Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Note: As it's Thursday, several of the items below have been borrowed from Lenox Napier's Business Over Tapas
Spain
- A marvellous discovery about a 15th century document produced for Maria of Castile, queen of Aragón?
- A not-so-new observation about modern Spain: To say that prostitution is big business in Spain would be a gross understatement. The country has become known as the brothel of Europe, after a 2011 United Nations report cited Spain as the third biggest capital of prostitution in the world, behind Thailand and Puerto Rico. . . This vastly profitable and largely unregulated market has also become infested with criminality, turning Spain into a global hub for human trafficking and sexual slavery. Shame on Spain. More here from The Guardian.
- Some tourist info, courtesy of Lenox, here and here.
- Richard North today: We're facing unresolvable imponderables. Anyone's guess is as good as the next man's. The legacy media is all at sea, awash with speculation but with nothing of substance to offer. If there is one certainty to come out of all this, it is that the result of the Euro-elections will be an irrelevance.
- A serious new political party.
- Britain's equivalent of the Jerry Springer show has been terminated after the suicide of one of its 'guests'. As someone has written: The name of the game in these television formats is public confrontation, with bigots and bullies in the audience whipped up into a frenzy and baited to cast judgment on people they hardly know. This kind of public behaviour will ring a bell with anyone who has spent more than five minutes on Twitter. The baleful impact of these programmes on the wider culture is to be seen all around, whether it be the fake outrage and shutting down of debate on social media or the abuse and threats directed at politicians.
- An expert's take on US foreign policy: The simple caricature of a presidency driven by arrogant American aggression then needs to be tempered. If anything, the more accurate picture may be this: a strategic outlook rooted in a more explicitly nationalistic view of America’s role, tilted by an ambiguous approach to friends and adversaries, influenced by competing advisers with different outlooks, all under the leadership of a president with a limited attention span, capricious interests, and a firm belief in his own ability to get people to do things he wants them to do. You are free to decide whether that makes you even less comfortable.
- Camino news: The limping member of our trio has decided not to start with us on the trek today. Bad news for him, but excellent news for the other 2 of us. He can now operate as a back-up driver in my car, carrying our luggage to the next hotel, eliminating the need for us to take a bus or train from time to time, to stay a night in Santiago and to return from there by train to get my car that would otherwise have had to be left pro tem in Ponferrada. Not only hassle-saving but also money-saving. What's not to like about it? We're raising our hats to his Achilles tendon. Well, 2 of us are . . .
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