Up near Gondomar they’re excavating what they think is the site of the oldest settlement yet found here, dating from 5,000 years ago.


According to BeautifulPeople.net Galicia is the Spanish region with the highest percentage of people who think physical beauty compensates for the lack of intelligence. And 65% of Galicians have sex on their first date. Most of them in the forest behind my house, I suspect.

Beautiful People, by the way, is a ‘meeting point for beautiful people who share the same lifestyle’. Am I being unfair to see this as quintessentially Spanish? Possibly, as it originated in Denmark


Up in the hills yesterday, I picked up a notice at the local council’s offices entitled “Assistance programs for farms attacked by wolves”. I hadn’t realised they got this close. Other than the estate agents, of course. Interestingly, the brochure bears the logo of both the Galician government and of the EU. But not of the Spanish government.


Possibly about 30 years too late, the Spanish police have set up a specialist unit to tackle corruption in the construction sector in Madrid, Málaga and Murcia. Maybe it will be called
‘The M Team’. Anyway, this, rather than global warming, may well be the reason why property developers from these infamous places have recently decided to pile into the Galician coast. If things follow their normal trajectory, it will be quite a while until we have a similar capacity to tackle irregularities. It usually takes about 20 years for us to get what they enjoy in Madrid and the south - the AVE high speed train being a good case in point. So, I guess we can look forward to more Russian ‘visitors’.


Here in Pontevedra we have several distinct types of beggar. The lowest class comprises the emaciated drug addicts, constantly in search of funds for ‘a sandwich’. After them come the Romanian women who populate the traffic lights and approach every car, with a success rate of about one in a hundred, I guess. Then there are the gypsy harridans selling charms and who are only too eager to curse me for refusing their entreaties and asking them, in effect, to go away. Above these are a couple of reasonably dressed middle-aged men, one of whom goes about his business by thrusting his face into yours before whispering his demands into your nostrils. At the top of this unimpressive pile are the better-than-reasonably-dressed middle-aged men who either stand in the middle of the pavement offering you packets of tissues or, even more pathetically, sit on a doorstep gazing fixedly into the ground in an attitude of total despair. These always have a little bit of folded cardboard in front of them, telling you they have no job nor recourse to assistance. They look so respectable I’m invariably tempted to ask why on earth they have sunk to these depths. And why they – alone in Spain – have no family to help them. Or no rights to assistance from the state. But I never do.


Animal rights activists released 15,000 mink up near La Coruña this week. As these were bred in captivity [the mink, not the activists], most of them are doomed to die of starvation. It seems an odd way to protect animals. By the way, the Spanish word for mink is ‘visón’. Given that ‘v’ is pronounced as ‘b’, I was initially rather confused by a headline which I thought read that 15,000 bison were stomping across La Coruña province.


One of Spain’s largest narcos [drug dealer] has just been released on bail of only 12,000 euros. Which must make sense to someone, I guess. He is Galician, by the way. Like designing/making women’s clothes [Zara], this is one area where we excel.


In 2005, Galicia’s economy grew at a slightly lower rate than Spain’s but per capita income rose. This is because the population reduced yet again, with 25,000 more people leaving the land. No wonder there are cheap houses for Brits to buy up in the hills. But not as cheap as they were last year.


Two out of three of the people toiling in Galicia’s fields are women. Who can blame them for wanting to give up this unequal burden and to flee to the cities?


House prices in Galicia this year have risen 14%, which was in the country’s top three. Possibly down to lots of Brits buying up [decreasingly] cheap ruins in the hills. Time to close down my web page perhaps. Except that it’s now just a drip in the ocean of coverage Galicia is getting in the British media at the moment. I actually had an article-writer ask me if I agreed it was the ‘new Tuscany’. Needless to say, he had no plans to visit the place before lauding its charms.


The average height of the Galician male is now 1.74 metres, the same as for Spain as a whole. This compares with1.68/1.69 in 1975 and 1.62/1.63 in 1920. For Americans and Brits of my generation, these are roughly 5’9”, 5’7” and 5’5”.


There are said to be between 15 and 18,000 illegal immigrants here. But this represents only 2.5% of the population, against 8.5% for Spain as a whole and 16% in the Balearic Islands.


A shop called Rocio in Pontevedra advertises its wares as ‘Underwear and Babies’. Perfect for Madonna, then.


Talking of the weather, here’s a few statistics about the current rainfall. The first figure is the annual average for each city over the last 30 years, in cubic metres. The second is the amount of water which fell in the first 3 weeks of this month:-
Pontevedra 1778/902 = 51%
Ourense 794/415 = 52%
Santiago 1862/545 = 29%
Lugo 958/421 = 44%


The Voz de Galicia reported today that house prices up near Ourense have tripled in the last 5 years because of the demand from Brits in search of the new Tuscany.


The reduction in fatal car accidents since the introduction of a points-based licence in June is forecast to bring us reduced insurance premiums. But since Galicia’s reduction has been less than elsewhere, my guess is it will still be more expensive here.


Our donkey population has fallen from 25,000 in the mid 90s to only 6,000 today. If you want to know about an organisation dedicated to protecting them, here’s a recent press article . . . http://www.elcorreogallego.es/index.php?idMenu=130&idNoticia=98529


76% of children between 10 and 14 in Pontevedra have a mobile phone.


Taking up Trevor’s brilliant suggestion, I've now set up the Galician branch of Ciutadans. Please send in your applications for positions of power. These will be dispensed in accordance with local norms. If this name means nothing to you, try this . . .
www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_7237.shtml


The residents of Ferrol and Ourense are the biggest consumers of water in the region, at 177 and 166 litres a year, respectively. The national average – in this dry country - is 171, compared with around 145 in the UK. The lowest consumers are the good people of Santiago, who only get through 100 litres a year.


It’s good to see the ‘farming’ of horses in the mountains of Galicia is on the increase. It’s less good to know most of these creatures are destined for the tables of restaurants in France and Italy. It seems their diet of gorse gives their meat the edge over grass eaters. The positive news is that, en route to the kitchen, the horses devour the undergrowth that is such a factor in the rapid spread of forest fires. Bring on the empty horses!


Galicia’s not great when it comes to international cuisine and I’m still looking for an Indian restaurant as good as the one down the Portuguese coast in Oporto. But at least we don’t see this sort of nonsense, advertising a restaurant in Majorca – The Ultimate in Indian cuisine with the true authentic taste from England. Curry and chips, presumably.


The Galician government [the Xunta] has set up its first embassy [or ‘delegation’], in Buenos Aires. The next one will be in Brussels, apparently. Delusions of grandeur?


Galicia does even better than the national average when it comes to size. 23% of the local population is said to be obese and 60% of adults overweight. Must be all the bloody
cocido.


Property prices in rose by 19% over the last year, double the national average. Up in Ourense, the figure was 33%. Must be all those bloody Brits.


A reader of my web page yesterday asked me what advice I’d give about moving here. After contemplating the 5th day of continuous rain, I was tempted to say ‘Look somewhere else’. Well, today was the 6th day of the thick, grey blanket and a non-stop downpour, so suicide is beginning to look like an option. Thank God for the bright spot of the Thanksgiving Day dinner tonight at Pontevedra’s English Speaking Society. Assuming I survive the day.


In most Galician cities, around 60% of the population was born there. But this falls to ‘only’ 49% in La Coruña. And, yet, this is the city with the happiest residents. Can there be a connection? For one thing, it’s certainly regarded as the city with the highest level of cultural activity. They even have a Japanese restaurant, for goodness sake. Here in Pontevedra we used to have an excellent Korean restaurant but this was forced to close for lack of business, even though its main dish was the tempting Cod Korean Style. We also used to have an Indian restaurant but this deserved to close.


Not that you would know this from walking along any beach but it’s long been illegal to build within 50 metres of the sea. The Xunta has now announced that the new distance will be 500 metres. This is admirable but it might cause a few problems for those townships which currently fall 100% within this limit. We wait on events.


Fifteen years or so go Brussels demanded the Spanish government crack down on the region’s age-old cigarette smuggling. The Law of Unintended Consequences resulted in the locals deciding that, if they were going to be harassed, they might as well make things more worthwhile for themselves. So they turned to cocaine and duly became Europe’s main point of entry for the stuff. In the process, infamous ‘clans’ were formed but I read today that these are now being displaced by Columbian barons. On balance, I suspect this is bad news.


Galicia is rich in rock art petroglyphs. But not as rich as it was. Sadly, many of these were destroyed by the fires and floods of the last few months


A nice comment on the incessant rain of the last 10 days – A cartoon in one of our local papers today showed a salesman trying to interest a young man in a sports model . .
It goes from 0 to 100kph in 4 seconds.
Yes, but can it float?

Still on cars - Galicia, it turns out, is the Mecca of expensive customising, or ‘tuning’ as it’s called here. If you want to see some examples, go to my blog of 18 Nov. or to this link.
http://www.colindavies.net/chav%20cars.htm


The heavy rains of the last couple of weeks have brought terrible floods to towns on our coast. These are blamed, in part, on the deforestation caused by August’s devastating fires but the Voz de Galicia has also pointed the finger at what it calls ‘ferocious urban development’. Those mayors again.


One particular consequence of the floods is a gaping hole in the middle of one of our main roads. Into this, around midday on Wednesday, fell a maintenance van. The police were called and a car raced to the scene. And promptly launched itself into the hole. So the police erected barriers around it. Guess what happened then. . .


It’s official – The mini-submarine found in Vigo harbour a few months ago had been used for drug smuggling. A number of people around the country have now been arrested. We wait to see whether they are all midgets.


Attempts are to be made by a consortium of local producers to make a centre of excellence in bio-foods. Which can’t be bad. Unless you think these are a commercial scam. In which case, you’ll be interested in this comment from a UK columnist:- Producers are making a fortune from our gullibility. Claims made about bottled water include that it comes straight from a fresh Alpine, or Pennine, or Dolomite spring, yet about 40 per cent of it began life as tap water from a municipal supply; and that it promotes cellular regeneration and detoxification of the body, though no scientific test has ever proved this. The claims for omega-3 fish oils are even more awesome: they fight heart disease, mood swings, and boost IQ. Scientific evidence for these startling claims is mixed, but, as Dr Ben Goldacre has exposed in his invaluable Bad Science blog, the media have megaphoned the glowing results of "studies" that neither had a control group nor followed proper research methods.


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 …..

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 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.


No sooner do I quote the article about Galicia being like a piece of Gruyere cheese than events overtake us. I wrote last week about subsidence in a major new highway leading to a Keystone Cops incident but now we learn the road is to be closed for ‘5 months’ while the risk of further subsidence is addressed. The underground drainage pipes, it seems, are not made of the specified concrete but of metal. Astonishingly, this deteriorates when in contact with water.


In the interests of balance, I should report it stopped raining for a while today. And the sun even made a pathetic attempt to peer through the clouds. But the thick grey blanket is forecast to return tonight.


I see water has been discovered on Mars. Probably a run-off from Galicia.


More and more brown bears are appearing in Galicia’s forests. These, it seems, have strayed from Asturias, possibly looking for a place to swim.


My township of Poio – across the river from Pontevedra – has announced that the number of foreigners here has risen enormously in the last year. It’s issued a list of all the 25 nationalities represented, in descending order of numbers. This is a real rag bag which starts with Argentineans and Brazilians, includes Croatians and Ethiopians and ends with bloody New Zealanders. What it doesn’t do is cite any Brits. Which is rather insulting, given all my efforts on behalf of Galicia. Perhaps I should ask for all my taxes back as I don’t officially exist.


It didn’t rain in Pontevedra today. We had hailstorms instead.


The day after I noted the Poio council thinks there are no Brits here, I received a letter from them asking me to confirm the data on an enclosed census form. Interestingly, the letter is in Gallego but the form is in Spanish. Though on it my street name is in the Gallego version. No wonder I’m schizophrenic.


We are blessed with many fiestas in this region. Most of these merit the label ‘gastronomic’. But the range is wide and some might not regard tripe, pigs’ ears, bean stew or even black bread as a delicacy. I’m reminded of someone who wrote to the Spectator magazine a couple of years ago, bemoaning the fact you couldn’t get offal and lights any more in the UK, except in one or two expensive restaurants. I suggested he came here for his dinners.


Astonishingly, there are at least 16 [sixteen!] national and local daily newspapers on the stands here. The leader of the pack is the Voz de Galicia, which had an ‘audience’ of 663,000 a day between February and November this year. This is more than twice as much as the next paper and gives it a national ranking of 6th.


A Spanish friend of mind searching for ‘twenty-second’ today came up with ‘twenty-twoth’. Which I prefer.


There’ve been more serious structural problems on one of our wonderful new roads. This time it’s a case of regular rock falls. Which is more than a tad worrying. The College of Engineers of Galician Highways [sic] has called for a meeting to debate the subject. I guess this would be a good start, provided the words are followed by actions and not just political mud-slinging. Meanwhile, any drive in Galicia would be best undertaken with two people in the car - one to look out for potholes and the other to keep an eye on the adjacent rock slope. A propos of nothing, the Spanish for the latter is talud. Which is not too far from ataúd. Or ‘coffin‘.


500 Galician homes tap into the earth for ‘geothermal energy’. I wonder if it’s the radon gas in all the granite that does the trick.


The recent rains about which I complained so much caused severe damage to several of the region’s best shellfish beds. Thanks to the gluttonous custom here of eating four huge meals of seafood within a singe week, it’s customary for the prices of these products to quadruple around now. But this year one variety of hard-to-get clam is said to be selling for a record 123 euros a kilo. Or 40 quid a pound.

One of the reasons prices soar into the stratosphere is that Galicia ns touchingly believe their local produce is vastly superior to anything that can be imported from, say, Thailand, Brazil or Cornwall. So they pay way over the odds for the stuff which isn’t shipped to Madrid. It’s hard to credit that only 50 years or so ago shellfish was disdained by everyone here but the poorest of the poor, in a very disadvantaged region. Especially the repulsive and now ruinously expensive percebes, or ‘goose barnacles’. But, of course, they are an aphrodisiac. Honest.


Galicia ns are reputed to be amongst the most superstitious people in Spain. So it should come as no surprise lottery ticket sales this year were twice the normal level in those towns badly hit by fire and/or floods between August and December. Being as religious as they are superstitious, they obviously believe in a just and compassionate God. So I guess they’re blaming it on their own sinful ways now that the booty hasn’t poured down from the heavens. As the Voz de Galicia put it - “A mere 15 million euros comes to Galicia”. This, they say, is only 10% of the value of ticket sales in the region. So much for justice and compassion. Ninety per cent of Galician money down the celestial drain.


Talking about things pouring down from the sky - In line with the comments I made recently about British weather, I’ve been in the UK for a week now but have not had to use an umbrella. In fact, I’ve seen very little, if any, rain. And none is forecast for the coming week. It’s not often you can go two weeks in a Galician winter without needing protection from the elements. On the other hand, it is 13 degrees in Pontevedra, against 4 or 5 here. Swings and roundabouts, I guess


Galicia has 3 international airports - in La Coruña, Santiago and Vigo. As you would expect in Spain, they compete with each other ferociously, with rampant disregard for the interests of the region, never mind the nation. As a result, they all lose out to the much-more-rapidly- developing nearby airport of Oporto in north Portugal. Of these 3 Galician airports, Santiago’s is best served by international flights as it hosts both Easyjet and Ryanair. Domestically, La Coruña gets the points, following Iberia’s recent decision in a fit of pique to punish Santiago for dealing with these low cost competitors. But now we read that Iberia’s own cheap operation - Clickair - is to begin international flights to from 2007. Or ‘in the worst case’ from 2008. And these will use Vigo. I guess it all makes sense to someone.


The regional government has spent 2 million euros on a new representative office in the embassy quarter of Brussels. I wonder whether the German Landers all have these. I’m pretty sure the British counties don’t. Unsurprisingly, the Xunta foresees a 50% increase in the number of staff at the Fundación -Europa.


Until the November rains and floods, Galicia had one of the driest years on record, confirming [it’s said] the phenomenon of regional warming. Over the last 30 years, the average temperature has increased by 1.4 degrees. The future, we’re told, holds the prospect of more ‘adverse phenomena”. You have been warned.