It strikes me that Cataluña and Scotland have more than a couple of things in common right now, apart from the fact they’re best buddies because of shared independence goals within their governments. The left-of-centre central governments in both Spain and the UK only retain power because of seats held in Cataluña and Scotland, respectively. I guess if it weren’t for fear of the power of precedent, the PP and Tory parties would be kissing them goodbye.

The Palma politico who spent €50,000 on male prostitutes in two years, turns out to have been a pillar of the Catholic church and a man who refused to preside over gay marriages. I’d be prepared to bet he is/was a member of the Opus Dei secret society. Nice to see that hypocrisy is not confined, as the Spaniards appear to think, to Brits. By the way, his name is de Santos. Or Saintly, I guess. This explains why he has re-paid the money. Which was just lying around, it seems.

Things change. Views change. Societies change. Listening to a BBC discussion of the classic 1914 American film Birth of a Nation, I heard one critic say the people who’d made it hadn’t the slightest appreciation it was not just racist but appallingly so. Albeit astonishingly well directed. I shall think of this whenever in future anyone tells me here they’re not racist and were merely joking when they upset whomever they upset.

Galicia Facts

With the elections well over, life has returned to normal. The spat over the re-location of displaced gypsies between the mayors of Pontevedra and neighbouring Poio appears to be shifting towards outright war. The street demonstrations against gypsies – more accurately against ‘drug trafficking’ – have moved to the centre of Pontevedra. Meanwhile, the gypsies in question have moved back to the encampment near me, into houses erected where their illegal homes were knocked down a month or so ago.

The new Indian restaurant here in Pontevedra was a disappointment. Not bad in some ways but, as in the Vigo Indian, dishes described as sweet on the menu were unbearingly so. I wonder if this is an attempt to Hispanicise/Galicianise them. The usual way, of course, is to remove anything that makes the dishes hot [picante].

I seem to have got my wishes about the Portuguese workers who’ve been clogging up the street with their cars for more than two years. They appear to have disappeared from the building site opposite my house. But whether this is because their work is done, or because money has run out or because we’re in a holiday week, I can’t tell. For whatever reason, work appears to have ground to a near-halt.

The Portuguese economy has been in a bad way for some time now. So I wasn’t surprised to read that more than 50% of the workers on the nearby tracks for the twelfth-of-never high speed train [the AVE] are from Portugal. Not did I fall over when reading that 1. they’re paid a third less than their Spanish colleagues, 2. they’re denied the benefits given to the latter, and 3. the site boss was reluctant to let them be interviewed.

Asked whether they thought zebra crossing provided enough protection for pedestrians, 95% of the readers of the Voz de Galicia opined that they didn’t. Of the 5% who thought they did, 50% have since been run over.

See – Two days now without news of the printer. Which is, of course, because there isn’t any.