Dawn

Dawn

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Booming tourism receipts?; Rail safety measures and more; Hands off Columbus!; Messy abortion; & Mature women.



One major success for Spain in 2013 was the growth in its tourism receipts. Which were 10% up, at €59bn. The government has naturally trumpeted this success but (HT to Lenox Napier), the workers at the coal-face say this number doesn't square with their receipts of only €45bn. Be that as it may, Brits continued to dominate the Foreign Visitors table, followed by the Germans and the French. But it's the Russians who are surging up the chart, though they're still only 4% of the total of 60m.

It could hardly be otherwise but, following the Santiago rail crash that claimed 79 lives, the national carrier, RENFE, has announced a series of new safety measures. These include the signalling system that was deliberately not installed for the final 8km of the line from Madrid into Santiago. We await the judge's verdict on whether anyone is guilty of anything for this decision. We also wait to see whether the suggestion that tickets will need to display the full name and ID of each passenger mean that buying a ticket from Pontevedra to Vigo will now mean another bureaucratic hassle.

You'll all recall that Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón) was born here in Poio, across the river from Pontevedra. And that there's a statue of him near the latter's Alameda. The last few months has seen it covered in scaffolding and plastic as the statue was refurbished. Walking past it yesterday, I saw it was now back to its original glory. But still handless. As I know the head of the Bellas Artes department responsible for the work, I asked her why. Her reply, essentially, was that the original hand was too heavy for the arm and that they're waiting for a lighter one. Columbus crossed the Atlantic in less time time. Meanwhile, here he is in all his polished splendour, the single-handed adventurer.


The Spanish government continues to get itself into a mess with its proposed changes to the current abortion law. A leader in yesterday's El País gives a good insight into the situation:-

A Uncertain Future

The rejection aroused by the abortion reform counsels for withdrawal, not its prolongation through its processing.

The reform of the abortion law has opened a deep crisis in the Popular Party government which it seems to want to resolve things by leaving it de facto parked in a long bureaucratic process. This is suggested by the fact that neither Mariano Rajoy nor his vice president have defended it in parliament, and the government has requested thirty submissions from various public and private bodies before taking the next step. Rejection of the reform by many voters and leaders of the PP is just one of the reasons for this strategy. The other, perhaps decisive, is the attrition of support being suffered by the party and, according to surveys, could be reflected in a substantial loss of votes at the next elections, starting with the European elections next May. The attrition of the ruling party can't be attributed to a single legislative initiative of ultraconservative stamp, but this seems to have accelerated it.

Minimising the damage is not a simple task. The opposition has raised the banner of the struggle against a legislative change that is rejected by over 80 % of the Spanish population and the Justice Minister gave the rest of the political spectrum a new argument this week in equating abortion with disrespect for a life already born. His dialectical contortions, previously hurtful, sound strange now that he is almost alone in defending a project that is reaping a large negative impact, not only in Spanish society. The criticisms in the European Parliament, promoted by the socialists, have been joined this week by the voice of French far-right Marine Le Pen, who, contrary to the signals given out in the beginning, neither agrees with an amendment that would ban abortion in cases of foetal malformation, unless it is "incompatible with life" and also augurs some risk (proven) to the mental health of the mother.

The proper strategy should not be to seek consensus as Rajoy has promised, but to withdraw the proposal. The processing of this project, which should never have seen the light of day without consensus, means waste in political terms and in the resources of the national administration, which are so necessary for reforms to revitalise the economy and to improve social welfare. The periods-based law currently in force in Spain is similar to that prevailing in the rest of Europe and has consecrated a right - for women to decide freely about motherhood - that society is not willing to give up. The PP claims that this periods-based law - approved in its day by 7 parties - was one of its campaign promises. Going to extremes by pulling this rabbit out of the hat has become a dangerous boomerang for the government. Rooting itself in an ideological position way beyond anything expected is the sole cause of this shambles.

Finally . . . Since she's reappeared (again), I thought I'd show you the sort of 'mature, rich woman' I'm invited to link up with on Facebook. Sorry about the quality but I'm sure you'll get at least one of the 2 points I'm making here.

I assume she's got some sort of rod attached to her back:-




And here's another mature woman, from this morning:- 


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