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.
England
- I'm beginning to understand why Spaniards get irritated by British politeness/civility towards strangers. It really can be too bloody much. In a shop early this morning, another customer and I almost came to blows as to who should go ahead to the counter first. But, of course, we'd never have managed to fight because we'd be arguing for days about who'd have the first punch.
- Neither of my regular magazines – Prospect and Private Eye – has managed to get recent issues to me at the addresses I've nominated on my travels. In fact, Prospect haven't managed to get copies even to my home address for 8 months now. They keep extending my subscription to compensate me. But I pointed out to them yesterday – rather robustly, I admit – that they could do this until eternity but, if the magazines never managed to arrive, I'd never actually get anything to read.
- My sister was complaining yesterday that her husband's planning is often unrealistic, making him rather unreliable. I said it might be his 'plans' could be better described as 'intentions', and suggested she check for Spanish blood in his (Irish) family. Perhaps a survivor of the Armada shipwrecks of 1588 along the western Irish coast.
- As I left my grandchildren's play centre yesterday, I saw this odd sign on the gatepost:-
And then I realised I was standing next to this . . .
Which presumably passes for a sculpture these days.
- A comment on the case of the comedian being asked to contractually bar himself from offending anyone at all:- The government, corporations and media are terrified of causing offence and will succumb to any complaint made by people with skin as thin as the surface tension of blood. This censoriousness infects society and shuts down debate, even though most people consider such fastidiousness both undemocratic and ludicrous. Hear, hear.
Spain
- Good news re some toll roads.
- And possibly good news if you're optimistic enough to buy lottery tickets this Xmas.
- The Olive Press's view of why there's been an outbreak of narco violence down on the south coast.
- Winter-orientated info for the better off.
The UK and Brexit
- A couple of pertinent comments:-
- We are seemingly stuck in purgatory, where we had been for the last two years, circling pointlessly with no end in sight. Even hell might be preferable.
- Rebuffed in both Westminster and Brussels, May is coming to resemble a figure from a medieval morality play, scorned and rejected wherever she turns.
- As for the next crazy developments . . . For what it's worth, my own guess is that the notice period will be extended to allow the British and EU establishments to put in place a second referendum, with or without loaded questions.
- But maybe the folk who comprise these power centres should read these comments:-
- The probability of a second referendum, once the quixotic goal of a handful of unreconciled Remainers, is increasing with each passing day. It’s not just Brexiteers, fearful of losing the prize they won against the odds two and a half years ago, who dislike that possibility. Plenty of Remainers, too, are nervous about a contest they fear they could lose, thereby closing the door for good on a close relationship with Europe. And others, many of them Labour MPs in pro-leave seats, tremble at the sheer hostility the prospect of a second vote arouses in the people they represent.
- The challenge will be: to make the referendum exercise itself both legitimate in the eyes of leavers and substantively different to the first one. On the first count, it will help if the ballot is seen as a move by May, rather than a demand successfully pressed by the People’s Vote campaign. It will also help if the two competing propositions on the ballot – and let’s make the hopeful assumption that no parliament would present a no-deal crash-out as if it were a viable option, since that would be criminally irresponsible – are both significantly different from the leave v. remain choices of 2016. It’s easy to see how leave would differ this time around. In place of the abstract, wishful idea of leave – which Brexiteers cast as a pain-free cash bonanza and panacea for all Britain’s ills – would be a concrete, detailed plan for leaving: May’s plan, more or less.
- Some are talking of a “reformed remain” option, an alternative to leave that does not smack of a complacent desire to pretend Brexit never happened. For those Labour MPs in leave seats, their chief hope is that they can signal to their voters that both they and the EU itself have heard their concerns on one issue especially: immigration. [But see 'The EU' below]
- I had a horrible realisation yesterday that I might not be fully aware what the critical but troublesome Northern Ireland Backstop might be. So I consulted this.
- Finally on Brexit . . . A valiant – and fascinating – attempt to explain the inexplicable stance(s) of the Labour party on the issue of a generation.
France
- Good question: If Macron can’t reform his country, how can he hope to save the EU? Macron has put himself forward as the saviour of a faltering EU. To be credible he needs to reform France first. But now its financial weakness, aggravated by the 'gilet jaunes’s' derailing of Macron’s economic programme, is patent. Its budget deficit is sure to remain or worsen. It will need to borrow large amounts from the EU, and this will create dangerous financial and political strains for the whole system. Revolutions are intoxicating: “Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!” They bring purpose, hope and optimism. But they rarely end happily.
- Flexibility has never been the EU’s forté. This is unavoidable: such a massive international co-operative effort can hardly work cohesively unless there is a robust legal framework to keep things ticking along. The thing is, that inflexibility is one of the reasons that Britons chose to leave in the first place. The EU would be doing itself, as well as us, a favour if it recognised that pragmatism and flexibility can, on occasion, lead to the kind of solutions that strict interpretation of the rulebook cannot. I can't see much chance of that happening, though in an Irish newspaper this morning I saw the astonishing headline that Ireland might have to give up the backstop in its own interests. That would be a turn up for the books.
Spanish
- Word of the Day: Racano
© [David] Colin Davies
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