Thoughts from Galcia, Spain: 26.9.18

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.

Matters Spanish

• My first external task of yesterday morning was to get a pair of new tyres. My second was to drive to the petrol station to remove air from the massively over-inflated neumáticos. From 3.0 bar back down to 2.1. Not just the new ones, also the other 2 that had been attended to. I've had to do this every time I've bought new tyres here, at various outlets. God knows why they do it. The cynic in me says it's because they know it'll accelerate wear, but it might be that they have a genuine misbelief it improves handling and/or fuel consumption. As it says here, this simply ain't true. In fact, it's downright dangerous. Be warned.
• Here and here are articles from The Local which will help with your learning of everyday Spanish. The journal's web page here gives an indication of which articles are free and which are Premium and, thus, behind their paywall.
• Says Don Quijones: Abengoa, the Spanish green energy giant — with big entities in the US, Canada, Mexico, and other countries — famed for cooking its books with Enron-esque aplomb before collapsing in spectacular fashion a few years ago, is back in trouble. More on this here. If you're a taxpayer here, you're actually a shareholder, after the government 'invested' more than €400m in the company a while back. If you're optimistic about the company's future, you might soon be able to pick up some shares at the price of a hundredth of a centimo each. Who could resist?
• Need I say that I wasn't called yesterday with the news that the laptop battery scheduled to arrive last Friday was now in the shop? One learns to be patient here. . .

Matters US

• Click here to get an insight into what Satan is up to these days. In the USA at least.Which is his/her favourite place for him/her to operate, it seems. As well as in the Catholic Church, of course. 

Matters Galician and Pontevedran

• From the voices I hear around me, the Irish are here in force this month. Perhaps an article in the Irish Times. They've been very lucky with the weather.
• The Galician Xunta is going to do something about the region's famed 'ugliness'(feismo). It's going to tax people who leave their properties in a ruined state, both in old quarters and in villages which have been abandoned. There's quite a few of the latter. So, a nice source of revenue, I guess.
• Pontevedra city as 'Paradise'.  . . Do you get hassled by beggars 5-10 times a day in Heaven?

Finally . . .

• 1. Things forecast by Orwell in 1984, inter alia:-

- Two-way TVs
- Helicopter police patrols
- Camera surveillance on every street
- Microphones everywhere. Even in the countryside.
- Pornography easily available for the masses
- The 24 hour clock, striking 13, 14, 15, etc.
- Populist leaders who hold mass allies at which dumb people chant mindless slogans such as Hang the traitors! Or Lock her up!
- People denying that objective truth exists, believing that ALL news is fake.
- Conversion of British Imperial measures to the metric system.
- National lotteries with which the masses are obsessed.
- The portrayal of nasty capitalists as ugly, cigar-smoking men in frock coats and stovepipe hats. (See every Spanish cartoon on the subject of wealth).
- Saccharine tablets instead of sugar.
- People who neither smoke nor drink and who spend hours every day in the gym.
- Vegans, or at least vegetarians.
- 'Rubbishy newspapers' – the tabloid press.
- 'Films oozing with sex'.
- The faking of photographs. Photoshop.
- Idiots chanting Trump!Trump! Sorry, Big Brother! Big Brother!
- 'Ink-pencils'. Biros?
But it doesn't look like he managed to foresee, among all the other horrors, Spanish daytime TV

• 2. According to Google Analytics – allegedly the most accurate people – only in the cities of La Coruña (Eamon) and London(??) was my blog read every day by one person in the last week As I know of at least 6 un-cited cities where this happens, you'll understand why I have little confidence in their reports.

© [David] Colin Davies, Pontevedra: 26.9.18