Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
- Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain.
CAMINO NOTES
- There was much confusion on leaving El Puerto de Santa Maria yesterday, as all 3 Spanish texts consulted cited the street of Pintor Juan Miguel Sanchez, instead of the correct name Prior J M Sanchez. To make matters worse, should you succeed in finding the street, the plaque on the wall says it's called Concejal Juan Bocanegra Muñoz
- Fiestas can be a problem for pilgrims on a camino, especially one down here in Andalucia, it seems. Last September, virtually every town we stayed in between Madrid to Segovia and then between Ávila to Toledo had most of its restaurants closed because of a fiesta that day, or the previous day, or even the week before. This spring we're finding that every city in Andalucia is having a major fiesta of one sort or another right now. This time restaurants seem to be open but hotel prices are higher than usual. Down here they 'have their August' in April and May, it seems.
- Here in Jerez, we've stayed in a family-run restaurant with a hotel attached. The hotel part gets very good reviews on Tripadvisor but the restaurant, to say the least, doesn't. So, we ate elsewhere.
- It does rain in Andalucia. The stuff we put on the window ledge last night – which was almost dry when we went to bed – had been soaked by overnight showers.
- Looking at the camino routes and at the directions given by Google, I do wonder if someone's paid to direct you down shopping streets.
- I also wonder - again not for the first time - if the Information offices around Spain are ever open at times to suit tourists and pilgrims, as opposed to the staff.
- Applying sun block to my face this morning but leaving out the bits below my eyes, it struck me that I'll soon look like the opposite of President Fart
ODDS AND SODS
- Lots of irritation in Spain at the outcome of the trial of 5 men convicted of sexual aggression (I think) but not rape. An obsolete legal definition of the latter charge – demanding that there be evidence of physical violence – is ripe for change and even the right-wing PP party seems ready for this.
- Meanwhile, someone has described the current statute - dating from the mid 90s – as the product of a patriarchal and macho culture.
- I read that the EU is considering punishing those states – mostly in Eastern Europe – which don't comply with EU norms. Judicial, political and even cultural, it seems. The money saved via reduced subventions to these miscreants would go to those states impoverished by the introduction of the euro and by the austerity subsequently imposed on them by Germany. Greece, Portugal and, of course, Spain. None of which get good ratings when it comes to corruption. So . . . Spain's period of not earning its own way and standing on its own feet will be extended, not reduced. And corrupt politicians and businessmen here will get even richer. What a way to run a whelk stall!
FOTO GALLERY
- Just the writer surveying distant Jerez from a hill outside El Puerto de Santa María:-
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