Thoughts from Madrid: 28.7.18

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

• This is an interesting take on the new ('accidental') government.
• And this is a positive take on tourism.
• I often shock visitors by telling them just how corrupt the politico-industrial nexus is here. But I always stress that, though this type of corruption inescapably adds costs to everything, it's very rare for one to engage in a corrupt practice in daily life – with the obvious exception of paying cash to avoid VAT/IVA. Plus, of course, the customary under-reporting of house price deals, so as to reduce the high transfer tax. However . . . It struck me today – when reading of a scam involving a chain of cheap dental practices – that it's not unusual to hear of large-scale frauds on the public. Such as the huge stamp scandal of a couple of years back. And then there were the crooked estate agents and lawyers of the South who rooked so many foreigners during the construction boom of 2002-2006. So, maybe I should revise my spiel. Individuals here might not practice corruption on a day to day basis but they are certainly at risk of being rooked.
• There was a demonstration in Puerta del Sol last night. This is what it was about.
• Coincidentally(??), the BBC yesterday contained this article on Spain's 'enduring machismo'.

Life in Spain

• As she departed for the UK, my elder daughter asked me to take some CDs back to a public library in the palace of the Conde de Duque, about a kilometre from her flat, to avoid her having her rights suspended for being late. This is what happened once I got there:-

- I arrive at the palace and go through the main portal.

- I walk the 50m across the courtyard under the hot sun to the door of the public library.

- I get near the door and see it's roped off.

- I divert myself left to go up a long ramp in the hope this is the way in.

- I arrive at a bend and realise the ramp goes, not down to the library door below, but up to the main entrance higher up.

- I come down the ramp again and go back to the library door.

- I go under the rope and find the door locked, but with no sign/notice on it, except one giving the summer timetable. 

- I see people working near the door inside. None of whom lets on they've seen me pushing at the door, trying to get in.

- I go back under the rope and meet a guy who asks me if the library is closed,

- I say it seems so and we both walk to the steps to the main door and climb them. The only notice on the door there is that, to get into the library, we should use the door which we've just found to be roped off and closed.

- We go inside and then down several flights of stairs which we assume will take us to the library on the ground floor.

- After several flights of stairs, we find ourselves among construction workers having their lunch in the basement.

- We wearily climb back up the stairs and exit the building.

- My new colleague says he will check at the entrance and so walks 50m back across the courtyard to the main portal

- I wait patiently.

- He returns to say we have to go through a door in another wing into the next courtyard

- We do this and take the second of 2 available doors, to find ourselves on the ground floor of the library, at a door marked Children's Room.

- So, we go upstairs to the adults' room.

- I ask where I need to go to return the CDs.

- Am told to go to the desk in the middle of the room.

- At the desk I'm told that, to return CDs, I have to go back downstairs, via a flight of stairs at the far end of the room

- I go back downstairs and find myself 2m away from the door I originally tried to get through. It's blocked inside.

- I go to the first desk and wait while 2 employees chat to each other.

- After a minute or more, one of them tells me to go to the next desk, where another couple of employees are chatting to each other.

- I do so and one of them breaks off to take the CDs

- I then have to walk the length of the room to get out of a door near to the one where we finally managed to get into the library.

- I exit and walk through the smaller courtyard to a smaller portal which opens onto the street.

Thus is time wasted in Spain, where it sometimes seems that - as stressed so often by the Dutchman, Vincent Werner, in his recent book It is not what it is: The Real (S)pain- service providers are incapable of – or unwilling to – put themselves in the shoes of the customers. In truth, I have more time on my hands now that at any other period in my life, so can be 'philosophical' about this sort of thing. As a younger man, I'd have been beside myself with irritation. Hence my belief that, much as I love to be retired here, I could never have worked happily in Spain.

English

• I checked out the books of Manfred Görlach cited in yesterday's article on the various Englishes, planning to buy at least one of them. But not at €100-150 a time.

Finally . . .

• Last evening I set out for a meeting with my visiting Canadian cousin and her 18 year old daughter. Their apartment was in a little street off Calle de La Montera – once famous for its high class shops but now for its many prostitutes. Arriving at the street, I couldn't help but notice 3 of the latter on the corner. But, anyway, I realised that I didn't have the number of the building, only the apartment number – 4C. But I checked out building number 4, just in case, and concluded it was far too seedy to be the right building. As I was talking to the guy sitting in the entrance, one of the ladies of the night (well, evening in this case) passed me with a client. Confirming that it was essentially a brothel. So, I continued my search for 4C and eventually found it in no. 14 Calle de Caballero de Gracia. All's well that ends well. And we saw the lunar eclipse in Plaza Mayor, where I entertained myself by discussing the sale of my cousin's daughter to a Senegalese hawker. No deal was finalised but he did manage to get a foto with her. God knows what he'll claim to his mates.

© David Colin Davies, Pontevedra: 28.7.18