Life in Spain Follow-Up:

1. Pablo del Bosque: My friends at dinner last night felt his message had, indeed, been that he could be trusted to do a better job. But what I didn’t say last night was that, despite initially telling me he’d do the job himself, he’d then found someone called Manolo to do it on contract. Which makes the message – and the fee premium – even less credible.

2. The people the lady was looking for: This is well known to my friends as the family Dominguez, which used to have a fruit and veg shop down by the market. And they do live at the bottom of the hill, almost two kilometres from my house. In a tremendously ugly modern house. Designed, of course, by one of Galicia’s leading architects.

The Dog Days of Summer. OK, Autumn.

We’re scarcely short of dogs here in Galicia. In fact, we’re surrounded by them and their nocturnal barking forces me to resort to ear-plugs every night. Apart from those in my street, the one I see most regularly is this blue-eyed husky, which I pass every day in an empty plot at on the road down to the bridge. Guarding grass, it would seem. 24 hours a day, year in, year out.

Then there are the docile canines of the “street performers”, which I usually see first in the centre of town and then again later when their owners are walking to or from the drug distribution centre in one of the gypsy encampments near my house. Come to think of it, they’re probably used for guarding grass as well.

But, anyway, here are more examples of Pontevedra’s graffiti.

Near the first two of these, there’s an empty walled-plot which is occupied – like many places in the old quarter – by a family of semi-feral cats which breeds with great regularity. In fact, there are so many of these that the question arises of what happens to the offspring. If they all survived, there’d surely be more cats in the old quarter than people. And not many rats. But there aren’t and I wonder if there’s some glue factory somewhere which benefits from their unrestricted procreation. Assisted, unwittingly, by the residents who put out food every day for these nervy urban felines.

There is another dog I regularly see but this one is worthy of his own paragraph. So I’ll leave him for another day. Perhaps after I’ve been able to snap him.


Tailnote for new readers: My elder daughter has now net-published six chapters of a novel which is “A fast-paced political thriller but, above all, a personal tale of pride and paranoia.” Set in a fictionalised Cuba, it’s being e-published at the rate of at least a couple of chapters a week. If this entices you, click here.