Dawn

Dawn

Friday, July 19, 2013

Fiestas, Females, Fiddling judges, Basquean Brits and Top Gear's Spanish sojourn.

Pontevedra's summer response to La Crisis has been the traditional one of inventing a new fiesta, to go along with the dozens we already have. As of Saturday, it will the tradition to have a summer entroido, which is something normally associated with the first week of Lent. This week - and into next - we have the annual Jazz and Blues Festival, taking up more nights than ever and occupying not just one but two plazas. That said, there are no recognisable names so maybe this is where economies were made. As in Ortiguira last week, the festival is billed as 'international' but this is a bit of a misnomer as absolutely nothing is in any international language. Everything - brochures, announcements, videos and adverts - is in Gallego. In Ortigueira, between acts, there was even a saccharine film of some length featuring a dozen kids who were destined to achieve great things because they were Galician. And the Galician flag was prominent on stage during at least one performance. Part of me finds this regional emphasis quite touching but another part finds it parochial and keeps imagining it happening in, say, Cheshire or Yorkshire. Which I find that quite amusing. Maybe Wales would be a better comparison. Though the Galician 'nationalists' would surely say Scotland, as there's talk of independence there.

It being summer, all the 'academies' which teach English are closed for 3 months. So, suddenly several of my neighbours want me to give their kids English conversation classes. Strangely, all of these are female, aged between 17 and 23. It's tough being the token male but it's a mantle I've agreed to assume, more or less willingly.

Well, the main scandal of this month - who can say for August? - just gets bigger and bigger. The latest person said to be on the list of black money recipients is the President of the Constitutional Court, no less. Of course, he's denied receiving brown envelopes but has admitted to the criminal offence of being a member of the PP party despite the judicial requirement for impartiality. No wonder the Spanish rate the judiciary almost as low as other institutions. My guess is he won't resign. Though he may apologise. Insincerely.

The Anglo-Spanish Connection. Well, the Basque connection, at least: Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes. Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.” What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years. The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language. Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. So, bear in mind that, if you're English and going to visit the Guggenheim in Bilbao, you're going home.

Finally . . . If you missed Sunday's Top Gear and the protagonists' race around Spain's abundant empty spaces, you can catch it here. You need to go through the segments to see it all. Enjoy.

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