Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- More on the Spanish/Galician villages for sale in their entirety.
- In case you didn't read that . . . Spain’s fertility rate of 1.3% in 2017 was the second-lowest in the EU, after Malta, and the gap between urban and rural births is one of the widest in the EU. A lack of young people means the population isn’t replenished, while the regions also lose the entrepreneurs who might have generated employment and driven the local economy. Immigrants - especially those from culturally similar South America - are seen as part of the solution to this problem. Which helps to understand why the Spanish are pretty relaxed about it.
- I have to admit to surprise at learning that Spaniards don't even make the top 20 coffee drinkers of the world. Perhaps the talking is more important that the consumption of the beverage.
- Dear dog! Fart emulation.
- There's concern in Spain about increasing obesity, with young kids said to be second to only those in Malta in the fat stakes. I thought of this when dodging young people on motorised scooters in the centre of Madrid. Who can no longer be bothered to walk even short distances. Likewise in the Retiro park. At least some of them use the roads recently 'liberated' by the banning of traffic in the centre.
- Here's the estimable Matthew Bennett on an excruciating interview involving Spain's Foreign Minister. MB is pretty even-handed in his castigations for the disaster. Which won't help Spain's international image, however unfair that is.
- The battle to legalise cannabis here. Is the country going to pot?
- After the 3rd rejection of Mrs May's deal, Richard North says that Parliament - far from taking control of the Brexit process - has handed it over to the EU. Since 23 June 2016, our political establishment have had one thing to do, and even that it couldn't manage. Our politicians have ended up as ignorant and confused as the day we voted, having failed on what was supposed to be the last day of our EU membership to decide even on whether we're leaving, much less when. . . Whatever else, the Brexit process represents a loss of political and moral authority of that political establishment which has consistently and repeatedly failed to measure up. Most marked has been its intellectual bankruptcy, where so few politicians have grasped the basic issues. . . Brexit has turned out to be the touchstone of a decadent nation.
- As for the future, RN forecasts: At midnight on 12 April, the most likely scenario is that we exit the EU without a deal.
- But, as I've said, others think that we're hearing the death knell of Brexit, as the EU will impose conditions to a long delay which will effectively guarantee its demise - be it a general election or a referendum. Or both. My guess is that it's the latter belief which is keeping the pound above what it was only weeks ago.
- I think it fair to say that Guardian columnist Marian Hyde is no admirer of the "mad bastards" of the Conservative party. Here she is - very amusingly - on the candidates in the imminent leadership election.
- Interesting to read in Robert Tombs The English and their History that the British, in taking a mandate over Palestine in 1917, blundered insouciantly into what would turn out to be an intractable and damaging problem with long-term ramifications unimaginable at the time. And that as long ago as the 1930s people were putting forward the 2-state solution still being talked about today, 80-90 years later.
- Word of the Day: Siesta. An institution I value highly, despite not living in the hot South.
- Odd Old Word: Oxgang: 'A land measure of uncertain quantity. As much land as an ox would 'gang'[go] over or cultivate. Also called a bovate'. On average, c. 15 acres.
- During a metro trip in Madrid, I identified these 'odd' station names. I'm sure Madrid is not unique in having such things:-
King's Pillar
Virgin of the Farmhouse
Catholic Kings
Crystal Sea
Pink Rivers
Canal
Spanish Aviation
Angel Port
Ambassadors
Frontier Posts
Star
Zone of Conception
The Muses
Turkeys
O'Donnell
Retreat
Mary Tudor
King's Pine Forest
Angel Port
Gunners
Hope
Taps
Angels' City
Happy View
The Peseta
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