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.
Cataluña
- Yes, The Constitutional Court has said that Sr P must appear in the Catalan parliament in person on Tuesday - not via a TV screen - and that, first, he must get a judge's permission to stand for election. The court declined to give an immediate decision on Madrid's claim that his candidature is illegal. That will take another 6 days, apparently. At least, I think that's what's happening.
Spain
- News of one of the oddest of Spain's numerous strange fiestas. The point is made therein that: In Spain, as in Poland, Jewishness is a protean concept. If like me, you were foxed by 'protean', it means 'readily taking on varied shapes, forms, or meanings. Exhibiting considerable variety or diversity'. Very true.
The USA
- Can you believe that Fart's lawyers – although convinced he won't be hung out to dry for collusion with Russia – are desperately trying to stop him testifying before Robert Mueller because they know he is “incapable of telling the truth” and fear he'll lay himself open to prosecution for perjury. Well, yes, I guess that really is credible. As someone has said: It’s not that he knowingly lies but that he occupies an alternate reality. What he says and believes is often different from the demonstrable facts of what happened. He creates his own truth. I once knew a woman like that. It takes time to realise (and believe) what's going on.
- In all fairness, I've added below Article 1, which explains why we'd be better off ignoring Fart. The logic doesn't apply to me, of course.
The UK
- The unhappy Richard North highlights the irony of the mad Hard Brexiteers ensuring there'll almost certainly be a long transition period under a Soft Brexit. This is because they've wilfully ignored the complexity of the consequences of any form of Brexit. As he puts it: Having contributed to screwing up any rational approach to Brexit, Rees Mogg and his pals have contributed to the situation where, despite leaving the EU, we will remain essentially still in it. You couldn't make it up. Little chance for a Common Sense Brexit now, it seems. But I haven't completely abandoned hope.
- Talking about common sense . . . For those in the UK watching events around that sleazy Presidents' dinner – possibly with a sense of disbelief – Here's one (female) commentator's explanation for it: The furore was predictable in that our[British] society has become grotesquely overheated about sex. The great and the good seems to have lost track of what matters, such that public life is now all about showing how much you deplore male lasciviousness. . . . In the wake of the now farcical #metoo and #timesup campaigns, being seen as very cross indeed about sexual harassment has become the most important thing in the world. She goes on to excoriate those virtue-signalling charities which have returned donations needed by, inter alia, very sick kids, ending with the peroration: When children’s lives are at stake, I can’t help but feel that we’re starting to pay a very real, and tragic price, for this madness. See the full Article 2 below.
The English Language
- I came across this neologism yesterday: It is chalk full of plenty of other helpful information. I'm guessing the writer meant 'chock full' and wonder how commonplace this error is.
Social Media
- A surprising renegade explains here why Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple need to be broken up. Read it and join the revolution.
Galicia
- Galician travellers are now said to comprise 11% of those using Oporto airport down in Portugal, which is lower than I expected. At dinner on Friday night, I asked Galician friends when they thought the Xunta would see sense and amalgamate our 3 underperforming airports into one useful international facility. The answer was essentially the 12th of Never. As I say, Spanish 'localism' at its very best/worst.
- Gallegos represent 6% of the 309 people currently being tried for corruption in Spain. Which, as it happens, is exactly the proportion of our population to that of Spain as a whole. Mostly politicians and civil servants, I guess.
Pontevedra
- Another of our daily beggars haunting the city centre is an old guy who's bent over on 2 sticks, bearing on his chest a sign that compensates for the fact his speech is incomprehendible. He used to drag a puppy around with him but stopped the day after I'd told him I'd seen him hitting it with one of his sticks. Yesterday, I was told he'd been seen outside the dog pound, borrowing puppies for his sympathy shtick. This fits with my suspicions but, again, could be an urban myth.
Finally
- Talking to my mother last night about her childhood in her parents' pub in Liverpool, I was surprised to hear her mention the word rotunda. This means 'roundabout/circle' in Spanish and I've been known to go on about how local drivers (mis)negotiate them. But my mother was referring to a cinema. Or 'picture house', as she called it. When I told her of the modern meaning of the word, she told me that, yes, it had been on the side of a roundabout. This is the theatre Google threw up but I'm not sure it's the one my mother talked of.
- Talking of past times . . . Yesterday I was reading of a famous English anti-Semite of the 1930s. Here he is referring to some outrageous statement he'd made at a public meeting. I wonder if it reminds any reader of the same person who occurred to me: I said that I had many friends who were Jews, and some I admired tremendously, but that I regretted that in this Communist movement there were many Jews. There was no intention of an attack on the Jews as such, but a reference to the component influences in the Communist movement. No one abhors the treatment of the Jews in certain countries more than I do. No?? What if I add: I am the least anti-Semitic person there is? Or change 'Jews' for 'Blacks' and 'antisemitic' for 'racist'?
- Who TF is Bruno Mars?
Today's Cartoon
ARTICLE 1
Why waste your energy
on raging at Trump?: Clare Foges
The anger directed at the US president could be better used to further causes closer to home
In Great Expectations Pip loves Estella “against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement”. Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof rues that living with someone you love is lonely “if the one that you love doesn’t love you”. Byron wailed, “it be my lot/To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still”. We have heard much on the agony and indignity of unrequited love but what of the agony and indignity of unrequited hate? What of the corrosive internal curdling when the object of our loathing not only fails to loathe us back but feels nothing for us or our opinions but indifference?
For Pip, Maggie and Byron we can substitute every Briton who last night fulminated, raged and tweeted through Donald Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan, and who have made hating the man their daily hobby over the past 18 months. With some weariness the president confirmed what we may have guessed: when it comes to the endless vituperation from his British critics, he just doesn’t care. In his own words, “I don’t care. I don’t care. It’s just one of those things, I don’t say anything. You know why? I don’t care.” The hate is unrequited. The hate barely registers as a blip on the radar. Yes, he may have been acting cool to preserve his pride. Yet ultimately, why should he care? It would be understandable if he was reluctant to visit Britain if he expected a hostile reception, but would missing the trip keep him awake at night? We are not, after all, the ones who will pass judgment on his presidency at the ballot box in less than three years’ time. We are not his electorate.
Sometimes it can seem that large chunks of the British public forget this. I know people who follow American politics more closely than our own — who moan at the latest filibuster, vilify Sean Hannity of Fox News and refer to Capitol Hill as though it is down the road. They have obsessively followed Trump v Comey, Trump v Bannon, Trump v Mueller. The presidential preoccupation has infected our media coverage, with American politics taking up more and more airtime. Over the past year I have marvelled at the number of times largely irrelevant machinations thousands of miles away have made the news here.
Of course, we all enjoy the spectacle of American politics. Compared with the present state of dishwater-dull Westminster, Washington is Hollywood. It is Air Force One, helicopters on the White House lawn, helmet-haired news anchors with machine-gun delivery. American leaders can give spine-tingling, sweeping speeches about the winds of change blowing from the mountains to the deserts, in a way that British leaders can’t: “The winds of change are blowing from Accrington to Bournemouth!”
So I upbraid no one for enjoying the soap opera of US politics. What palls is the British hate affair with Donald Trump. It palls because Trump-haters have convinced themselves that they are genuinely contributing to a better world. By retweeting some presidential blooper and adding a satirical “Sad!”, they can feel a buzz of self-righteousness: I am taking on the enemy of the world! I am on the side of the angels against Bogeyman No 1!
The truth is that it is all the most monumental waste of time. It is so circular. It goes nowhere. The tweeters are preaching to the long-ago converted. Yes, those across the Atlantic who protest and campaign against Trump might be able to affect what the president thinks and does but people in Britain tweeting, ranting or rioting against him won’t make a blind bit of difference.
What have the 1,863,708 signatures on a petition to deny Trump a state visit achieved? Nothing but the slight cooling of relations with a nation that will be a vital trading partner after Brexit. Our collected outrage might force Theresa May to make some mealy-mouthed hint at her displeasure with Trump (as with the Britain First retweets) but this, sadly, is unlikely to move the dial on anything in Washington.
The Trump-haters could argue that international condemnation might at least awaken the senses of the American people and make them reconsider their options at the next election. Somehow I doubt it. Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone instincts don’t spring from nowhere but from deep in the American psyche. Many in America believe much of the world hates their country and are understandably defensive about it.
If there are mobs on Whitehall hurling eggs at the presidential motorcade, then sure, east coast liberals may think, “I told you so!”, but for those in the rust belt it might be taken as evidence that, finally, here is a president whose willingness to put America first has earned him enemies around the world. Indeed, Trump often seems to welcome the vilification as a badge of honour. On New Year’s Day he wished his “enemies” and “haters” a “Happy and Healthy New Year”. The tweeters and petition-signers in Britain are playing into his hands.
So, Trump-haters: lose no more hours, days or weeks in railing against a man whose actions you cannot influence and whose voters you will not convert. Unfollow him on Twitter. Release yourself from the daily updates. Expend your energy where it can make a difference: campaigning to change policy at home, getting as interested in your backyard as you are in the Beltway, raising awareness of causes you can affect. Why spend the next few years hysterically, hyperbolically hating the democratically elected leader of another country? It is someone else’s fight. It is a waste of our time.
The anger directed at the US president could be better used to further causes closer to home
In Great Expectations Pip loves Estella “against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement”. Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof rues that living with someone you love is lonely “if the one that you love doesn’t love you”. Byron wailed, “it be my lot/To strongly, wrongly, vainly love thee still”. We have heard much on the agony and indignity of unrequited love but what of the agony and indignity of unrequited hate? What of the corrosive internal curdling when the object of our loathing not only fails to loathe us back but feels nothing for us or our opinions but indifference?
For Pip, Maggie and Byron we can substitute every Briton who last night fulminated, raged and tweeted through Donald Trump’s interview with Piers Morgan, and who have made hating the man their daily hobby over the past 18 months. With some weariness the president confirmed what we may have guessed: when it comes to the endless vituperation from his British critics, he just doesn’t care. In his own words, “I don’t care. I don’t care. It’s just one of those things, I don’t say anything. You know why? I don’t care.” The hate is unrequited. The hate barely registers as a blip on the radar. Yes, he may have been acting cool to preserve his pride. Yet ultimately, why should he care? It would be understandable if he was reluctant to visit Britain if he expected a hostile reception, but would missing the trip keep him awake at night? We are not, after all, the ones who will pass judgment on his presidency at the ballot box in less than three years’ time. We are not his electorate.
Sometimes it can seem that large chunks of the British public forget this. I know people who follow American politics more closely than our own — who moan at the latest filibuster, vilify Sean Hannity of Fox News and refer to Capitol Hill as though it is down the road. They have obsessively followed Trump v Comey, Trump v Bannon, Trump v Mueller. The presidential preoccupation has infected our media coverage, with American politics taking up more and more airtime. Over the past year I have marvelled at the number of times largely irrelevant machinations thousands of miles away have made the news here.
Of course, we all enjoy the spectacle of American politics. Compared with the present state of dishwater-dull Westminster, Washington is Hollywood. It is Air Force One, helicopters on the White House lawn, helmet-haired news anchors with machine-gun delivery. American leaders can give spine-tingling, sweeping speeches about the winds of change blowing from the mountains to the deserts, in a way that British leaders can’t: “The winds of change are blowing from Accrington to Bournemouth!”
So I upbraid no one for enjoying the soap opera of US politics. What palls is the British hate affair with Donald Trump. It palls because Trump-haters have convinced themselves that they are genuinely contributing to a better world. By retweeting some presidential blooper and adding a satirical “Sad!”, they can feel a buzz of self-righteousness: I am taking on the enemy of the world! I am on the side of the angels against Bogeyman No 1!
The truth is that it is all the most monumental waste of time. It is so circular. It goes nowhere. The tweeters are preaching to the long-ago converted. Yes, those across the Atlantic who protest and campaign against Trump might be able to affect what the president thinks and does but people in Britain tweeting, ranting or rioting against him won’t make a blind bit of difference.
What have the 1,863,708 signatures on a petition to deny Trump a state visit achieved? Nothing but the slight cooling of relations with a nation that will be a vital trading partner after Brexit. Our collected outrage might force Theresa May to make some mealy-mouthed hint at her displeasure with Trump (as with the Britain First retweets) but this, sadly, is unlikely to move the dial on anything in Washington.
The Trump-haters could argue that international condemnation might at least awaken the senses of the American people and make them reconsider their options at the next election. Somehow I doubt it. Trump’s isolationist, go-it-alone instincts don’t spring from nowhere but from deep in the American psyche. Many in America believe much of the world hates their country and are understandably defensive about it.
If there are mobs on Whitehall hurling eggs at the presidential motorcade, then sure, east coast liberals may think, “I told you so!”, but for those in the rust belt it might be taken as evidence that, finally, here is a president whose willingness to put America first has earned him enemies around the world. Indeed, Trump often seems to welcome the vilification as a badge of honour. On New Year’s Day he wished his “enemies” and “haters” a “Happy and Healthy New Year”. The tweeters and petition-signers in Britain are playing into his hands.
So, Trump-haters: lose no more hours, days or weeks in railing against a man whose actions you cannot influence and whose voters you will not convert. Unfollow him on Twitter. Release yourself from the daily updates. Expend your energy where it can make a difference: campaigning to change policy at home, getting as interested in your backyard as you are in the Beltway, raising awareness of causes you can affect. Why spend the next few years hysterically, hyperbolically hating the democratically elected leader of another country? It is someone else’s fight. It is a waste of our time.
ARTICLE 2
The Presidents Club
furore shows how overheated about sex we have become: Zoe
Strimpel
I don’t have children so I can’t be 100 per cent sure. But I’m pretty sure that were my child gravely ill and in need of costly treatment, my main concern would be whether she or he was getting the best treatment – not the niceties of how the hospital funded that treatment.
If my child’s life was in danger, I can confidently say that if the hospital needed more money to provide the best treatment (are there any state-funded hospitals that don’t?), I’d damn well want it to find that money by whatever means.
The nation’s leading children’s hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), has shown that it holds a different view.
Between 2009 and 2016, GOSH received £530,000 from organisers of Presidents Club, the now-disgraced (and shut-down) all-male fundraising dinner. But last week, as the sex scandal that destroyed the annual gala gathered force, GOSH melodramatically sent back all the monies raised by it – as did, among others, the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, which had accepted the pledge of £650,000 to fund a high-dependency space within a new intensive care unit, whose construction is already under way.
In my view, the only plausible checks on funds where children’s lives are at stake are murder, torture, human trafficking or any other systematic brutality. The Presidents Club money hadn’t been made through any of these. It had, rather, come from the overstimulated loins of 300 podgy businessmen at a dinner perving over 150 hostesses paid to parade around in short dresses, corset belts and high heels.
Since the sleazy dinner hit the headlines last week, with tales of the kind of bad behaviour that one might expect to accompany such an event, the response has been both bizarre and utterly predicable.
Bizarre, in that an alien visiting Britain for a day might wonder why a dinner in the ballroom of a posh central London hotel in which nobody died or was wounded or even violently attacked was being treated with the seriousness of, say, a hostage situation (if the alien knew about hostages) or the collapse of a government (if the alien knew about governments).
The furore was predictable in that our society has become grotesquely overheated about sex. The great and the good seems to have lost track of what matters, such that public life is now all about showing how much you deplore male lasciviousness.
To me, it seems clear that the charities’ refusal of the Presidents Club money was not about women’s rights in any real sense. It was about reputation management and image alone.
Not even the children who could benefit from the donations won the day here; a smarter approach, surely, would have been to demand a doubling of the donation. As a friend sensibly put it: “Why not hit the Presidents Club men where it hurts? Their wallets.”
Thankfully, money is not all to be lost. At the end of last week, the resourceful City chief Dame Helena Morrissey announced an alternative glamorous fundraising event to recoup the money sent back – this one with a 50:50 gender split.
What I find disconcerting is the way charities such as GOSH seem to be acting through vogue or fear, rather than sense. In 2016, 60 charities received donations from the President’s Club. The money was perfectly fine then; it seemed to be generally accepted that sexy ladies paid to be sexy have always made (and no doubt will always make) the City go round. But in the wake of the now farcical #metoo and #timesup campaigns, being seen as very cross indeed about sexual harassment has become the most important thing in the world.
The grim and ironic results of this obsession were neatly illustrated by reports that a small charity felt it had no choice but to return its £100,000 Presidents Club donation – the result being that it is to cut three members of staff.
The truth is, I struggle to see what all the fuss is about. Clearly, many of the men behaved boorishly – as one might expect of an all-bloke shindig – and those who crossed the line seriously should pay a price. But we seem to forget that for the hostesses who chose to take this job – skimpy dress code included – non-violent lechery may have been an occupational hazard they deemed worthwhile for the money.
It’s all very well for the political elite, such as Margot James, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, to drawl with disgust on Newsnight, as she did on Wednesday night, about the ghastliness of the “women paraded around in the sort-of paid-for hostess role”. Would Ms James have preferred them not to be paid?
Run! Hide! The predatory male, seemingly coming to a dinner or a party near you (warning: he may well be wearing a suit…), means that the great and the good must scramble to distance themselves from anything that looks seedy. Let them. But when children’s lives are at stake, I can’t help but feel that we’re starting to pay a very real, and tragic price, for this madness.
I don’t have children so I can’t be 100 per cent sure. But I’m pretty sure that were my child gravely ill and in need of costly treatment, my main concern would be whether she or he was getting the best treatment – not the niceties of how the hospital funded that treatment.
If my child’s life was in danger, I can confidently say that if the hospital needed more money to provide the best treatment (are there any state-funded hospitals that don’t?), I’d damn well want it to find that money by whatever means.
The nation’s leading children’s hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH), has shown that it holds a different view.
Between 2009 and 2016, GOSH received £530,000 from organisers of Presidents Club, the now-disgraced (and shut-down) all-male fundraising dinner. But last week, as the sex scandal that destroyed the annual gala gathered force, GOSH melodramatically sent back all the monies raised by it – as did, among others, the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, which had accepted the pledge of £650,000 to fund a high-dependency space within a new intensive care unit, whose construction is already under way.
In my view, the only plausible checks on funds where children’s lives are at stake are murder, torture, human trafficking or any other systematic brutality. The Presidents Club money hadn’t been made through any of these. It had, rather, come from the overstimulated loins of 300 podgy businessmen at a dinner perving over 150 hostesses paid to parade around in short dresses, corset belts and high heels.
Since the sleazy dinner hit the headlines last week, with tales of the kind of bad behaviour that one might expect to accompany such an event, the response has been both bizarre and utterly predicable.
Bizarre, in that an alien visiting Britain for a day might wonder why a dinner in the ballroom of a posh central London hotel in which nobody died or was wounded or even violently attacked was being treated with the seriousness of, say, a hostage situation (if the alien knew about hostages) or the collapse of a government (if the alien knew about governments).
The furore was predictable in that our society has become grotesquely overheated about sex. The great and the good seems to have lost track of what matters, such that public life is now all about showing how much you deplore male lasciviousness.
To me, it seems clear that the charities’ refusal of the Presidents Club money was not about women’s rights in any real sense. It was about reputation management and image alone.
Not even the children who could benefit from the donations won the day here; a smarter approach, surely, would have been to demand a doubling of the donation. As a friend sensibly put it: “Why not hit the Presidents Club men where it hurts? Their wallets.”
Thankfully, money is not all to be lost. At the end of last week, the resourceful City chief Dame Helena Morrissey announced an alternative glamorous fundraising event to recoup the money sent back – this one with a 50:50 gender split.
What I find disconcerting is the way charities such as GOSH seem to be acting through vogue or fear, rather than sense. In 2016, 60 charities received donations from the President’s Club. The money was perfectly fine then; it seemed to be generally accepted that sexy ladies paid to be sexy have always made (and no doubt will always make) the City go round. But in the wake of the now farcical #metoo and #timesup campaigns, being seen as very cross indeed about sexual harassment has become the most important thing in the world.
The grim and ironic results of this obsession were neatly illustrated by reports that a small charity felt it had no choice but to return its £100,000 Presidents Club donation – the result being that it is to cut three members of staff.
The truth is, I struggle to see what all the fuss is about. Clearly, many of the men behaved boorishly – as one might expect of an all-bloke shindig – and those who crossed the line seriously should pay a price. But we seem to forget that for the hostesses who chose to take this job – skimpy dress code included – non-violent lechery may have been an occupational hazard they deemed worthwhile for the money.
It’s all very well for the political elite, such as Margot James, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, to drawl with disgust on Newsnight, as she did on Wednesday night, about the ghastliness of the “women paraded around in the sort-of paid-for hostess role”. Would Ms James have preferred them not to be paid?
Run! Hide! The predatory male, seemingly coming to a dinner or a party near you (warning: he may well be wearing a suit…), means that the great and the good must scramble to distance themselves from anything that looks seedy. Let them. But when children’s lives are at stake, I can’t help but feel that we’re starting to pay a very real, and tragic price, for this madness.
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