Dawn

Dawn

Sunday, July 01, 2018

Thoughts from Galicia, Spain: 1.7.1

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
Life in Spain
The EU
  • France: Quietly, a mood of frustration is creeping into French diplomacy. Especially when it comes to reforming the eurozone, Macron has picked up no firm allies and few concessions from Germany.
  • Germany: Is it time to say 'Auf Wiedersehen' to Mutti Merkel? See the article below. Big showdown meeting in Berlin this afternoon/evening
  • Brexit: A despairing Richard North: Not only is the "no deal" scenario not an option – it does not even exist. There are no circumstances, short of war, where the UK can cut off relations with its European neighbours. Brexit is not about "leaving" Europe. It is about redefining our relationship with the EU and its Member States. In practical terms, we need to make arrangements for the movement of goods and people, to maintain our electronic and communications, to ensure our mutual security and the myriad of other linkages that make modern society a reality.  The point here is that there can be no such thing as "no deal". We have to deal. The question is whether we negotiate before or after we leave the EU – whether we do it in a controlled fashion or in crisis conditions after things have stopped working and chaos has descended. Either way, we end up with deals. Made in a crisis atmosphere post-Brexit, they can hardly be more favourable than anything we agree before we leave. The "no deal" scenario, then, is just another soundbite – another of those meaningless clichés that have so poisoned the Brexit debate. A bad deal cannot be better that no deal. The way Mrs May has handled this, there can only be bad deals or even worse deals – and we're heading for the worst of all possible deals. 
The UK
  • Bloody 'ell! Moped muggers who rob people of their watches, jewellery and mobile phones are doing it to fund extravagant summer holidays on “party islands” like Ibiza and Cyprus -  as a way to live a “gangster” lifestyle. Very glad I don't live in either of those places. Can't imagine the bastards will be settling – or even just strutting - on our coast. Unless they gravitate to cocaine smuggling. Which might well be bad for their health.
English to Spanish
  • 'Wuthering Heights' – Cumbres Borrascosas ('Stormy/Squally/Tempestuous'). Until I saw this, I never knew what 'wuthering' meant . . .
Spanglish
  • El esparring: Illegal dogfights. This came to my attention when reading of the disappearance of a large number of canines up near La Coruña. Probably meant merely 'sparring' originally. Or, would you believe, boxeando . . . .
Galicia/Pontevedra
  • The writer of this article bemoans the use of English when there are perfectly good Spanish equivalents. The article is in Spanish but it gives several examples of this trend. I'm sympathetic to the writer's discontent. I imagine that many 11th century Brits were very unhappy at the intrusions of Norman French.
The World Cup
  • So, two very good matches – with some superb goals - have seen both of the world's best players leaving the stage on the same day. One of them I feel sorry for. The other, I don't.
  • The plague of face/head-holding continues, in the face(sorry) of TV cameras showing the player wasn't touched anywhere north of his waist. My suggestion is that that anyone who grabs his head and rolls around the floor in agony should be sent off unless he can show a 5cm gash that needs at least 3 stitches.
  • VAR: I've belatedly discovered this isn't used to draw attention to all fouls missed by the referee anywhere on the field. It's only used – to assist the referee - in these cases:-
- Penalty decisions and offences leading up to a penalty
- Goals and offences leading up to a goal.
- Direct red card incidents only.
- Mistaken identity
There are still some people out there who think the game would be better off without it. But they're a dwindling band. That said, there'll always be someone. And, at the moment, the dinosaurs in the English Premier league are holding out against it. But this surely won't last much longer.

Finally . . .
  • A nice foto . . .

Possibly got to Russia via Galicia . . . 


© David Colin Davies, Pontevedra: 1.7.18

THE ARTICLE

Is it time to say 'Auf Wiedersehen' to Mutti Merkel?

Angela Merkel used to be viewed like the German football team - invincible, with exceptional technical skill and a steely determination that always prevailed. Or, to use another metaphor, her style of governing was reminiscent of the slogan of the car-manufacturer Audi, Vorsprung Durch Technik: ‘Advantage through technical prowess’.

But all things must come to an end. Earlier this week, Audi’s CEO Rupert Stadlerwas arrested for his alleged role in the Volkswagen Group's diesel cheating scandal. And we all know what happened to Joachim Löw’s German football team in the World Cup.

Twelve years ago, Merkel summoned a crestfallen Jürgen Klinsmann for a dressing down after Germany lost a match to Italy. Back then, ‘Mutti’ was in full control of her party, her country and the EU. She could dictate that Britain gave up part of the EU budget rebate negotiated by Margaret Thatcher. She could also demand of Klinsmann that Germany did not play a 4-4-2 formation in the 2006 World Cup.

Merkel’s passion for football is well known. When she and her fellow G7 leaders were watching the Champions League final between Chelsea and Bayern Munich in 2012, she taught Barack Obama to say ‘scheiße’ when the Bavarians missed a penalty.

Now, though, she has bigger fish to fry. After almost 13 years in power, time is rapidly running out for the German Chancellor.

Nowhere was her diminishing influence more evident than at this week’s European Union leaders’ summit. Where once Merkel commanded the floor and had other leaders practically queueing up to kiss her hand, this time it was she who came with the begging bowl, and all but implored  her colleagues to find a solution to the immigration problem that could save her political skin.

Gone was the confident Chancellor, usually front and centre in photographs in her usual pose: eyes straight ahead, hands clasped in front of her. Instead, she looked away.

The cause of Merkel’s woe is a disagreement with Horst Seehofer – her interior minister and leader of her Bavarian sister party the CSU (Christian Social Union). Facing regional elections in the autumn, Seehofer has openly defied the Chancellor and threatened to close the Bavarian borders. He threatened to begin the repatriation of failed asylum seekers if she did not find another solution at the summit.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Merkel was held to ransom by new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte over his demands for a tougher immigration policy. Merkel gave in. That is telling. In 2011, she effectively caused the downfall of Silvio Berlusconi when she refused to give more money to his spendthrift administration.

Yet, after an all-nighter, the leaders seemingly took the first steps towards a European solution on refugees, with the German press describing it as a ‘breakthrough’.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party and the CSU will meet tomorrow to discuss the outcome of the summit and the future of their centre-right partnership. But it looks as though, for now,  the 63-year-old has a stay of execution – an early present ahead of her birthday on July 17th - though, at best, as a lame duck.

It wasn’t always this way. Once, Merkel was Queen of Europe. Her personal story is formidable - she rose from utter obscurity in East Germany to become one of the most powerful women in history. Back then, she was a thirty-something divorcee, working on her doctorate in quantum chemistry and dating fellow scientist Joachim Sauer (now her husband). Her father, Pastor Horst Kessler disapproved of her bohemian lifestyle. The fact she had lived as a squatter was not, he thought, becoming for a clergyman’s daughter. Yet, within a year she managed to go from unknown research chemist to cabinet minister, before taking over the CDU leadership from her mentor, Helmut Kohl.

History will record her role in averting the worst economic crisis since 1929. When the world’s financial system faced meltdown in 2008, Merkel read the public mood, and went against her conservative Hinterland by limiting bankers’ bonuses. “I must do what I must”, she told me at a press conference that year. The use of the personal pronoun was not incidental.

Hers has been an impressive career in other ways, too. The fluent Russian speaker, who grew up in Communist east Germany, stood up to Vladimir Putin when the Russian strongman waged war by proxy in Ukraine and was instrumental in kicking the former KGB-man out of the G8.

In those days, she governed with effortless ease. When my American publisher insisted that my biography have the subtitle ‘Europe’s Most Influential Leader’, I had no choice but to accept. For, as the editor asked: “who else?” When the book was published in Bulgaria a couple of weeks ago, that subtitle was gone.

So where did it all start to go wrong for Mutti?

One major wobble came after last September’s elections, when the CDU polled the lowest number of votes in the party’s history – losing many to the far-right.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s surprise election victory in November 2016, Merkel had been feted as the ‘the moral leader of the West’. Rumour has it that she only decided to run for re-election after Trump won. She believed the hype; that she alone could stem the tide of Trumpism. This proved not to be the case. It took four months before Merkel was able enter into a grand coalition and save her seat. But her position had been weakened.

It is too simplistic to cite the refugee crisis in 2015 as the beginning of Merkel’s downfall. Germany was always split over the issue of taking in close to one million refugees. Yet, the issue has become totemic for Merkel. Before 2015, she had never visited a refugee centre, but suddenly she was speaking passionately about the duty to ‘love thy neighbour’. It was as if she had found her calling. Once, public opinion was on her side. Now 62% support Seehofer’s position of returning failed asylum-seekers.

Her predicament is not unlike that of Theresa May. The British Prime Minister suffers the indignity of being undermined by outspoken cabinet colleagues, who brief against her and conduct their own private policy with scant regard for collective responsibility - let alone the interests of their boss.

Only this week, May was reportedly forced to give Liz Truss a dressing down after the treasury secretary took a public swipe at her fellow ministers. Boris Johnson, too, has caused ructions over the past few days - flying to Kabul to avoid a vote on Heathrow’s third runway and allegedly using an expletive when asked about the fears of business leaders over Brexit.

But just as May cannot sack Johnson, Merkel is no longer politically strong enough to show Seehofer the door.

The two used to emphasise that they were ‘vicars daughters who get on with the job’ – as Merkel said when the women met after the Brexit vote in 2016. Back then, both were seen as pragmatic politicians, unburdened by ideology. Strong and stable, if you will. Since then, politics has been turned on its head, and we have entered a new era of the bold, brash and ‘out there’ statesman - Trump and Emmanuel Macron leading the way. The current climate calls for action, not procrastination.

Merkel once had a sureness of touch; able to surf the zeitgeist and present herself as the embodiment of German public opinion. She had a knack for winning elections and successfully transformed a lacklustre Christian party into a centrist electoral machine.

She might yet survive as Chancellor. She might try to engineer a transfer of power to her preferred successor, the CDU general secretary Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. But this could be difficult.

Once, Merkel controlled the party and several politicians were jockeying for position, seeking to be anointed by her. That was then. This is now. It might well be time to say, ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Mutti’



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