Pontevedra has a Guardia Civil barracks down by the river. Driving past it last week, I was struck by how easy it would be to lob a bomb over the wall a couple of meters from the road. Or even from the adjacent pavement. This week the Basque ETA terrorists tried something rather more ambitious up in the north east. According to the media, they attempted to massacre not just GC officers but also their families. They didn’t succeed but, sadly, one officer was killed in the process. The fear is that ETA have re-established their bomb-making capability in southern France. Let’s hope the gendarmes find it soon.

Talking of violence, a Scottish columnist fears the pictures of Glasgow Rangers thugs attacking the police in Manchester this week will have damaged his country’s reputation around the world. Well, not in Spain, I suspect. Here they’ll merely be taken as confirmation that all Brits are either ooliganes or frock-coated toffs. But mostly the former. And I doubt that Scottish independence will change things much.

The figures for economic growth in the first quarter of the year make dire reading for Spain, where the achievement of 0.3% was only half that of the Euro zone average of 0.6% - a figure heavily weighted by Germany’s figure of 1.5%. This, of course, was achieved despite the rise in the value of the euro. Must say something about the fundamentals of the respective economies, I guess. But it’s an ill wind that blows no good and those of us living close to Portugal can now take advantage of the fact that poor country is now in an even worse state than it has been for the last decade of boom here in Spain. A bit of carpetbagging is surely in order.

Which is surely the most audacious link in my blogging history . . . Can anyone explain why the film The Carpetbaggers is called Los Insatiables in Spanish and not, say, Los Aventureros?

Finally - You’ll doubtless be familiar with the Cannes Film Festival but possibly not with the parallel event taking place up in the Galician hills in the village of Cans. Which actually means ‘dogs’ in Gallego, I believe. You can read all about it on its web page but here’s a snippet to give you the flavour - O Festival de Cans é un peculiar festival de curtametraxes que se celebra no mes de maio na parroquia de Cans (O Porriño), coincidindo en datas co Festival de Cannes. Precisamente a idea do festival xurdiu da similitude entre o nome desta aldea galega e a da cidade francesa. Naceu en 2004, polo que a de 2008 será a quinta edición. Este ano celebrarase do 21 ao 24 de maio, aínda que o conxunto de actividades desenvolvidas extenderase ao longo de todo o mes de maio. It would be useful for information to be in Spanish as well but that’s not the way of things these days in Galicia, where Gallego is being increasingly ‘normalised’. But I don’t think you’ll be shot for speaking Castellano/Castelano as you walk around. Though I might be.


The Anglo Galician Association – open to all who speak English – now has a Forum on the web. If you have a query about Galicia, why not register and post it.