Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
Christopher Howse: A Pilgrim in Spain
Spain- After travelling a lot around Spain, I'm utterly confused by hotel star ratings. So, I wasn't surprised to read yesterday that the situation is chaotic, arising from the fact that each of Spain's 17 regions has its own criteria. The article cited the example of a stunning-looking place somewhere which rates only 1 star, because it doesn't have a lift(elevator).
- I passed this shop window in Pontevedra yesterday. Down in Toledo, of course, every second shop looks like this:-
- Odd that the availability of even Samurai swords and huge knives doesn't mean here the sort of knife-crime wave that's afflicting the UK at the moment. Must be other reasons.
- In my barrio of Poio, they've decided to ban parking just before zebra crossings, to improve the sight lines of drivers. Not before time. The absence of these is an aspect of Spain which has concerned me for some time. But not as much, of course, as the way drivers here negotiate roundabouts . . .
- The consensus is that we have fewer foreign tourists (guiris) in Pontevedra's old quarter this summer. Perhaps this is connected with the work that's taking place on O Burgo bridge, driving camino 'pilgrims' to use streets outside the quarter when leaving the city. I say 'work' but I've seen no one engaged on this since last Wednesday. Possibly why no one believes the completion date of 'October'.
- There's a 3-way stand-off, it says here. Promising.
- Below is a post from the blog of reader María. Who'd have predicted that the internet would give a bullhorn to cretins and sociopaths, coarsen political discourse, render politics ever more divisive, allow Russia to interfere in democratic elections, and bring us dozens of new ways to cheat people? Well, not me anyway. But there might just have been someone.
- If you're ignorant of how Fart has ridden roughshod not only over the Rule of Law but also over the softer norms and conventions of US administration, click here for an insight. Truly astonishing. And with very long-term implications.
- Wouldn't you know it, Fart's son is a slum landlord in Baltimore, where "no human being would want to live." Possibly not in one of his places.
- Michelle Bachman says that Fart is 'the most Biblical president ever.' Like a vengeful god, I imagine, rather than like a true Christian.
- A cartoon made for Jim Bakker:-
Spanish
- I've been taken to task for suggesting that the word una mentira can not only (pejoratively) mean 'a lie' but also (non-pejoratively) 'a mistake'. But here's the Royal Academy on it:-
- An expression contrary to what is known, thought or felt.
- Something which is not true.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the second of these clearly encompasses an innocent mistake. Hence the (frequent?) use of mentira in Spain when there's disagreement without any suggestion of dishonesty.
Finally . . .
- Yesterday I stumbled on my collection of Punch cartoons from the 1980s. My impression is that they're a lot more cynical and macabre than those of today. And much funnier. But maybe that's more a reflection of my selection criteria than the reality. One example:-
- One thing's for sure, great cartoonists of that era - Tidy, Haldane, Williams, Albert, Lowry and Ford, for example - took a great deal more care with their sketching than today's lot. A couple of examples, the first being from the incomparable Bill Tidy, with Spanish overtones:-
Who Said "Advanced Society"?: María, Spanish views from a small town.
Once upon a time, at the advent of the internet, it was thought that having infinite information at our fingertips would make all of us instructed and better informed. We would see information on different subjects discussed in different ways, and we could create our own informed opinions, based on actual information, and not simply speculation or because we accepted verbatim how our brother-in-law explained something.
Um, no. It's turned out that most people only search for information that will confirm their biases. If that information also calls those who opine differently dumb as rocks, even better. When social media, such as Twitter and Facebook showed up, those with cool heads thought it would mean that people of different ideas would share them and learn to live together. Those with cool heads live on a different planet.
A true story follows.
Jamie belonged to a closed Facebook page that followed the political party she favored. From time to time, she would comment on a post. One day, she posted her opinion on a point in the party's program she differed with. She expected people to agree and others to disagree, both using rational discourse, as she had done.
Rational discourse disappeared with the dinosaurs.
A few people did agree with her, and some that disagreed did use measured language to explain her "error." But the majority called her all sorts of names and intimated that they thought her little better than a slug for even calling into question any aspect of that political party. After about an hour of laughing at some of the comments, she found that she had been blocked from commenting or posting for twenty-four hours.
Given the fact that this political party had always argued against censorship, she found this a bit disquieting. When the ban was up, she posted again, further explaining her thoughts and expressing her belief that censorship was an aspect of the past she had thought would have remained in the past.
The past lives.
Again, there were rational people who agreed and disagreed. Most of those rational speakers also agreed that censorship had no room in that political party. But the majority simply screamed and laughed at her and repeated the name calling. Jamie's intention had been to post her opinion, and after a couple of hours delete herself from the group. She was forstalled by being blocked permanently from it by one of the admins. The admin screamed in a last comment that she had no right to post her opinion on their group, and to go take a hike.
Given that it was a private, closed group that merely followed the political party, and was not an official channel, she understood that there would be people running it that might be excitable and not very open. But she had explained that the point with which she disagreed was just the one point, not the entire platform, which she agreed with in the majority. Yet, the possibility for discourse, for rational discussion which the page had offered, was simply a chimera. Those who ran it and most of those who had joined it, weren't interested in different points of view. They were only interested in propagating their official truth.
My official truth is that people go bonkers whenever they approach a keyboard.
So, instead of promoting rational discourse, social media and internet are probably sowing the next civil war in this country and various others. We've come such a long way as a society, that we're back at the starting point.
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