Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Just in case anyone’s that interested, here’s an article sympathetic to the challenge faced by the (English) referee to the Holland v. Spain World Cup Final on Sunday night. In a word, it was a bitch of a match. But with the Dutch as the main culprits, does that make it a butch of a match? You decide.

One Spanish article I read listed all the mistakes the writer felt the odious Mr Webb had made. Except the one of missing Iniesta possibly being offside when he scored the only goal. Funny that. But, anyway, we all agree that the right team won and that Spain deserved to become champions for the quality of the football they play. Even the Dutch. And it was a joy to witness the nationwide celebrations of the achievement.

I actually watched the game with three Dutch folk (volk?) and so it wasn’t surprising that the room didn’t exactly resound to complaints about outlandish (or even Netherlandish) tactics. There was some talk of the referee being too harsh and Spaniards going down like sissies but I took this to be irony. If I’d been back in Pontevedra, I’d have joined Spanish friends in the main square to watch the match on a big screen there. Which only happened, I heard today, as a result of pressure from the Pontevedra provincial government. For, in a pathetic attempt to emulate what they must see as Catalan statesmanship, the local BNG nationalist party which runs the city had tried to stop this. As a result of which, I’m betting their share of the vote in the next regional elections will fall below the mere 14-15% they got last time round. It’s tough being a nationalist party when even you don’t demand secession but they are their own worst enemies at times.

I was going to mention the reports of our neighbours in northern Portugal being close to revolt against what they see as neglect on the part of the government down in Lisbon but then came a rather more interesting item – viz. that “Playboy magazine is terminating its Portuguese edition after an outcry over a photo-shoot depicting Jesus Christ alongside topless models”. This, it seems, was part of a somewhat misguided tribute to the recently deceased author José Saramago. More here. With pictures.

Another language difference . . . In English, if you are rapacious, you’d sell your grandmother. In Spanish, it’s your mother. Freud could probably have explained this.

Finally, driving up into the hills today, I felt my car was handling a little differently from usual. Recalling it had been serviced on Friday, I checked the tyres. To find they were all more than 25% over-inflated. This, of course, happens every time you have new tyres put on in a workshop here. But this was the dealer who sold me the car in the first place. So I’m left with the question – Is there a universal belief in Spain either that all tyres should be over-inflated? Or, alternatively, does everyone here really believe that all cars of whatever make and size should have their tyres inflated to exactly the same pressure? If so, why? Or is it just Galicia?

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