Thoughts from Galicia: 24.8.17

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.

My usual Thursday morning thanks to Lenox of Business Over Tapas for some of these items. Though obviously not the first ones!

Life in Spain:-

• Don't let anyone try to convince you that fines are not being imposed by the Tax Office (the Hacienda) under the infamous 2012 Modelo 720 statute on overseas assets which the EU has pronounced illegal. I am still wrestling with them over a fine imposed in 2016 in respect of 2012. Yesterday, I received a letter claiming they'd sent me a letter in March this year advising of another €375 fine for that year, despite my already having paid 2 amounts last year. I have no evidence of receipt of this. So will I will today waste more time delivering a letter of protest to the local office. Without much confidence they will revise anything. Worse, they will then threaten me with an 'overcharge', if I don't pay the amount demanded by 5 September. If they reply at all, that is.  
• By the way, the payment document attached to the letter is dated exactly a month earlier, on 23 July. As happened also last year. One is forced to conclude the Hacienda sends out demands - justified or not - during the month they know virtually everyone is on holiday. Thus maximising the chances you'll miss the deadline date.
• Is it any wonder that it's reported that thousands of Brits have sold up and left the south of Spain, rather than be caught by this stupidly vicious law, aimed essentially at defrauding locals? 
• La Ser reports that, in the 3 years since the end of La Crisis, the cost of buying property has risen 7 times faster than wages. Or 14% against only 2%. 
• The relatives of Franco are reported to own a vast array of properties, via dozens of front companies. Here in Galicia, there's a tussle going on over one particular palace and grounds which our Xunta wants to be open to the public. Said Franco relatives have effectively - and arrogantly - told the regional government to f***k off and leave them alone with their ill-gotten gains.

Here's Don Quijones on hardening attitudes on Brexit in the UK. I seem to have missed this a week ago, before DQ went on holiday . . .  The situation remains that no one yet has any real idea of how the negotiations will turn out. One gets the impression that both sides - but particularly the British - are making the expected concessions.

As you leave Vigo on the old N550 road I mentioned on Wednesday, you pass this eyesore on the city outskirts. You can also see it from the AP9 running parallel to the N550 at this point. It's been there for at least the 17 years I've been going to Vigo and it - and other similar examples - surely help to give the Galicia region its fame for feismo - ugliness. One wonders why nothing is done about it.

Finally . . . I saw an interesting TV program on Romanians in the UK yesterday. But was surprised to see that it had been filmed in cooperation with the Romainian Cultural Institute. Anti-Brexiteers, presumably.

Today's cartoon

Door!