Both
of Spain's political parties – the PP on the right and the PSOE on
the left – are said to be further right of their equivalents in the
rest of Europe – surely reflecting the course of Spanish history
over the last hundred years. What this means is that the
right-of-centre PP party (currently in government) has a pretty
extreme right wing, possibly comprising several Opus
Dei
members, for whom this would be their natural home. I say this
because something has to explain just how stupid the government has
been in facing its challenges in Gibraltar and, far more seriously,
in Cataluña. In both cases the strategy has been to criticise and
threaten the very people they need to negotiate with, causing them to
stiffen in their resolve to either stay or become separate from the
Spanish state. The president of the Catalan government, for example, has been
threatened with prison if he continues with referendum plans. Spanish
nationalism at its worst. And its most obtuse.
Talking
about Spanish politics . . . Spain's leading ballerina, Tamara
Rojo, has waded in with the following tendentious comments to a British
newspaper - Spain
is its own worst enemy. We're going backwards. After Franco, all
sides – including communists, anarchists, fascists and
conservatives – were trying to take the nation forward. Now there
is not even a political dialogue. In
England people tend to want to hear all opinions and then make their
own. In Spain people have their opinion, because it is the opinion of
their father and their grandfather and his father before that.I'm
not sure she'll be thanked for making these comments from a UK base.
I
decided to take a look at the webpage of the National Rifle
Association(NRA) of the USA. Where I found that the organisation
views itself as a victim of the reaction to the latest mass slaughter
of American children and that it sees the answer in the fortification
of every single school in the country - on the basis that only armed
guards and teachers can have any hope of defeating the aims of the
next insane gun wielder. Tellingly, I didn't get the impression the
writer of this blog had any sense at all of how horrific such a
scenario is and what signals it would send to the world about
American society. Nor did I see any evidence of any willingness to
accept a ban of semi-automatic weapons. I guess it does accept a ban
on, say rocket launchers and machine guns, but you wouldn't know it
from the twisted logic of the writer. Let's hope Obama is strong
enough to take them on successfully.
Stimulated
by the fulsome obituary of a cricket commentator, I've decided that
everyone should have the right to view the draft obits held on the
files of any and every newspaper in the world. They are so wasted
when the subject of them dies without having a notion of all
the lovely things that are going to be said about them post
mortem. I
think I'll go global with this idea. Possibly even viral. Even though
it won't make the slightest difference to the vast majority of us.
This
is another quote from the USA
& UK Prophecies
document I cited the other day. Overall,
British influence was beneficial for the whole world, just as God
anciently prophesied that it would be. Not
everyone will agree with this, of course, but even more contentious
is the claim that the Bible both predicts the existence of the
British empire and the degree of its success. Heady stuff. I wonder
what it said, if anything, about the earlier Spanish empire.
Talking
of Brits. . . . It's an ill-known fact that the Celts adore the
letter 'd'. No one knows why but here's a nice example, from my deep
knowledge of Welsh - Blwyddyn
Newydd Dda.
Or Happy New Year. And Diolch
a nos dda.
Now, that's a real Celtic language.
Finally
. . . Today I snapped 13 jewellery shops in the centre of town, with
a view to seeing how many are still open at the end the month. Except
for money-laundering purposes, I find it hard to believe Pontevedra
can sustain all these.
No comments:
Post a Comment