As
with the all the financial losses fraudulently inflicted on
property-buying foreigners down in Andalucia, the Spanish government
appears to care not a jot for its reputation abroad. Despite all the
empty talk about Brand Spain. Worse, it seems not to care
about what's being done to its own 10,000 citizens being forced to
wait at the border for up to 7 hours in the sun as they try to get to
work in Gibraltar. Needless to say, Catalan politicians are making
hay while this sun shines, regretting the "improper
bullying and harassment" by the Spanish government. If you're
pushing for Catalan independence, it pays to be able to depict the
Spanish government as a nationalist bully.
But
anyway . . . I've tried Amazon Spain for the
first time - for the TV I finally decided on. They don't really seem
to have got the hang of things yet:
9
Aug: I got a message saying the product had left the store and would
be with me some time on 13 Aug. i. e. yesterday
13
Aug: As I sat in waiting for this delivery, I got another message at
12.15 saying it had just left someone else's warehouse and would be
with me 'within the next 48 hours'.
Which
is quite a large margin. As my elder daughter said to me last night:
"Dad, you still haven't learnt to moderate your expectations".
The first rule of a happy life in Spain.
The
good news is that it arrived late yesterday afternoon. So, all's
well.
Here
in Galicia our 3 small international airports continue to compete the
life out of each other via ever-larger subsidies to airlines such as
Ryanair. The upshot for the poor customers is that flights can
suddenly move from one (convenient) airport to a different
(inconvenient) airport. Meanwhile, Oporto's facility continues to
grow at the the expense of the Galician trio, not least of all
because it has a superior attitude to customer service. Most
recently, they've improved the bus service which will take you from
several Galician towns direct to the Portuguese airport. The problem
is that, while the case for rationalisation of the 3 Galician
airports is incontrovertible, no one's going to have the political
will to take the decision to implement it.
Talking
of incompetence . . . You'll all remember the Spanish artist who
turned the fresco of Jesus in her local church into something resembling an
orang-utang. Well, she's now had an exhibition of her works and, in
truth, one or two of them don't look half-bad. Click here for
more on this.
Finally
. . . I occasionally take my daily tiffin in a café on the edge of
Pontevedra's main square. One of the pleasures of doing so - outside
- is watching the ebb and flow of people. If you're familiar with
Spain, you'll know that the square throngs with folk until around 2,
when suddenly it's deserted, as everyone goes home for the main meal
of the day. Here's a foto showing this. When I took it, there were
more beggars working the café than there were people in the square.
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