Dawn

Dawn

Thursday, April 25, 2019

Thoughts from Galicia, Spain: 25.4.19

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable. 
                  Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain

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

Spain
  • The upcoming elections:-
  1. Facebook cracks down on far-right networks.
  2. Why they will change the politics of immigration here.
  • Young reader(s) . . Five good reasons to study in Spain. I suspect most of us could think of quite a few better ones.
  • Lenox this morning cites this Politico article on Spain's perennial problem of corruption. In Spanish.
  • See the article below on the strange case of a Gallega deprived of her children  - by a female judge, as it happens - for 'working too hard'. 
  • If you can bear to read it, the Guardian has published a long article on the case of the manada ('pack') of men  accused of gang rape in Pamplona in 2016 and eventually sentenced for a lesser offence under an outdated law which ignores the issue of consent. To the shock of most people in the country.
The UK
The USA
  • Is Fart a short-term thinker par excellence?  . . . The USA has perfected the art of economic strangulation through the global banking, insurance and shipping nexus. This is possible because it has hegemonic control over global finance and the dollarised payments system. So . . . The cost of defying the White House on a large scale is punitively high. “Anyone doing business with Iran will not be doing business with the United States,” tweeted Fart. As a result companies have been leaving Iran in a drove. But . . . Germany, France and Britain have created a special purpose vehicle - Instex - as a financial conduit for humanitarian trade with Iran. It is the start of larger ambitions. The European Commission drew up a report in February to promote a switch in company contracts from dollars to euros. China and Russia are experimenting with their own alternatives to the US-dominated Swift system for payments. Trump commands for now but his actions have guaranteed a riposte from the major powers that will erode dollar supremacy over time. By overplaying his hand, he may be throwing away Washington’s most formidable weapon. 
Spanish
English
  • Odd Old Phrase: Knobstick wedding: 'The 18th century practice whereby the churchwardens of a parish used their authority to virtually enforce the marriage of a pregnant woman, which they attended officially. The term 'knobstick' was in allusion to the churchwardens staff, his symbol of office.' 
Finally . . . 
  • Walking in the woods behind my house yesterday evening, I saw this flattened mouse in my path:-


On closer inspection, though, it turned out to be just an oddly shaped tree root.

ARTICLE

Spanish woman loses custody of children for 'working too much'.

A successful female lawyer has vowed to take the Spanish state to court after losing custody of her children for allegedly working too much.

Elena del Pilar Ramallo Miñán, a solicitor formerly of Santander Bank, was ruled to have “spent too much time away from the conjugal home” when she had child-sharing responsibilities for her two daughters, aged seven and 13, revoked on International Women’s Day in 2018.

Ms Ramallo, from Galicia, northwest Spain, is to argue that the verdict “clashes head-on” with women’s rights to personal and professional fulfilment, and that the hearing gave unfair weight to the word of her ex-husband and her mother, the only witness to have been called.

The presiding judge, Carmen López, found that Ms Ramallo spent excessive time on business trips and conferences, rather than at home with her children, on the basis of testimony from their maternal grandmother, who had been on difficult terms with the mother for many years.

Ms Ramallo criticised the verdict as a “grievance to all women”, and claimed that she had fallen victim to a “social stigma” attached to high-achieving female professionals.

She has addressed an open letter to the Spanish courts in her local newspaper, using the language of ‘J’accuse…!’, novelist Émile Zola’s famous rebuke of the French judiciary that fuelled the Dreyfus Affair.

“As a mother, a woman and a citizen, I demand that nobody else in Spain may ever lose their children over the fact that they work and love their work,” she wrote.

Spain’s Supreme Court has stated that shared custody is the “desirable model”, and single custody would only be imposed under exceptional circumstances.

The family court in La Coruña heard complaints by the grandmother that Ms Ramallo, who has a PhD and is the author of seven legal books, did not pay enough attention to the girls and “was always anxious to devote herself to her career.”

Her ex-husband said that she was “not in the right state of mind” to share custody.

However Ms Ramallo insisted that she had “never marginalised” her role as a parent. “Like millions of women, I have had to dedicate thousands of hours to my work, stealing them from my sleep,” to excel as both lawyer and mother.

The controversy came as the Spanish election campaign, in which the conception of a ‘glass ceiling’ has been a prominent fault line, neared its climax.

While the current Socialist-led government has sought to make maternity and paternity leave equal and transferable, far-right Vox would seek to reverse this if part of a fresh coalition.

“The patriarchy lives on, accusing educated, independent women, who have careers involving travel and professional responsibilities, and who also get divorced, of being bad mothers," Ms Ramallo added.

The custody ruling gave no opportunity for appeal.

Ms Ramallo is seeking advice on which legal pathway to take and is expected to proceed through the Provincial Court of La Coruña.

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