The welcome developments in Northern Ireland have received much attention in Spain. I guess this was inevitable in a country in which there are not only regions trying to secede but also government and opposition members striving to outdo each other in vindictive bile. Some commentators have even suggested Spain is heading for the sort of divide which preceded the civil war but this is a little far-fetched. I hope.

En passant, what a low trick for Tony Blair to say the Northern Ireland developments are a reflection of his hard work over the last 10 years, when he knows the peace process began 13 years ago, under his predecessor. I suspect it’s this sort of partisan posturing which the electorate sees through and results in the low opinion of politicians.

On a lighter note, here’s the second part of my compilation of entries on Galicia & Pontevedra. I had a few laughs doing it so I hope you do too:-

2005

So what did Galicia’s leading daily paper lead on for its first issue of 2005? The devastating tsunami in the Far East? The discotheque fire in Argentina that killed more than a 150 people? Well, No. It featured the New Year address of the President of the Galician government, who also happens to be the head of the local PP party. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so surprised that the local papers somehow manage to survive on uneconomic readerships.


2004’s rainfall, in Galicia at least, was the lowest for more than 50 years. But holidaymakers suffered bad luck when it rained on 21 of the 31 days of August, the only month in the year when the 30 year average was exceeded. Who says God has no sense of humour?

House prices rose by an average 14%, though with major differences between cities and regions. For some reason – too much bloody building going on? – the 4% increase in Pontevedra was one of the lowest in the country. Needless to say, the Pontevedra town council has claimed that it is their enlightened policies which have kept the rate of property increases to amongst the lowest in Spain. Hmm.


Needless to say, a Galician nationalist party has said that they will be making Basque-like proposals for Galicia. I very much doubt that anyone in Spain will take this very seriously, unlike the threats from Catalunian parties. For one thing, Galicia is not rich enough to survive alone.


The banner headline of one of yesterday’s local papers was that the Asian tsunami had hardly affected the coast of Galicia. With Africa in between, this shouldn’t have come as a huge surprise to its readers. I don’t suppose it did much damage to New York or Greenland either.


No sooner do I stress that violence is not a feature of booze drinking in Spain when the riot squad is called out in Pontevedra to sort out warring gangs. The perils of being a topical commentator.


Galicia’s economy has grown to the point where it now exceeds the cut off point for EU grants to poor regions. This threatens funds for 2007 onwards. Local politicians have said it won’t be ‘fair’ for Galicia to lose out this way. Whereas it was, one supposes, perfectly fair to receive someone else’s cash for 30 years or so.


Iberia are complaining about the assistance being given by the Galician government to the likes of Ryanair and Easyjet. Like the local politicians with the loss of EU funds, they are whingeing about the unfairness of it all. Since Iberia’s strategy todate has made it more expensive for Galicians to fly to Madrid than to Hamburg or even New York, there’s not a lot of local sympathy for them. Especially as the low-cost operators will now do vastly more for the local economy than Iberia has ever done. Meanwhile, the state airline has threatened to retaliate by cancelling its one [expensive] daily flight between London and Santiago. This strikes me as being as futile a gesture as my moving my shopping from a churlish checkout girl this morning.


This is Carnaval weekend in Spain, providing everyone with an excuse they don’t really need to dress up and have a great time. If you want an idea of what things are like here in Pontevedra, try my article Carnaval in Pontevedra on my web page – colindavies.net


You’ll all know that Lent began on Wednesday, preceded by Mardi Gras-type events around the world, including Spain. But things didn’t stop there. All this week there have been various bizarre rituals around the country centring on the mock burial of some stuffed creature or other. Here in Galicia, the sardine seems to be the favourite corpse but in Pontevedra it is a huge Pythonesque parrot, called Ravachol. Fittingly, it was dressed in the colours of the local football team, who stand nil chance now of avoiding an immediate return to the third division at the end of the season. The funeral cortege set off at 9pm and weaved its way around the old quarter, accompanied by weeping mourners of all ages. As ever with this event, many of the widows in black were anything but female, raising a question or two about such zeal for cross-dressing. The other regular feature is a large number of participants dressed as cardinals, bishops and nuns, suggesting that the event might once have been used for surreptitious criticism of the religious authorities.


The Diario de Pontevedra is offering a free umbrella with one of next week’s editions. In any normal Galician winter, this would have been a sure-fire success. And, before the onset of the driest winter in over 50 years, so it must have looked like a great idea. In fact, the last rain to speak of was in the peak holiday month of August, when it was rather less than welcome than it would be now.


Waiting at the bank today for one of those face-to-face meetings which are a staple of Spanish life, I happened upon a brochure from the Galician Nationalist Party. What was fascinating about this was that it recommended rejection of the EU Constitution. The reasons centred on the fact that Galicia didn’t have a seat on the Council of Ministers and so could not protect its own interests. Instead it had to leave this to the capitalist lackeys of the Spanish government. I can’t see the latter losing much sleep over this attempt to lift the No vote into double figures.


A friend in England has written to say that travel agents are beginning to refer to the Miño area as the new Tuscany. Well, I suppose somewhere has to be, until the next one comes along. Perhaps this will be Galicia after RyanAir and EasyJet have started their flights into Santiago and Vigo in late spring.


Here in Galicia a man was arrested this week and charged with being a member of GRAPA, which turned out to the local equivalent of ETA. You can tell how active and effective they are from the fact that, after more than 4 years here, I’d never even heard of the organisation.


In Galicia – you may recall – the BNG nationalist party campaigned for a No vote, on the grounds that Constitution wasn’t socialist enough. This had the effect of delivering the lowest No vote in the entire country. So I suppose Mr Chirac would regard this as only a moderate triumph.


There’s otherworldliness and otherworldliness. The Mother Superior of Pontevedra’s sole remaining convent has been taken to task for allowing some of its antique furniture to be exchanged for towels and other household items. These were offered by a couple who came to the door selling underwear for the 6 inmates. Not Jehovah Witnesses, then.


The video shop owners of Pontevedra are protesting about the number of pirate DVDs that are on sale in the town. Either things have changed since I last went to hire a DVD or this is a monumental piece of chutzpah. My recollection is that everything on the shelves was an illegal copy.


The Galician police say they carried out 30,000 checks for drivers using mobile phones last week. One wonders how, as they managed to catch only 284. Or less than 1%. I guess these are the ones who ignored the flashing lights of friendly oncoming drivers. Or didn’t see the signs saying “Police checkpoint ahead”. Or perhaps they were the ones arrested while saying, ’I’ll have to go now as there is a bloody traffic cop banging on my window”.


The chief of police in Pontevedra had roundly rejected the demand from residents that he install CCTVs where the all-night revellers cavort. His view is that this would possibly be illegal and certainly ‘illegitimate”. My suspicion is that he means that it would offend the Spanish concept of nobility and ‘fairness’, the same attitude which militates against traffic wardens and has only recently allowed random breath tests on anything other than a token scale.


There’s understandable excitement here at this week’s Oscar for El Mar Adentro, in the foreign language film category. This is set in Galicia and some are beginning to talk of a new Galiwood. This seems just a tad premature to me but, right on cue, someone called me today and asked if I wanted to play a part in a film about an English shipwreck. I assumed he meant a boat, rather than, say, some alcoholic writer or other. Anyway, I agreed to meet tonight to discuss the proposition. Naturally, he called to postpone.


One of our local newspapers has issued a list of the 125 most influential Galicians in the country. The most immediately notable aspects of this are the scarcity of women and the inclusion at no. 8 of a Cardinal.


If you’re a regular reader, you won’t be too surprised to hear that almost 50% of Pontevedran pedestrians hit by cars are on zebra crossings at the time. But I must admit I was surprised; I thought the percentage would be much higher.


When I came here in the winter of 2000, it rained virtually every day from November to May. This year has been so dry that yesterday I was forced to do something that is probably unprecedented in Galicia - I put on a lawn sprinkler in March. I guess it’s all down to global warming, though I’m not sure how.


Galicia had many wonderful ‘gastronomic’ festivals and this month it’s the turn of ‘caldo’. This is a stew made – it seems to me - from strange bits of the pig, pieces of salami, vegetables and large green leaves, possibly from a cabbage. It is, I believe, the traditional peasant dish of Galicia. If you’re raised here, it probably has strong childhood associations, just as Irish stew does for me. But then, having had the latter every bloody Saturday of my youth, I would find the idea of a Festival of Irish Stew a little hard to take seriously.


The need to consult a Spanish language dictionary took me today into the town’s library and reminded me of just how glorious libraries still are in Spain. Or in Pontevedra at least. The staff don’t act as if they’re in a night club, the shelves are full of books rather than CDs and videos, and the readers are deep in frighteningly silent study. I almost wept with nostalgia. As in many other areas, I’m all for the lack of progress.


There’s a forest behind my house, where I walk my dog every morning. Apart from the growing of trees, this is used for a variety of human activities but mostly tipping, tupping and tapping. Of veins, rubbish and each other, though not necessarily in that order. In keeping with the pattern of land ownership throughout Galicia, small individual plots are marked off with whatever is handy – rocks, coloured sticks or upturned bottles on the end of poles. I occasionally see people taking wood from these plots but am never sure about the legality of it. Early this morning, I happened upon a couple of fairly advanced years who were chain-sawing a tall eucalyptus that was suspiciously close to the track. I wondered whether the wife had said, “ Looks like the temperatures are going to drop. Let’s nip up to the forest and get ourselves some wood for the fire”.


Here in Pontevedra there were mechanical problems on Tuesday with the carriage bearing the statue of The Blessed Virgin of Hope during a Holy Week procession. In brief, its attempts to get out of the church into the street were, well, hopeless. Another divine practical joke, like this week’s rains.


It comes as a bit of surprise to learn that – after waves of emigration years ago – only two cities here have more people entitled to vote in the upcoming elections than Buenos Aires in Argentina. So we can expect Mr Fraga to risk a South American trip or two before June. Not very good news for the local deer, I suspect.


Galicia is a truly beautiful part of the world but it’s a sad fact that human aesthetics still lag behind those of nature. My local paper reports today that the various building laws introduced since 1985 have done little to stem the tide of ugliness. One of the main problems is that, until not so long ago, the ground floor in Galician homes was dedicated to animals. And it seems that the locals can’t shake off this concept, meaning that a [relatively] handsome first floor often sits atop a ground floor of raw brick and metal. I’ll be putting one or two of these monstrosities on my web page in a day or so.


The Spanish seem to love comparing themselves with other countries, particularly those in Europe. I suspect this is a hangover from 30 years ago - when the lags were sizeable – and so may reflect a continuing [if slight] inferiority complex. Closer to home, the statistics must be welcome material for local newspapers that need to be filled every day. So today, for instance, I learned that Galicia is 1st in Spain for giving blood; 5th in the number of agricultural workers; and 6th in the obesity rankings. Who’d have thought it?


I wonder whether anyone can explain why three of the five most expensive cities for petrol are in Galicia, one of the Spain’s poorer regions. The other two are in mega-rich Catalunia. My guess would be a cartel. Though there just might be some connection with the right of the largest operator to veto the construction of new service stations.


Galicians, it seems, are second only to Andalucians in the fatty stakes, with 69% of men and 53% of women being said to be either overweight or obese. Not in Pontevedra they aren’t. In this self-regarding, fashion-conscious little city, the evidence all around suggests it’s a hanging offence to be above average weight. That said, as I was walking across the bridge into town tonight, I came up behind a young lady who certainly was on the wrong side of the line. She had SOC printed on one buttock and CER on the other but, such was the disarticulation, I never got to read the whole word.


The unscientific evidence of my own eyes suggests that most of Pontevedra’s drivers have progressed from Phase 0 [no seat belts on in the car] to Phase 1 [All front seat belts on] but have yet to flirt with Phase 3 [everyone in the car with belts on]. I guess this belated but impressive advance must be put down to recent campaigns from the Ministry of Traffic. But I fear it will be a while yet before it gets through to parents what it means to have a human missile hit you in the back of a head when the car brakes suddenly. Not to mention what it does to your unbelted kids, as they either come up against you or sail through your windscreen. Especially if they were standing on the console between the front seats when the brakes were applied.


A new sight on the Vigo to Pontevedra road this afternoon – Santiago-bound pilgrims on those aluminium scooters that were all the rage for kids a few years back. At first I thought the things were motorised but then noticed their ‘riders’ were free-wheeling downhill. God’s Holy Rollers, I guess. I hope they had more than prayer for brakes. Air brakes, perhaps.


There are 2 parallel roads which link Pontevedra and Vigo, the old 2-lane National road and the newer 4-lane motorway. The latter is controversial as the toll on it is high. The Galician government has responded to demands for a reduction by announcing that a third parallel road will be built, a little further inland. This, too, will be both a 4-lane motorway and a toll road, allowing the charge on the current motorway to be lifted. This seems to me to be planning madness and I’m left wondering what lies behind it. I suppose one factor is that it isn’t the Spanish taxpayer financing it. What the other factors might be, I can’t begin to guess.


The Galician authorities have trumpeted that they have stamped out the smuggling of cigarettes. Funny but I read three years ago that, after Spain finally started to take action against this activity, the smugglers felt that they might as well move to something easier to transport and a lot more profitable. Cigarettes were for cissies.


There’s a little village in the hills of Galicia called Cans. Oddly enough, this means ‘dogs’ in Gallego and - unlike the Spanish word ‘perro’ - is derived from Latin. Anyway, around this time of year the village’s population of 200 swells to 10,000 as they hold a festival parallel to that of its namesake in the south of France. Needless to say, this is a little less serious and features more ‘agroglamour’ than is probably evident on the Cote d’Azure. But it sounds like fun. So, next year in Cans?


Such is the low level of crime in general and street crime in particular here in Pontevedra, local newspaper reports can make amusing reading to the more world-weary of us. So it was with an account I read yesterday of a ‘tough’ night for the local police when they had to deal with a fight at 3am in the old quarter. In my old town of Congleton, the police would sell their mothers for such a night.


A Spanish friend recently told me that shellfish – Galicia’s greatest claim to fame – was once the reserve of the poor. I was a tad incredulous about this but other friends have not only confirmed it but told me that even in times of famine during the Civil War the people of Vigo declined to eat it. Fish, on the other hand, was a different matter.


Car insurance premiums in Galicia are the highest in Spain. This is said to reflect the high weekend accident rate. So it’s not just indulgent parents who are paying for young men to embed themselves in roadside fixtures in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday.


A week or so ago, the local papers were full of the news that the beachfront apartments in nearby Sanjenjo/Sanxenxo [‘the Marbella of Galicia’] were the second most expensive in Spain to rent during July and August. Tonight comes the rose-deblooming news that discounts of as much as 50% are being offered for the second half of July. Not great news if you’ve already booked, of course.


Every year, the Pontevedra council erects temporary tourism kiosks in a couple of the town’s squares. They did this on Monday. Yesterday the workmen returned to one of them and rotated it, so that the door and window now faced the street and not the brick wall the kiosk was up against.


Galicia’s ‘national’ tree is the oak but around here these days you’re far more likely to find yourself in a forest of eucalyptus trees, which are faster growing and so far more profitable. How fitting, then, that the eucalyptus also goes by the name of Tasmanian oak.


Just over 2 years ago, the English Speaking Society of Pontevedra moved out of its old premises. We were the last tenants to leave, under great pressure from the landlord as demolition of the building was ‘about to begin’. I walked past the building yesterday and saw they’d finally started to knock it down. This probably gives as good idea as anything of the concept of urgency in Spain, especially as regards construction.


Galicians are said to have an even greater affinity with their land than other Spaniards. In fact, I’m not sure the Spanish for homesickness – morriña – isn’t a Galician word. This may explain why they’re the second largest group of returning émigrés after the Madridleños. Today, in fact, was Galicia’s national day, coinciding with the feast day of the region’s patron saint, St. James. Or Santiago. I caught a few minutes of the celebrations on the local channel this evening and was interested to note that Galicia’s ‘national’ anthem is so mournful it makes God Save the Queen sound like a Scott Joplin rag. Especially when accompanied by massed bagpipes. The Presdient of the Xunta, Manoel Fraga, appeared to be as familiar with the words as John Redwood famously was with those of the Welsh anthem.


Even curiouser and curiouser, said Sky News. The police in Galicia have arrested 4 fire-fighters for starting forest fires. A private job creation/retention scheme, presumably.


One of the local papers claimed today there are 4,000 things to do when there’s no sun in Galicia. Which is just as well as we’ve hardly seen it for a week.


Up in the Galician hills, the lonely job of shepherd is now being taken on by Poles, Chileans and Senegalese. And it’s not often you can get these three adjectives in the same sentence. I suppose it’ll be Polish plumbers next, on the rebound from unwelcoming France.


In my absence on a trip to see Spain’s castles, things continued pretty much as usual in Galicia. A driver who was possibly returning from a wine festival along the coast decided to knock down 18 km of road cones set up to form 3 lanes out of two on a vía rápida so the holiday traffic could move more freely. The inevitable result was chaos. Dozens of other drivers reported his car registration number via their mobiles but, after 2 days, the police still haven’t managed to track him down. Which is odd, as they do it very quickly if you park your car wrongly. Perhaps he’s related to someone. He certainly appears to have felt himself inviolate.


This summer Galicia has been hotter and drier than most other parts of Spain. As a result, we’ve been plagued with forest fires and I guess I’m not alone in praying for a little rain. But all should change when my younger daughter arrives on Tuesday next. Within the family – and now more widely - she is renowned for bringing with her not just her smile but also bad weather whenever she comes.


Forest fires continue to rage throughout Galicia, with a total of 35 registered yesterday. The media insists that 90% of these are deliberate, an assertion backed by the arrest of 277 pyromaniacs throughout Spain so far this year. Things may ease off after tomorrow, when my younger daughter arrives. As I feared, rain is forecast for her stay.


It seems we get a better class of tourist in Galicia. True, we only get 3% of the country’s total but they each spend 28% more than the average. Of course, this could just be a reflection of the high prices charged for the shellfish, seafood and Albariño wine in which the region specialises.


This year’s Albariño grape harvest is predicted to be a bumper one, fractionally down on 2004’s record. So it’s second chance for the producers of the end product to lower their prices and increase the volume of sales, outside Spain especially. Are we holding our breath? No, we aren’t.


Pontevedra’s main square is pleasant enough but, in truth, doesn’t compare with Spain’s finest. It does have some nice gardens adjacent to it, though these may now be under threat. With this year’s major fiesta just over, the town council has said the square really needs to be ‘reshaped’ so that it can accommodate bigger concerts and ‘spectaculars’. Very Spanish.


The things I have to do. Here in Pontevedra we have a chap who calls himself Draculín and claims to be a vampire. Now a woman in Portugal has emailed me a letter and asked me to pass it on to him. She would like to know, inter alia, what he thinks about the death of Vlad’s wife in 1462. Needless to say, she has the numbers 666 in her email address. So, I’d better do what she asks.


September is exam time for all those Spanish students [the majority] who need to take re-sits. Accordingly, the libraries of Galicia have announced new hours, designed to afford them ample time for last-minute swotting. In Santiago university these will be from 9am to 2pm and then from 3.30pm to – would you believe – 3.30am. I suppose this still allows ample time for enjoying the afternoon sun on the local beaches. And, with luck, some post-prandial sleep.


The wetter weather of the weekend seems to have put a damper on the forest fires. I continue to read suggestions that the majority of these are started deliberately and one paper helpfully printed the main reasons for setting fire to a forest:-
1. To get yourself new pastures for your grazing animals
2. To demarcate your land
3. To achieve a change of use that would be difficult otherwise, and
4. To wreak revenge on your neighbour.

They say the last of these has a particularly Galician quality about it, land being scarce and precious up here. So a source of many feuds, both within the family and without.


My elder daughter, Faye, has long maintained that the weather changes up here along the Galician coast alter her sleep and activity patterns. Basically, she claims she’s more lethargic when the pressure falls and the humidity rises. I’ve long poo-poohed this but now have to admit that my senior moments – such as forgetting to put water in the coffee pot – do seem to occur when, like this morning, the barometric pressure has plummeted and we’re looking out on a thick blanket of fog.


This is the last day in Galicia of my younger daughter, Hannah, before she returns to the UK. We are all removing to Madrid tomorrow morning for 3 days, meaning that the fog should have disappeared to reveal the sun by midday tomorrow.


In the copy of the Voz de Galicia I brought with me to Madrid, I see they’re now giving us photos of male whores in their small ads. Though the word ‘small’ may well be inappropriate in this context. What next? Pictures of pretty spaniels? Or well-dressed, full-size plastic dolls, perhaps.


My elder daughter’s [Spanish] boyfriend told me that he’s amused when they read out headlines from the national and regional press on TV of a morning. The Galician ones, he insisted, tend to be rather ‘provincial’, along the lines of ‘World’s biggest crayfish netted off Finisterra’. This may be a bit of an exaggeration but it’s true today’s Correo Gallego declined to go with news from New Orleans and trumpeted that 1 in 5 Galicians had managed to give up smoking.


It’s official – most local drivers have no idea how to negotiate a roundabout. The Diario de Pontevedra today majored on this claim and added a diagram which helpfully showed that, if you are turning left, you should be in the left hand lane. Whereas, if you are going straight on or turning right, you should go into the right hand lane. The flaw in all this is it requires you to stop talking and start thinking before you arrive at the obstacle. Actually, the real problem is said to be there were no roundabouts in the town until 5 years ago, so no one learned how to deal with them. Now there is a new one every week and the traffic police say they’re ‘more dangerous’ than other alternatives. Well, they would be, wouldn’t they, if you and your co-drivers couldn’t make sense of them?


Unemployment is high in Spain nationally and even more so here in Galicia. To say the least, it’s a buyer’s market, where there’s little pressure on employers to empathise with employees. So I guess it wasn’t too surprising that, when a friend of mine was interviewed for a senior secretarial job yesterday, the recruitment agents were unable to give her any details at all of the position. With some justification, she came away feeling the sole purpose was to assess whether she was pretty enough.


Thanks to a vampire-worshipping young Portuguese lady, I finally got to talk to one of Pontevedra’s real characters today. This is Rafael Pintos, better known locally as Draculín, or Little Dracula. Sr. Pintos and I pass each other most days as he is walking into town and I am walking out. Or vice versa. He is exceptionally well-dressed. Nearly always with a cane and, in winter, often swathed in a red-lined cape. If you’re interested, there’s more information on his persona and life-style on the web, of course.


Deportivo La Coruña, one of the Galician football teams, played Atletico Madrid this weekend. The latter team appear to be sponsored by European Gigolo, whoever that is. I guess we can expect to see the names of local brothels appearing on players’ shirts soon.


The Spanish have long been known to favour their place of birth [or patria chica] over all else. Second comes the region and finally – often some way behind – is the Spanish state. This localism can be amusing – e.g. when the local papers refer to Spanish banks based outside Galicia as ‘foreign’ – but it can be irritating as well. For instance, it’s not enough to know that the person whose phone number you want lives somewhere in the province of Pontevedra. Or even ‘not far from the city of Pontevedra’. For residents in the province are not listed simply in a single alphabetical order but in alphabetical subsets according to the town, village or hamlet they live in. And there are hundreds of these. So, if you don’t know exactly where they live, you can’t find their number. Unless I am missing something.


Astonishingly, Galicia’s medical specialists are reported to have the highest salaries in Spain. Even more surprising is that Catalunia’s have the lowest. But the list of supplementary productivity payments [whatever they are] reverses this order. Can this really mean Galicia’s specialists are the richest but laziest in the country? I must ask around.


It’s good to see foreign tourists to Spain were up 6% in the year to end August but, after another trip to Santiago yesterday, I’m beginning to wonder about scrapping my web site on Galicia and Pontevedra. We foreigners still have an exotic flavour here in Pontevedra and are treated accordingly. 50km north in Santiago we’re just sheep.

As a case in point, I was given double tapas and double wine today simply because the barman had given me Rioja slightly inferior to the one I’d requested. Actually it was quadruple tapas, as my portions are routinely double. Very noble, the Spanish. Unless you’re one of thousands of tourists.


The Portuguese economy is struggling and VAT rates have recently risen there. This has the poorer inhabitants crossing the border in search of cheaper petrol in Tui and the richer to buy luxury cars in Vigo. Strangely enough, Spanish doctors are going in the opposite direction, which is a problem for the Galician Xunta. It’s bad enough when Madrid is trying to steal your talent without the lowly Portuguese getting in on the act.


This is the time of year for harvesting the ferns and cutting down the eucalyptus trees in the tiny patches of land which Galicians notoriously own on the hillsides around us. Unfortunately, the industrious perpetrators don’t seem to be aware of Spanish cultural norms and stereotypes and have been switching on their strimmers and chain-saws at 8 in the morning. This is the equivalent of 6am in other countries and even early-risers like me are prone to be woken rudely from our slumbers.


I asked my piano teacher whether pupils in his native Argentina regularly failed to turn up for classes, as they do here. On reflection, he rather ducked the issue, answering that he’d found the Galicians to have an attitude summed up by the phrase ‘Búscate la vida’. As this literally means ‘Find yourself a life’, I thought it was yet another way of saying fun came first. But I’ve since been told it really means something like ‘You’re own your own, mate’. Or, in the vernacular, ‘Tough shit’. So it’s a riposte to make to someone who finds your behaviour unacceptable.


Yesterday’s eclipse was the first in Galicia since the one in 1772, which I missed. And, if I’d known the next one wasn’t coming round until 2082, I would have taken more interest in it.


Gratifyingly, 62% of Galicians say they feel equally Spanish and Galician. But this, of course, means 38% feel more local than national. Within these, a significant percentage say they don’t regard themselves as Spanish at all. This got me thinking of the UK again; it’s hard to imagine anyone there answering the question ‘Where are you from?’ with ‘Cheshire’ or the like. Though I guess things are different in the USA, where you might answer with the name of your state.


In town today, I came up against a young man trailing a Rottweiler on a lead with his left hand and carrying a miniature Yorkie in his right hand. I resisted the temptation to ask whether the latter was the former’s lunch.


Today we finally had some much-needed rain. More accurately, the Atlantic decided to rise up and drop on us. My elder daughter has always maintained that increases in humidity affect her both mentally and physically. This is one reason she’s happier in Madrid than Galicia. I’ve always tended to pooh-pooh this but have to confess it tends to be on cloudy days like today that I miss out one of the 5 stages involved in making my morning coffee. This morning it was neglecting to move the coffee from the grinder to the coffee pot before putting it on to boil. This is daft enough but doesn’t compare with taking the top off the grinder before the blades have stopped.


With a view to revising my Galicia web page, I reviewed the dozens of brochures I recently picked up at the tourism exhibition in Pontevedra. The high spot of this was re-discovering just how daft people can be in trying to be trendy. All the numerous leaflets for the Pontevedra province carry a banner claim similar to this one:-

EMO
Pontevedra CIO
UNA PROVINCIA NANTE

As ever at times like this, my conclusion is this Spain’s infamous nepotism/cronyism is at work here. Surely no professional could recommend this mess.

The other thing I noticed was just how many national, regional, provincial and municipal organisations were producing brochures for places in Galicia. And then, to cap it all, I stumbled on a new one. An organisation called Eixo Atlantico has produced a 62 page brochure on the delights of North Portugal and Galicia. So, why have they entered an already-crowded fray? Well, because the EU designates North Portugal and Galicia as one of its Euro-Regions. Clearly, this not merely justifies but demands another layer of bureaucracy.


Galicia has a number of claims to fame. My favourites are that Ireland was colonised from this part of Spain and that Christopher Columbus was born right here in Pontevedra. Some have rejected these as myths but who’s to know?


I’ve recently mentioned some of the local beliefs. Another is that Pontevedra [like the nearby city of Tui] was founded by Greeks. A book I’m reading about early civilisations suggests the latter got to the north east of Spain but says nothing about them reaching the north west. But I don’t suppose this will kill the belief. Not that this would make much difference; the emphasis here is on continuity with the [earlier] Celts than with those effete Johnny-come-latelies from the Eastern Med.


In the 11th century, a Muslim scholar reviewed all the peoples of the known world. He concluded everyone in temperate zones was pretty clever but those in northern climes were blond and dumb, whereas everyone to the south was black and thick. He detected two [inexplicable] exceptions to what he saw as a Divine law – the Berbers of North Africa and the Galicians of north West Spain. The former were Muslim but fractious and the latter were stubbornly Christian and outside the Muslim state of El Andalus. Despite being in the correct latitudes, both were, therefore, stupid. Funnily enough, notwithstanding latter day religious conformity, the rest of Spain still has much the same view of the poor Galicians. And of the North Africans. I suspect. Part of the Arab heritage?


Prompted by my reference to the Galician beliefs that they’re Celts and that Ireland was settled by Galician colonists, an Irish reader has sent me a fascinating treatise which suggests that even the Irish are not Celts. Instead, they’re descendents of various Near East peoples who, around 3,000 years ago, sailed out of the Med and up the west coast of Africa. The theory goes that they used the Iberian peninsula as a stopping off point, long before any land-bound Celts got there. On reading this, my first thought was I’d write to the local papers exploding the Celtic myths. My second thought was that my residence permit comes up for renewal quite soon. Anyway, it so happened I was today finishing A Brief History of the Human Race by Michael Cook. Looking up ‘Ireland’, I did find a reference to Ogham, a ‘folk script that the early Irish somehow derived from the writing systems of the Mediterranean world’. But a Google search suggests this really is a Celtic relic, from around 1500BC.


Like most people in Spain, I guess, I’m getting to the point where I give no credence whatsoever to forecasts of availability of such things as the high speed train between Madrid and Galicia. Or even between cities in Galicia. Or between Galicia and Portugal. The stretch between Vigo and Oporto in north Portugal has moved from 2007, to 2009, and most recently to 2013. But now the Portuguese government has said it’s postponing it indefinitely, because of national economic problems. However, it’s an ill wind that blows no good and this unhappy development has allowed all the town mayors in the cross-border ‘Atlantic Axis’ Euro-Region to justify its existence by demanding a crisis meeting.


Although there may not be much evidence for the Galician belief that Ireland was colonised from here, there does seem to be some that post-Roman Brits came the other way. The town of Bretoña, south east of Mondoñedo, for example, is said to be the site of an ancient British settlement. To quote.. “Links between the peoples of NW Iberia and the British Isles were much closer in prehistoric and historic times than has been the case since the 16th century. The old legend of the Irish originating in Spain was simply part of a much broader pattern of movement of peoples along the Atlantic edge of Europe.” Perhaps, then, Columbus was actually of Anglo-Galician descent. See this site for more details – http://www.peterrobins.co.uk/camino/British_Galicia.html


You may have missed it – even in the Sports reports – but yesterday was a big day for the city of Vigo, here in Galicia. For the first time in its history, the Volvo Ocean Race [or the ‘BolboOceanRace’ as it’s called by Spanish commentators] started from a non-British port. The event seemed to go off spectacularly well, which will hopefully give the desired boost to maritime activities along Spain’s magnificent NW coast. We can surely look forward now to a lot more people messing about in boats. I’m even contemplating it myself, though with an outboard motor, rather than a sail. And on a docile river, rather than the unpredictable sea.


A professor in Pontevedra’s School of Fine Arts has bemoaned the fact that ‘Performance art is almost non-existent here.’ Now that I think of it, this is one of the main reasons I enjoy living here.


There’ve been several strident calls recently for a high-speed train link to be installed between Vigo in Galicia and Oporto in North Portugal before the 12th of Never. Meanwhile, back on earth, the Portuguese government has just taken the decision to withdraw one of the two trains which currently provide a service on this route. Even though these move only fractionally faster than walking pace, this will surely be missed. Not everyone has a car and can barrel down the under-utilised autopista which connects these two cities.


The Pontevedra council has decided to do something about the high number of pedestrians injured or killed by cars on the town’s road. They’re going to penalise pedestrians who indulge in inappropriate ambulatory behaviour. I wonder if this applies to people who are hit on zebra crossings. A fair number of drivers give the impression of believing that venturing onto these classifies as inappropriate behaviour.


On my daily walk into town I used to pass a pet shop. Now I pass two. But the new one is rather more up-market than the old one. Or ‘alto-standing’, as they say here. It’s clearly aimed at those residents of Pontevedra who’ve completely taken leave of their senses. Not only have they bought a dog which is only fractionally larger [and less attractive] than a rat but now they want to dress it in a pullover or overcoat. And buy it food that has ‘Royal’ in the brand name. Sadly, there must be enough of them around to make the shop a going concern. What a shame they don’t sell hunting rifles next door.


Two Galician trawlers have been arrested by the Norwegians for fishing for a protected species, Greenland halibut. The Spanish government has said they were in international waters but, given the quantities of illegal fish available in tapas bars throughout Spain, my guess is no one in Spain actually believes this. Especially in view of the clip on the news, showing tons of fish being jettisoned from the side of one of the miscreant boats.


The Spanish government has demanded the immediate release of the two Galician fishing boats impounded by the Norwegians. They insist only the Spanish courts have jurisdiction over the alleged offences and that, if the they’re found guilty, there will be severe fines. Which is doubtless true but, old sceptic as I am, I wouldn’t bet much on this coming to pass.


Pontevedra’s police yesterday began their campaign of ‘admonishing’ jaywalkers and pointing them towards nearby zebra crossings. And this morning I was again almost mowed down on one of these. I predict an increase in the mortality rate, further proof of the view that the result of all major reforms is the exact opposite of that intended. I just hope I live long enough to gloat at the accuracy of my prediction.


Another Galician fishing boat has been arrested. This time by the Irish, for illegal trawling for hake. Can we now expect to see one EU country threatening to take another to the International Court at the Hague? Hake, by the way, is considered the king of fish in Spain and, truth to tell, untold tons of illegal young hake [cariocas in Galicia] are sold in tapas bars throughout the country. Strangely, across the Pyrenees, they regard it as rather tasteless. But that’s fish fashions for you


Only in Galicia?: A local association of telephone tarot card readers is taking legal action against their boss, accusing her of pressuring them to sign a new work agreement by using black magic and voodoo. I wonder why they never saw it coming.


The Galician Xunta says it wants to make Vigo the ‘motor of the Galician economy’. This will do nothing for the long-standing rivalry between this upstart city-without-a-cathedral and Pontevedra, whose burghers tend to believe nothing much has changed since the Middle Ages as regards urban supremacy.


Well, I’m not sure I’ll make it to gloat over my pedestrian mortality prediction. Last night I was almost hit twice crossing a zebra crossing. And I do mean ‘a’ zebra crossing. In a new low for me, having just missed being crushed on one side, I was then nearly plastered on the other. I suspect Pontevedra would be a much safer place if we shot all the policemen now busy directing us to these places of specious security.


Galicians are reported to be the least stressed people in Spain. The region also had the lowest rate of ‘industrial growth’ in 2004. I wonder if there’s a direct relationship between these facts.


By and large, Galicia seems a pretty crime-free place. So it comes as a bit of a shock to read that 2 young man were murdered by contract killers yesterday in a ‘settling of accounts’ among drug dealers. This came two nights after the discovery of the burned-out remains of a speedboat and 4x4, the favoured vehicles of the local narcotraficos. And today there were calls for action from the local police in order to prevent Galicia becoming ‘another Sicily’. Let’s hope they’re more effective in this than the police there. Not that the local drug barons aren’t all very nice people.


Galicia is said to have almost 50,000 illegal houses, i. e. places built without a licence. A property developer who was asked to comment justified this wholesale breach of the law on the grounds that “Galicia doesn’t have enough land zoned for building”. Presumably his response to being caught speeding at 180kph would be that Spain doesn’t have enough roads where he can drive at any speed he likes. Very Spanish. The law wasn’t personally very convenient: so I ignored it.


In 1994 a land development law was introduced in Valencia, giving the local authorities power to not only compulsorily purchase properties but to compel the [ex]owners to contribute to the cost of developing the land taken from them. Abuse of this law – for reasons we can only guess at – was so scandalously extensive it finally led to the EU Commission ordering the Spanish government to put a stop to it. As nothing was done, the Commission yesterday gave Spain a deadline of 3 weeks, after which it will be taken to court. With impeccable timing, the Galician government yesterday announced it’s considering the introduction of a similar law. Meanwhile, though, most of the local councils along the coast have announced they will be re-designating significant stretches of land so as to ‘give legitimacy to arrangements already made with developers’. Maybe we really will have the 17 new golf courses mentioned in yesterday’s press reports. To go with the 2½ we’ve already got.


A fourth Galician trawler in a month has been arrested for illegal fishing, this time by the Irish government. Conspiracy theorists here are suggesting it’s all a ruse to blacken Spain’s name before the next round of negotiations on EU quotas. I suppose this lies within the realms of possibility. Not that you’d get many takers in Spain itself, I suspect. Especially in Vigo.


The President of the Valencian government has said the pending EU court case around their illegal land development laws has nothing to do with them but is a matter for the party which is about to be prosecuted – the Spanish state. Not surprisingly, a member of the opposition has accused him of telling porkies. Yesterday it emerged that a total of 85 new golf courses are planned for the Valencian coast, which rather puts to shame the 17 ‘planned’ for Galicia.


I wrote some time ago of a crossing in Pontevedra where 7 roads met but there were no indications at all as to who had right of way. Over the last few months, an enormous roundabout [circle] has been under construction here and I think I can forecast accurately that the accident rate at this spot will shortly rocket up. Meanwhile, I am again astonished at just how long things are taking. One obvious reason is that I hardly ever see anyone at work there. My guess is the men are simultaneously working on several other challenges and so spreading themselves very thinly. During the sort of construction boom we’ve had for a number of years now, this must mean things actually take longer to complete than in the less frenetic times that are always supposed to be around the corner.


Galicia is a place of myths. I wonder if these include one to the effect that some trees have magnetic properties. For, at 6am on Sunday morning, yet another car carrying two young men smashed into a tree when taking a sharp bend. Four hours earlier, a couple of women leaving a restaurant after a Christmas dinner were killed when they were hit broadsides by a car doing 160kph [100mph] on a local road. I suppose this sort of incident will reduce in time, though possibly only when there are no young men left in Galicia.


No great surprise to read that Galicia leads Spain in the percentage of road accidents attributed to excess speed. I suspect the fatal combination is speed, bends and wet surfaces but I guess the accuracy of my observation makes little difference to those who end up dead. Or, worse, bereaved.


As regular readers will have appreciated, there’s no shortage of surveys in Spain. And one of the consequences of the regionalism/localism I often talk about is an obsession with ranking oneself against everyone else, even to the point of absurdity. So, in one if today’s headlines, we read that ‘Galicia is the 7th worst region in Spain as regards loss of students from public universities’. There’s a steady stream of this sort of stuff but I suppose it’s inevitable when there are 4 or 5 local papers which bring out issues every single day of the year.