We resident foreigners
often rail against Spanish bureaucracy but this Guardian article
suggests we're lucky compared with the poor souls who have to get
things done in Russia. I'll never criticise things here again.
Honest.
The supposed bones of
Spain's greatest writer - Miguel Cervantes - have been interred, with
due ceremony, in a Madrid convent. The inscription on the monument
includes a quotation from Cervantes’ final novel, Los trabajos de
Persiles y Sigismunda. Or, rather, it doesn't, as the final word has
been spelt Segismunda. Although a tad embarrassing, it's no one's
fault, apparently, and "the mistake can be easily remedied". Which is
surely the right attitude.
I doubt any reader will
be surprised to hear that the British have an image here born of
football hooligans and, more recently, the revellers of Magaluf and
similar lo-cost-hi-booze venues. Rod Liddle picked up on this
theme in yesterday's Sunday Times: More than 5,000 British people
were arrested for behaving like feral dogs on holiday last year, and
the number of countries in which they were arrested grows by the
year. It’s one of the many benefits of globalisation: our genitals
get everywhere, they zip around, hither and thither, demanding to be
photographed wherever they land. They crave recognition, our gonads.
They want to be seen in exciting, happening places. . . What is it
with us and this obsessive, infantile narcissism of flashing our
privates all over the place? No sooner do people get a phone than the
trousers are around the ankles and the snap posted on the internet.
“Look! It’s my cock!” Can we regress any further? Is it because
we no longer feel repressed? If so, let’s have a bit more
repression, quickly. Maybe state repression, with electrodes. . . .
We have been brought up with a liberal ideology that will not be
gainsaid. Other countries have no right to be appalled by our nudity,
our voracious sexual appetites or anything else we care to foist upon
them, be it urinating in the street or vomiting in a bodega. Such
monumental arrogance. You wonder why the rest of the world hates us?
A bit OTT but he surely has a point.
The 2 beggars of
Pontevedra I've known the longest have both come up in the world. The
first is a hirsute bag-man who stands in exactly the same spot, day
in day out, rattling coins in his left hand while he holds out the
right. Until last week, he'd worn the same greasy black T-shirt
for more than 15 years. But he's now got a bright orange one. The
second longtime beggar is a woman who spends all day circulating the
old quarter chattily panhandling for money at every table and in
every bar. Over the years, the quality of her clothing has got better
and better and I fully expect her one day to be sporting the same
outfit as Queen Leticia. As of a few weeks ago, she's taken to
dragging along with her a little dog, which presumably also lives on
the proceeds of her begging. Happily, both of these old-timers recognise
me as much as I recognise them and neither of them wastes time in
asking me for contributions. Professionals, the pair of them.
I enjoyed this
paragraph in Raymond Carr's The Spanish Tragedy: "For Hitler,
Franco's Spain - with its priests, landowners and businessmen - was a
disillusionment. He prophesied that Falangists and 'reds' might 'make
a common cause to rid themselves of the clerico-monarchical scum
that floated to the top.'" And I've always had Hitler down as a
madman.
Finally . . . Every
time I try to put a blog post on Facebook, I get the message it can't
be published as it contains something that someone finds offensive.
This is hard to believe but I guess the culprit might be one of the
foul-mouthed Spanish readers I've upset. Which would be ironic.
No comments:
Post a Comment