Road deaths in Spain have declined enormously since the dawn
of the century but saw a slight uptick of 3% in 2016. Here in
Galicia, the increase – at 16% - was higher than in most regions of
Spain, though in the Pontevedra province deaths continued to decline.
Cue reduction in our insurance premiums?? Overall, the Galicia total
of 107 in 2016 compares with 380 in 2000.
I'll
be travelling to Vigo by train
later this morning. As with most trains in modern Spain – contrast,
say, 1971 - it'll be very new and will arrive – more or less – on
time. Above all it'll be cheap. In contrast, over in the UK
rail-farers are said to be paying 6 times more than for their tickets
than in the rest of Europe. Which is justifiably described here as
scandalous. Whether it justifies a return to the execrable public
service of a phoenix-like British Rail is another question. Few doubt
that the UK network is now much better than it was – with the
possible exception of Southern Rail – but this has certainly come
at a price for the consumer. Elsewhere, of course, it's the taxpayers
who pay for the subsidised state-provided services. Which is clearly
less painful. At least for those who benefit from this largesse from
non-rail travellers across the country. Looking back, at the time of
union strife in the UK, rail privatisation seemed like a very good
idea. But, if the government were starting with a clean sheet today,
my guess is it'd go for the state-supplied service. But this doesn't
look like even a remote possibility right now.
Galicia's 3 'international' airports in Santiago, Vigo and La Coruña might not be as
competitive as, say, the nearby Portuguese facility in Oporto but
they're all among the top 30 in the world when it comes to
punctuality. Which just might, of course, have something to do with
the density of operations. After all, Cardiff in Wales comes in at no
4.
In the rest of Spain, it's commonly believed it rains every day here
in Galicia. Well, not quite. It's true that – up in La Coruña –
it fell on 50% of the days last year but here in Pontevedra it was a mere 40%.
And mostly in winter, of course. When, as I like to tell my British
visitors, it rains here more than it does in Manchester. In contrast,
Cádiz got rain on only 110 days last year and Malaga only a piffling
65. No wonder it's a dull brown down there. Though the people are quite colourful.
Something else I consummately failed to make the acquaintance of in
2016 was a film called La La Land. Which
is a musical, I understand. This is a bit of a shame as I'm a sucker
for good musicals.
Today's cartoon . . .
Finally
. . . I continue to receive very genuine-looking emails which purport
to be from Virgin Media about an account I don't have. Previously,
they didn't use any surname when addressing me but now they do. A
wrong one, as it happens. I've now started to receive messages from a site called
Arab Dating Team, something else to which I haven't subscribed - not
being an Arab. But I'm wary of clicking any link on a page I don't
know or trust, so can't unsubscribe. I can only designate it spam.
Meanwhile, it allows me to segue neatly into this (very) potted
history of the Moorish occupation of Spain, which began in May 711
and ended – after 781 years - on January 2, 1492. A fraction over
525 years ago.
2 January
1492: The end of Moorish Spain and Islamic rule in mainland Europe.
In May
711, Tariq ibn Ziyad led an army of around 7,000 Syrians, Yemenis,
and Berbers north from Morocco. The Islamic invasion of Spain
had begun. He landed his forces at Gibraltar. (The name Gibraltar
comes from jebel at-Tariq, meaning Tariq’s rock.) Heading
inland, he found the Visigothic rulers fighting a civil war. Local
Jewish populations and the faction supporting the dead king Witiza
joined Tariq, and by July he had captured Toledo, the Spanish
capital, and then Córdoba. In 712, Musa ibn Nusayr – Tariq’s
boss, who was fresh from conquering the Maghreb for the Umayyads in
Damascus – crossed from Morocco with another 18,000 men, and soon
Tariq and Musa had taken two thirds of Spain. By 720 the Iberian
Peninsula was under Islamic control.
Moorish
rule in the region went through several phases. The heyday came in
the tenth century, with the civilisation built around the Caliphate
of Córdoba, of which the great mosque is a spectacular legacy. There
were numerous attempts by Christian armies to retake the lost
territory, but the Reconquista did not start to bite until
combined forces from Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and Portugal scored a
decisive victory at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.
As the
tide turned, one by one the Moorish areas started to fall. The
Balearics in 1235, Córdoba in 1236, Valencia in 1238, Seville in
1248, Faro in 1249. Islamic territory was eventually confined to a
small segment of the south, in al-Andalus. Finally, in 1469,
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile – los
Reyes Católicos – married and united their kingdoms, sparking
a new phase in the reconquest, culminating in the capture of Granada
on 2 January 1492.
Muhammad
XII, the last Moorish ruler of Andalucía, was spared. As he gazed
down at the Alhambra Palace from Puerto del Sospiro del Moro (Pass of
the Moor’s Sigh), he wept, and went into exile. An Islamic
civilisation that had lasted 781 years in mainland Europe had come to
an end.
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