Crisis cuts; PP black dealings; Trial by media; Deadly drugs; Spanish pragmatism; and Bird brains.

Sorry, I was wrong yesterday when I said President Rajoy had said there'd be no more cuts next year. What he actually said was that the cuts wouldn't be as severe as those made in the last 2 years. Which must have come as a relief to all.

As for these cuts . . . I don't have a full understanding but there seems to have a been a wide range of reductions in benefits - something perhaps totally unthinkable in France. Or even the UK. These have included a cut in payments to the disabled (in those regions where these were actually implemented), in healthcare provision and in assistance for poor kids in the payment of school meals and text books. Reports of harsh evictions regularly appear in the papers and each time they do one wonders how many bankers, politicians and senior businessmen have been turfed out of their homes. Or even forced to 'downsize'. As I've said, there are countrywide protests against the cuts this weekend but I can't be alone in believing these will have no effect whatsoever. What's really needed is a revolution.

Meanwhile - to no one's great surprise, I'm sure - the judge in the trial of the ex Treasurer of the ruling PP party has said there's evidence the party used illegal donations to pay the architect of its HQ renovation in black. This is despite the insistence that all the accusations are "Lies, lies and more lies". Being of the right, the PP sadly can't avail itself of the the other standard Spanish defence: "You're a fascist to say that."

The murder trial in Santiago: A journalist on our Voz de Galicia has insisted that the parents of the child aren't yet on trial and expressed the fear that "we have ahead of us a long parallel trial by media.” Given that we've had this for months already, this is a pretty safe bet. The question is - What is anyone going to do about it? My guess is nothing.

At dinner with friends last night, there was discussion of the drug smuggling along our coast and the devastation it caused when the drugs leaked into the local community when kids were paid partly in heroin for help in bringing shipments ashore. Particularly affecting was the story of the all-conquering Vilanova 1982 football team, who all got involved in this, leading to the early deaths of 7 of them.

On a happier Galician note, here's a TurGalicia video issued in the USA

I regularly say the Spanish are a very pragmatic people. Another example occurred in a shop yesterday, when I was third in the queue and the person whom the owner was dealing with went off to look at something on the shelves. In Britain, I doubt whether the woman in front of me would've said anything but would've waited for the owner to ask what she wanted. Not here. The woman seized the opportunity to tell him what she wanted and he started to (efficiently) deal with 2 customers at the same time. Mind you, this can be taken to extremes, when someone comes from the back of a long queue and asks a shop assistant a question while you're talking to him/her. Possibly annoying but still pragmatic and, from the point of view of the enquirer, efficient.

Finally . . . While I detest the pigeons that crowd round my table and attempt to steal peanuts, I take a far more benevolent view of the sparrows who sit at the edge of the table and wait for me to give them something. Best of all, just before they take half a peanut, they each give a squeak, as if of gratitude. Here's one of them. 

By the by, we've had a new development this week. Magpies, while aggressive and even murderous, are normally cautious birds. But a young one has taken to competing with the pigeons and it seems a lot smarter than them. Though this shouldn't come as a surprise, given that a pigeon will keep coming even when I'm smacking it with the menu each time it gets within reach. Bird-brained, I guess. Or bloody hungry.