All
that said, there's certainly a majority in the Catalan parliament in
favour of a referendum on independence from Spain.
So I guess we can assume it's coming some time in the next year or
three. Unless – as with the Scottish Nats – the conclusion is
reached it's going to be lost. Meanwhile, here's fellow blogger
Graham's rather more in-depth analysis of yesterday's developments
than mine.
Incidentally,
reporting on these elections France24 spoke of the 'compromise of
the independence parties.' This is an all-too-common mis-translation
of the Spanish word compromiso. Which really means
'commitment'.
Which
reminds me . . . The normally-amusing voiceover on Come Dine with
Me keeps referring to chorizo as choritso, rather
than choreetho. It's getting to me. I'm starting to
shout at the TV.
Tamara
Rojo is the Artistic Director of the English National Ballet. She's
Spanish and there are some beautiful fotos of her on the web. This is
one of them and the question that springs to my mind is – How on
earth does she do it? Just looking at it brings tears to my eyes.
I
went to an exhibition of Picasso sketches tonight, in a building
associated with the now-extinct savings bank Caixa Galicia. We used
to have two savings banks in Galicia but now we have none, as they
were fused and then converted into a real bank, NovaGalicia. One of
the functions of the savings banks – alongside lending or just
giving money to favoured politicos and businessmen - was to stage
cultural events such as this one. My guess is we'll now see fewer and
fewer of these. Especially as the European Commission has demanded
serious layoffs in NovaGalicia, as part of the deal to transfer
billions of euros to Spanish banks. Pretty inevitable but still
unwelcome.
Finally
. . . It's generally felt that the first football team in Spain was
formed in Huelva but there are two Galician coastal towns which dispute
this claim to fame. I knew that Villagarcia believed that – thanks
to games against the British Navy – they'd got there first but
today I read in El
País
that the honour may well belong to Vigo, thanks to the British laying
communication cables from there in 1873. Followed by the Germans.
Which made the city a pretty interesting place between 1937 and 1945.
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