Thoughts from Galicia, Spain: 22.1.18

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.

Spain

• Altea is a village on the Costa Brava which someone thinks is reminiscent of Santorini inItaly. Maybe. I've yet to visit either of them. 
• Courtesy, this time, of the The Sunday Times, here's the same (rather unmissable) person's list of 10 of Spain's 'hidden gems'. You can see the details here.

1. Villajoyosa
2. Ronda
3. Playa de la Granadella
4. Altea
5. Juzcar
6. Portsaplaya
7. The pink lake of Torrevieja
8. Valencia's City of Arts and Science
9. Calp
10. Zahara

Blimey. I've yet to do 9 of them.

• I might have cited this before but, if you're confessionally taken short here in Spain, you can get relevant info from this (not a spoof) site.

The USA

• Below is a short review from a Republican of Fart's first year. Well, worth a read. The author notes that The elite’s mewling hatred, laced with notes of genuine panic, is taken as a sign that Trump is doing well. This ties in with the view that we should stop mocking Fart since this merely strengthens the support of his voting base. Well, if I thought there was the remotest chance of any of his fans reading this blog, I'd certainly stop. But, as it is . . .

The Spanish Language

• In yesterday's Voz de Galicia, there was a full page dedicated to a private school in Vigo. Admittedly the text was different from the normal. But only slightly. I noted there was the word Remitido in the top right corner and this translates as 'Paid insert'. Another example, then, of briefer castellano. But, hang on . . . Only one word but 4 syllables, against 3 in English. 

Social Media

• Trust in social media has fallen to a record low as Britons lose faith in companies such as Facebook and Twitter, according to research. Fewer than a quarter of people trust the technology and publishing giants. Most Britons believe that such companies are doing too little to address extremism, tackle cyberbullying or prevent illegal use of their platforms, the world’s largest study of trust has found. Sixty-four per cent want social media companies to face tighter regulation. 
• Meanwhile . . . No sooner do I quit Facebook than Mr Zuckeberg says they're changing their strategy so as to reduce irritation for and/or harm to FB's customers. Columnist John Naughton is rightly sceptical and points here to the speciousness of this claim. His final comment:- In the end, it’s just an advertising company pretending to be a social service, and no amount of corporate cant can disguise that awkward fact.

Galicia

• Private health care is not much of an an issue here. Even left-leaning civil servants have their own medical insurance scheme. And I've never heard a hint of an accusation that the public health service is being privatised, either openly or 'by stealth'. So, I wasn't surprised to read that the split of per capita annual expenditure on healthcare here is €1382 public and €534 private – 72% and 28%.
• Wanna buy an entire village for peanuts? There are 3,677 pueblos here without a single resident. Up from 1,561 as recently as 2012.
• The total of visitors to our region was only 2.8m in 2001 but rose to 5.0m last year. For 2018, the forecast is 5.3m, with many of the additional tourists being 'foreigners'. But I'm never sure whether this means real foreigners or just folk from other Spanish regions. And Cataluña.

Finally

• The interview I cited yesterday has become an internet sensation, with extremists from both the crazy Left and the insane Right using it in celebration of perceived vindication. The estimable Matthew D'Ancona takes issue with all of them here. 

Today's Cartoon

Pardon, M'sieur, this table is reserved.

THE ARTICLE

[The highlighting is mine, of course]

One year on, Trump's revolution is unfinished – but too many still hope his voters will just go away: Molly Kiniry, a researcher at the LegatumInstitute 

The president has given a megaphone to the 'forgotten people'. What happens if he does not improve their lives?

It feels fitting that the United States federal government has shuttered itself on the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s inauguration. The president has brought chaos to Washington, constantly creating unnecessary crises for himself and his party. He has upended the conventions of a role from which Americans traditionally expect not only gravity but also a kind of heroism.

For those who believe that governing should be a serious and sober business, each week brings fresh humiliation and opprobrium, cascading into a unified strain: “This cannot be happening.” But it is happening, and while we should not fall into the false complacency of a “new normal” we should at a minimum accept that this is reality. Trump was elected by people who were concerned about the direction in which the country was perceived to be moving, and on the whole, that base still backs him a year into his term, opprobrium be damned.

Every revelation of misconduct brings hope for some on the Left that Trump’s base will disappear. But that base has only been emboldened by the instinctual contempt of the “liberal metropolitan elite”. Said elite’s mewling hatred, laced with notes of genuine panic, is taken as a sign that Trump is doing well. Liberal hand-wringing has become a proxy for success in his stated mission to forcibly re-chisel Washington into something which better resembles the sentiments of middle America.

Insofar as he was asked to provide an Oval Office-sized megaphone for their grievances, Trump has done well by his base. But permanent revolution remains out of reach. The legislative process is not amenable to Trumpism. Nor is the federal bureaucracy, which has decided to sit quietly for four years and plan how to undo the damage later. While Trump has managed to get Neil Gorsuch onto the Supreme Court and passed long-awaited tax reform, there has been little progress on the most promising aspect of his brand of populism: rewriting the rules of the game so that everyone in America has a fair shot at success.

Whenever he does leave office, be it in three or seven years, I doubt that he will have accomplished everything promised in his inaugural address. On that day, after years of neglect, Trump looked out onto his rain-soaked, questionably-sized crowdand declared that “everyone is listening to you now.” Those feelings of hard-won recognition are likely to dissipate pretty quickly once his base realises that their best shot at radical change has rode off into the sunset of a millionaire’s retirement.

And then what? We cannot expect those who found faith in Trump’s message to go back into the shadows, nor should we want them to. They are fellow Americans, with as much right to be heard and respected as the rest of us. It is a national tragedy that so many people have felt isolated from their government – supposedly by and for the people – for this long.

But the mainstream parties do not seem to be a good conduit for their discontent. The Democratic and Republican parties re-baptised themselves several decades ago as the solemn defenders of a set of values and ideals. Trump, in contrast, has sworn fealty to people. That is why his contradictions, lies, otherwise ruinous personal history and paltry legislative accomplishments matter so little: he is still, at the heart of it, outwardly loyal to, and respectful of, his base.

It is also why his fit within the GOP has been so uncomfortable for the rest of us; he does not share our ideal of a government limited to protect our sacrosanct freedoms, each the inheritance of our immigrant forebears who fled from political and religious and economic persecution elsewhere.

To the extent that Trump has his own philosophy, it sits uneasily inside the Republican Party; nor, I believe, could it ever thrive in the modern Democratic Party. Should it survive the cynicism which this administration is likely to produce in its adherents, this strain of political thought may well jump the bounds of our political system to form a viable third party.

One year on from Trump’s inauguration, I remain deeply committed to the idea that my humpty-dumpty country can be put back together again. The president may himself become part of that solution; for now, he is simply proof that there is a serious problem. His first real accomplishment was alerting the rest of us to the existence of these unhappy compatriots.

Over the next three years, I hope that he finds a way of creating the more equitable society which he has described, and that the rest of us find a way of listening to those who believe that only one man can hear them.