Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Thoughts from Galicia; 28.6.17

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain. 

If you've arrived here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra, see my web page here.

Life in Spain:-
  • In one of the major corruption cases going through the Spanish courts, the PP party's ex-treasurer and all the big vegetables whom he's accused of giving brown envelopes to appear to have lost the power of speech. Except to insist that no one recalls anything about the illegal payments from corrupt but lucky government contractors. Perjury on a grand scale? Is anyone surprised??
  • More on driving offences . . .  Here's a useful list from The Local at last - the things you can be done for here in Spain. Not mentioned is wearing earphones - or possibly just one earphone - that aren't connected to anything. €200 and the loss of 2 or 3 points. But you can, as I've pointed out, have 4 passengers in your car all simultaneously shouting at each other. By way of 'conversation'
  • Just to prove my point about the difficulty the UK will have negotiating the Brexit with the world's largest committee, the Spanish government has again changed its tune and demanded that its claim to Gibraltar be met as part of the deal. You'd have thought it had enough problems with Cataluña without worrrying and alienating the Andalucians who work on The Rock. I imagine, though, that the EU technocrats will let Madrid's demands fall by the wayside. They have much larger fish to fry. Like the salvation of the EU and - even more important - their salaries and pensions.
  • I read this intriguing report and was left wondering whether Dali was bending in his grave . . . 
  • Good to know that the government is repealing the Franco-era law which dictated that folk who are deaf or blind needed to get a medical certificate saying they were fit to marry. Perhaps back then it was felt these poor people were less likely to believe in a benevolent Catholic god.
The Perils of Poor English:- This is a truly shocking tale of a poor Dutch girl who understood No jump to be Now jump when she was preparing to bungee jump off a bridge. The instructor is being prosecuted but what about the company which employed him? And which set up an illegal jump.

Interesting Spanish:
  1. Vettel y Hamilton se tienen ganas: Looks like it means they desire each other but actually means they're spoiling for a fight.
  2. Mojar la almeja: Well, mojar is 'to wet' and una almeja is a 1. A clam; and 2. A female body part. Together, they mean:-
  3. Echar un polvo. Or to have a shag.
Nutters Corner:- They'r not all evangelist pastors  . . . . An 80-year-old Buddhist woman forced the evacuation of 150 passengers on a Shanghai flight when she threw a handful of coins into the engine of the plane as she “prayed for safety.” 

The vast forest fire down in Portugal and the nearer one down in the Doña national park seem to have encouraged the Galician Xunta to implement the laws promulgated after our own annus horribilis in 2006. Most obviously ensuring there are none of the dreadful eucaplyptus trees within 50 metres of any human habitation. Not before time, of course.

Finally . . . . La Renta. For those affected by this . . . In the past, I've found it relatively easy to complete my income tax (Renta) return, using the reference the Hacienda mailed me to access its PADRE internet program. But this year they've changed the system and it now involves a Casilla(box) number from last year's declaration and then a reference number, an @Clave access process and a pin number. I was finally able to fill in a draft quickly enough but problems arose when I tried to submit the form for payment. The final page asked me for an NRC number and advised that this came from “Collaborating Entities.” None of the numbers I'd already got worked and the internet didn't provide an answer. Eventually - and I mean eventually - I discovered that, before the Hacienda would acept my declaración, I first had to make the initial payment via my bank and then add the NRC number they gave me. Only then would the Hacienda accept my declaración and deign to take the second payment later in the year. My bank said I could do this on the internet or by phone, but I couldn't see how to do this on their web page. So I did it by phone, handicapped as usual by the fact that Spaniards find it really difficult to talk slowly down when you ask them to. Having wasted several hours of my life, I'm now trying to console myself by repeating "All's well that ends well". Especially as I now don't have to go to the Hacienda office this morning to try to sort all this out. Hopefully, next year's process will be the same and, forewarned, I will sail through it. Maybe I'll even have found out by then how to make the first payment via my bank's web page.

Today's cartoon:-


As I fear I might have already posted that one . . . 

"It's one of those pointless tragedies which could have been easily prevented by safety precautions and plain common sense!"

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