Pontevedra Pensées: 25.10.16

SPANISH LIFE/CULTURE

The World's Best Restaurant: It's not going to make any difference to my life, of course, but this is adjudged by TripAdvisor to be a Spanish restaurant in Lasarte, near San Sebastian, along the northern coast. Spain also grabbed the 10th and 13th places. Believe it or believe it not, there are 3 British restaurants in the top ten. Details here. I might just have been to the one in Ubud on Bali.

The Basque Country: Terrorism was at least suspended by ETA a few years ago and there's been no incidents for 4 or 5 years now. But the problem remains of what to do about ETA and, inevitably, there's a range of opinions. See El País on this here.

SPANISH POLITICS

The Next Administration: This will be the right-of-centre PP, in a minority government. So, an unimpressive man who's presided over massive corruption – in which he himself is implicated – will continue to be Spain's President/Prime Minister, despite losing – or at least not winning – 2 elections. And despite the considerable support for the new parties of Ciudadanos on the Right and, particularly, Podemos on the Left. It's enough to make one lose one's faith in a huge chunk of the Spanish electorate. And the worst aspect? We'll now see Rajoy trumpeted in the right wing media as a strategic genius. But, anyway, let's see how he does now that he'll have to negotiate every law through parliament with the several opposition parties.

THE SPANISH ECONOMY

This will presumably start to go downhill, now that we have a government after 8 months delay.

THE EU

Italian Banks: Don Quijones remains very worried about these. One comment amused me: The plan to merge the two banks is eerily reminiscent of the ill-fated [and scandal-ridden] creation of Spain’s frankenbank Bankia, the spawn of the doomed merger of seven insolvent saving banks. But this conclusion is worrying: The authorities — both political and monetary, domestic and European — will continue to resort to the tired old playbook, deploying quick fixes (e.g. mergers of bankrupt banks) and accounting gimmickry (e.g. allowing insolvent banks to use “future earnings” to fill today’s gaping capital shortfalls) to address, or as least conceal, a problem that threatens to engulf not only Europe’s third largest economy, but the entire Eurozone with it. Click here for more.

GALICIAN STUFF

Percebes: If you've never seen these dreadful-looking – and, to my mind, equally dreadful-tasting – 'aphrodisiacs', take a gander at this video.

LOCAL STUFF

Seur: This is the courier company which delivers my stuff from Amazon. More often than not, I have to go their offices to collect items, in a street where there's no parking and in an office where they have no internet cover. Beats me. But, anyway, they've got a lot better at sending me information about when a package might be delivered and giving me the option of telling them I won't be in then. Sometimes, though, they can get ahead of themselves. So, it was this morning that I received an email telling me a book would be delivered between 10.30 and 11.15. I got this at 11.51, almost an hour and a half after it'd been delivered. So, a way to go yet.

House-Building: This is a poor quality pic, blown up from a camera snap, showing a house below mine that's been under construction now for more than 4 years. Possibly 6. My guesstimate of the average lead time for a house-build here is 2-3 years. So, this is already way beyond that.

FINALLY

Flipar: This is a bit of Spanglish which seems to me to have two main meanings:

1. To 'flip' in anger.
2. To 'flip' with pleasure.

But the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, while citing a couple more meanings, doesn't give one related to anger. Maybe I'm wrong on this:-

Origen: Del inglés 'To flip [out]': 'Perder el control bajo los efectos de las drogas', 'Volverse loco'.

1. Estar bajo los efectos de una droga.
2. Estar maravillado o admirado. (La gente flipaba CON la música).
3. Estar asombrado o extrañado. (Flipamos al saber que fue monja).
4. Agradar o gustar mucho a alguien. (Me flipan las motos).
5. Drogarse.

THE GALLERY

This is a sign outside the toilets at the football ground on Saturday:-

Don't throw fag ends on the floor

Don't eat shelled dry fruit

Don't take animals inside

It made me smile anyway. The bit about not taking pets inside, I mean:-

THE CORRUPTION CAVALCADE

Again, no new ones today. Sorry. Bound to be a new case along very soon, though. Meanwhile, here's a bit on Rita Bárbera, the ex mayor of Valencia who's tried to cloak herself in Senate immunity from common-or-garden prosecution.