Dawn

Dawn

Monday, April 20, 2009

I occasionally mention the speedboats abandoned on our Galician beaches. There may now be rather fewer of these, as “The members of the leading smuggling gang operating in Galicia, a well-travelled gateway for cocaine into Europe, were arrested and their boats seized in an operation which involved scores of officers from the police and the Civil Guard. The so-called lancheros - launch men - were under contract to Colombian cocaine cartels to bring ashore large consignments of the drug. After getting it on dry land, the lancheros hid the drugs to await transport to Britain and other destinations in Western Europe.” Now, this may seem like very good news to you, but spare a thought for our local economy. Times were hard enough already.

I’m used to reading odd female names inspired by the Catholic religion – like Penitencia, Imaculada and Purgatorio (though I may have made up the last of these) – but pickings are less rich when it comes to males. However, I see the father of the new president of the Galician Xunta is blessed with the name Saturnino, Which translates as, well, saturnine. Or melancholy, grave or gloomy. Which seems a lot to load a kid with. I wonder if anyone’s called Diablo. Or even just Lucifero. If so, it'd have to be recent development, as it’s only a few years since the Spanish state withdrew the obligation to name your children after saints. But Santo Saturnino? Well, yes, actually.

Roundabouts again . . . It’s struck me that, in the article I cited, there were no instructions about what signal to give when entering or exiting one of these. Perhaps this is just as well, as any signal, absence of signal or combination of signals seems to be perfectly acceptable. Which leads to the superordinate rule on any roundabout – Don’t trust any signal made by any other driver.

Apart from several Chinese and Italian restaurants, Pontevedra doesn’t offer much by way of international cuisine. The Korean restaurant closed down after only a few months and two Indian restaurants didn’t last much longer either. But the city is now overflowing with kebab places. I guess it’s the perfect dish for hungry souls patronising the dozens of bars and discos of the old quarter. Coincidentally, I’ve heard today that a kebab house in Santiago is offering Thai dishes. Which will have to be investigated.

Meanwhile . . . Hits to this blog have soared today. I’ve suggested this happens if I refer to sex, brothels or prostitutes but, in this case, it looks as if it’s because I cited ETA and terrorism. Perhaps there’s a horde of angry Basques out there tracking the blogosphere for any reference to these. Actually, most of Spain’s Basques seem angry but I guess this is because they’re the ones who get the media attention. They wouldn’t, of course, regard themselves as angry Spaniards.

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