Well, I’ve survived another 1100km on Spain’s roads and am back in Pontevedra. The sun shone, I’m told, during the entire two weeks of my absence but rain is forecast from today. Just what I needed. Or my re-seeded lawns at least.

A UK Sunday newspaper provided this definition of “zoo radio” – ‘Everybody is competing for attention and everybody talks at once.” So, we have both zoo radio and zoo TV here in Spain. Except, in the latter case, for the heavy tertulias at 9 in the mornings, when no one is watching.

Returning to my blog after a couple of days off, I thought I’d strike the right note by quoting one or two tendentious comments from an excellent book I’ve started. This is Between Hopes and Memories: A Spanish Journey and it’s by Michael Jacobs, who knows the country and its writers extremely well. So here goes:-

Galicia is a land which encourages myths, though myths of a different kind from those found in other regions of Spain. Galician nationalists, no less than sentimental travellers, think of Galicia essentially as a Celtic land, even though the Celtic presence in this region is not significantly greater than in other parts of Spain which one does not think of as Celtic at all – Almería for instance. The physical similarities between Galicia and such Celtic extremities of Europe as Ireland and Brittany cannot be denied; and there are local traditions such as bagpipe music that are associated with the same regions. But the term ‘Celtic’, when applied to the people and character of Galicia today, is so vague and contradictory as to become almost meaningless.’

And

If Galicia can be called the cradle of anything, it should be called the ‘cradle of dictators’. Fidel Castro is of Galician descent. The [ex]right-wing president of the Galician Xunta, Manuel Fraga is said to have offered him refuge in the case of a fall from power. But the most notorious Galician was Francisco Franco, who was born in Ferrol in 1892, and whose granite-like obstinacy and phlegmatic disposition have been seen as unmistakable attributes of the people of this region.

Less controversially . . .

Galicia Facts

Ryanair will re-start its direct flights from Liverpool to Santiago in April next year, having laid them off from the end of this month.