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. Garish but informative.
Spain
- Worrying news about Spain's highly important tourism sector. Not totally unexpected.
- Spain has overtaken Italy at the main target for migrants from Africa. Also predictable. Can it continue?
- Another bit of bad Spanish history, dating from the Franco era. It does make you wonder about the organisations which continue to laud the monster.
- The new left-of-centre government has said it'll be raising taxes on various industries/companies. Here's where some of this revenue will go.
Life in Spain
- Teaching English in Madrid . . .
- There was one of 'those Spanish conversations' at the table next to mine yesterday. I couldn't help overhearing it, as it took place at the usual high level of these. Indeed, it could possibly have been heard in the next street. It was between 2 women, at around 12.30, and began thus:-
Where were you?
I arrived at 12.05
You couldn't have done. I was here until 12.15 and then went home for a while.
No, I was here.
It went on like this for a good 10 minutes or more, before the younger woman said: Perhaps we should talk about something else. I nearly leant over and thanked her, even though her suggestion fell on stoney ground . . .
The USA
- Here's Donald Trump( a.k.a John Barron/John Miller) on himself:
- When I left the NATO meeting everyone was thrilled.
- In a key section of my remarks, I said 'would', when I meant to say 'wouldn't'.
- One of the best shocked reactions to the Helsinki event: Trump betrayed his own country as an exercise in vanity.
- There's nothing more to be said on Trump by me. He has said more than enough about himself. If this exceptionally stupid, egotistic, dangerous fool is not ejected from power, the American people deserve everything that's coming to them. For being as dumb, gullible and weak as he clearly thinks they are. See here, here and here on this. Crass, suspicious stupidity stimulating stunned stupor.
- Here's a good set of final words by the near-to-death John Cain
Galicia/Pontevedra
- Here's a nice little tale from Matthew Parris, cited because I'm convinced that the “grisly relic of the Franco years” was a Gallego called Manuel Fraga, a minister who later became president of our region, for almost 15 years:- My friend Tristan Garel-Jones is a great Hispanophile, and, while Mrs T was opposition leader and still finding her feet in international relations, he brought a visiting Spanish minister to see her. This grisly relic of the Franco years swept into her reception room. She rose. He bowed low and, clasping her hand on the way back up, raised it, pressing lips to her fingers. “Doña Thatcher,” he murmured, “of your high intelligence the whole world knows. But your beauty, your astonishing beauty, has taken my breath away.” Thereafter, whenever Tristan mentioned Spain to her, her steely gaze would soften for a moment: “How is that charming minister you introduced me to?”
Finally . . .
- When I was a kid in a Catholic primary school, we had a big presentation on the Turin shroud, aimed at proving it really was the cloth in which Jesus had been wrapped. I bought it, of course. So, I was almost disappointed to read this. Almost.
© David Colin Davies, Pontevedra: 18.7.18
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