One
thing that looks unlikely to help get Spain out of its rut is a rash
of new businesses. For Spain continues to be a difficult place in
which to start an operation. Which might help to explain why so many
young people want to become civil servants and so few of them want to entrpreneurs.
The
Diario de Pontevedra
reports that a number of cafés in town have set up large plastic
owls to deter the seagulls and pigeons that are more of a nuisance
than ever this year. Sadly, I'm not credited as the pioneer of this -
largely ineffective - initiative.
Another
Pontevedra experiment that failed - before my time - was that of
parking meters. Since then, the council's attempts to stop illegal
parking have resided in a single grua
- a truck that takes offenders to a pound next to the town's
cemetery. But now we're to follow La Coruña and Vigo in having a
multamovil
- a car with a camera that snaps offenders. Particularly, it's said,
those who park in unloading bays. It'll be interesting to see whether
this means fewer cars double-parked with their hazard lights flashing
away.
President
Rajoy has finally said something about the allegations that he and
several colleagues were paid large sums out of a slush fund financed
by construction companies and property developers. Essentially, it
was that he had nothing to add to what he said a while back. The
Opposition party, the PSOE, is considering calling for a vote of no
confidence, their worry surely being they might win it and so put
somebody better that the hapless Sr Rajoy into power. The guy through
whom the money was routed now has a new lawyer - an ex judge who was
de-barred after a conviction for perversion
of the course of justice. As usually happens with people of his rank,
he was pardoned by the right-of-centre PP government of the day,
under President Aznar. Who's now accused of having his daughter's
lavish wedding paid for out of the slush fund.
Down
at the other end of the social scale, small investors who've been
demonstrating against the loss of their life-savings via the
mis-selling of bank preferential shares have been hit by an "avalanche" of fines for minor infractions including "not
wearing seatbelts" and honking horns. I don't suppose any of
them will be getting a pardon.
Finally
. . . There's a long-running British sitcom called Benidorm.
Set, of course, in the Spanish city of that name. I read this sniffy
review today from The
Guardian,
the house journal of the liberal intelligentsia - "How
is it that this stuff is being made, and screened, in 2011? It's like
the script was taken from someone's collection of saucy postcards. It
is back, inexplicably, for a third series. Well, there is an
explanation of course: millions of people watch it. The mystery is
why they do." The simple explanation of this 'mystery' is that it's well-written, beautifully
acted by the ensemble and bloody funny. And there's room for
everything. It doesn't all have to be Curb
Your Enthusiasm sharp.
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