Spanish
life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain.
News
from the Portuguese Camino: Very little today, in fact. A short
walk of 12km from Barcelos to the very lovely town on Ponte de
Lima. The only incident of note - in an otherwise uneventful day - was
being sent for the keys of our hotel door to a café nearby
which prefers to remain incognito. In other words, there was no
indication anywhere on the front of the café as to its name. Which was a tad confusing.
But I did
learn than Ponte de Lima technically qualifies as a city but
prefers to remain a town, so that it can continue to claim that it's
Portugal's 'oldest town'.
As for
Spain . . . The regular themes:-
Corruption:
Here's Don Quijones on the latest scandals. As he writes: President's
Rajoy’s only response to the plethora of scandals affecting his
party – Gürtel, Púnica, Lezo and more – is to travel abroad
(he’s currently in Brazil), keep mum about domestic troubles, and
offer speeches about the importance of maintaining economic
growth and job creation in Spain.
One person
who has so far escaped prosecution is the woman once dubbed Spain's
Maggie Thatcher – Esperanza Aguirre, the ex Presidenta of
the Madrid region. She's just tearfully resigned as head of the PP
party in Madrid on the grounds that she was duped and ' betrayed' by
her corrupt lieutenants. Suffice to say that not many people in Spain
will believe that she has clean hands.
The
Spanish Economy: The macro growth number that I regularly
contrast with micro reality might not, it seems, be all that it's
cracked up to be. A group of Spanish economists has written to the
Eurogroup
President urging him to probe the Spanish national accounts, which
they claim have been manipulated by Spain’s National Statistics
Office.
Unemployment:
Numbers – as long suspected – might not be that reliable here
either. Especially down in very corrupt Andalucia.
Spain's
Banks: How safe are they really? Read DQ on this here.
Lunatic
Prosecutions: Here's news of the latest one.
Beautiful
Spain: A recent list from The Local which might well have
appeared previously under another guise.
Galicia:
An equine oddity.
Today's
Cartoon: A rather vicious one from The Times, pointing up the
hopeless performances of Britain's Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn,
at Prime Minister's Questions Time.
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