Thoughts from Galicia: 28.10.17

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

• Cataluña1: Well, it didn't take long for President Rajoy to decide when would be the right time to hold elections in Cataluña, so as, he claims, to return the region to normality. They'll be in late December and you'd be a brave man or woman to predict the result. Or how much more trouble they're going to bring in their stormy wake. But, really, having mismanaged the Catalan challenge since he came to office in 2011, Rajoy had no other practical option. That said, it could blow up in his face – conceivably spectacularly - if the nationalists return to power because at least some non-secessionists now fall in behind them. Then what??
• Cataluña 2: Meanwhile, here, here and here (Don Quijones) are reports of what happened yesterday in Wonderland. As DQ puts it: The fracturing is not just economic though. It’s political, geographic, and social. Communities and families throughout Catalonia are being torn asunder by a conflict that was wholly avoidable, had Madrid shown the slightest interest in reaching a negotiated political settlement. Here's Ambrose Evans Pritchard on the subject: The self-styled Republic of Catalonia is scrambling to put together the economic machinery of a sovereign state after the momentous vote for independence in the Catalan parliament, but the quixotic venture faces a devastating counter-attack from the Spanish state within days. Large global banks and funds are no longer convinced that premier Mariano Rajoy can contain the crisis. It is one thing to invoke the nuclear option of Article 155 under the Spanish constitution: it is quite another to subdue the breakaway region. What I find particularly depressing is the TV pictures of thousands of jubilant – nay, delirious – young Catalans who think they've achieved something other than a futile act of rebellion. Reality will surely come as a brutal shock to them. And their elders, of course.
• Cataluña 3: So, Spain is on the Brink, as more than one newspaper puts it. True, but of what? No one really knows. Civil disobedience? Yes. Violence? Very probably. Deaths. Possibly. Civil war? Surely not.
• Cataluña 4: The Overview: As The Daily Telegraph says: This is a momentous occasion for Catalonia and for Spain. But it is also, without doubt, a tragic one. No matter what the final result of this crisis is, one of Europe’s most charismatic, charming, and beautiful nations will be irrevocably damaged. But I suspect it will be decades before anyone in the right-of-centre PP party accepts any responsibility for bringing Spain to this point. After all, no one has yet done this in respect of the 1936-39 civil war.
• Spain 1: It's an Even Madder World than You Thought: The council in Vall d’Aran, an area in eastern Catalonia, is to hold a meeting on Monday about leaving Catalonia.
• Spain 2: Unemployment continues to fall, but . . 
• Spain 3: The big corruption case against the PP (including Rajoy) continues to dawdle along.
• Spain 4: The country's self-employed entrepreneurs continue to see reductions in state-imposed barrier to their success. So, it's not all bad news . . .
• Spain 5: Yes, some good news.

All proselytising churches are at war with someone else apart from the Devil. What's odd about the Roman Catholic church – of which, I understand, I am still technically a member as far as it's concerned – is at war with itself. If you don't believe me, read this article on why Pope Frankie is 'the most hated man in the world'. It's not only Spaniards and Catalans who can paint themselves into corners . . .

Finally . . . In a penalty shoot-out in Thailand, the score was tied at 19-19, when this happened. If you don't find it hilarious, I have bad news for you. You are brain dead.

Today's Cartoon:-

Brexit progress . . .