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.
Cataluña
- Now that the Spanish government's policy is no longer to show the Catalans how macho and stupidly short-sighted it can be, the local political parties have – inevitably – returned to their usual internecine infighting. It shouldn't be too long before it's safe to give the Catalans a legal referendum on independence, in the confidence that the majority will have enough common sense to reject it.
- Meanwhile, Spain has terminated the international arrest warrants against exiled Catalan politicians, having finally taken on board that other European countries have rather less right-wing definitions of the word 'rebellion'.
Spain
- More information on that badly designed submarine. If you read the El País article you'll know that: Nobody is taking responsibility for the design flaw that has added nearly €1.8 billion to the final cost. In this article, the BBC reports a former Spanish official saying that at the time – 2013 - someone had put a decimal point in the wrong place, and "nobody paid attention to reviewing the calculations". Seems a tad unlikely. Surely. Anyway, it looks like the Spanish will have a hell of a job selling this craft to other countries. Unless the commissions are good, I guess.
Life in Spain
- I went for my first visit to a Spanish court today. This happened after I'd called the clerk yesterday to say I wouldn't be able to come – as a witness - on the date set for next week. Given that Pontevedra court staff have been on strike for several months and that there's said to be an even-larger-than-usual backlog of cases, I was astonished it proved possible to re-set the appointment for early this morning. On arrival at the court, my first surprise was that it was not a hearing but only a declaration in front of the lawyer of the defendant in a suit (denuncia) brought by a friend of mine. My second surprise was that the clerk was taken aback that I arrived at the appointed time. My third surprise was that, apart from the details of my own identity and address (already on their files), I had to give the names of my parents. Which wasn't really a surprise, of course; I've been here almost 18 years. But it made me laugh. Until we got to the usual confusion about forenames and surnames. Anyway, I did my bit and it was all over in less than half an hour. As to whether the denuncia will result in a trial, the clerk said she really didn't know if it would or wouldn't. And that - if it did - she had no idea when. Which was far more in accordance with my expectations than what had just taken place.
The UK: Brexit
- There's some talk in the UK of a national government of all parties to take Brexit forward. As one columnist puts it this morning: This is, indeed, the best hopeless idea anyone has had at any point in this sorry saga. A national government has a lot to be said for it and just the one drawback, which is that it is entirely inconceivable.
- Because: The country is horribly divided on whether it is in a state of crisis; it cannot agree on what it is trying to achieve and it has endless ways of achieving these many objectives, none of which appear to work.
- In short: All the things that make a national government desirable are the things that prevent it happening.
- Meanwhile, the initial reaction of Brussels to Mrs May's White Paper has been to laugh at it for being: 1. Totally unacceptable, and 2. Full of stupid translation errors in 27 languages. But not Irish, as there wasn't one. Which has rather annoyed Dublin, even though there's probably not a single Irish politician who speaks the language.
The USA
- Only a truly great country would have/permit comedy programs as good as this one.
- I guess we all know now about the Russian woman who used both the NRA and the National Prayer Breakfast to infiltrate the upper echelons of US society. I have to admit I thought the latter was a small annual meeting of religious nuts which took place in the presidents' office. But, no, it turns out to be a huge event, run by an alarmingly secret Christian organisation called The Fellowship. The stated purpose of which is: To provide a forum for decision makers to share in Bible studies, prayer meetings, worship experiences, and to experience spiritual affirmation and support. As if. In reality, it's a powerful lobby group.
Galicia/Pontevedra
- After a plenary meeting of the council, Pontevedra has become a non-taurine city. I'm not sure what this means for our annual bullfights, scheduled for August. Tickets are on sale for this year but will there be any in the future? Probably.
- Ahead of a disciplinary meeting, the judge in Vigo who runs a fortune-telling business on the side volunteered a couple of days ago that a reading of her Tarot cards had revealed that her future as a member of the judiciary would shortly be brought to an end. Wrong so far. Her fear of being suspended after the preliminary hearing proved unfounded. But maybe the cards will prove correct in the fullness of time. They should.
- If there's anything worse than the pigeons which infest the city's squares, it's the idiots who feed them. At the next table to me yesterday, there was a couple of senior citizens doing this. While the husband fed them bits of bread, the wife made a video of his crime. I was sorely tempted to use my cane on both the pigeons and the couple but decided that neither of these actions would probably go down well. So, I left.
- As it happens, the local papers today report that the council is having some success in reducing pigeon numbers. For example by preventing them from nesting and catching them in cages on the roofs of flat blocks. Good news, indeed. But I suspect the attempts to sterilise the bastards wasn't successful.
- Still on the subject of birds . . . An odd item in today's papers tells of 2 adult and 7 Nile geese chicks walking through the centre of town. But not after coming up from the river. They flew out of the window of a 6th floor flat. Keeping geese in a flat strikes me as even more idiotic than feeding the bloody pigeons. And that's saying something.
Finally . . .
- Still on birds . . . . You'll guess that I have sympathy for the man in Weston-super-Mare in the UK who - objecting to a seagull stealing one of his chips - grabbed it by its feet and swung it against a wall. The police, though, aren't at all sympathetic and have issued a description of the man so they can prosecute him. The good news is that the seagull died.
© David Colin Davies, Pontevedra: 20.7.18
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