Thoughts from Galicia, Spain: 14.3.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.

            Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

Note: As it's Thursday, some of the items below have been borrowed from Lenox Napier's Business Over Tapas 

Spain

• How bad is Spanish bureaucracy? When I arrived here in 2000 it was, as I wrote here, pretty bad. But I was under the impression things had got better, possibly because I both speak Spanish and understand the pitfalls. And can use personal contacts. I've never resorted to that (unique?) Spanish character, the gestor, but The Local thinks this might still the best way to get things done here. 
• The Local is going to town today on aspects of Spanish life. Here it offers you the chance to help find the answer to the question - Is machismo still alive and well in Spain.
• The Local also writes on the dreaded Modelo 720 here, but gets one key aspect very wrong. It claims that no fines have been levied under this statute. Well, I can tell you that they certainly have been. Despite their EU-declared illegality, I doubt I'll ever get my money back. The Hacienda can be as unscrupulous/arbitrary as any other organisation in Spain. Two years on, it has yet to respond to the EU judgment on the illegal level of fines, having been given 2 months to do this. [P. S. After I wrote to them, they revised the original article]
• The supermarket Carrefour will let you take your own plastic containers to minimise the use of plastic. I foresee problems.
• Per Lenox 1: A foundation of the Junta de Andalucía has been discovered by the new government with €1.2m euros a year of public expenditure, 2 employees and zero activity. The Centro para la Mediación y Arbitraje de Andalucía is simply another ghost agency attached to the regional administration, which - in less than 2 months - has eliminated  85 consortiums or bodies without any functions but with succulent budgets.
• Per Lenox 2: El Mundo lists the best international schools in Spain here.
• Per Lenox 3: What dose the adjective 'Spanish' denote in other languages. See Eye on Spain here.

Local News

• Per Lenox 4: What to do in nearby Cambados.
• On my way to the dentist yesterday, I was stopped by a 'chugger', wanting money. I told her, in Spanish, that I was a guiri and didn't speak castellano. Instead of asking me the obvious question, she replied: "Ah, OK.".

Brexit, the UK and the EU.

• This was the headline in one UK newspaper last night: No deal Brexit ruled out by MPs in all circumstances as Brexit chaos deepens. Frankly, I'm not sure that the latter is or ever was possible.
• I think I said weeks ago - but can't be totally sure - that an extension of the Article 50 process was the most probable outcome of parliamentary shenanigans which are beyond human comprehension. So, now the only question is "2 months or 21 months?". This, of course, will be determined not by the UK government but by Brussels.
• Richard North today: Never have the Tories been so divided, never has Labour been so inept, and never has parliament as an institution so completely lost its way. The media, of course, is loving it, but the journalists are as bad as the politicians, with both print and broadcast news becoming excruciatingly tedious, neither readable nor watchable. But, while chaos reigns, the nation watches in despair. The rest of the world, I suspect, is just dumbfounded.
• I'm increasingly suspicious that May's strategy has always been to get to this point, so that a second - reversing - referendum would be held. Assuming she ever had a strategy, of course. In other words, she aimed at a 'bad deal', which she's always said would be worse than no deal. Or no Brexit, of course.

The USA

• Someone has asked whether Fart would make a good comedian. Well, he would if being comical is a valuable first step.

Spanish

• Word of the Day: Guataque: Party/shindig. Or: Fiesta casera, generalmente de gente joven, en que se merienda y se baila.

English

• Allegedly Odd Old Word: Agog: 'In a state of warm imagination.' Hmm. Surely these days it means 'astonished/slack-jawed.'

Finally . . .

• I've mentioned my problems in accessing data on my old laptop and on my external drive. I now wonder if the only way to be sure of saving data is to put it on the cloud, and make it accessible to every computer in the world . . .  Even Google Photos has not backed up some of my fotos. No idea why not but they seem to be lost for ever. 
• Another great performance.