Spanish life
is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher
Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain.
Cataluña
- I think I've mentioned this village, which has threated to declare independence from an independent Cataluña.
- The (immaterially?) attractive leader of Ciudadans in the region says that she's hoping for a 'constitutionalist' alliance that would keep a pro-secession 'leftish' coalition out of power. We'll soon know with what success she 's wooed the ERC to her side, keeping them away from the PSOE.
Spain
- Spain naturally sees new opportunities for Madrid post Brexit. Some 'experts' suggest it has a far better chance of doing this than its competitors in other EU states.
- More here on corruption in the Spanish Football Association and its potential consequences for the nation. If not for those eventually found guilty of crimes.
- Some people seem to have no sense of humour. Far worse, they see the vandalism as evidence that there's no freedom of religion in Spain and that Christians are being 'persecuted'. As if anyone is stopping them from practising their faith. Albeit in reducing numbers.
- Namesake reader Colin cites this nice article on the FEVE train of Spain's northern coast. He wonders whether I've ever mentioned it. Well, yes. Here, here and here. Though not as fulsomely as the writer of the article deservedly does.
The EU
- Everyone will be aware of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The writer of the article below - whose right-of-centre views I don't always agree with - points out that: Far from proving the [intended] bulwark against extremism, the EU is facilitating its rise with neo-fascist parties gaining ground along with legitimate nationalist ones. She also gives a good summary of the perspective of we non-stupid, non-racist, non-dreaming-of-empire Brexiteers.
The Spanish Language
- Latest new word for me - Gandul: Idler, Slacker, Good-for-nothing. Of Arabic origin, it's said.
Galicia
- Galicia's president promises to do something about our very expensive north-south autopista - the AP9 - when the regional government - the Xunta - gains control over it from Madrid. Can't see this happening soon.
Pontevedra
- Would you believe that there's a Pontevedra ladies Gaelic football team? It's one of 8 in the region and is affiliated to the Irish Gaelic Athletics Association. Good for them.
- Pontevedra's rather more professional football team is having a bad season and is currently heading for relegation. This time last year, it was very much in contention for promotion, as I recall.
Finally
- The English poet, Stephen Spender (1909-1995) wrote in his diary in 1960 that: Time is really the greatest illusion. One believes in a future when one is young, and then, when one is older and achieves what one believed in, one no longer believes in it. And that is the great disillusionment. My response to that would be that, to stay young, one should concentrate on the future and keep planning for it. Works for me.
Today's Cartoon
THE ARTICLE
The EU is the engine
room for extremism: Melanie Phillips
The artist Damien Hirst
— he of the pickled animals — says he is horrified by Brexit.
Why? “It [Europe] is about freedom, flexibility, being able to
travel. I feel sad that my children won’t have that kind of access
and sad we would limit our options in that way. It doesn’t make any
sense. But it’s not really the people of Britain, is it? To choose
something as small-minded as that.”
So leaving the EU means
Britons will no longer be able to travel? How does Damien Hirst think
we get to the US, Australia, India or indeed anywhere in the world
that is not part of the EU?
Does he feel sad about
the un-British limiting of his options when he has to get a visa
to visit Mumbai or fill in an electronic travel authorisation form to
go to New York? Is the prospect of longer checks at passport control
at Frankfurt or Milan airports really so small-minded?
In In this oddly
irrational dread he is, however, far from alone. In the minds of many
Remainers, those who want to leave the EU hate Europe and Europeans.
The idea that one might love visiting Europe and like Europeans but
nevertheless not want to be ruled by them is apparently
incomprehensible. Britain is pulling up an existential drawbridge.
The Brexiteers’ desire to open up the world is deemed a retreat
into isolationism.
Behind all this lies a
curious paradox. While Brexiteers believe they are about to reclaim
their political identity, these Remainers feel that they are about to
lose theirs.
Such people often say
they feel not British but European. What, though, does that mean?
There is no European-ness, no European nation, no European identity.
The countries of Europe are all different.
What they seem to mean
is what they don’t feel, because their British identity
means little to them of value, or perhaps they even despise it.
For decades, our
intellectual class has told itself that Britain is an “imagined
community”, that its sense of itself as a nation is little more
than vainglorious mythologising and is ultimately meaningless.
This has gone hand in
hand with the orthodoxy that western culture and national identity
are bad because the culture is historically white and therefore
racist, and the nation spells nationalism, which means bigotry and
war.
National institutions
and laws must therefore be trumped by trans-national ones such as the
UN, international human rights law and, of course, the EU.
The foundational
premise of the European project was that, in the light of the rise of
fascism in the Thirties, Germany and the other nations of Europe were
never again to be trusted. So they had to lose their independent
power to serve their own national interests.
The The Brexit vote was
a revolt against this denial of sovereignty. Remainers, however,
refuse to believe this because, for them, sovereignty is an illusion.
Instead, they think that those who want out of the EU are, in David
Cameron’s infamous words, “fruitcakes, loonies and closet
racists”. As people opposed to the axiomatically enlightened EU
project, they have to be beyond the pale.
Yet far from standing
for freedom and flexibility, as Damien Hirst so fondly imagines, the
EU stands for the imposition of inflexible economic policies ruining
vulnerable member states such as Greece and the extinction of the
freedom to express national identity and culture through
democratically elected institutions.
Thus abandoned by the
entire political mainstream, the peoples of Europe have started
voting in droves for populist, nationalist and truly neo-fascist
parties.
In Austria the
far-right Freedom Party, founded in the Fifties by former Nazis, has
joined a governing coalition with the centre-right Austrian People’s
Party. The Freedom Party leader and now vice-chancellor
Heinz-Christian Strache has dismissed his youthful dalliance with
neo-Nazism as occurring when he was “stupid, naive and young”.
The Freedom Party first
joined the Austrian government in 2000. On that occasion, the EU
imposed diplomatic sanctions and demanded evidence that human rights
would be protected. This was because it was supposed to be the
guarantor that fascism would never again rise in Europe. Yet now the
Freedom Party is back governing Austria and the EU is silent. The
fact is that, far from proving the bulwark against extremism, it is
facilitating its rise with neo-fascist parties gaining ground along
with legitimate nationalist ones.
EU supporters assume
that the erosion of national boundaries and an ideology of enforced
multiculturalism will create the brotherhood of man. They don’t.
They create instead resentment, rage and extremism.
Freedom and flexibility
belong not to Europe but to Britain. Resolute independence of spirit
and the determination to resist foreign domination are what the
people of Britain are really all about.
People voted for Brexit
principally to restore, uphold and defend that culture and the
independent democratic institutions that created it. To Remainers for
whom that idea is as dead and rotten as Damien Hirst’s formaldehyde
shark, however, those who voted to leave the EU will remain forever
foreign.
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